Kerpow!

The release of the sparkling wine was a big hit this past weekend. Many of our customers - new and old, enjoyed tasting this special holiday offering. The Sparkling Chardonnay (known as Blanc de Blanc in Champange, France) is spritzy, lively and very tasty. It'll be great at Christmas or New Year or any festive occasion. The Sparkling Nebbiolo is the only such wine that I know of in the whole wide world.  It has amazingly tiny and long lasting bubbles with a wide range of tart fruit and wine flavors. It'll be great at Christmas or New Year or any festive occasion (didn't I already say that?). One of the very dramatic events of the Champagne method of making sparkling wine in its' own bottle is the step called disgorgement - when the frozen plug of wine and yeast is propelled out of the bottles.  I'm currently working on a video that explains the whole process and when it's done we'll have it playing at the winery and I'll have Kathryn put on our facebook page. It'll prominently feature the moment of disgorgement.

FIZZZZZZ

I was reluctant to enter this blog post until I was sure it was a done deal. Or at least was moving in the right direction. Especially considering the experience with last year's sparkling project. You may recall that last year there was problem with the compatibility of the bottle and the closure. It was not tight and the secondary fermentation was not contained leading to serious leakage as the youthful sparkler built up pressure in the bottles. Well this year after scouting out a bunch of suppliers and running some test bottle fermentations, I had a winner. A couple weeks ago Joan and I bottled the 2007 vintage sparkling Chardonnay and Nebbiolo Rose. I address some of the technical aspects of this winemaking adventure in the July Winemaker's notes for those of you who are interested. If all goes well and so far so good - namely no overwhelming smell of spilled fermenting wine in the winery, I will have a dozen or so cases of each available during the Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years holidays this year.

Stages

It’s taken me a few days to write this entry. First there was Denial – “Tim, when I was down at the winery today it smelled a lot like sparkling wine. Maybe one of the bottles leaked”. Then there was Anger, accompanied by a lot of cuss words. I tried to Bargain – well maybe not all the bottles leaked, maybe if I just do a super tightening redo job on the crown caps it’ll preserve the pressure that is remaining in the bottles, maybe it was just one bottle that was defective and blew up under the pressure. The Depression stage is just lifting as I’ve stopped busying myself with meaningless and repetitive tasks to distract myself from Accepting that almost all 45 cases of sparkling wine were lost because of a defective bottle that didn’t allow a pressure tight seal for the secondary fermentation and essential carbonation that occurs in the bottle. I did learn that the yeast build up was successful and the secondary fermentation was progressing full steam. My dad asked what I learned. “There are a lot of ways to screw up winemaking.” (Apologies to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross)

Sparkling

Making wine fills me with anxious expectations, but even more so the making of sparkling wine. First there's the task of making a sound base wine, in this case a Chardonnay with grapes from Cochise County. Then the yeast has to be "build up", meaning getting it used to living in a high alcohol environment. A measured amount of sugar is added to the base wine (4 grams per liter for each desired atmosphere of pressure) and the built up yeast is pitched to the wine. I always wait overnight to make sure there is some fermentation action, then the sugary, yeasty, base wine is bottled in champagne bottles and sealed with a crown cap. Over the next few months the yeast turns the added sugar to alcohol and carbon dioxide, but as opposed to primary fermentation, the production of carbon dioxide is the main goal. The tightly capped bottle prevents the gas from escaping and it becomes dissolved in the wine, AKA bubbles. This is the basis of the methode champenoise. It takes the yeast so long because they don't like the high pressure and increasingly high alcohol environment. When they are done and die the chore will be to get them out of the bottle, but that's the other half of the story.

Progress

One of the exciting things about the festival was pouring my wine for others to sample. I had prepared myself for the inevitable scrunched noses and "hmmm, that's interesting" comments when people taste a bone dry riesling. Yet I was thrilled with the positive reception I received and even ecstatic when I sold some wine. The Dehner's were my first customers. We are all smiling. Suddenly I could sense the tide had begun to turn and Joan and my "winery project" had become a business. Next on the agenda for when my son Ian visits in May, at least in the wine making arena, is to build up the yeast for a secondary fermentation and bottle the chardonnay that is still in barrels to make sparkling wine. We plan a limited and early release of some of it during the holidays. I'll keep you posted.