Harvest is in full swing at our downtown winery, where we process all of our white wines. Over the past couple of weeks we have been getting in truck loads of tiny small cluster berries such as sauvignon blanc and orange muscat. Today we received about 5 tons of Thompson Vineyard Chardonnay and about the same tonnage of Monterey Sauvignon Blanc (Musque Clone).
We receive fruit by the truckload, which brings it right to our front door, parking right in front of the visitors area of the winery. The juice immediately gets pressed off of the skins and fermentation begins soon afterwards. We have gotten the opportunity to taste sauvignon blanc juice through the stages it takes from just grape juice to an active fermentation. As the wine is fermenting the sugar disappears and it turns into wine as those sugars convert to alcohol. Each day the juice is a noticeably less sweet.
Visitors today can taste the chardonnay berries that we have in the tasting room as they sip through current releases of our 2007 white wines that were going through the same process just one year ago.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Thursday the 25th of September the urban harvest crew received the largest tonnage of grapes for the season. The grapes were Sauvignon Blanc from the Jack Mcginley
vineyard, formerly called the Westerly vineyard. Ryan Ralston, the assistant winemaker for Santa Barbara Winery and Lafond Winery wines has a pension for creating Sauvignon Blanc with balanced, rounded tropical fruit flavors, little astringency and crisp finish.
“The key to having great California Sauvignon Blanc is allowing mother nature to exude its full effects on the grape. To do so the winemaker and vineyard manager must have some faith in the sometimes fickle California climate and let the grapes hang until peak ripeness is achieved.”
Anything less would be uncivilized and add bitter, grassy and sometimes harsh poly phenols and phenolics to the wine.
Photo above shows whole-cluster grapes dropping into the press from the conveyor. The stems provide channels for the juice during the press cycle. The grapes enter the press undamaged.
The bottom photo is of juice being extracted through the press. The press has a large bladder which on being expanded by air, like a giant balloon, gently pushes the grapes against the wall of the press and its screen.
Cameron Bendetsen, Sata Barbara Winery
Another day, another wine dinner in Santa Barbara… Spiritland Bistro’s Wednesday Wine and Dine featured Santa Rita Hills Pinot Noir as their designated varietal this week. If you have missed my previous postings about this event, each month a four course meal is paired with a designated varietal of which each guest brings their own bottle. Between each course an expert on the varietal speaks about its characteristics and food pairings.
Lafond was the most popular label of the night, I think there were about 7 bottles
of Lafond brought in the mix of 35 wines. I brought two bottles: 2006 Lafond Martin Ray Clone Pinot Noir and 2007 Santa Barbara Winery Pinot Noir. These dinners provide an amazing opportunity to learn about specific areas of wine, particularly pairings of food and wine. It is great to be able to taste wines from the same appellation against each other and see why the wine works with the menu and cheeses.
Food was delicious - delicate mushroom tart to start followed by baked salmon and potatoes au gratin. Dessert was a delicious berry crumble. The stand up cheese course featured three cheeses that matched perfectly with the wine - Cabra al Romero, St. George, and Brie de Nangis. There is always an effort here to collect an assortment of diverse cheeses from around the world while still keeping their flavor profiles in line to complement the pairings.
Cabra al Romero is a pasteurized Spanish gourmet goat cheese from La Mancha. This is an area in central Spain where you can also find the famed Manchego cheese. It is coated with rosemary, which seeps through the outer walls to produce a fragrantly subtle herbal nose. This quality makes it a really nice match with pinot. Its texture is dense and firm with a slightly fruity finish.
St. George is a richly textured, semi-hard, full flavored cow’s milk cheese from Northern California. It is based on a Portuguese recipe, but retains a distinctly American spin. It has a depth of flavor that effortlessly works with pinot and is fantastic when melted in polenta.
Brie de Nangis (bree duh nahn-ZHEE) yields from France and is firmer in texture than its relative Brie de Meaux. It is milder than other Brie cheeses with a hint of earthiness. It is soft ripened (bloomy rind), which gives it a creamy and smooth texture.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Zach Blair has moved one step closer to becoming a certified Master Sommelier. Zach has worked part time in the tasting room for about three years while working full time in the high end restaurant service industry. He has worked locally for the Wine Cask, Louie’s, and Ruth’s Chris. Most recently, he is working at Pierre Lafond Bistro helping to revamp and manage their new wine list and menu.
This past weekend the Court of Master Sommeliers held the second of four stages to attain the title Master Sommelier, the Certified Sommelier Exam. Zach earned the right to take this test by passing the first Introductory Sommelier Course last year, a two
day intensive filled with instruction and a written exam. The most recent challenge was a one day exam with three portions: blind tasting, written exam, and service exam. At the end of the day Zach was among the select participants to receive certification by the American Court of Master Sommeliers. He has only two more very difficult and time consuming steps to become a Master Sommelier.
So what does this mean? The Court of Master Sommeliers was established to encouraged improved standards of beverage service and evaluate knowledge for hotels and restaurants. The first exam was held in the United Kingdom in 1969, while the American Chapter was established in 1977. Only 96 professionals hold the title Master Sommelier in the American chapter: 81 men and 15 women. The lengthy process takes the most committed, skillful and knowledgable professionals through rigorous testing that ranges from basic knowledge of viticulture practice to blind tasting evaluation skills. It is the only internationally recognized certification that a wine and service professional can attain.
For those who are interested in getting a sense of the extensive knowledge that Certified Master Sommeliers must possess, go check out The New Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia and scan through each section. Most likely, any Master Sommelier will be able to answer almost any question out of there if you just opened it, pointed to a sentence and asked them about it. If they don’t, at least they will have the ability to skillfully deflect and talk for an hour about a related area of interest.
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
We have the fans blowing and doors open at Santa Barbara Winery today now that fermentation has started. If you have never visited our tasting room, it shares the same building as our production facility where we process all of our white wines (the reds are made up at Lafond Winery & Vineyards). This means that visitors get a chance to see and smell harvest while tasting through six or seven wines featured on the tasting list.
Fermentation is the chemical reaction that produces wine from grape juice. Yeast reacts with the natural sugars found in grapes to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is released into the air so we’re really smelling it in the facility.
We just inoculated the Orange Muscat with yeast strain QA23, which is very aromatic. The fermenting juice is in stainless steel tanks. Unlike red wine, white wine needs to be brought down to a cooler temperature in order to ferment (less than 60 degrees is ideal). This first stage of fermentation for the white wines lasts about 10-15 days.
According to Assistant Winemaker Ralston, “We are in a lull right now. A couple of things have come in [some Sauvignon Blanc and Orange Muscat], but we won’t see more fruit for another week. We are waiting on more Sauvignon Blanc to come in next.”
Joanie Hudson, Assistant Tasting Room Manager, Santa Barbara Winery
Photo taken September 19, 2008, before harvest. The vines are beginning to stress as the grapes ripen. Harvest, in this block, will probably begin within the next two weeks. This photo does not include the Martin Ray Pinot Noir block mentioned in the previous blog.
The Lafond Winery is in the distance just below the hills.
Click image to enlarge:
2008 Harvest
Due to circumstances created by mother nature leading up to the 2008 grape harvest, we at the winery searched far and wide to find quality grapes to fill our barrels. One such find was Orange Muscat.
Tuesday September 16th the first batch of Orange Muscat arrived from the Karry/Mosby vineyard in Santa Ynez. We received 4.16 tons of this curiously delicious grape varietal. Upon sampling the fruit, I was immediately taken back by the layers of sweetness unleashing on my palate. Ryan Ralston the assistant winemaker noted that the “candy” had arrived.
The flavor profile of the grape ranges from grilled pineapple covered in brown sugar to sweet peaches. The pressed juice was similar to a sugar fortified sweet tea. The Orange Muscats destiny is still yet to be determined; it could become an off-dry wine for warm summer nights or it could undergo full fermentation in ordered to process out all of the residual sugars and become yet one more delicious dry white wine in the Santa Barbara Winery line-up.
To find out….Keep reading and drink up!
Cameron Bendetsen, Santa Barbara Winery
Recent Comments