November 28, 2007
Interior Marketing Photos
I've been working on taking some interior shots to begin using in our marketing collateral. Got a couple good ones during Thanksgiving, as well as a few others.
Posted by Stephen at 7:38 PM
December 12, 2006
New Logo / Wine Labels
At long last I think I've finally settled on a font for our logo. It took forever to find, and even once I began designing with it the final image took some font manipulation (adding anchors, doing some distortion, removing some letter bits etc.) Anyhow it is the closest I've been yet and given my current state of exhaustion and the fact that we needed wine labels I'll just say it's done. Like Sting said about recording a song - "A song is never finished - it's just abandoned." I feel pretty much the same.
That said, I needed to whip up labels for our wine and jelly since they are going out as Xmas presents. Check them out!
Posted by Stephen at 4:35 PM
November 5, 2006
Viogner Bottling
This morning we bottled the last of the Viognier we harvested back in August.
In order to experiment with different styles, I created three different types (suitably named with musical terms of course!)
"Vivace" - lively
100% Viognier - straight up from the vine to the bottle.
"Vivace e Dolce" - lively and sweet
80% Viognier, 10% Gewurtztraminer, 10% Rhine - created to evaluate the potential for blending Viognier and Traminette (our next varietal slated for planting Spring 2008).
"Vivace Con Eleganza" - lively with elegance
100% Viognier aged with French oak chips to simulate popular Chardonnay-style wines.
All three exhibit similar citrus bouquets, pink grapefruit being most prevalent. They all also have high alcohol content and seem a little "hot", however this is consistent with the 24 degrees brix at harvest which roughly translates to 13.5% alcohol. Maybe they just need to mellow in the bottle for a few more months - we'll see.
The dolce blend has the floral notes consistent with the addition of the Gewurtztraminer and a hint of sweetness on the palette. Down the road I'll probably add in more Traminette and increase the the residual sugar a bit (maybe a 60/40 blend) - not really my favorite style of wine but that will sell like crazy on hot summer days! The oak blend should probably have been bottled a week or two ago - I think the oak bouquet is quite nice but a bit strong in the finish. Perhaps it will settle down in the bottle, or perhaps I just screwed it up (more likely...)
So there it is. In just over four years we somehow managed to go from an absurd notion to bottling our first vintage. There is just too much going on right now for me to really let that sink in, but for the brief moments when I try to ponder it I have trouble believing it has actually happened. Holding one of those bottles in my hand is just an amazing feeling.
My goal this harvest was just to get something bottled - not necessarily to make a great wine, but rather to just get a wine with no obvious mistakes. I think however, that we did far better than that. Shannon and I have been to a lot of wineries during the last four years, tasting, experimenting, evaluating. Perhaps we're just biased, but we both feel very encouraged at the results of our efforts. I sincerely believe I have paid $20 for worse-tasting wine in the store, and I KNOW I have tasted much worse at some of the wineries we've visited. Winetasting is entirely subjective, and that will be something that I will struggle with for the rest of my life. Some people will love our wine, some people will hate it. So regardless of what I think this vintage tastes like, one thing is certain - our Christmas shopping is done!
Posted by Stephen at 10:59 PM
October 17, 2006
Barrel Sterilization
Rinsed out the barolkleen from both the French and Hungarian barrels and added a solution of potassium metabisulfite to sterilize them. Looks like I'll be racking in the wine tomorrow night!
Posted by Stephen at 10:32 PM
October 15, 2006
Barrel Preparation
So in order to take my winemaking the whole way, I decided to purchase two different kinds of barrels to evaluate any differences between French and Hungarian barrels. Since this was kind of a last minute decision, the supply house was out of the sizes I wanted, so I settled for a 20-gallon French and a 12.7-gallon Hungarian. Since the optimum barrel size is around 50-gallons, smaller barrels tend to introduce too much oak character due to the larger surface-to-volume ratio of wood to wine. So the supply house recommends prepping the barrel with a solution of barolkleen, which extracts excess tannins from the oak to allow a more controlled aging process. Otherwise the wine can taste like sawdust in a matter of weeks - not cool.
Posted by Stephen at 10:33 PM
October 3, 2006
Viognier Haze
Looks like the pectin enzyme cleared the viognier haze, but it seems to me that a touch of the grapefruit bouquet has disappeared. I had read that one danger of fining agents is that they can often remove the subtleties of the wine, and now I wish I had thought to leave a control batch to conduct taste tests i.e. did the bouquet lessen due to another reason or directly as a result of the pectic enzyme addition? Oh the vagaries of winemaking - this is so awesome.
Posted by Stephen at 10:52 AM
September 30, 2006
Viognier Protein Haze
Morning:
Having a little trouble getting the viognier to clear. I didn't add any pectic enzyme at crush (like I did for the cabernet franc) and looks like that was a mistake. So I ordered the enzyme and added 1/4 tsp per each carboy to hopefully clear the haze. The isinglass settled out the rest of the precipitate, so if I can just clear this last bit I'll be ready to bottle. Walking that fine line now though, of adding clarifying agents vs. stripping out flavors. Going to add minimum amounts and see how it goes.
Evening:
I can already see some improvement in the clarity of the wine. Looks like I'm on the right track - we'll see if it clears all the way or if I have to add another dose.
BTW I got a B+ in my UC Davis class. Bummer. Could nailed it without that big show the last week of lectures, but given everything that's going on guess I can't whine too much. Just a little. :-)
Posted by Stephen at 9:29 PM
August 26, 2006
Viognier Harvest And Pressing
So today was the big day. The first official Notaviva Vineyards harvest! Preparation actually began last night, as I unpacked the press and all the plastic fermenting pails. I laid out all my chemicals and tools in the kitchen, so that when we arrived witht he grapes everything was ready to go. I finally go to bed about 12:30 AM - ugh.
I got up at 4:30, made a pot of coffee and headed over to the vineyard. I had ordered a flat of harvest lugs so I needed to get them unpacked. Shannon, Ken, and Jim met me at the vineyard at 6 AM, and we loaded a couple dozen lugs in the back of Ken's truck and drove them into the vineyard. It was still pretty dark out, but we were able to start laying out lugs in the rows and got to the picking.
Turns out my harvest forecasts were pretty far off - I had estimated we'd bring in about 800 pounds of Viognier, and we only filled up 14 lugs with 382 pounds. What the hell - we didn't think we'd be picking any this year! The picking went fairly quickly, and we were ready to head back to the rental by 7:30. The rationale for picking so early is to get the grapes at the coolest temperature possible, to inhibit microbioligical activity for as long as possible once they are cut. Picking while cool also helps to preserve the fruit flavors, which disappear quickly as the grapes (and eventually the must) heat up.
We got to the rental and quickly got some fruit on the sorting table so we could pick out any berries shriveled from black rot. At first I had hoped to be able to do the direct-to-press method, where the whole clusters are loaded into the press. Once we had filled the press, I started ratcheting down the head and all sorts of problems started to arise. As the press started to compact the clusters, I realized that we didn't have enough wood blocks for spacers, and the ratchet head bottomed out. So we added more. And it bottomed out again. So we added more - still no juice. So we added more, and finally started to get some juice coming out of the press pan, but now the floor was all slippery and it was getting harder and harder to get leverage on the ratchet.
Now mind you, Jim and Ken are quite strong lads, and they were holding the press with everything they had while I was cranking and we were still sliding around the kitchen. So I decided to screw the press to the floor. Yup, that's right - I ran six drywall screws through the holes in the press legs right into the kitchen floor. Then we made a little more progress but still weren't getting the juice as I expected. So we switched, and Jim began to crank the ratchet while Ken and I held the press. He gave it a few cranks and broke the screws.
Now I'm getting really pissed off, which should make for some good TV because did I mention we're doing this with the HGTV camera in our faces? Nothing like making a total asshole of yourself on national television. So I've had it, and decide that I'm going to lag bolt the goddam press to the floor. So Ken and I head to the hardware store to get some bolts, and return home to secure the press. Ahhh - much better! Now we're getting somewhere. We finish off the first basket, evetually getting four gallons out. Disappointment set in though, as I took apart the basket to remove the pomace we saw how many berries in the middle of the cake were still unbroken. I'd say we left at least a gallon of juice in there.
So on the next basketful, Ken started crushing the fruit by hand (since I hadn't purchased a crusher/destemmer as I figured I didn't need one for the direct-to-press method...) This didn't speed up the process any but seemed to be getting a lot more juice out. We got two more basketfuls done in this manner, and eventually finished up with 18 gallons of juice in 3 six-gallon fermenting pails.
I added potassium metabisulfite to 60 ppm in each pail (an anti-oxidant and anti-microbial). I checked my hydrometer readings and found a few discrepancies. The hydrometer read a specific gravity of 1.108, which correlates to 14.5% potential alcohol and 26 degrees brix. But last night when I measured the brix in the vineyard it was 24 degrees brix, which correlates to 13.5% potential alcohol and 1.100 specific gravity. So somewhere I think one of my measuring devices was affected either by temperature or by suspended solids in the juice. Hopefully the field brix readings are the more accurate, because a wine over 14% alcohol is going to be too hot - we'll see.
I built a "wine-cooler" to settle the juice overnight. Basically put an air conditioner in my bathroom and set it on eskimo. The strategy is to settle the juice overnight, then tomorrow I'll rack it off the solids, pitch the yeast (EC-1118) and add bentonite (1 TBS) and diammonium phosphate (1 TBS - DAP is a yeast nutrient) and let the fermentation begin!
Posted by Stephen at 9:37 PM
February 9, 2006
Rhetorical Questions
This entry is from a wine blog I follow, and this entry is especially relevant to the Virginia wine industry:
A Good Cry & Rhetorical Questions
Posted by Stephen at 3:07 PM
January 30, 2005
Barrel Tasting
Last night we visited neighboring Windham Winery for a barrel tasting. Our friend/consultant Doug Fabbioli, winemaker for Winham hosted the 6pm event. Seemed to be about 24 people there, which considering the weather (wintry mix) isn't bad, plus there was an 8pm session which was delayed because of an accident on the road heading to Windham. Anyway the tasting was quite interesting, consisting of four flights of four different wines. The first flight was the Sauvingnon Blanc with two 2004 barrels (one each from vineyards 2&3) and the 2003 and 2002 vintages. Very interesting to smell/taste the differences between the two barrels from the different vineyards (same grape varietal in different soils and microclimates == different wine.) The 2002 was particularly nice, even being slightly past it's prime, while the 2003 was crisp but with noticeably less fruit.
The second flight was the Chardonnay, but to be honest the nose on the first wine (2004 new French barrel) affected us so much we were basically unable to do much with the other three Chardonnays. At this point in the winemaking process (I believe Doug indicated it was in the middle of malolactic fermentation, the process by which malic acid is converted into lactic acid) a very strong chemical compound results which basically smells like burnt rubber. Very close to the smell when your vaccuum cleaner gets stuck and burns up the belt - that's what this smelled like. It was one of those compoinds that just sticks in your nose, but accepting those compounds along the way and knowing that the wine is being transformed is part of the challenge of the process. Scared the shit out of me though - I think the first time I smell something like that come out of one of our barrels I'll pour it in the pond to kill the algae...
Next up was the Cabernet Franc, highly anticipated by Shannon and I due to being one of our first acres in a few months. And we were not disappointed! Very nice wines these Cabs - especially the second 2004 being aged in Hungarian barrels. Such a smooth texture, much different than the American barrels which had a bit of a bite to them, although Doug indicated this is important to the final blend, taking characteristics from each to create the final wine. This is going to be a great wine, we'll be getting a case of it upon release.
The final flight was the 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2003 and 2002 Vintner's Reserve, and a port which Doug is experimenting with. Obviously the 2004 Cab was quite young (and a touch vegetal I thought...) but the Vintner's Reserves were nice and the port, considering it is the first attempt was quite enjoyable. Not nearly as nutty as a Sandeman's or other Oporto port, but still nice.
Perhaps even better than the educational experience of the barrel tasting was the new people we got to meet. Doug mentioned a few times during the tasting that Shannon and I are new growers and that got some good conversation going with the other two couples at our table, both from Middleburg. Actually one of the guys, Stirling Young, is the vineyard manager at Boxwood Winery, the new venture of John Kent Cooke. Stirling and his friend Andy were great to talk with, and we chatted about vineyard startups, labor, etc. Looking forward to dropping in on him at Boxwood soon.
And the funniest moment of the evening, was when Shannon spotted Dave Collins, winemaker at Breaux Vineyards with a Jars of Clay hat on. Funny because I toured with Jars from '96-'97 and we had just seen the band the weekend before at a close friends' wedding. So we tapped Dave on the shoulder and told him about my association with the band, and had a wonderful conversation. Dave has been making wine in Loudoun County for nearly 20 years, having planted the first vines at Breaux long before they even owned the property. He was very interested in our venture, and knows the area and will drop by sometime. I told him I'll be getting him a picture signed by the band and he was really happy about that!
Posted by Stephen at 11:14 PM
May 31, 2003
Winery Seminar
Today we attended a winery seminar given by Dr. Bruce Zoecklein from Virginia Tech.
What an amazing amount of knowledge to gain in a single day. Main focus of the day was on business plans for varying size wineries, from 2,000 cases all the way up to 200,000 cases per year. Excellent course material broke out all the costs associated with a winery start up. Additional presenters from the Virginia wine industry also gave excellent information on everything from tank selection to power requirements.
This seminar was great because we got a sense that Dr. Zoecklein and the other people are total realists, and essentially tried to discourage the people in attendance from starting a winery unless they were absolutely 100% serious about the venture. As wonderful a notion as founding a winery is, it will also be a rough road getting it off the ground. This is not going to be a cheap or easy venture - probably the main reason Shannon and I are attracted to it. I guess if we didn't bag this idea today we're in it for the long haul!
Posted by Stephen at 5:12 PM
