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1-29-08
Happy New Year from Denner!
It has been an eventful time since harvest. In November, Ron & I had a great trip to the mountains of Colorado to pour at three Trade Tastings in Aspen, Vail & Telluride for our Colorado distributor, Baroness Wines. The wines were well received and you can start looking for them in fine wine shops and restaurants soon.
Our reds are in bottle now and will be released at Hospice du Rhone in May. Our much anticipated 2006 Grenache will be released in March at the Zinfandel Festival. It is even better than last year, too! The whites will be bottled in February. We will also have some new red wines coming out this year - to be announced soon.
Ron & I will be pouring at another Trade Tasting in New York City on April 16, 2008 and are really looking forward to a great time in the Big Apple.
Denner Winery has a General Manager now and is running much smoother and more efficient. Carol Rounsaville brings a wealth of experience in marketing, organization, and working with a small family business and we are so happy she has joined us.
We look forward to all the upcoming Wine Festivals and hope to see you in Paso Robles this year.
Cheers,
Marilyn Denner
Notes From The Cellar Rat
12-7-07
10 Things I Learn Every Harvest
Most of the experiences I have learned during harvest tend to stay with me from one harvest to the next. There are, however, a few lessons that just don’t seem to stick. Here’s a short list of the most important ones I re-learn every fall:
- An empty oak barrel will bounce if dropped from several feet in the air. A full oak barrel will never bounce, no matter what height it is dropped from.
- A glass bottle, empty or full, will almost never bounce.
- The Spanish word Bandeja means “Picking Tray” in English. The word Pandejo does not. Do not confuse the two.
- Missing spots while cleaning the floor with the power-washer is not considered modern art. It is, however, considered shoddy work and grounds for having to clean the drains too.
- The stereo system at the winery is surround sound. Be careful what you play on it during tasting room hours.
- Consumption of beer is widely accepted if not mandatory during harvest. Several guidelines do apply: The cheaper the beer the better (a suitcase of Pabst will disappear in a matter of days, a sixer of Firestone will still be in the fridge in the Spring), use any and all means to ensure the beer is cold (dry ice works well but often results in explosions and frozen beers, which is worse than warm ones), creative methods of opening beer will result in accolades from co-workers (swords, screwdrivers, and human appendages are always impressive).
- The cooling unit in the barrel room does not move. It is 3 inches below the top of your head and always has been. Do not stand up underneath it.
- The tasting room windows look down on the fermentation floor. It is good to practice self-awareness….as wine-tasters are watching your every move…
- Always wear underwear to work. You never know when or where your jeans are going to rip.
- There is a point at which increased consumption of coffee will no longer fuel your productivity. That point is 11 cups
Anthony Yount, Rat de Cave
10-12-07
For the third time this harvest we find ourselves in the middle of a mildly threatening drizzle. While these do not pose any serious threat to the safety or quality of our fruit that is still hanging in the vineyard, it sometimes poses a threat to our sanity. This morning I found myself washing the floors and equipment for the fourth time this harvest. Brian, meanwhile, has put Elliot Smith on the sound system, which has just about everyone else ready to stab themselves in the heart (too soon?).
After washing the floors I went to make a pot of coffee. We were out of filters and the only coffee in the kitchen was Foldgers that had been left in the cupboard since last harvest. I made a makeshift filter out of a paper towel and put in ten cups of water. Despite the stale oxidized flavor of the coffee, it was all consumed. It was just one of those days.
In all honesty, it really isn’t as bad as it sounds. Days like today and a good strong coffee buzz usually give us the opportunity and energy to divulge in deep conversations that we wouldn’t have time for otherwise. For example Amy Butler, the winemaker for Ed Sellers Vineyard and Winery, and I just finished a conversation about how Champagne should be the official beverage of harvest. But in the end agreed that beer is probably better because it is lower in alcohol and more economical.
The good news is that the weather seems to be clearing up and Brian is finally scheduling our picking dates and press loads. Things are certainly looking up for the next few weeks.
Anthony Yount, Rat de Cave
9-05-07
Things I can do with one finger: pick my nose, point out a murderer, turn on the lights, and make white wine. Honestly, making white wine is one of the easiest things Brian and I do here at Denner. Here’s how we do it: load the whole clusters of white grapes into a bladder press, push three buttons on its control panel, and let it do all the hard work.
The bladder press is a large drum that can both compress and spin on it’s own. We use an automatic 85-minute sequence, which consists of 12 cycles of gently pressing the grapes and then spinning them. The juice drains from the press and collects in a drip pan, where it flows, by gravity of course, into a selection of new French oak and stainless steel barrels. This year we’ve decided to use about 60% oak and 40% stainless on our Viognier, and the reverse on our Roussanne. This gives us wines with both pure varietal character as well as balanced oak spice to use in the final blends.
The juice undergoes fermentation in these barrels, so we only fill them 2/3 full to ensure the yeast enough room to do their thing. We have also found that they slower and cooler the fermentation, the more fruit and floral elements are preserved. We accomplish this by allowing the indigenous yeast to perform the fermentation, and by storing the barrels in our south barrel room, which is kept at a nippy 54º.
After most of the sugar has been consumed, we move the barrels to the north room, which is kept warmer and more humid. This environment is more favorable for malolacitc fermentation, which our wines go about ½ through before we stop them. malolactic fermentation decreases the acid, as well as gives the wine a slightly buttery flavor.Throughout this entire process we taste the wines at least once a week, to make sure they are not producing off flavors.
Lastly, we move the wines back into the south barrel room, where they are allowed to age for a few months before being blended, filtered and stabilized in preparation for bottling in the spring.
Anthony Yount, Rat de Cave
7-17-07
With the 2007 harvest looming in the near future, life at the winery has begun to pick up a little. After an incredibly busy spring, which marked the release of our 2005 reds and 2006 whites, we had hoped for a little down time to recharge our batteries before the fall. Unfortunately, with a handful of busy weekends in the tasting room, and a few special tastings with distributors, we have found that there really is no rest for the weary.
Now, just as tired as ever, we begin the long process of preparing ourselves for harvest. The first job at hand is creating the 2006 red blends. Every year we end up with a plethora of different “lots” of wine. Each “lot” contains unique elements, even though many are from the same variety, same vineyard block, and even the same fermentation, but often differ based on how they were stored. Each lot contains its own sensory characteristics that, when blended, help to make a more complex and balanced whole.
This year Brian began the blending process by pulling samples of the 58 lots of wine. There were 27 lots of Syrah, 16 lots of Grenache, 8 lots of Mourvedre, and 5 lots of Zinfandel. Tuesday morning Brian and I began tasting through the 27 different Syrahs. I was amazed by how different each lot of wine tasted, even when they were the same clone from the same tank.
We gave each wine 2 minutes for evaluation and both wrote shorthand notes on the composition of the wine, paying close attention to aroma and flavor intensity, mouthfeel, perceived acidity, and body. At first I had no trouble keeping up with Brian as we hammered through the wines, but as we reached the double-digit wine the quality of my notes began to fade.
After the 20th wine I was really struggling. I could still identify most of the aromas I found in the wines, but the harsh tannins in these young wines made my mouth feel as if it were burning and kept me from identifying flavors and differentiating the structural components in the wines. I felt like I was buzzed, despite the fact that we were spitting into buckets.
After an hour of tasting, we had finally sampled all of the Syrahs. Erin, our wine club manager, was making fun of us because it was only 10 in the morning and our entire mouths were purple from the anthocyanin color compounds in the wines. We will taste through the rest of the wines in the next few days, and will soon begin the process of making trial blends.
Some general notes I found intertesting:
- Syrahs that were fermented either partially or completely whole cluster were darker in color than the destemmed wines. This is most likely due to the cogeners in the clusters that help to stabilize the anthocyanins.
- Whole cluster lots contained more spice and herbal elements than destemmed lots.
- Lots that were aged in larger barrels (300-500L puncheon instead of the typical 228L barrique) had more complexity and the flavors in those wines had married much better than the wines in the smaller barrels.
- 2006 was a great year for Paso Robles wines despite the strange fall weather and rushed harvest.
Anthony Yount, Rat de Cave
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