11-11 Coffee tastes like wine?

Coffee tasting?

I know a lot of people who love coffee, and I know a lot of people who love wine. I also know a lot of people who love coffee and wine, though usually not in the same sitting. I don't think any of those people would compare tasting coffee to tasting wine, even those who really appreciate both. I think most coffee lovers are really coffee addicts who want good coffee, but then again maybe most wine lovers are really wine addicts who want good wine. I always hope to provide proof that you can know a lot about wine without being a wine addict, but I know I'm not the majority!

Anyway, coffee tasting is actually something for professionals, just like wine. According to Wikipedia, the practice of coffee tasting is called cupping and is done much like wine tasting: "A standard coffee cupping procedure involves deeply sniffing the coffee, then loudly slurping the coffee so it spreads to the back of the tongue." Sound familiar? So does the description of what one is measuring: Aroma, Taste, and Mouthfeel; and the words used to describe those things, respectively: earthy, fruity, floral; acidity, bitterness, sweetness; and body (for more go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_cupping). They even use a comparison commonly used in wine for mouthfeel of different types of milk, skim milk being like light-bodied coffee, and whole milk being like full-bodied coffee.

I was introduced to this notion of coffee tasting the other day when I was buying some grounds at Peet's. When I told the young, slightly awkward, but very energetic guy behind the counter that I needed to buy a half pound of ground coffee, he put on his Master Cupper's hat and began a deep interrogation about what exactly I liked in my coffee and what I wanted to get out of the beans I bought today. In my head I was just thinking "caffeine...that's it", but when he started describing coffees from different regions as having certain characteristics, I was hooked. I wanted to make sure I bought the perfect bag. I ended up buying the Christmas Blend for its medium body and fruity characteristics with a hint of spice, but I left wanting to buy at least one from each region he described. Who knew that Costa Rican coffee was fuller bodied and nutty with citrus flavor (Marsanne), Ethiopian coffee could taste like blueberries (Petit Syrah) and Sumatra was a full-bodied, low-acid, and sweet coffee (Zinfandel). So if you enjoy knowing what characteristics you like in wine, pay a little extra attention to your next cup of coffee, and next time your buying coffee, think "do I want cabernet? or something a little less acidic?".

I was so overwhelmed with my experience, I completely overlooked the fact that he sold me a pound instead of a half. I guess knowledge of your product really does make you a good salesperson!

For more on how to be a coffee cupper:
http://www.coffeecuppers.com/Tasting-Primer.htm
And for more on the different regions: http://www.coffeecuppers.com/CoffeeTastingGlossary.htm

10-30 Getting to the Juice

Time to Press.

For those of you who are following along, you know that last week we crushed our grapes. About 7 days after crush, it's time to press all the juice from the grapes and leave the skins and seeds behind.

Over that 7 days the juice is still sitting in the skins and seeds. The mixture is kept cool and dark, covered in a large vat, within the stone walls of the winery for ideal temperature. During this time, the wine is gaining color and tannin, and fermentation has begun. You can see the dark color of the juice in some of these pictures we took. Before we "went to press", I popped one of the remaining whole berries in my mouth and it was extremely remniscent of an island-themed party in college where we had soaked fruit in Vodka. WOW!




Before we actually start the press we pump all of the juice that has settled to the bottom and separated from the skins and seeds on its own, out of the vat. This is called the "free run" juice. We attach a little filter and hose to a small pump which will pump the juice from the vat into the barrel that we will store it in for the remainder of its fermentation and aging. Free run juice is usually considered the best juice, so we were very happy to have gotten a lot of free run out of our grapes this year.




Next we press as much of the remaining juice from the skins and seeds as we need to fill the barrel. The press looks a little like a barrel with some separation between the staves (those are the slats of wood that are bent to make a barrel). Inside the press, it looks much different than a barrel; there is a large balloon in the center, made of a heavy plastic, that will expand to gently press the skins, seeds, and any remaining whole berries to the sides of the contraption, releasing the juice. The juice comes out the bottom, much like a heavy-duty juicer. The pump then pumps the juice from the small recepticle below the juicer into the barrel to join the free run. The press we used today was previously used for pressing cabernet. We left the must (leftover skins) in the press, which will give us a boost of darker color, whithout changing the flavor. As the juice poured out of press, we took a glass to sample it. At this point it tastes pretty tart and alcholic, kind of like a vodka cranberry made with the unsweetened kind of cranberry juice. It is also very cloudy, which will change much later in the process when we filter the juice.




In order to make sure we stop the pump when the juice is just below the top of the barrel, someone watches inside the tiny whole in the top of the barrel (the bung, I'm sure all of the boys reading this are chuckling now...) Its a tricky task. The barrel is very dark inside making it hard to see the level of the dark juice as it rises. We used a flash light to peer in, but this time we did overshoot a little and the juice spilled over the side. After we turned off the pump it settled down to a perfect spot. This will just make our barrel easily recognizable with its red stained center.



The juice will sit in the barrel through the holidays, and then we'll "rack" it in January. I bet you can't wait to find out what racking is...

10-23 Harvest Season 08 begins with a Crush!

Who wants to crush some grapes?

I'm in my 5th vintage of making wine with the Bacchus Winemaking Club in San Carlos. I can't exactly call myself a winemaker, since the wine is made by a professional, Dominick Chirichillo, but I do get a chance to take part in all the major steps and most of the major decisions that go into the wine. However, before I get involved, the grapes must be harvested (picked), sorted and delivered to the winery (Bacchus). I think I'm only missing out on some dirty work and getting scraped up by grapevines, however it did look pretty glamorous in the movie "A Walk in the Clouds".

So by the time I see the grapes they have been nicely sorted into bins (either the bins they are picked into, which are small 30 lb bins, or large, 1-2 ton bins), placed on a palett (wooden platform that can be picked up by a forklift for easy moving), and they are ready to be crushed. Each year when I've asked friends to help me out with the crush, there is at least two giddy people who ask if they get to stomp on them with their bare feet. YUCK! Would you want to drink a wine that you knew was stomped on with anyone's feet? I know Lucy did it that way in the TV show and all, but I don't think you saw her drink that wine later (whoever has time to look this up on Youtube to confirm, let me know). Crushing involves dumping the bins of grapes into a big machine called a crusher/destemmer, which then removes the stems and any remaining leaves from the grapes and breaks the skins releasing some of the juice. We crushed about 10 bins of Syrah, 8 bins of Mouvedre, and 16 bins of Grenache. The result of crushing about 1000 pounds, or 1/2 ton of grapes is approximately 60 gallons of wine (1 Barrel). My crushing buddy (the budding photographer who took these photos) and I were tired.

After the last bin has been dumped into the crusher, we make sure all the juice has left the machine and then shut the noisy contraption off. The product of the crush has been pumped from the crusher through a big red hose into a large plastic vat. The vat now contains juice, skins and seeds from the grapes. Next we test the sugar content of the wine to see what adjustments need to be made, if any. The tool that we used for testing the sugar was a refractometer, but you can also use a hydrometer; both are measuring the density of your solution (the juice) to tell you how much sugar is dissolved in it. Grapes are generally picked so that their measure of sugar in degrees, called the brix, is below 24 degrees (which results in about 14% alcohol, since the sugar converts to alcohol at a ratio of .58*brix). Today our wine measured at about 26 degrees. The high sugar content is typical in the region that we get our grapes from(Amador County), because the temperatures there are much warmer than in Napa. This usually means that you end up with a wine that is slightly sweet, or a wine that is high in alcohol, but you can alter this by adding water before the wine goes through fermentation. We had the experience in our third vintage, a wine my husband and I served at our wedding, that when 27 degrees brix converts to 15.8% alcohol, the resulting wine is little tough to drink and stay standing. Lesson learned, we added about 4 gallons of water and brought the brix down to about 25 degrees, which is slightly high, but I couldn't bear to add anymore water to the yummy juice. I hope we didn't stop too soon!

The final step in this part of the process is to add sulfer dioxide (a preservative), yeast (which causes fermentation as the yeast feeds on the sugar), and sometimes acid (called acidulating). The grapes have some naturally occuring yeast on their skins, however, winemakers generally like to add a preferred strain of yeast to have more control over the process. The yeast Dominick likes to use is called Pasteur Red. As for acidulating, I have an aversion to acidulating that developed from some snobby wine folks in Napa, so I won't let Dominick do it. This, in additon to the hesitation to add more water, is a choice I'm hoping doesn't come back to haunt me in the form of 24 cases of really sweet wine, but so far all of our vintages have been delicious and we've never added any acid.

Just to quest your thirst for knowledge, the opposite of adding water would be adding sugar. This is called chaptilization and is generally done in cooler climates (like Germany), but is illegal in California.

Next step...PRESS. We will press the grapes next Wednesday!

9-21 Wine tasting in parts Unknown- NC

I find it a unfortunate that some people remain closed minded about new wine producing regions. A few years ago, when I was in Houston for Thanksgiving, I asked my family if we to take a day trip to the Texas wine country with me. Everyone was happy to tag along except my dad and my youngest sister. My sister had a great excuse, A&M (her school) was playing Texas that day. That was HUGE! I'm pretty sure they lost, but at least my sister didn't feel like she wasn't supporting her team. My dad claimed to also have serious ties to the outcome of the game, but while he was investing quite a bit of money in A&M at the time, it was pretty evident when it came time to tasting what we brought back with us from our tasting trip that my dad had some ulterior motives for staying home. While we also sipped on our Texan juice, he decided to pop open a Silver Oak (aka serious Napa Cabernet). To be fair to dad, he's a lot more open now, but I'd like to claim credit (Dad, you can agree by commenting below). By the way, the winery we visited that day was Messina Hof. The winemaker there had worked at BV in his past, which was the reason for my interest. They have a nice restaurant and a fun, cozy tasting room. The wine we liked enough to bring home was called Paulo (eponymous of winemaker Paul Bonariggo). Now that was quite a few years ago (like maybe 6), but they still make that wine and its still winning awards in Texas.

So when I recently found myself in North Carolina, which happens to be one of the first wine producing regions in America - stunted by Prohibition, I was ecstatic when it was suggested that we visit one of the local wineries. We were staying in Winston-Salem (better known for a vice of a different sort), but nearby Lexington, NC had one of Wine Enthusiast's top 25 wineries in America, Childress Winery. Childress is owned by race car driver Richard Childress. Now before you go on making any comments about a winery owned by a race car driver, I will remind you that in Napa the Andretti family has a winery and in Sonoma we've got serious race car traffic at Sear's Point. And besides, I also know of a few veterinarians and dentists that own wineries, which is just as strange.

My friend Kelly and I were accompanied to the winery by her husband and mine, along with their son. All of us newcomers walked up to the winery a bit amazed at how beautiful the place was. They'd had a Tuscan-inspired architect from Georgia (the only non-local part of the whole establishment) design an appropriately themed estate. Kelly had given about 100 (or maybe 1000) disclaimers on how the wine probably wouldn't be very good, but I still had an open mind, and if nothing else the setting was gorgeous. The estate was surrouned by rolling hills and vineyards, live music was playing outside, and the sound of laugther and clanking glasses was everywhere. This ambience is something I will give much more credit to non-Napa wineries for. There is a bit of glory in not being the premier wine region in the country, something enjoyable and laid back about just being good to drink.

And the wines (at least most of them) were good to drink. We tasted two of the three categories of wines Childress makes, the Classic and the Varietal. While none of us had much of a liking for the Classic wines (the least expensive), we found just about every one of the Varietal wines to be tasty, and of good quality (I was really the only one judging that). The Varietals were all very reasonable priced as well, between $9.99 and $19.99 at the wineries price (which is often the most expensive you will find a wine). I had a special taste for the Sauvignon Blanc and the Sangiovese. Both wines were dry, which is usually the first fault of any young (newer) wine region, the wines often having a bit of residual sugar (the wine word for sweetness). The Sauvignon Blanc was also light and zippy with lots of citrus and melon and a hint of herbs. The Sangiovese was smooth with a nice black cherry flavor and a good finish (meaning it lingered a bit). We decided to skip the Signature tasting, but were assured by a very knowledgable host that they were the best (well of course...). I was very impressed by the education and enthusiasm of all of the staff, from the tasting room to the tour guide. The woman who poured for us had just returned from 2 weeks of career development in Napa where she visited something like 40 wineries. The woman who guided our tour answered a few of the tougher questions I asked (like how does sugar % in grapes compare with brix-which is the term I am most familiar with to describe the level of sugar in grapes). The tour guide was also genuinely excited to have someone from Northern California on the tour, and introduced me to the winemaker to further my dialogue. I was also very impressed by the wineries focus on being "green", which they pushed during the tour. I learned how bad synthetic corks are for the environment compared to screw caps (who knew!). They claimed cork was 50/50, good and bad, better for recycling, but not necessarily good for the trees it comes from.

We took two bottles home. We'd only brought enough packing materials (a two bottle styrofoam box) for that many (and have no room in our apartment for any more). We bought one of the Classic wines that we liked just enough, the white, because of the race car themed label and capsule (the metal foil on the top of the bottle) and a bottle of the Varietal Sauvignon Blanc.

I've been to tasting rooms in almost as many states as I've been to: Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New York, Texas, Virginia, Maryland, and of course California. While I wouldn't say that I've had anything better than the wines of California, Oregon and Washington, I will say that I've had some good wines in all of them, some very interesting wines at some of them, and a great experience every time (and I spit!)

If you're in NC, you have to try some wine made from Scuppernog or Muscadine. They are two regionally native grapes that are wild throughout the area we visited. The wine isn't good, but it's wierd enough to be interesting. By the way, Napa doesn't have any native grapes that they make wine from...

8-17 Reasons not to be the drunk taster in the bunch

First, let's all look back at the few (or many) things we've done that we wish we could forget, or forget again in some cases. I think its safe to say that for most of us who have occasion to imbibe, our least impressive moments have been when we were way past tipsy. Its enough to make us all rethink that next drink.

Here are some examples from my days working hospitality at the winery:

One Saturday, we had a guest come in to return 3 cases of wine. When asked why, he claimed that he had accidentally bought the $800 worth of wine yesterday. He said he had come in hoping to buy just one, but they were all so good. I remembered him from the day before; he and 3 buddies came in late in the day for a tasting. They had finished a week of business meetings and taken the day off for some wine tasting. BV was their fifth stop of the day and I could tell they had enjoyed each one to the fullest. Five wineries, a tasting at each, let's say conservatively that's 3 two ounce pours per winery, or 6 ounces of wine. A glass of wine is 4-5 ounces, and they'd probably had 30 ounces of wine, so that's over 6 glasses or 1.5 bottles. Their taste buds were shot. Even two-buck Chuck would taste great after that much vino!

Another Saturday when I was greeting people at the door, a young man came in with a beer in his hand. He'd already tasted so much wine that he'd made the switch to a new bevvie and was so far gone that he'd obviously forgotten he was in wine country and not Vegas. When I kindly told him that it was illegal for him to bring in an outside beverage (not to mention illegal to have been walking outside with an open container), he took another swig. I then asked him to either leave the building or throw it away. He tried to argue with me, but could barely put together a sentence. Noticing that my slight build was not very threatening to this guy, one of the wonderful gentlemen I work with came over to give me a hand with him. He escorted him to the trash can, but our stubborn drunkard refused to throw the beer away. This all led to a call to the police and the guy being taken away in a cop car. Napa jail is no way to end a great day of tasting.
Last but not least of the best of the worst stories involved a group of ladies tasting for a bachelorette party. About half way through my pouring for them, one of the girls noticed that someone was missing. After they checked the bathroom, and the gift shop and the parking lot, someone decided that they might have left her at the last stop. We called down the road to the last winery they'd visited, and sure enough she was there. Their limo driver went to pick her up and the other gals finished the tasting. It turned out that she had slipped into the bathroom during their tasting at St.Supery and actually fallen asleep in one of the stalls!

A positive thing to note, but definitely no reason to get drunk on your next Napa visit is that winery staff do sometimes end up benefiting from the drunker guests, as drunk people are often more generous and lively. I received an invitation to be someone's date at a wedding, a $50 tip from a group of men who has done the free tasting, an offer to use someone's time share with all the contact information scribbled on a napkin, one marriage proposal, and many, many invitations for dinner and drinks.

I kindly refused all of these, of course, except that $50 tip! Who could blame someone who makes $11.13 an hour?

There are a few important take away from this little diddy:

1)Winery staff are legally forbidden to pour for you if you are drunk. I had to deny serving a few folks in my day, and it looks very embarassing!
2)Someone has to stay sober and drive, and I say the rest of the crew should buy that person a bottle or two for their trouble. You can still taste, just spit! You'll look so "wine snob" if you are a spitter.
3)By really tasting instead of drinking, you'll be better suited to decide which wines you like enough to buy on your trip and your head will be happier after it!

5-26 Listening to your own Advice

There's a new wine shop in my neighborhood; erase that, there has been a new wine shop in my neighborhood for probably a year (or even two) now and I haven't taken the time to pop my head in yet. This is very bad form for someone who considers herself a wine lover. I think my neglect stems from a time when I went in to one of the other wine shops within a few blocks of my house and was disturbingly offended by the owner. He made inaccurate and disparaging claims about BV, the winery I used to work for, and left me feeling like my wine knowledge had been discredited. I guess it took me awhile to face another wine shop owner within the proximity of this guy. Silly me.

Within moments of stepping into this new wine shop, I felt welcome. The owner, a cute, petite women, came from behind the counter and introduced herself to me as Katie. She asked me if she could help me find anything, and after I told her that I was just browsing, she versed me briefly on the shop, "whites here, reds there, almost everything Italian, except the last three rows over here from Austria and Hungary," and left me quietly to my search. I chose an inexpensive Italian white, and when I brought it to the counter she told me that it was a nice, light wine made from Vermentino, and also commented on the pretty label. I had liked the label (which is a perfectly good reason for choosing something to try in the inexpensive category) and thought the color looked promising (not too pale), so I was happy to hear it was one she liked. The price was also in the range I was focused on ($12), which made it a definite winner. I mentioned to her that I have a group of ladies over for wine tasting about once a month, and that we always try at least one inexpensive wine along with whatever I decide to pull out of my cellar, a.k.a., my 6ft wine fridge. This idea excited her into telling me about a red wine she had just tasted called Castello di Meleto, that was priced at about $10 retail. She had ordered the wine for the shop and said it should be on the boat headed our way as we spoke. Talking with her about my purchasing plans reminded me of the advice I've given to numerous friends, as well as advising ein this blog, that you should always feel comfortable asking the shop owner for advice on what to buy, no matter what the price range you're looking in, or how much you know about wine. Most shop owners are happy to help, so be sure not to get discouraged by one that isn't. If you happen to run into an unpleasant owner, head to the shop around the corner. If you don't live in San Francisco, the closest shop may be on the other side of town, but its worth the drive. If you happen to see a bottle of the Castello di Meleto, give it a try and let me know what you think. I'll have to wait until the ship comes in!

2-26 Old Wines, New Palates

Last week, my husband and I went to our first social, business dinner together. The French CEO of a young company had planned a feast at one of my favorite SF restaurants, paired with what we discovered to be delicious wines, and even though he wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy networking, I think he felt a little guilty indulging in the haute cuisine without me. Not that he hasn't been privy to many guilty dinners prior to this, but for the first time, spouses were invited.

After slowly sipping a martini during the brief cocktail hour (slowly, that is, to keep my wits about me) we were escorted to what appeared to be the Special Guest table in the center of the room. I don't know if this actually meant that we were special guests, or just that we were all not company employees, but let's assume the former. It was quite a mix of people. On my left sat two young technology focused gentlemen, across from me a distinguished and established French business man, and to my right the French lawyer for the host company and a midwesterner who loved to ski.

The fixed dinner menu and wine pairings were printed on long, slender cards in front of each of our place settings. I couldn't resist perusing mine immediately, even though the focus of the table was on business conversation (and snow skiing). The wine choices were from some of the best regions in France. The appetizer (a tuna tartare) was paired with a Condreiu, which is a viogner from the Northern Rhone, one of my absolute favorite wines. The next course (lobster bisque), came alongside a Puligny-Montrachet, one of the best Chardonnays of Burgundy (much different from California Chardonnay, crisp and a bit salty to go well with the shell fish). The main course (sturgeon and veal cheek) was accompanied by a Vosne-Romanee, which is a Pinot Noir from Cote de Nuit in Burgundy (known for its soft, elegant flavor, making it a great complenent for both fish and meat). All of the wines were balanced and beautiful, and the food was delicous!

As we moved further into the meal, the conversation turned from the business at hand to the food and wine in front of us. The technology guys were very interested and curious about it all, where, as I would have expected, the distinguished Frenchmen were very knowledgable. At the end of the meal, we were joined by a young New Zealander who introduced Zinfandel into the conversation and began talking to the technology guys about their thoughts on the wine. Both of the techie gentlemen, with their newly introduced palates, claimed to like them, but found them to be a little weak. Both Frenchmen, having older and more experienced palates, found the wines to be superb. This all made me think about how differently the old world (Europe) and the New World (everyone else) view wine. Americans typically like their wine "big", meaning full of flavor and body, while Europeans like their wines "balanced", soft and elegant. This has always seemed to me to be completely in line with the way the two cultures view wine differently, Americans for pure consumption, and Europeans as a complement to food.

So the lesson for everyone here is that if you like your wine big and bold, stick to the American, NZ, and Australian stuff, and drink it young. Americans tend to drink their wine they day its purchased (85% of wine is consumed this way), so winemakers make it so that it can be, at least at the reasonably priced level. If you want to see how well wine can complement a meal, try a French wine, but keep in mind that the French like their wine soft and elegant and this typically comes with age. They don't make their wines as drinkable early on.

PS. My only digression during dinner was an attempt to show the knowledgeable Frenchmen my "hand" map of France. When I worked at a winery in Napa I used the back of my hand to teach people about the regions in France (and as evidenced by this particular evening, I'm still known to do so from time to time). I could tell the Frenchmen were less impressed than your average middle-America tourist at my self described, brilliant tool. I think I actually saw them biting their lips to fend off laughter. I guess I'll stick to domestic students from now on.

France on (my) Hand: