Blind Muscat's Cellarbook

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As mentioned in This Space before, Blind Muscat spent the first half of the year writing down everything he knows -- and more -- about home winemaking. The "and more" part refers to the dozens of professional winemakers who pass on their own insights on various grapes and tecn hiques along the way. 

And now it can be yours:

 

Books and Buddies

A few days back, while I was busy smiling broadly about publishing my opus on home winemaking, the following email exchange occurred over the course of a couple hours between me and two old high school friends.

Mike, who lives in Toronto, sent out the first note in the series to me, to our mutual friend Gordon in Vancouver, and about 50 other people. I replied to him and Gordon, and from then on, it's just the three of us commenting on the meaning of books and many other things in the modern digital world.

Mike: If you are interested, here is a link to Book Thug interview about my new book, Cosmographia--a post-Lucretian faux micro-epic:
http://www.bookthug.ca/newsletter/michaelboughn2010.html

Thanks,
Mike

Tim (to Mike and Gordon): And if either of you needs to pick up a useful skill, check out my recent publication, Home Winemaking for Dummies --

Finding Myself in Wikipedia

When my book -- that would be Home Winemaking for Dummies -- came out a couple weeks ago, boxes of copies showed up at my door and got piled in my living room. I emailed friends to let them know it was out, and got many nice emails and promises of orders in return. Soon people I hadn't contacted heard of it and sent more nice notes. I busily set to work organizing launch and signing events hither and yon around the Bay Area. The book showed up in the Amazon rankings, and soon I was checking every few hours as the book made a respectable initial climb.

But I never expected the publication would get me listed in Wikipedia.

My wife Nancy actually discovered this intriguing twist on instant fame -- she was tracking my "celebrity" as well. The entry in question wasn't about me, or about the book; it was a newly-contributed article about Blenheim Vineyards in Virginia. After noting that it's the project of rocker Dave Matthews, the article goes on to describe the lineup of wines, including mention that the Viognier is made with some barrel and some tank fermentation, and with neutral rather than aromatic yeasts.

In footnote 11, the source of the Viognier info is revealed as . . . ^ "Patterson, Tim. "Home Winemaking for Dummies" For Dummies, 2011. p.283." (The repetition of "for Dummies" is apparently an attempt to identify the publisher, which is John Wiley & Sons.) And indeed, Blenheim's winemaker, Kristy Harmon, was one of the dozens of professional winemakers I interview for and quoted in the book. How the book became a source within days of its publication still baffles me.

It's official: I'm a footnote in Wikipedia!

White Wine Gets Ugly

One of the revelations that comes from making your own wine is discovering that white wines, which end up brilliantly clear, delicate and refreshing, and usually clean as a whistle, start off looking really disgusting. Glass carboys, the home wine staple, provide a clear window into the unappetizing visuals of fermentation; commercial tanks obscure the workings, which is probably good for morale among commercial winemakers.

Atelier Rides into the Sunset: 2007 Rockpile ZInfandel

These are tough times for wineries, and teh casualties are many. Usually the back story for a winery shutdown is either a sad tale of hard-working vintners crushed by inexorable market forces, or a schadenfreude-inviting chronicle of colossally bad judgment by self-important poseurs.

But every now and then, the demise of a wine label happens mostly for good reasons, and this is one of those stories.

Every Wine Has a Story

This strange harvest took some even stranger turns in the past ten days, and not all of them have to do with grapes.

Leading up to the ever-later harvest, the prize batch of grapes was always the backyard field blend at Paul and Barbara Micaleff's place in the hills overlooking Dry Creek Valley near Healdsburg. (See September 5 post,) The spot is gorgeous, the vineyard a 20-year-old labor of love, the owners delightful people, and the prospect of an old-time field blend -- Zinfandel, Petite Sirah and Carignane from one stretch of dirt -- was mouth-watering from the start.

Paul called periodically through September with Brix readings, and every one was an awful lot like the last; the chilly weather meant the grapes were taking their sweet time -- bad choice of words -- accumulating sugar. The Micaleffs were always planning a short vacation in Maui in early November, celebrating the wedding of one young member of their large and complicated family, and we worried about having to pick with no one around. But then, the grapes were so under-sugared, we eventually figured they'd be back before harvest.

On Saturday October 9th, Paul called me from Maui; the wedding and the reception afterwards had been terrific, and they would be enjoying a couple more days, and by the way, he had fresh sugar level readings done by a neighbor that morning. Creeping up, but still not ready -- at least a week off, maybe two.

Later that day, swimming in the Pacific, Paul started coughing up blood, and was rushed to a hospital, sinking fast. He had been fighting cancer for quite some time, knowing the cancer was winning, still taking drugs and treatments to stave it off, and determined to get the most out of life for as long as he could. The last straw was probably a heart attack. By Sunday, we heard through friends of friends that he had died.

2005 Quixote Winery Panza Grenache-Mourvedre

As a wine writer who has taken the vow of poverty central to our profession, I get to taste pricey wines only 1) when invited to a tasting (a great perk of the job), or 2) I never get to taste them at all. There are whole worlds of white Burgundies and and Trockenbeerenauslesen and single-vineyard Priorats that will never pass my lips. Once a year on my birthday, I let myself buy a wine with a dollar value matching my age, and I am definitely looking forward to March, 2011, when I get my $65 bottle -- and get onto Medicare.

Meanwhile, there is the kindness of neighbors.

Waiting to Extract

Finally, the Malbec is in the house.

For 15 home harvests, most of my grapes have been in by the end of September; this year, the first major batch of fruit came in Octrober 2, with the rest anywhere from one to three weeks off.

I know you're all asking, "How late is that really, Tim?" Here's how late. This morning, I was talking with Ed Boyce, the winemaker at Black Ankle Winery in Mt. Airy, Maryland, and I told him I was about to go pick up some Malbec, my first grape of the season. He chuckled and allowed as to how his Malbec was already fermenterd and pressed. There's the 2010 story: the East Coast gets ripe sooner than Lodi this year.

Take that, climate change deniers.

Bottling Flashbacck

While we wait, endlessly, for the new grapes to come in -- what was supposed to be Malbec on Wednesday is now maybe Malbec on Friday -- let me think my way back a few weeks to the most recent bottlings of the 2009s.

Among the adventures from that vintage was a five-grape Bordeaux blend, the whole contemporary crew -- Merlot from Sangiacomo Vineyard in Sonoma, Cabernet Franc from the Russian River, Cabernet Sauvignon from El Dorado County in the Sierras, Malbec from Russian River, and a pinch of Petit Verdot from Napa. I will admit that Bordeaux grapes are not my preferred cup of tea, but with some goading from my co-conspirators, doing the whole Bordeaux Bingo became an irresistible force. (No, no Carménère, the phantom Bordeaux grape that migrated to Chile; we'll get around to that when we find a source.)

For the first few months of its life, this blend tasted marvelous; almost ready to drink, full of tasty fruit. Then it had an attack of aldehydes, unpleasant compounds put together by the mating of ethyl alcohol and oxygen, dampening the aromas/flavors and offering up something stale and nasty instead. Thanks to the miracle of sulfur dioxide (aka sulfites or SO2), this unpleasantness got fixed, and the fruit came back.

When we got around to the label, like most home winemaker efforts, this one has a convoluted, private story. But stick with me; the labels themselves are worth it.