Ever since returning from Crushpad Bordeaux to man the helm of Sales Account Management at Crushpad Sonoma, I’ve been searching for  the best vineyard source of Cabernet Sauvignon to create a similar Bordeaux style blend to pair with my 2010 Margaux-based blend.  After sampling all of Crushpad’s 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon production, I focused on the Cabs form the coolest part of the valley, the Coombsville/Tolucay area: Carrefour, Coombsville and Reverence.  Samples from each of these vineyards proved more than “worthy” but the Reverence vineyard stood out as best for my needs.

Once past the vineyard selection (which I though was the hard part), I pulled samples from several barrels to analyze and taste.

Science Guides, But Taste Decides

Armed with my trusty (hobby) refractometer and pH meter, I set off analyzing each sample hoping to get a scientific hint on which sample to choose.  The Brix readings appeared way off due to a bad calibration that I wasn’t able to resolve (but will double check in the lab this week) but the pH range of 3.82-3.66 appeared reasonable.

The color on all of these young samples were mostly indistinguishable with their deep ruby core fading all the way out to a pinkish rim.  One sample, had a touch of garnet in the core but no organoleptic indicators of oxidation.  Two of the samples expressed cassis and ripe fruit, two other samples were layered with a bit of confectionary sugar, and the last two samples gave more red fruit and floral notes — just what I was looking for.  Long tannins and good acidity was displayed by all of the samples.  But the samples offering more red fruit had a touch more vibrant acidity.  Again, exactly the cool climate traits that I desire.

All of these samples were aging in medium toasted barrels used since 2008 from an array of coopers.  The sample that I enjoyed the best, and will secure tomorrow was made by Sansaud.

I can’t wait for the next step:  the Assemblage.

My first order of business after relocating from BDX (Bordeaux) to PDX (Portland) via BOS (Boston), was to attend the Oregon Wine Symposium in Eugene this week.  Below I offer you some interesting tidbits while sparing you the gory details.

Technical Tasting: Ageable Oregon Whites

In this session we were treated with 11 aged white wines from Oregon and 2 aged wines from Germany as a comparison.  My 2 favorite wines of the bunch were the 2001 Argyle Chardonnay and the 1992 Zilliken Saarburger Rausch Riesling Spatlese (Germany) followed closely by the 2004 King Estate Signature Pinot Gris.  I disagreed with the panel’s positive endorsement of the 2002 Amity Gewurtztraminer and 2005 Watermill Viogner and found the Rieslings a bit lacking in the company of the German samples.

Bottom line, I would certainly endorse Oregon’s ability to produce age-worthy white wines.  Chardonnay may be the varietal of choice for aged wines in the future if one is to believe a comment by a viticulturist from another session stating that Pinot Gris is not ‘particularly economically viable’ to grow.

Consumers and Their Purchase Drivers

Of the plethora of mind numbing statistics and PowerPoint Eye-Charts, nothing ground-breaking was reported.  It was encouraging to learn of Oregon’s 2010 growth rate (~18% volume and value).   Other information was obvious to New/Social Media saavy folks like ‘most wine buyers are getting most of their information from Facebook, Twitter or Blogs’.  I left the session muttering the words of Benjamin Disraeli, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  These statistics are important for business plans and bankers, but at the end of the day, we winemakers must make the very best product we can and make a real, personal connection with our consumers.  I probable could have skipped this session and gone to the bar to network.

Harvest Parameters and Differing Conditions

The most interesting information was given by Russ Smithyman from Château Saint Michelle in Washington.  Their use of remote (aerial) sensing using leaf reflectance to delineate intra-parcel maturity/selection was fascinating.  I was reminded of my friends at Force-A who have developed optical devices to measure photoflorescense in developing grape bunches to evaluate phenolic maturity.  Cool (geeky) stuff.

Drawing Perspective: Three Views on Distribution

This was fun to watch.  What started as a series of factual presentations from a winery, distributor and an outsource sales and marketing company turned into a mild bashing of distributors and enthusiasm for direct-to-consumer.  To Alex Krobin of Thirst Wine Merchants’ credit and from all accounts, he seemed like a standup guy and maintained the middle ground on the debate and basically took the position that “there is room for all of us”.  Adding value to the marketplace versus violation of the commerce clause is what’s at issue.  Only time will tell.  As a producer, determining your raison d’être and go to market strategy early on is paramount.

The Many Faces of Malolactic Fermentation

OK, this will most likely only be interesting to me.  But, I really enjoyed Sigrid Briand and James Osborne’s talks on Malolactic Fermentation.  Not a moment too soon as next weeks UCD winemaking lectures cover MLF.  Of specific interest was the issue of co-inoculation.  Rodrigo Laytte’s of Château Kirwan (see The Art of the Blend with Château Kirwan’s Rodrigo Laytte) explanations of the benefits of co-inoculation where confirmed by both speakers. Additionally, if I understood correctly, co-inoculation can protect against Brettanomyces and can reduce vegetative notes.  They did warn, however, that wine that endured MLF showed reduced color and pigmented polymers.  This could be an issue for unstable colors in Pinot Noir.

All About Filtration

Consumers have lately been conditioned to prefer/request unfiltered wines.  Unfiltered == Better == Artisinal == Complex == “Insert-Your-Own-Quality-Descriptor”.  This talk and tasting presented traditional and cross-flow filtration and gave us an opportunity to taste the differences.  Of the 2 Pinot Noir wines we were shown, 3 samples of each were given: Unfiltered, Cross-Flow Filtered, Cross-Flow and Sterile Filtered.  The wines were well clarified and impossible to detect visually.  The unfiltered wines generally displayed more tannic qualities.  Preferably speaking, I preferred Cross Flow and Sterile filtered version of Wine 1 and the unfiltered version of Wine 2.  Given that this was my first experience of head-to-head comparison of filtered and unfiltered wines, I can’t form an opinion.  I think that I’d have to try it on my own wines before making a conclusion.

As my winemaking adventure in Bordeaux was coming to an end, I thought it fitting for my last experience to start back at the beginning with a trip to a pépiniériste.

Mercier Groupe Pépiniériste

Mercier Groupe, founded in 1880, is a grape vine nursery headquartered in Vix, France.  Utilizing 100+ different vinifera varieties/clones and 15+ varieties of rootstock, Mercier produces over 1,000 unique combinations of plants suitable for diverse terroir. Guillaume Mercier, CEO of Mercier Groupe, was kind enough to give me a tour of their nursery operations, R&D facility and even share a taste of the Loire Valley wines that they produce. The photo album below depicts the process from harvest to shipment of the young vines.

Thibault Despagne

I had the opportunity to meet Thibault, his family and the folks at Despagne through CRUSHPAD Bordeaux who make their white wine blends there. Despagne is primarily known in the region for their fine white Bordeaux blends of Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc.  However, it is their Girolate red wine and the techniques employed that are of particular interest to me.Just 12km south of Saint Emilion, in Naujan et Postiac, is where Despagne’s Girolate is painstakingly crafted.  On a 10ha parcel of clay and limestone are densely planted, ultra-low yielding, single-cluster-per-cane spur-trained Merlot vines (Cordon de Royat or Chablis if memory serves?) yielding small, highly-concentrated berries.  So, it stands to reason that, after expending much care and effort in the vineyard, it should be no surprise the lengths that Thibault and his team will go to produce an intriguing, premium wine.

Double-Barrel Filling Station

While the rest of the Merlot fruit from Bordeaux is being “pinched” and herded en masse into 25-45hl stainless steal tanks, the berries that will yield Girolate remain whole and are gently placed into 225l new oak barrels.  The benefits of early oak integration during red wine barrel fermentation to produce greater complexity does have its drawbacks. It becomes more challenging to control fermentation temperatures and for cap management.

So, the chock full o’berries barrels are immediately ushered in to a nearby cold room for a brief soak and settling.  Once all the barrels have been filled, they are inoculated for alcoholic fermentation and transferred to a climate controlled cellar necessary to properly manage fermentation temperatures. Caps are managed, not through offensive punch-downs, pump-overs or rack-and-returns, but a gentle turn of the barrel in the OXOline rack system.

OXOline Rack System

Top-ups are then performed from the fermenting fruit from neighboring barrels.  This, of course, would indicate that it now takes two (2) oak barrels of fruit for every one (1) barrel of wine that is produced.  Not accounting for the additional labor cost, this adds approximately €2 per bottle in material costs. Better results always carry an associated luxury cost.

2005 Girolate

You are most likely thinking, “This is nice and all, but what is the wine like?” and “How much does it cost?”.  My tasting notes and experience are below and a quick wine-searcher.com search indicates that the 2005 Girolate can be had in the US between $75-100.  It reportedly sells for several times that in Asia.

Tasting Notes:

This wine is loonnnggg.  Although initially restrained to exhibiting red and black berry aromas, it eventually opened up to offer scents of white pepper, cedar and a bit of green olive. The acidity and alcohol (14.5%) were in harmony with the soft, long tannins. Besides having a long, smooth finish, it was quite full bodied as one could tell by looking at it that it was most likely unfined as well as unfiltered. I was advise by Despagne to hold this wine for a while but I couldn’t resist and wasn’t willing to risk transport back to the US.  I am sure that it will continue to age nicely over the next few years, however, I believe that it is drinking quite well right now.

A special thank you to Thibault and everyone at Despagne for allowing me to witness a unique winemaking process and trying an exceptionally unique wine..

Below is a collection of photos from Despagne.  Enjoy.

Rodrigo Laytte

As true as it is said that you only get one chance to make a first impression, it is equally important to set the environment in which to be impressed upon. Below is an excerpt from my first trip with CRUSHPAD Bordeaux to the Médoc to meet Eric Boissenot, oenologist of the Grands Crus, Châteaux Latour, Margaux, Lafite-Rothschild…

Stephen Bolger, CRUSHPAD Bordeaux: So, what are you going to ask Eric when you meet him?

Me (embarrassingly unprepared): Ah. Well. I haven’t thought about it.

Me (several kilometers later and after considering several trite alternatives): I do have one question.

(fast-forward to the end of the meeting with Stephen, Eric and Cecilia Grallert, CRUSHPAD’s Viticultural Consultant)

Me (shamefully posed in English): What is the most important lesson I should learn about Bordeaux winemaking?

(after the laughter subsided from a winemaking question in the same vein of an ecology student asking an environmental scientist the one thing she could do to avoid melting the polar ice caps, I got my answer)

Eric (grossly paraphrased and oversimplified): Blending. Blending varieties to elevate, express and respect the terroir. Blending!

I recalled that answer at every future tasting opportunity.  I’d ask, “What varieties did you use?”, “How much this or that?”.  Thinking that I was gathering data points that I could later utilize.  However, I never fully appreciated the complexity and Art until my visit with Rodrigo.  (Not surprisingly, Eric also consults for Château Kirwan.)

Château Kirwan 2010 Barrel Samples

Rodrigo Laytte is the Technical Director for Château Kirwan, which means he is responsible for all viticultural and oenological operations. Daunting task for most, but not so I suspect for Rodrigo.

Rodrigo’s philosophy, similar to that instilled in me educationally and beaten into me practically, can be interpreted as, for every extra hour in the vineyard you save beaucoup euros and undesirable manipulation in the winery later. Terroir is not something that can be added or taken away later.  It is what it is and is not what it is not.  However Décartes-ian or  Seuss-ian that may sound, remember Eric’s lesson, the Art is in the blending.

After touring Kirwan’s chic new visitors’ center (Bordeaux is starting to get serious about oeno-tourism) and receiving generous viticultural, mechanical and oenological lessons, Rodrigo delivered a one-on-one master blending class.

First, we tasted barrel samples from Kirwan’s assemblage, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot, of this year’s vintage. Tasting barrel samples of wine this early in the process, pre-MLF, would tend to be overly acidic.  However, Rodrigo’s fastidious winemaking allows him to co-inoculate so the wines have already completed MLF before they go to barrel. Generally, having only spent 2 weeks in barrel to this point, the oak influence was minimal.  Black fruit aromas were prominent in the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with the Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot exhibiting their characteristic contributions of bell pepper and violets, respectively.  The acids, alcohol and tannins of each sample were well balanced except for the slightly high alcohol evident in the Merlot.  But, remember the lesson here, it’s about blending!

Next, Rodrigo blended the varietals in order of significance according to 2009’s assemblage.  (Note: the 2010 assemblage won’t be decided for several months).  Voila.  High alcohol from the Merlot and bell pepper from the Cabernet Franc no longer perceptible and presenting a much more complex and interesting libation.  Ah, now I get it. Or so I thought. Rodrigo would then present the final 2009, yet to be bottled, assemblage.

Château Kirwan 2009

Having spent considerably longer integrating its individual parts into a greater whole, this was clearly more of a finished wine. Rounder and fuller with a longer, smoother finish. Detecting my need for an explanation to why the 2009 was so much fuller bodied than the 2010, Rodrigo demonstrated the appropriate use of press wine by adding the similar amount of press wine as in the 2009 assemblage to the 2010 that we had previously tasted.  Ah, now I REALLY get it.  Or at least I am starting to internalize the complexity and Art that is blending.

My single, simplified take away from the whole experience, “Good wine is grown, Great wine is blended.”  What I was told by Eric, I was shown by Rodrigo.

A huge thanks goes out to Rodrigo Laytte and Château Kirwan for being so generous with your time and sharing precious knowledge with me.

Below is a collection of photos from my time at Château Kirwan.  Enjoy.

I’ve driven by the Saint Emilion Union de Producteurs dozens of times in the last five months.  Today was the day to check them out.  With the tagline, “Métier d’Art, Vigneron”, how could I resist.

The Saint Emilion Union de Producteur coopértif was formed in 1931 by six top producers led by Robert Villepigue of Château Figeac, one of the oldest châteaux in all of Bordeaux.  Today, it is situated at the foot of the village of Saint Emilion and boasts to house more than 160 producers and process more than 750 hectares of fruit (38,000 hl of wine), annually from 5 Appellations: Bordeaux Rouge, Bordeaux Supérieur Rouge, Côtes de Castillon, Saint-Emilion and Saint-Emilion Grand Cru.

It’s capacity and diversity, combined with my own ideas about next-gen mesh cooperatives, made the Saint Emilion UdP an interesting visit.

In a traditional cooperative, winegrowers sell their fruit to the cooperative which is vinified and blended under the cooperative’s brand.  The average grower might be paid ~€1/kg for their fruit, end of transaction.  The typical cooperative grower farms around about one hectare.  Not enough quantity to establish a marketable brand.

But, what if you are a grower of higher quality and quantity than the regional average?  You either find a recognized brand to buy your fruit or go it alone.  Not so if you are a grower in Saint Emilion.  You can join the ‘union’ and maintain your château/clos/maison brand and benefit from the economies of scale and vinify, bottle and sell your wine at their state-of-the-art facility. (Note: I did not determine the UdP’s pound-of-flesh for such a benefit)

Admittedly, I’m sadly no longer impressed by rows of temperature-controlled stainless steel fermenters, pressers, sorters, pumps, gears and gadgets.  Just tools of the trade to be used, cleaned and maintained for me now.  Yes, the honeymoon is over.

So, in this instance, I was more interested in the customer facing element of the operations: The Red Envelope-esk Tasting Room / Retail Shop.  Not on par with my Millésime experience, but remarkable nonetheless.

At the UdP, you are treated with a complimentary tasting of their own wine brands.  Unfortunately, none of the single château wines, whose brands were unrecognizable to me, were available for tasting.  (Suggestion to the UdP: Showcase one single château a day/week/month. Perhaps have the producer come in to talk about the wines/fruit/terroir. — side note: same suggestion I made to Planete Bordeaux).

So, of the eight or so coop-branded wines, I choose to try two of each of the extremes.

At the low end of the spectrum, I found the Royal Saint-Emilion and CôtesRocheuses to be fruity, overly-acidic, light generic wines.  Expectable for their price point.  Admissible but not agreeable.

At the top of their pyramid, the Aurelius and Galius were pleasing and more interesting.  They happened to be aged and have spent more time in oak.  The fruit-juicyness was consumed by the oak and sour-patch-kids acidity was malo’d away.  Just the way I prefer.

In short, the difference between €5 and €15 is clearly apparent in the wine of the UdP, as one would expect.  Not exactly on my list of must-visits, but I’d definitely venture back for a tasting of their single château wines.

Yeasty, aromatic, cloudy, partially-fermented, slightly carbonated, sweet juice.

Unfinished Moscato d’Asti?

That was my first thought even though it shares little to no resemblance to the sweet spot I have for Moscato d’Asti.  It is pleasantly refreshing nonetheless. Especially at €3.

At 4.5% alcohol, perhaps not for breakfast, but Bourru for brunch or dinner.  I have a strange craving for a Croque-Madame or Omelette aux cèpes.

I am told that Bourru is a Bordelaise tradition in celebration of the harvest.  It is meant to drink immediately and has a limited shelf life.

I mention it here only for its cultural, not its oenological, significance.  And there is not much more to say about it.  It was just one of those experiences whose uniqueness alone is worth sharing.

If you are in Bordeaux during harvest, I suggest giving it a try.  Croque-Madames are on me.