Tilth, Table, & Terroir

April 25th - Marseilles & Bandol

2009-04-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

4-25-09 – Marseilles & Bandol

Michel and Anna invited me to go to Bandol, to perhaps go sailing on Michel’s sailboat. I met them in front of the hotel , and we left in their car. We drove down the Rhone valley, past Aix-en-Provence, Mont Luberon, and down toward the coast. Provence has beautiful countryside, orderly farms, planted in espaliered fruit trees, with tall cypress and platane trees lining the fields to protect against le Mistral. At the same time, it still seems very wild and natural; the homes are built from the same rock of the mountains and hills all around, and the scrubby ‘Garrigue’ brush is largely composed of wild herbs and flowers that blend seamlessly into the edges of the farms themselves. It is difficult to see where nature ends and the hand of man is a very subtle thing here.

About an hour into the drive, we went through a tunnel, and emerged with the sea in sight, and Marseilles spread out before us. This is a major seaport – ships of every description were in evidence, loading and unloading cargo from around the world. Ferries from here reach Rome, Corsica, Barcelona, Genoa, Beirut, Alexandria, Lybia, Morocco, and Algeria. Humans have lived around here for 30,000 years, evidenced by cave paintings in the area - It was established as a seaport by the Phonecian Greeks 3,000 years ago, and was important to every power since. The Vieux Port is still bustling within its very sheltered walls, but today it is filled with pleasure boats, instead of the vessels of commerce which used to bring the wealth of the world here. We crept up on the road along the Cornice, where you can view out to sea. It is possible to see the islands where the Count of Monte Cristo was supposed to have been held as a captive, and he escaped by swimming away in the sea.

From here, we turned a bit inland, and followed the motorway toward Toulon. We passed Cassis, which is famous for the Calanques – a landscape of high mountains that fall into secluded fijord-like grottos – perfect for boating and swimming. We arrived soon at Bandol, which is both a larger wine region made up of several villages, and a small seaside city. We found Michel’s boat, the Llhassa, which is about a 40’ sailing boat, and set up aboard. The wind was blowing between 25 and 40 knots while we were there, and the entire harbor was filled with the sound of whistling rigging of the hundreds of boats in the marina. We had lunch on the boat, and enjoyed the combination of warm sun with cooling breezes. It was far too windy to go out sailing – outside the protection of the harbor, the sea was whipped into whitecaps, even within the sheltered bay.

We walked the waterfront, checking out the boats – some of them were quite impressive megayachts – also the motorcycle variety was very good! Many groups of people were playing Petanque on the crushed granite boules court – I guess that this is the Provencale sport, and perfect for a breezy Saturday afternoon with one’s friends!

After several hours, we packed our things and left to visit a Domaine owned by friends of Anna & Michel. We drove up into the mountains, quickly gaining altitude as we left the seaside behind. Vines appeared very quickly once we rounded the first bend from the sea, and as we appeared in a higher valley, every hillside was terraced and planted to vines all around.

We arrived at the Domaine de La Laidière, high above the valley floor and with a commanding view of the village of Sainte Anne d’Evenos. We were received by Freddy Estienne, who owns the Domaine. His father and grandfather established the estate in 1941, with some small vineyards which are still owned by the family, and began to produce wine. Since then, they have purchased other vineyards slowly and reclaimed an impressive high terraced slope above the winery which had fallen into disuse over many years, replanting the traditional cepages of Mourvedre, Grenache and Cinsault.

Freddy makes his wines very traditionally, but uses stainless steel, temperature controlled fermentors for the initial fermentation and then ages the wines in large wooden foudres for about 18 months for the reds. He only buys a new foudre every year or two, so the wines are not at all dominated by the wood, but instead stand on the strength of the wines themselves.

We tasted many wines – the white and rose are beautifully refreshing. The rose is a direct pressed wine, meaning that it does not remain on the skins for any time at all, and as such is a pale, delicious, fresh wine. The reds are deep and serious, relying heavily upon the Mourvedre – a grape that produces deep, richly textured wines with aromas of rich earth, blackfruits, and sometimes even leather and blood (this is a good thing, a very good thing!) He opened many vintages for us, both from recent bottlings as well as dating back to 1993.

At the end of our tasting, he beckoned us downstairs into the storage cellar for bottled wines. He has a collection of bottles going back to the first years of the estate, under his father and grandfather. He selected a bottle from his dwindling supply of the 1950 vintage, and brought it upstairs, opening it for us in an overwhelming show of generosity. It was aged, but still vibrant and alive, and amazingly consistent with the younger wines we had been sampling.

This is what wine can be about – it can become more than just a beverage, more than just an art or craft or agriculture, or hobby. To imagine the efforts and toils that Freddy’s grandfather and father endured to bring this wine to bottle – it is staggering. To realize their belief in the terroir of Bandol itself (theirs was one of the Domaines which were instrumental in developing the Appellation d’Origine Controlee for Bandol,) and then to taste the wine which came from their early vintages here in this place – it was to see how wine can also become a thread of history and of place. It ties the generations of their family together, and ties them to this place where they have made their lives. It is a bit of time-travel, a chance to taste the still-lingering fruit from that long-ago summer, and to remember all that has changed since. And yet the continuity between each of the bottles we tasted reminds one of all that does not change – the terroir, the cycle of the sun & seasons, the rhythms of life.

Merci Beaucoup, Beaucoup, Beaucoup, Freddy for sharing this precious bottle with us and for connecting us with your family and your sublime place as well. I will always remember this show of generosity!

www.laidiere.com

April 24th - Chateauneuf du Pape & Orange

2009-04-26T04:25:00.000-07:00

4/24/09 – Avignon / Chateauneuf du Pape / Orange:

I arrived from Paris on the TGV and went to collect my rental car. At the office, it quickly became apparent that the rental was going to be a lot more expensive than I had expected from the online quote – mostly because I needed to rent it in Avignon, to be returned in Montpellier, and the expense for a one-way rental was astronomical. On top of that, they would not rent to me a GPS for a one-way rental. I decided to skip it, and took the shuttle into Avignon to check into my hotel.

Once I was on the shuttle, I telephoned to Victor’s father, (Victor is a French Oenology / Viticulture student whom will become an intern with us at Eos this harvest,) Daniel, to let him know that I was in Avignon. He arranged to meet me at 2pm, and we went up the Rhone river about 10 miles to Chateauneuf du Pape. We visited several of the Domaine Beaurenard vineyard sites within Chateauneuf du Pape, and met several of the vineyard workers, who were hand-weeding around the vines. There were so many rocks that the tools they were using were the sturdiest hoes that I had ever seen, complete with a backside of the hoe that allowed them to perfectly work around the trunk of the vines. Daniel said that his system is totally organic now, and in fact he was going entirely to biodynamic viticulture, starting with this season.

Some of the vineyards that we looked at were planted in 1920 – these are some of the oldest vines in their domaine. Daniel said that he is the seventh generation of his family in the vineyards – they have a barn on the property that has been in the family since approximately 1685. Even some of his workers have been there for a long time – one has been an employee for 20+ years, he started working when he was 14. And that employee’s father had worked alongside Daniel’s father, Paul Coulon for most of his career.

The oldest vineyards still producing in their domaine were planted in 1902. ‘Perhaps I will have to replace them, but they still give very good quality wine, but not so much of it’ he said. ‘Or perhaps Victor can replace them!’ It was interesting to see the soil types and how they differed throughout the areas of Chateauneuf. The oldest plantings were established in the areas where there is more clay in the soil, and less rocks. This was the most fertile, and easiest to farm ground. As this land became scarce, growers moved up into the areas where the glaciers deposited mountains of stones. In some places, more than 90% of the soil is made up of rocks! These rocks can reach up to 200 feet deep in places, so they are very well drained. The stones came from as far away as the Alps, carried by the massive glaciers that scoured the valley of the Rhone, and were dropped here when the glacier turned.

In some of these secondary areas, there are huge mounds of stones – the farmers wives used to have the task of carrying stones out of the vineyards, in order to make it easier for the horses to work in the vines. But as many as they pulled up, more shifted up from under the earth – so today there are just as many stones, but many of the vineyards have margins with banks of stones piled up around them. It still would be easy to turn your ankle out here – it is quite incredible!

Daniel told me about a specialist whom he had met with several weeks before. This person is a horticulturalist who works with understanding soil condition and health by analyzing the weeds that grow on the floor of the vineyard. By looking at the type and biodiversity of the species represented, he can tell whether the soil is in a sustainable place, or if it is lacking nutrients, or is not a stable mix of types. This seems quite interesting to me, and quite logical - certainly the state of a soil will determine which species can become dominant in it - and the mixture of types all can give and receive different things within the soil. A stable vineyard soil should exhibit about 20-25 species in this area, according to the specialist - Daniel's vineyards have as many as 42 in some places, and the specialist said that there are no specific challenges that are apparent to him in these locations.

After several hours in the vineyard, we toured the winery, and tasted through the wines. They produce a range of wines, everything from Rose to Cote du Rhone, a very high quality Rasteau, delicious Chateauneuf Blanc, and some magnificent Chateauneuf du Pape Rouge – the wine that this region is justly famous for. The wines of Beaurenard are largely Grenache, with smaller amounts of Carignane, Mourvedre, Syrah, Cinsault. I love Chateauneuf du Pape; it walks a beautiful balance between being a strong, powerful wine of extract and heft, but at the same time it is elegant, not overly tannic, and very layered. You can clearly taste the mineral and restrained ripe red fruit character of the wine, and the use of oak is subtle and tasteful – used to support the fruit and the wine, but not to be an obvious component of the flavor of the wine.

After several hours with Daniel, I met Anna, Victor’s mother. She took me to see the city of Orange, where she grew up, and where she works now. Orange was an important Roman city when they conquered Provence. It still has a mostly intact Roman theatre which dominates the hillside in the midst of the city. It is spectacular to see the workmanship that leaves such a massive, complex structure standing after over 2000 years. This is only one of three Roman theatres in the world to still have its stage wall – the large wall that would be behind the performers – preserved (the other two are in Syria and Turkey.) This keeps the acoustics intact as they were 2000 years ago, and enables the performers to be heard clearly by every one of the 9000 seats surrounding the theater. In the warm summer evenings, there is a full schedule of Opera and other performances that still take place many evenings of the week.

Next, we headed back into Avignon. We met up with Anna’s friend, Michel, who is a pathologist in the city. We went to a restaurant which a friend of theirs had just purchased 2 weeks ago, to sit outside and have oysters. These oysters, which were from near Montpellier, are known to be a bit more salty than the Belons from near Bordeaux. I was told that when I am in Bordeaux, I must enjoy some local oysters (which I will definitely do!)

http://www.beaurenard.fr/

April 24 - Paris to Avignon

2009-04-26T04:19:00.000-07:00

After the usual hassle of air travel in the US, it is a pleasure to be riding across France at high speed on the TGV. Easy to show up at the station, in the centre of the city, purchase a ticket with 20 minutes to spare, step onboard with my bags and be underway within minutes. I certainly hope that the US begins to adopt high-speed rail service – it makes so much sense.

It strikes me just how agricultural France really is. Only a few minutes into the travel, one escapes the 11 million plus people and congestion of Paris, and we are riding across landscapes filled with fields of mustard, alfalfa, and freshly planted fields with scarecrows erected. Forget about California’s ‘Happy Cows’ – if they could see their French cousins, with rich glossy long red coats, chest-deep in lush green pastures… Somehow the dry scrub of the western range wouldn’t seem so good at all.

Looking at the map of the travel, it appears that we are heading to the East slightly, not quite as far as Dijon, and then skirting down the backside of Burgundy, emerging in Macon. From there, we will continue down through Lyon, and next down the Rhone Valley to Avignon. This train will also stop in Aix-en-Provence and finally Marseilles, but that will be after my exit.

I am planning to pick up a rental car upon arrival and continue to Chateauneuf du Pape, to meet with Daniel Coulon, of Domaine Beaurenard. Daniel’s son, Victor, is a third-year student in Agriculture and Oeneology in Toulouse, and will be an intern for us at EOS beginning in August and through the harvest season. It will be fantastic to meet his family, they are good friends and past business partners of my former clients, Bob & Jim Varner, of Park Wine Company. They used to import many French wines from Burgundy, the Rhone, and the Midi to the United States, and formed a fast bond with the Coulon family.

I am staying in Avignon this evening. I was there last summer, and made some friends – I don’t know if I will be able to contact them or not, but I will stop by where they work and see if they are around. Since I have the car, I think that I will try to explore more of the region of Provence – I don’t have a great guide book, unfortunately, but I imagine that opportunities will present themselves. There is a village called Les Baux that sounds interesting, and I would like to visit other wine regions. I need to arrive in Montpellier Sunday to meet the group of winemakers whom I will be travelling with – Montpellier is not very far away at all, so it should be easy.
Nimes is on the way, apparently with amazing Roman artifacts, and I would love to perhaps see Arles, Aix-en-Provence, etc… Probably Saturday evening will be left to chance as far as accommodation – it could be interesting to end up in a smaller village, rather than the cities that I usually end up in – cities are good, but off the beaten track could be interesting as well.
Last year in Montpellier, I made a good friend of Philippe Chapon, who is the Chef/Owner of Tamarillo’s. His cuisine is based on flowers and fruit – very creative and delicious. One guidebook that I was looking at purchasing listed his restaurant as their choice for dining in Montpellier, and stated that Philippe taught pastry to chef Gordon Ramsay! I will ask Philippe about this on Sunday, when I see him.

We are in more forested terrain at the moment, it is difficult to look out the window without eyestrain. I suppose that we are traveling over one hundred miles per hour – possibly near two hundred.

April 23rd - Paris

2009-04-26T04:07:00.000-07:00

I am in Paris - for the first time ever in the springtime. I think that I have only ever been here in the winter, with cool misty greyness everywhere. The light lasts until late in the evening, and the flowers and trees are all exploding in green and vibrant colors. Birds are singing everywhere, the sun is shining and everything seems perfect!

I am not here in France just to enjoy - I have meetings all the following week - a series of technical trainings with a company called 'Vivelys' which does winemaking consulting, has developed several significant winemaking technologies, and has some very exciting new sensory analysis tools with built-in multivariate statistical analysis over the internet. Those meetings begin on Sunday and stretch throughout the week to Friday - it will be with 9 US & Canadian winemakers, and we will travel from Montpellier in the South of France, upward with our final destination in Bordeaux, stopping at wineries throughout the region as we go to view case studies of the ways that their technologies have been implemented.

In addition, I am traveling this weekend to Avignon, to meet with the family of the student who will be our intern this vintage at Eos. They have a Domaine in Chateauneuf du Pape & Rasteau, just north of Avignon. It will be great to meet them and get to know something about their winemaking.

Cheers!

Harvest 2008 - drawing to a close

2008-10-23T17:24:00.000-07:00

The 2008 vintage has been really difficult for growers throughout the Paso Robles region. Frost early in the year, below average rainfalls for 2 years running, and difficult weather a flowering made for stunted and late shoot growth, poor fruit set, and really uneven crop ripeness. As we got into harvest, fruit flavor profiles and tannin development lagged way behind sugar levels, forcing us to leave fruit on the vine longer in hopes that tannin and flavor would catch up and reach equilibrium.

As we moved through the early stages of harvest, we found that we were harvesting at approximately 30% below our crop estimates – a dramatically short crop. We scrambled to source additional Chardonnay for some of our programs, and were able to secure some very nice looking fruit from Santa Barbara County, as well as the Arroyo Grande and Edna Valley AVA regions of southern San Luis Obispo County.

As reds started to come in, the silver lining to the 2008 vintage became apparent as the fruit crushed up into deeply colored fermentations – the loose clusters caused by extreme shatter early in the year left lots of sunlight and air exposure on the fruit, helping to build anthocyanin (color pigments) in the skins of the grapes, and reducing fungal disease pressure.

Just when we were becoming accustomed to a leisurely pace of ripening and steady flavor development, a series of extremely cold nights set in. We had more than a week of days with highs in the 70’s and 80’s, but overnight lows dropping slightly below freezing. Several areas measured 27 degrees, which is about lethal for a grape leaf. Many of our growers started running their overhead sprinklers during the nights, to buy a few degrees of protection from the frost – one of our growers had so much ice build up on his vines that the first three rows of trellis buckled and bent over under the weight!

Most affected were low-lying areas where the cold air could not drain away. In many of the vineyards, you will see a pattern of frost-killed leaves in the low lying areas, or anywhere that the topography causes the air to pool up and stagnate.

We were really lucky in a lot of cases. Even within vineyards that had widespread damage, we mostly had some affected vines around the edges. Vineyards that were hit hard are basically done for the season. The cold actually causes water within the leaf cells to freeze, bursting them; walking in the vines after a freeze, the air smells a lot like fresh-cut grass, that vegetal, wet leafy aroma. Whatever stage of flavor development the vines were at prior to the freeze is just where they will stay; further time on the vine is only serving to dehydrate the otherwise unripe fruit.

At this stage, we are basically prioritizing the order that we bring in the rest of our fruit. Everything is about as ripe as it is going to get, just time to bring it in and get it started on a path toward what it will ultimately become.

Overall, I think we managed quality well in this vintage. I figure that about 10-15% of our red wine lots are of top quality, and I am really pleased with most of the white wines. Speaking with other winemaker friends, it sounds like we did better than the average in one of the most challenging vintages in recent memory.

More photos at my flickr.com account:
http://flickr.com/photos/18097654@N05/sets/72157607089923402/

Morning Samples - Russell Vineyard 9/16/08

2008-09-16T18:29:00.000-07:00

One of the best parts of working in wine on the Central Coast is that you get to spend a lot of time outdoors in some of the most beautiful scenery anywhere around. This morning was no different; I got out the door just as the sun was threatening to come up over the ridge, picked up a thermos of coffee, and was climbing around in a hilltop vineyard in the mountains just west of Templeton by the time that the sun popped up out of the fog blanketing the valley floor.

I was pulling some cluster samples from the Russell vineyard, which is on the Russell family's estate in the west hills of Templeton / Paso Robles. They are selling us a small amount of fruit from this vineyard, and from what I understand, my friend Russell From is getting fruit from here as well, for his Herman Story wines, and Loring Wine Company is in one of these blocks too, so I have some really good company. The site looks down the hill at the L'Aventure winery, which turns out some of my favorite wines in the region (everyone knows them for their pricey, highly rated estate red wines, which are fantastic, but I love their dry rose too, and for about $16 I can afford to drink a lot more of it!)

The top photo tells the story of Cabernet Sauvignon in the Paso Robles AVA this vintage. Not much of it mostly - poor weather when the vines were blooming essentially made for really loose clusters, with very few berries - as you can see, it looks like 80% of the cluster is just plain missing, and that is pretty accurate in a lot of cases. This phenomenon was really tied to bloom date, so it can be really isolated by age of vine, health of the vine, cordon height, elevation, exposure to sunlight, cold air drainage off hillsides, inversion layers, and basically anything else that can influence the timing of the vine. For this reason, it has been really difficult to get solid estimates of crop loads this year, and the vines seem to be ripening at really different rates; vines with little fruit may be a week or more ahead of their more loaded down neighbors.

My guess is that we will be down regionally about 30% or more compared to an 'average' harvest year in many of the Bordeaux varieties, particularly Cab Sauvignon. Ouch! But will the wines be really, really good to make up for the short crop? I think that in some cases they will be. We are having really good ripening weather currently, with cold nights and warm days, and everything seems to be inching its way toward ripeness at a pace that we can keep up with and make good picking decisions. The strategy that I plan to follow with such an uneven crop is to err on the side of picking a bit ripe; it doesn't take much unripe fruit to really make hard, thin wines out of what could otherwise be generous and full. I will try to keep water to the vines, so that the clusters that are ripe will not raisin while the rest of the crop is just getting their flavors in line.

It will be interesting to see this year's result!

Click this link for more harvest photos

Burst Bubble

2008-09-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

Disaster struck today (well, maybe “Disaster” is overly dramatic…) – the bladder on our main white wine press blew out while pressing a load of Chardonnay grapes. Modern wine presses operate under air-pressure; you can imagine a large, perforated tube with a balloon inside. We load this tube with grapes, then inflate the balloon, which squeezes them gently against the sides, allowing juice to run out through the perforations.

This is a really good way to extract clear, high-quality juice from the grapes with a minimum of tearing of the skins and minimal release of color and tannin compounds into the wine. However, just like any balloon, these membranes are subject to being torn, punctured, or just wearing out over time.

This is what happened today; it is hard to tell whether there was some imperfection in the membrane itself, or if a sharp object (such as a wire or a clip from the trellis system,) started a tear that eventually caused the whole bag to blow open. This is a pretty good tear, nearly 8 feet long parallel to the long side of the membrane – I’ve not seen one this big for a long time. It is much more common to get a puncture or pinhole that can be patched up pretty quickly. Replacing the bladder is a messy, sticky, and hot job if you have to do it in the middle of the day – you have to climb inside the press and undo about a thousand bolts (it seems like,) and then pull it back out the manhole, clean and lube the inside of the press, and reattach the replacement. Luckily we have a replacement on hand, but now we are running without a backup until we can get another replacement sent over from France (at about $7000-9000!!) So we have to be really careful and hope that we make it through the rest of the white wines, in particular. We have about 420 additional tons of white grapes (other than late harvest) yet to come in, so we need to get a bit more mileage out of this press!

So far we have taken in the following tonnage: Chardonnay, 297.72 tons. Pinot Gris, 19.88 tons. Muscat Blanc, 49.23 tons. Sauvignon Blanc, 40.23 tons.

Reds will be a bit further off – maybe late next week at the earliest. I think that Zinfandel and Tempranillo will be likely to be the first red wine varieties that come in.

For more harvest photos, click this link.

"King Corn"

2008-09-14T11:50:00.000-07:00

http://www.kingcorn.net

This was a great movie, available via the Netflix instant online view application.

Follows one acre of corn in Iowa for a season, tracing how this crop is grown, how it has affected small town America, and how it is finding its way into everything that we eat and especially drink. Very worthwhile to watch - at least the trailer, which is available at the movie's website - http://www.kingcorn.net/

Eating good during harvest

2008-09-14T08:26:00.000-07:00

During harvest, it can be difficult to remember to eat healthily and regularly. It can be hard to even get laundry done and bills paid sometimes! All of us depend a lot upon the other members of our families at this time to keep daily life together.

Our suppliers know that this is an intense time of the year for us as well. Though we generally don't have time for sales calls during harvest, many of them instead make an effort to take care of us - bringing by harvest tee shirts, lunch, cold beers (though I have way too many guys here at EOS to set a precedent of letting them have a beer at work,) and generally showing their appreciation for our business.

This week, we ate particularly well! First, early in the week, Gary Kroll of World Cooperage brought by fantastic Pizza for the entire crew - not sure where it came from, but the crust was perfect and crispy, with sesame seeds around the edge and really good quality toppings. I particularly loved the Jalepeno & cheese pizza!

On Wednesday, the guys from NomaCorc (a synthetic cork that we use for several projects and client wines,) came by with a BBQ feast on wheels! NomaCorc is headquartered just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina - an area that knows a thing or two about BBQ! Wes Ward, the technical sales director for the company, shipped his custom-built, cork-shaped BBQ smoker all the way out from NC and has been spending a couple weeks going from winery to winery, treating them to authentic, 10-hour roasted, pulled-pork North Carolina goodness! Christened the "NomaQue" it is a pretty cool contraption, with built in storage, cooler, and grill all on a tidy trailer.

Donna, the wife of our Cellar Master Dave, has agreed to bring us a healthy, filling lunch every Thursday through harvest. She started this week with delicious, home-made lasagnae for the crew, along with fresh vegetables, green salad, drinks and dessert. Next week is pulled-pork sandwiches, with a full schedule to follow! The love and care that she puts into this is appreciated greatly, and the crew really looks forward to this each year.

Year-round, our favorite, nearby places to dash out for lunch are the excellent restaurant at Hunter Ranch Golf Course where the Kobe Burger and Cobb Salad are perennial hits. And if you really need a decompression break, and excellent small plates, check out Cass Winery, tucked back in a canyon on Linne Road. They have a full kitchen, and a trained chef Brendan, who turns out great stuff. (As an added bonus, nobody seems to get cell phone reception out there!)

I am planning to organize BBQ for the guys on Saturdays, once we get into 7-days a week harvest. It is good to mark the passage of the week and build some comraderie. The winery has an old, but useable Santa Maria-style BBQ pit trailer, and we always grill on used wine stave wood from barrels that are past their useful service life - they burn hot and impart delicious French oak smoke to the meat. Plus we have some pretty capable pit-masters on staff here, and this can be a chance to let them shine!

More harvest photos here

Email Interview - Paso Robles

2008-09-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

I was contacted by a writer doing a story on EOS winery for a Swedish wine publication (apparently, we export a fair bit of wine there?) She wanted to do a sort of email interview as a preliminary, and came up with some questions to start the conversation - since I put some thought into the answers, and since they sum up a lot about how I feel about Paso Robles and Sustainable Agriculture, I am putting them up here as well for friends to see and comment upon. Cheers!

1. Please tell me about your background in the winemaking business.

· I trained at University to be a Marine Biologist; I have always been fascinated by the natural world and the way natural systems find their own order. To pay my way through college, I began to work in restaurants where wine was a central feature of the dining experience, and to taste seriously with and learn from the experienced staff members. In this way, I really came at wine from the restaurant side, and this eventually presented me opportunity to enter wine production professionally. I was working in Santa Barbara at Michel Richard’s restaurant Citronelle, when I met some of the people from Sanford winery, just over the mountains in the lower Santa Ynez Valley, (now the Sta. Rita Hills AVA.) I had always loved their wines, and volunteered to help by cleaning out tanks, or rolling barrels around; whatever I could do to learn more about how wine was made. I was given a 2-day a week job, and once exposed I never looked back. This industry was very welcoming; it was a good fit for my scientific side, yet offered a creative outlet in a way that the world of academic science didn’t do; being able to look back at the end of the day or week, or year and say ‘Hey, we did this!’ And being in an agricultural pursuit felt entirely natural to me, as I grew up within the cycles of seasons and in close dependence upon the earth. I bit the bullet, and left the world of restaurants to take a minimum-wage job with another Central Coast winery, and it was one of the best decisions of my life so far. From that point, I have worked primarily on the Central Coast, with one vintage spent in Oregon. My most recent position was as winemaker for a company that had their own 750 acre estate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vineyards, as well as a large two-facility custom winemaking operation which made wines for companies throughout California and the world. This was a great place to see how the ‘big guys’ played the game, and to work with fruit of all quality levels from throughout the premium winegrowing regions within California. I got involved at every level and in every aspect of the world of wine business and wine technology.

2. You decided to join EOS Estate Winery in April 2008, what was you

main motivation behind this decision and what do you hope to

accomplish?

· I’ve always believed that if you push yourself to excel and refuse to play small because it feels ‘safe’ you will be presented with opportunity to positively affect the world around you. I look around and see how the consolidation in the world wine business is really squeezing farmers and small wine businesses – these corporations need to present their shareholders with profits, and they often find the profit at the expense of their grower partners. When Sapphire Brands acquired EOS Estate last year, and announced plans to take it to 100% solar-powered, I knew that this was a company that was ready to do things the right way. EOS is a large enough winery (~4000 tons annually) to have an important impact, for the better or for the worse, upon the Paso Robles appellation – and I am determined to be a part of steering this thing in the right direction. We are putting a lot of wine into the world-wide marketplace with the words “Paso Robles” on the label, and I owe it to all my growers, and to all the other winemakers and wineries around us to make sure that those words stand for quality, for excellence, for value, and for environmentally and socially responsible choices. At the same time, we are really just the ‘little guys’ in the world of wine – we have to work harder, think smarter, be more nimble and turn out better quality in order to compete in a world where we have very little weight to throw around with distributors and ‘Chain’ accounts, and no budget to ‘buy’ our way in. We rely upon relationships as number one priority – with our growers, with our distribution partners, with our employees, and with our customers. Relationships are maybe even more important to our business than our buildings, vineyards and equipment.

3. What, in your opinion, makes EOS and its wines unique? What is your

proudest achievement during your time at EOS?

· EOS draws from vineyards throughout the large Paso Robles AVA – this gives us access to very diverse vineyard resources, and to diverse people with varied viewpoints on how to best achieve quality – some of the best minds in sustainable agriculture are working with us on a daily basis. I was drawn to EOS by the even hand and consistent quality which has been their hallmark – elegance and understatement stylistically, and a commitment to putting top quality wine into bottle at a price that is approachable for everyone. We are in a period of change currently, but when the medium is wine, change always comes slowly – over the course of years, rather than weeks or days. In that context, I am really just at the beginning of my time here, and though there have been important achievements, they are mostly of the sort that will show dividends in several years, rather than immediately. I have really set to work on defining stylistic goals for our winemaking – many winemakers will give good verbiage about “listening to the grapes, and letting them become what they wish to be.” Well, as one of my mentors in this business likes to say, “what grapes really want to do is to become vinegar, not wine!” Quality wine starts with time spent in the vineyard, and with clearly communicating expectations to the growers and vineyard managers, and hearing and learning from their experience. By the time the fruit arrives at the winery, my ability to affect the final outcome of the fruit is minimal – it is more about preserving the quality that is already inherent in the grape; I can’t increase the quality through what I do in the cellar, I can only avoid harming it. Stylistically, I want to refine our goals further, and bring a touch more modernity to our wine style. I’ve travelled to wine regions around the world over the past several years, and there are two main things that just this summer struck me and will define my winemaking to some extent; A.) We can sometimes take our wines too seriously in California, everyone is chasing the next ‘impressive’ wine. Traditional wine regions certainly have their share of these, but they also have a great hand with just plain ‘likeable’ and delicious everyday wines, and B.) Many California wineries try to define themselves as ‘Burgundian’ or ‘Bordeaux’ or ‘Italian’ in style – almost in the way that decades ago, American restaurants only felt that they could be of quality if they had a French or Italian name, menu, and décor. Those days are over for cuisine; chefs everywhere have embraced their own local heritage and ingredients, and it is time for the wine business to have some brave companies and winemakers step forward and proudly show our own style, our own ingredients, and contribute something unique to the world of wine – this is happening slowly too, but gathering force.

4. Please tell me about your views on sustainable agriculture and how

this affects your work at EOS.

· I grew up in rural Minnesota at the time that the small family farm was going extinct one by one as the suburbs sprawled, and the next generation went off to work in more financially lucrative careers. Both sets of my grandparents had farms of less than 500 acres each, but they also had outside jobs that made that possible – they farmed more out of tradition and love of the land than for the income that was derived from their efforts. Of their children, only 3 have continued to be involved in agriculture – two in agricultural support careers, and one uncle farms part-time the original family place built by my great-great grandfather when he arrived from Sweden in the late 1800’s, in addition to his career in technology in Minneapolis. I believe that I am the only member of my generation that is still involved in agriculture at all. In Paso Robles, agriculture is still viable for small farmers because the wine business depends upon, and rewards quality. Industrial agriculture has encouraged and stimulated the creation of standardized commodity markets for many agricultural products in the United States to the point that yield and efficiency are the only attributes that are rewarded by the market. Under these systems, large, ‘efficient’ companies using high levels of chemical inputs and operating on tight margins are driving smaller farmers out of the arena. I hope that we can work with and reward growers of all sizes whom are committed to quality and sustainability – the Central Coast has been at the forefront of sustainable agriculture in vineyards, and some of our growers are in the pilot program for the Central Coast Vineyard Team’s “Certified Sustainable” effort. By coming up with an objective certification program, hopefully the market will financially reward growers who are going to the extra steps to ensure that they are doing the right thing for our business and our environment for the long-run.

5. Which are the key advantages of winemaking in Paso Robles? The main

challenges (if any)? Please give a brief description of the region´s

climate and weather patterns and how these affect the quality of the

grapes and wines.

· The Paso Robles AVA is a relatively large appellation, with a lot of variation in soils, local climate, topography, and viticultural philosophy. This is both a blessing and a challenge – you can not apply the same technique in two vastly different locations and expect the same result. Though the old standard grape varieties of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Chardonnay are still the dominant plantings locally, there are growers experimenting with nearly every variety imaginable; varieties native to Italy, France and Spain, as well as ‘American’ varieties such as Zinfandel and Petite Sirah – some of these vineyards now have vines of great age. Rhone and Mediterranean grape varieties have really attracted a lot of attention here locally, and seem to fit perfectly into our climate and growing conditions. There are relatively few serious pests to deal with compared to other regions, so chemical usage is very minimal and generally selected for ‘soft’ chemistries. The basic climate is balanced on a razor’s edge between the cool Pacific Coastal region just over the Santa Lucia Mountains to the West, and the hot, dry inland climate of the southern San Joaquin Valley about 2 hours drive inland to the East, (it’s about 15-20 miles through the mountains between the town of Paso Robles to reach the ocean.) The days are hot during the growing season – 95-105F degrees is quite common; but as the inland regions heat up, the rising air pulls in cool breezes and fog from the Pacific (year-round temperature of about 48-55F degrees,) through several gaps in the mountains, which cools the entire region beginning an hour before sundown or so. Nights here are generally cool, around 50-55F degrees. Warm days help to build rich fruit flavors and soft tannins into the grapes on the vine, while discouraging fungal diseases, and the cool nights help to preserve color and aroma, and allow the vines to recover water and mineral balance and ‘catch-up’ from the heat of the day.

6. What, in your opinion, makes Paso Robles such a thriving viticultural region?

· It’s the people. The Paso Robles wine region is populated by passionate, determined people from a variety of backgrounds who are dedicated to constant improvement of farming, winemaking, and marketing our wines to the world. We have a world-class Agricultural & Business University in the form of Cal Poly just 25 minutes to the south, and their newly-formed Enology and Viticulture department is already releasing dynamic, enthusiastic young people into the industry throughout the state. Though Paso has in the past sent much of its fruit north to the big wineries who use our vineyards as sources for large regional blends, there is a trend toward more and more of the fruit being fermented and marketed by local vineyards who proudly proclaim “Paso Robles” on the label. There are small wineries who have become the darlings of the media as they push the limits of viticulture and enological style, attracting attention to the entire region. And there are larger wineries whom have shown how strongly the wines from this region can compete on a national stage. We are still working on increasing the knowledge of our region with the average wine consumer – we aren’t as recognizable as Napa or Sonoma yet, and we will always have a different meaning in people’s minds than those areas. But we are building our reputation by leaps and bounds, and are rapidly becoming an exciting new quality and value region that wine drinkers are embracing and enjoying and sharing with their friends, and making a part of their lives. We are a leader in responsible environmental vineyard development and management – we are a choice that people can be comfortable making. This is a dynamic and constantly developing region – stay tuned as we continue to define ourselves and push quality higher – I’m excited to be a part of the coming years!

Friday Update

2008-09-12T15:26:00.000-07:00

Whew. Sometimes the week just blows past - this one was no exception for sure! We have been taking in fruit all week - Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay mostly from a few vineyards in the area. Things have gone mostly smoothly - first trucks show up around 4am, we load and run the press, and then the next set of trucks shows up at 7am with cold, freshly picked fruit and we repeat. We are pretty much cleaned up on the crush pad and done by noon most days, with the night crew coming in to do tank racking and yeast additions to the juice.

We have been bottling a little bit here and there, both our own wines, as well for clients, which is really tough. It is always difficult to be finishing some wines while dealing with new juice - you have to keep a totally separate set of pumps, hoses, and equipment to avoid contaminating one with the other, etc... We are bottling as fast as we can to avoid the dreaded "checkmate" of not having a tank to go into when it is needed. As you can see from the photo, we are approaching critical mass - we are playing a pretty tough game of chess with dry erase markers, trying to map out our next move. Making it even tougher, our entire red wine fermentation room is currently under construction, getting set up to have tank warming and cooling available to every single tank (a really great quality step forward, but we are at the mercy of the plumbing company!) I am told that the room should be available to us next week, but until then we are really tight.

We have just started to barrel down our first barrel-fermented Chardonnays - the first is a Steinbeck vineyard block from our neighbors just across the fenceline to the south. As the sweet, just inoculated juice fills the barrels, the sweet, oaky air is displaced, filling the cellar with caramel and toasty oak aromas. Harvest is definitely here!

More harvest photos here

Harvest Begins

2008-09-06T17:20:00.000-07:00

We got our Harvest started today at about 9:30am on Thursday September 4th, with the delivery of just over 8 tons of Sauvignon Blanc from our neighbors at the Smoot “Oak Shadows” vineyard.

The fruit looked really good – 25.4 Brix from a quick sample of the free-run, and great, ripe melon flavors.

Expecting some Muscat Blanc from French Camp Vineyards in the next few minutes as well.

Lots of fun! (Sticky fun, but fun nonetheless…)

More photos of harvest if you click this link

San Juan Vineyard

2008-09-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

The San Juan Vineyard is located about 14 miles to the east from EOS estate, at about 1100 feet of elevation, and about 45 miles as the crow flies from the Pacific Ocean. It is farmed by the Filliponi family, whom are partners in the Santa Margarita Ranch, as well as the Ancient Peaks wine brand. They have been farming cattle and crops in the area for several generations. Doug Filliponi has built up a successful well-drilling company with a partner over the past decades – water is a prerequisite for any kind of agriculture in this part of California where it only rains 20” a year, concentrated entirely between November and April. His son, Jeff, is the vineyard manager (and quite a successful Team Roper in rodeo around the west as well.)

This vineyard is essentially laid out on the riverbench above the San Juan Creek, with a ford that cuts straight through the dry riverbed most of the year, unless it is raining. Deer and wild boar dig into the creekbed to find the mud and water that runs a foot or so beneath the surface – it is salty water that doesn’t support much in the way of vegetation in most places, but the animals make use of it in a pinch.

We are purchasing Muscat Blanc (Canelli) as well as Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel from the vines growing here. Some parts of the vineyard are 35 years old or older, with trunks that are thicker than my thighs! The vines look fairly good this year, though they suffered from some cold weather events earlier this springtime, and as a result there is a lot of unevenness in how the fruit is ripening – this is not as much of a challenge in the Muscat as it will be in the Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel. At the moment, the Sauvignon Blanc still needs a few weeks to move through the green tomatillo / bell pepper flavors and develop some ripe melon and floral tones that will be a solid base to build on. The Zin is still completing Veraison (the phase where the berries turn red and start to soften and ripen.) The Muscat is perhaps a week or two away as well.

Here is a link to more harvest photos - we will keep adding to it every week as we go.

Harvest Update - 8/26/08

2008-08-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 8/26/08:

We are getting nearer to harvest every minute. Grape samples are showing up at the lab nearly every day, from the 13 growers whom we will be working with this year. Several Pinot Gris vineyards are showing around 20-21 Brix degrees – I will be starting to look seriously at bringing them in once we get a bit closer to 23, probably next week. Brian and I are trying to spend at least parts of 2-3 days per week in the vineyard, watching the blocks, walking them, and getting a sense for how they are going to ripen.

The weather has been really cooperative, with warm days in the low 90’s and cooling evenings that allow the vines to ‘catch their breath.’ This is the perfect scenario for the ripening of grapes – the vines operate most efficiently between about 70F and 85F – higher than that can strain them to some degree, and over 100F the vines actually shut down and stop developing sugar and flavor in the grapes. Prolonged high heat can cause raisining; the Brix may climb, but the flavors and tannins are still green and unripe, producing awkward wines with little body, poor color, and ‘stewed’ flavors.

We brought in a few new guys to help us with harvest, and are devoting this week to training everyone on basic safety issues, as well as all the systems for keeping information and paperwork straight through the madness of harvest. I am reviewing all the slightly changed procedures and very new protocols for some of the wines – everyone here is going to be on a learning curve this year, from myself, to the new guys, to the 15 year cellar veterans as we deal with new vineyard sources, new varieties in a few cases, and new production methods in the cellar.

Lots going on at the moment, pretty soon we will be in the thick of it all here. Looking forward to this first vintage with EOS, it will be challenging, but I think that it will be very good as well.

-NRC

2003 Petra 'Quercegobbe' Merlot - Toscana

2008-08-22T17:59:00.000-07:00

Winery:	Petra
Location:	San Lorenzo Alto – Suvereto – LI -Italy
Wine :	2003 Quercegobbe Merlot, Toscana
Appellation :	Toscana (Indicazione Geografica Tipica)
Price :	~$38
Color :	Dried-Cherry Red/Black
Nose:	Pipe tobacco, polished antique wood, dried rose hips, plum
Palate / Balance / Flavors:	Unmistakable aged cigar wrapper, coating tannins, deep black fruit that is evanescent – moving toward the spice box / cigar notes quickly. Vinous in a way that California often is not – fruit is secondary, this wine makes clear that it is, first, wine.
Style:	Not overdone, not over-oaked, not overripe. Clean and professionally made. Balanced at a big, but agile build. Feels to me like a wine with plenty of time to age well.
Analysis:	13.97% alc, 3.57 pH, 5.1 g/l TA, 0.6 VA, 0.00 ML, 0.24 RS
Comments:	Had to include a photo of our swank new tasting room, complete with an integrated basin in the middle of the table. All part of our new offices, which we just moved into this very week.

Cork Taint - the Survey

2008-08-07T15:04:00.000-07:00

Click here to link to the cork-taint survey

This is a cork taint survey that my friend Arthur set up - it can be used by anyone who is willing to track how many bottles they open and then how many of those are affected by cork taint. He will tabulate the results, as we are trying to get a sense of what the real-world level of cork taint might be in wines closed with natural cork closures.

Cork Taint & TCA: is it really a problem?

2008-08-06T22:04:00.000-07:00

http://www.openwineconsortium.org/forum/topic/show?id=2000748%3ATopic%3A47170

The link above is to a discussion that a friend pointed me to at Open Wine Consortium on the prevalence of TCA, or 'Cork Taint' in commercially available wines. TCA is sensory active at just a few parts per trillion (like a droplet or two in a swimming pool,) and makes a wine taste anywhere from lightly dulled in fruit to completely musty like wet cardboard and dank cellar, depending on concentration. TCA primarily originates randomly in Natural Cork (wikipedia Cork Taint for a more exact discussion,) but it, and similar malodorous compounds can also arise in other ways, under certain conditions.

Seems that the premise is that wine drinkers might be making a lot of fuss over nothing. Some estimates (usually by pushers of alternative closures,) are as high as 12% of commercial wines affected to some degree. Others (usually Natural Cork companies,) say that the cork industry has gotten its act together and that the level is less than 1%. Seems that consensus points to around 3%, but there are not many reliable studies, and getting a handle on the sample size required to really state anything with statistical accuracy makes even the best guess still a guess

So, there is a lively discussion on the link above, including Arthur from Red Wine Buzz who is putting together a survey, so that all of us can track the incidence of corked wines that we open at home. With sufficient people participating, perhaps we can get a decent handle on about what the level of incidence is - at least in our sample set... Check it out, it could be interesting!

2007 Vina Robles 'Roseum' Paso Robles

2008-08-02T11:52:00.001-07:00

Winery:	Vina Robles
Location:	Paso Robles, Central Coast, California
Wine :	2007 ‘Roseum’ Paso Robles (Huerhuero)
Appellation :	Paso Robles AVA
Price :	$13
Color :	Bright pink-red
Nose:	Watermelon, carnation, orange
Palate / Balance / Flavors:	Not quite ripe raspberry, floral notes, and a touch of bitter orange zest / kumquat. Very refreshing style, tiny edge of tannin, I love the balance of sweet fruit with herbal floral and slight bitterness like citrus peel. Doesn’t have the heaviness associated with a lot of Paso dry rosé.
Style:	Tasty, fun, easy to drink lots of this! Like the price too.
Analysis:
Comments:	I really like Vina Robles’ touch with white wines, (reds are generally good too, just that they are SO good at the whites; usually there are a few bottles around our house) – emphasis on fruit, freshness and vibrancy. This is a nice example. (Sorry my photo is so crappy – iPhone does not like up close shots very well.)

2003 Petra 'Rosso' Toscana

2008-07-29T08:00:00.000-07:00

Winery:	Petra
Location:	San Lorenzo Alto – Suvereto – LI -Italy
Wine :	2003 Petra ‘Rosso’ Toscana
Appellation :	Toscana (Indicazione Geografica Tipica)
Price :	~$60
Color :	Deep Violet - Black
Nose:	Freshly dug earth, coffee, concentrated blackberry and cassis
Palate / Balance / Flavors:	Beautiful rich open palate, active acidity moves the palate through rich plums, currant, orange peel, and fennel
Style:	Thoroughly modern – lushness of tannin texture, ripeness of fruit, weighty build. Has vigor to age gracefully for many more years.
Analysis:	Too tasty, forgot to save any to run analysis.
Comments:

A quick, post from Siurana, Spain

2008-07-19T12:00:00.001-07:00

http://flickr.com/photos/18097654@N05/

Have been having a great time - no time to post, best bet if you want to see what I have been up to is to go to my flickr.com account and check out the photos.

I have basically been down the French /Spanish coastline from Perpignan to Barcelona, switched cars, then traveled to Tarragonna. From Taragonna into the Priorat district, which is amazing and beautiful, I am staying in Siurana, which is a totally incredible mountain-top village with amazing views - just have to be careful to not fall off a cliff when walking around!

Will be flying home tomorrow.

-Nathan

Badajoz

2008-07-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

That evening, we went in to the city of Badajoz for dinner. This has been an entry point between Portugal and Spain for some time, and there are a lot of the old fortifications still visible, including some of the largest remaining Moorish fortifications still remaining in Spain, the fortress known as the Alcazaba. Though there were a lot of Roman ruins in the surrounding areas, including huge bridges and aqueducts, other than being a small roman settlement, it was founded as a city only during the Moorish rule.

We sat outside in the Alta Plaza near the Alcazaba, and had an amazing meal of tapas - Gambas, (large shrimp,) Jamon, goat's cheeses, and pork. Delicious!

San Vicente - on the way and back

2008-07-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

This was a great day in many ways. I had been wanting to see this process since I first heard about the DIAM closure, and the plant tour really confirmed my trust in this technology as a top quality closure for high-quality wines.

In addition, the countryside was beautiful - cork oak forests, stone walls, mountains, plains, horses, sheep, cattle, even Iberian pigs. We passed through the hilltop fortress town of Alburquerque, with its impressive fortress guarding the valleys on each side and controlling the pass.

Maybe more impressive still was that I managed to have Jamon Iberico for breakfast, lunch, as a snack, and at dinner!

Oeno's DIAM closure (6) - Testing and sensory

2008-07-16T06:15:00.001-07:00

Throughout the process of production, Oeno's laboratory is monitoring every step. All lots of cork flour are tested extensively after treatment, and any questionable result will cause that batch to be rejected and retreated until no trace of TCA can be found. "It is not a question of if the level is acceptable or not - the goal is to make it undetectable with the most modern methods available." They have 6 gas chromatographs - each of these babies is about as much as a Ferrari, last time I asked someone.

They also run tests on the completed closures, to ensure that no further contamination has occurred after the molding and shaping. I believe that Dominic said that they are in full compliance with ISO guidelines for manufacturing, and so this testing is just a part of their commitment to deliver the most consistent, highest performance closure to the industry.

We also smelled liquid from corks being soaked in the sensory lab. First, we smelled clean water, with no aroma at all. Next, traditional corks, with an earthy, woody aroma, some mushroom like character. After that, a steam treated cork, which was pleasantly woody, like cologne, without the mustiness or earthly aromas, much more clean and wood-like. Finally the DIAM, which smelled exactly like the water alone!

When we asked Dominic whether the DIAMANTE process could be applied to traditional corks, he said "you couldn't treat corks, because it would stretch them out of shape, but you could load planks into the machine, and punch them after treatment - it just would take an enormous amount of time and energy, since there would be much less surface area. But even so, this does not solve some of the other problems of corks - namely each one of them performs differently in terms of oxygen transmission and flavor masking or contribution - we want to make a better, more consistent product." I have found this to be true in my own trials - DIAM perform very consistently, natural corks are the least consistent closure available - one bottle could be perfectly preserved, while the next is aged and oxidized far beyond what it should be.

"You know" Dominic said, "in Bordeaux they say that there is no such thing as a perfect vintage, only perfect bottles. We want to make it so that every bottle can be perfect."

Oeno's DIAM closure (5) - sorting and shipping

2008-07-16T06:07:00.001-07:00

At this point, the closures are essentially ready to ship to the next stage, finishing (which typically happens near their point of use - Napa Valley for my closures, some to Australia, and Champagne or Ceret France for most of the others.) Before they can ship, they get one last inspection - an automated machine looks at every single cork from many angles, rejecting any that are discolored, misshapen, have cracks, voids, or uneven surfaces. This was a fun process to watch, as a little puff of air sends the suspect closures off into one discard bin or another to be recycled back into the process.

They had a board of example defective corks as a reference, listed as critical, major, or minor failures. From here, the corks are baled, and shipped around the world.

Oeno's DIAM Closure (4) - molding and shaping

2008-07-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

From the TCA extraction process, the treated cork flour moves via pneumatic conveyors to the next factory. Here, it is mixed with 'Microspheres' which are another patented part of the DIAM process. Basically, these are tiny polymer spheres, which when mixed with the cork and then heated expand. Once expanded, they hold their shape, but have some flexibility. They help to give their elastic properties to the closure, ensuring that after compressing, it will spring back to retain the closure in the neck of the bottle, even if the neck is somewhat irregular. Once this is correct, a very high grade, very inert polymer adhesive is added to make a coarse 'meal' which is pumped to the molding machine.

Depending on the intended use for the product, slightly different blends of the composite ingredients are used.

The molding machine is something like an automated cupcake maker. The machine packs the cork 'meal' into a series of small, cork-sized holes, and then compresses and heats it to expand the microspheres. An automated vacuum cleans up the excess from each form, and sends it to be recycled through the process. The molds travel around a conveyor to another machine which pops them out of the mold and into a bin which can be transported to the next step in the process after the corks are properly cooled. At this stage, the closures are rough, and slightly larger than their finished size will be.

The hoppers are moved to a warehouse where they cool and set. From here, they go through a machine that shapes them, polishes them, and champfers, or slightly rounds the edge of each cork. At every stage of the process, damaged, misshapen, or out-of-spec closures are kicked out of production, back into the recycling process.

Lots more photos and videos from my visit to the DIAM plant at my flickr.com site

Oeno's DIAM closure (3) - Supercritical CO2 - DIAMANTE Process

2008-07-16T05:18:00.000-07:00

As we walked up to the DIAMANTE process factory, it DID look like something out of star wars. Tall silos contained untreated and treated cork flour, a huge compressed CO2 cylinder, compressors, pipes, coolant lines, electrical, and lots of other equipment that was difficult to totally understand.

Oeno has several patents on the process and equipment used in their TCA extraction process. The entire process is very complex, and uses many, many steps, but to simplify: They use supercritical CO2, which is CO2 at high pressure and moderately high temperature - this gives it some of the properties of a liquid and some of the properties of a gas. As such, it has huge ability to penetrate the cork granules to extract volatiles, and is very effective as a solvent to remove these contaminants. At the same time, it is relatively gentle on the structure of the cork itself, and does not cause physical deformation of the suberin. Nearly all of the CO2 used is run through an activated carbon filter to remove the TCA and other contaminants, and then it can be reused within the cycle again. CO2 is completely non-toxic, and is a byproduct of many other industries (even winemaking!) so this is considered an extremely 'green' method of extraction, and is now used in applications ranging from decaffeinating coffee to dry-cleaning clothing!

The actual treatment occurs in several tall cylinders, in a batch process. Dominic showed us their very first, prototype extractor, which was in a bay all by itself. "This is the only French-made machine in the entire plant. We have Italian machines, lots of German machines, some Japanese machines, but this is the only French, and now it is not used anymore." (I asked him if, as it was a French machine, it had decided to go on strike!)

We went outside to see where the TCA was collected, along with about 150 other compounds that they had identified so far, in a plastic chemical tote. We smelled it; it smelled vaguely corky, like sawdust and a little woody, but not overwhelmingly like TCA. They are collecting about 300 gallons of this stuff per week - it is completely non-toxic, and they have been discussing the possibility of selling it to some perfume companies, as several of the recoverable compounds are difficult to obtain, and are valuable in perfumery.

From here, the now-treated cork flour travels over to another plant where it is formed, mixed, and turned into closures.

Oeno's DIAM Closure (2) - steam cleaning

2008-07-16T05:04:00.000-07:00

Though this is not a part of the production process for the DIAM closure for the USA market, Oeno is continuing to treat some of the 'cork flour' with steam cleaning to extract volatiles and TCA. They are not the only company to use this process, I believe that many of the large cork companies are using this, particularly on their technical closures, such as 1+1 and twin tops. Oeno is mostly using this closure for the spirits industry, to be made into bar-tops - one peculiar feature of TCA is that it is more sensory active in low-alcohol beverages, such as wine. Seems that it is most noticeable at between 4% to roughly 11% alcohol, and then the alcohol has a masking effect. So for malt whisky at 40% alcohol, or even Port wine at 19%, the closure choice is more forgiving. For wine, particularly more delicate styles; champagne, belgian beer closed with a cork - these products are all at particular risk of taint by TCA.

Dominic stated that the steam cleaning process can reduce TCA to below 2.0 ng/l (that is less than two parts in a trillion!) which should be around the threshold for sensory impact for a sensitive individual. They sample continuously during the steam treatment, and if a lot does not pass their testing, it is sent back to be run through the treatment process again. In this way, they can guarantee results below 2.0 ppt, but as Dominic says, "that is not enough. We are still selling TCA, so we had to progress from this."

From here, we started to walk over to the most recent part of the plant.

"Now, we leave the medieval behind and enter the space age!"

More photos from the DIAM plant at my flickr page.

Oeno's DIAM Closure - (1) source cork & sorting

2008-07-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

To see the way that Oeno has been operating, in contrast to the older technology under which corks are being produced by the company leasing the remainder of the production space, we crossed over to the other side of the property. (I am trying to make it clear that although they operate on the same property, and though it is illustrative to see traditional cork production side by side with the high-technology used in the DIAM manufacture, there is no connection between the two other than a business arrangement to lease space.) Though Oeno is phasing out of natural cork closures at the moment, when they were producing them, they came at it from an entirely different direction - the soaking of the cork bark was done in gleaming, stainless steel - pressurized steam tables, and the condensed steam was filtered back via what looked like a reverse osmosis filtration system, so that the water was always free of cork tannin buildup and other unwanted contaminants.

For the DIAM closure, the cork sourcing is not so critical as for traditional corks - the part of the cork that they need is the suberin, the waxy, slightly spongy layer found under the bark of the cork oak tree, (Quercus suber.) We walked to the covered storage bays where cork that was destined to become DIAM was stored - it is made up largely of scraps that are too small to be useful for making traditional corks, remnants from planks that had been punched out into corks already. Dominic, the director of the company showed us a plank that had been punched. There were worm holes, tree bark, and other problems with the cork all around where the closure had been punched out, and one could extrapolate that there were problems in that closure itself as well, wherever it was now. "We find sometimes bugs, bullets, rocks, all sorts of things in the cork that are not desirable."

We put on our earplugs and entered the large warehouse where the initial processing takes place. Hoppers full of cork are dumped into a chipper, which breaks down the cork bark into small pieces of near uniform size. Heavy objects fall out at this point, and sure enough when we pulled the pan back to find what had come through, we found wire, a nail, bits of woody bark, small stones, and lots and lots of shotgun pellets - someone must be doing a lot of bird hunting in the cork forests!

From here, the cork is run through a series of centrifuges - this allows the engineers to select only the suberin portion of the cork oak - bits that are more or less dense are separated out and become waste, which will be used as fuel to provide energy to the plant. Of the total tonnage of cork that comes through the plant, less than 50% by weight is the suberin which is desirable for closure production - this is still much more efficient than traditional cork manufacture. As Dominic says, "there is actually much more cork in a DIAM than in a traditional cork!" by which I think he means that as a DIAM is more uniformly made from suberin, it contains much more of the desirable material than traditional corks, with their inclusions, voids, and uneven density. (And much fewer bugs, nails, stones, dirt, air, and bullets!)

Once the cork is sorted, it is sifted once more to ensure a uniform granule size - from here it can go forward to the next processes, designed to extract TCA and other unwanted volatiles from the cork.

(For those of you who may remember the Altec, this was the extent of the processing for that closure. It was assumed that the rigorous sorting would exclude TCA, which was believed to reside most commonly in the barky parts of the cork tree. Oeno does not have any further connection to Sabate or the Altec closure, except for having purchased the company and the patents, and Oeno has expanded their technology far beyond that of the earlier closure.)

San Vicente de Alcantara

2008-07-14T11:46:00.001-07:00

When we reached the Oeno closure plant in San Vicente de Alcantara, it was quickly clear that a lot of processes were happening at once. Recently, Oeno has completely put its faith in the DIAM line alone, abandoning the sale of traditional closures. Instead, they lease their old plant out to a traditional cork producer; this one mainly makes the discs that are used on the base of champagne corks, rather than full size still wine corks. This process can make use of pieces of bark that are too thin to punch a traditional cork from.

Once the cork is harvested, it is trucked in from the countryside on large flatbed trucks. It is then stored in a cork yard – basically a large woodpile, until ready for processing. Processing starts by immersing planks of cork into boiling hot water – this water quickly becomes pretty filthy. We were here on a Monday, the start of the work week, when the water is fresh – even so, it looked pretty much like a boiling pot of witches brew, with foamy suds and brown, tea-colored water. You can imagine that by Friday, you don’t want to be the guy buying corks from that days soak…

After boiling to moisturize the corks and leach some of the flavor from them, the cork is taken in and stacked to dry flat. After dry, it is sorted by hand, by men with large knives that cut off the sections that are suitable to punch corks from, and the rest is discarded. These selected chunks of cork are then taken to be punched out one by one by an operator with a foot pedal operated machine. The narrower discs for Champagne corks are sliced automatically from thinner sheets of cork.

From here, the corks are graded by two women who look at every cork as it passes down a conveyor in from of them. Rejected corks are thrown back into the waste – the ones that pass go into large bags from where they will be shipped to finishing facilities, where the corks will be bleached, further sorted, and finally branded, sealed, and shipped to clients who will use them to close their wine bottles.

This work is incredibly labor intensive, and done with archaic machines and surroundings. It is difficult to imagine that there is much traceability here, and because these corks are then sold on to other companies, it is impossible to know where they will end up.

Extremadura

2008-07-14T11:25:00.000-07:00

The region I am visiting is called Extremadura – it is a vast part of the interior of Spain. Wide plains, low mountains, ruined castles and walled cities as far as you can see under a brilliant sky. It nearly looks like the African savannah, with huge, thickly trunked cork trees spaced evenly, with cattle and the famous and delicious pata negra (black footed pigs, which are used to make Jamon Iberico,) pigs feeding in their shade on grass, tubers, mushrooms, and acorns. Here along the border and into Portugal is where most of the corks used in the world are grown. Once it reaches maturity at about 65 years of age, a cork oak can be harvested about every 11 years – the cork harvesters cut around the trunk carefully, and remove the thick bark – all without harming the tree, which then begins to grow back its skin over the next years.

A little background – Corks have been used to close wine (and other) bottles for hundreds of years. They have certain properties that make them ideally suited for this task – they are compressible, but rebound to their original dimensions, allowing them to form a secure seal even in an imperfect bottle neck. They are water tight, but allow small amounts of oxygen through them, allowing wine to oxidatively ‘age.’ They are a renewable resource, and provide nesting habitat for endangered African storks.

At the same time, they have some drawbacks that have been recognized for just as long. As a natural product, each one varies in how much oxygen can be transmitted through it. This means that bottles can vary widely from one to the next, based on too much, or not enough oxygen being available to the wine. Sometimes they leak. Other times, they cause the wine to taste dank, like a root cellar, mushrooms, or wet cardboard. This last symptom is known as ‘cork taint’ and is one of the major issues that the wine industry has been struggling with for years. The main compound responsible for this aroma is called 2,4,6 Trichloranisole, or TCA for short. This compound, along with its related TCB, and others, can affect 3-10% of wines closed with a cork, depending upon who you talk to. The worst part about it is that many consumers do not know about TCA, and when they open a tainted wine, they have to assume that the reason that they do not like the wine is that it was not skillfully or carefully made.

Despite increased awareness and heroic efforts by the cork industry (which has been facing severe competition from artificial corks and screwcaps,) to review and improve their processing controls, analysis and traceability, this problem still exists. Even purchasing the very highest grade, most expensive corks is no guarantee of a solution – although very low grade corks may have increased incidence of problems, at the higher level TCA still exists.

The company that I have travelled to Spain to meet with is called Oeno Closures. They are an offshoot of a traditional cork company that has been working on this problem for a long time. Their approach is novel, and they hold several patents related to a process which produces a closure, called DIAM which is warranted to have TCA levels at below detectable levels in the wine, (less than 0.5ppt with current technology; it is aroma active around about 4 parts per trillion!!)

I have used these closures in the past; hesitantly at first, but the more that I have worked with them, the more I appreciate their good qualities. There is no one best closure for all wines, but this is certainly a great tool to have in hand, and the leap forward that their process represents should spur further effort and research into solving the problem.

Badajoz, Spain

2008-07-13T22:04:00.000-07:00

Just waking up - we drove yesterday from the airport in Lisbon, to Badajoz, Spain. I was sleepy, despite having slept most of the way from Philly to Lisbon. Tylenol PM is my best friend on this sort of flight; I can't stand being packed in tightly for so many hours, so it is a good way for me to go to just sleep through it.

We picked up the car - it was tiny, due to some miscommunication with the travel agent, and they did not have a larger vehicle that they could upgrade us to. We squeezed me, Chris, Nicole, and our bags into it barely - but we are going to have 2 more people with us tomorrow, so it promises to be interesting!

The countryside looks a lot like California - loads of oak trees, (though these have their lower trunks stripped of bark, as they are harvested cork trees...) and the ground is very dry looking, with mountains in the background. Lots of fortified cities and ruined castles everywhere you look as well. Olive trees, some row crops, and cattle.

We stopped at a rest stop for espresso and a bite, and there were bullfight poster advertisments up on the walls everywhere. A couple of the guys we met up with later at the hotel, from another winery, were in Pamplona over the past couple days and did the Corrida del Toros, or rather they were there, as the police kicked them out of the street before it started. They said it was over before you knew it, and they think that they saw the back of one of the bulls as it went by, but that was it. It sounded crowded, dirty, and exhausting to be with so many thousands of people.

When we got to the hotel, we spent a couple hours by the pool. Love smelling warm fresh air with no hint of the huge fires that have been burning by us lately!

Getting off this morning to grab breakfast, then head about 70 miles from here to the factory to see how they process corks. Am looking forward to this!

Europe - Take two

2008-07-12T16:52:00.000-07:00

I know I just returned a few weeks ago from a great couple weeks in Spain and France, but I recieved an invite on my return to travel to Portugal Spain and France to tour the cork forests and processing plants owned by the French company Oenocorc, whom I have worked with a fair bit. I mostly have used their unique DIAM product, a zero TCA engineered closure. As I am in the airport typing on my iPhone, I will talk about TCA in a further post.

I will be getting on the plane here in Philly to land tommorrow am in Lisbon, then travel across Portugal to the Spanish border at Badajoz. This is near the forests and the initial processing plant. Then we fly to Barcelona, to travel to the finishing factory in the French Pyrenees. I will even be near the Pyrenees stages of the Tour de France, and Chris said we may try to catch a bit of it.

I didn't even fully complete my last travelblog, but I guess these trips will run together.

I forgot to mention! The part of Spain where the corks grow, Extremadura, is famous for its Jamon Iberico! Stay tuned!

Port Bou, Spain

2008-07-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

When taking the train along the southwest coast of France, going into Spain, you have to change trains immediately upon entering Spain at Port Bou. There were a couple of hours in between trains, so I grabbed my bags and headed down into the village.

Port Bou seems to be a small, sleepy village, (granted, it was Sunday,) that clusters around a small, sheltered port on the Mediterranean. Tall cliffs surround the city on every side, so it was very still, sunny, and warm, even vineyards were growing on steep terraces over the town. There is a trim embarcadero along the sea, and a gravelly beach right in the midst of the town, with restaurants and hotels clustered around, facing the small harbor. Through a cleft in the rocks, you can see out to the broader sea, a narrow alleyway which you would have to shoot through to get a boat to open ocean. There were sunbathers on the sand, and children scrambling over rocks near the cliffs, exploring the tidepools.

I sat at a restaurant across the street from the sea, and ordered the menu of the day - fried sardines and paella, with a carafe of rose. The sardines here are delicious - larger fish than what we are accustomed to calling sardines here, and they are fresh, simply slit along the belly to clean them, a scrape of the knife to take the larger scales away, and then dredged through a light flour and salt batter before being dropped in olive oil. They come out crispy, delicate, and delicious - you can pretty much scrape them lightly off the bone with the tip of your fork, flip them over and repeat. Delicious! The last time I had sardines this good was at Pilar, in Napa, and they were Santa Barbara caught sardines.

The Paella was just okay. It was oily, and seemed to be heated up rather than made to order - but then they have a restaurant to run.

I wish I would have had more time to enjoy the sun, sit on the beach, and sip rose, but I had to get on my train back to Barcelona.

More pics, click here

Convection oven, toaster oven, and hotplate

2008-07-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

I really love our new kitchen. The convection oven, the range with a really high-powered burner and fine control at the low-end, especially the dishwasher, and the easy access to the refrigerator, with the freezer down below, and the refrigerated shelves up top, where you can see them easily. Now I know that kitchens get fancier than ours - but this is really good compared to what I am used to, and we do just fine with this setup.

In Avignon, I got a good reminder that it is not the quality or layout of the kitchen that matters - it is ingredients, understanding of these ingredients, and organization that makes for really good food. I ducked into a wine bar with a kitchen that was turning out really solid regional food - I sat at the bar which also was the kitchen, and watched as two waitresses and one cook turned out plate after plate of food for a packed room and patio - with only a small convection oven (like the kind they use at Starbucks to heat up your disgusting breakfast sandwich thing,) a basic toaster oven, and an electric hotplate. There was a commercial dishwasher as well, and a sink, but that was essentially it! They were making oxtail, toasted sandwiches, roasted marrow bones, soups, salads, plates of cheeses, escargot, beef tartare, and many other things at a breakneck pace while keeping the diners happily plied with glasses, tastes, or bottles of wine from a blackboard listing around 30 selections.

The people next to me turned out to be friendly and fun; Franck is in the cork business, selling to wineries all around France. Kris is a baker, and sells her breads out of Les Halles, nearby. They were really fun, and we ended up going out for drinks at a friend's restaurant with an American chef. It was a great last night in France before catching the morning train back towards Barcelona.

More pictures from Avignon here:

Chateauneuf du Pape

2008-07-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

Without question, the most famous wine region in the Southern Rhone valley is Chateauneuf du Pape. It is located within view of Avignon, and takes its name from the castle which the Avignon Popes had constructed overlooking the town as a summer residence, (translated: New Castle of the Popes.) The red wine made here is based on Grenache, with some Mourvedre, Cinsault, Carignan, Syrah, and Terret Noir - they are often fragrant wines with relatively high alcohol for France, commonly just below 15%. It is common to use large, older oak casks for the elevage of these wines, so they do not have the intensely oaky character that is so common in new world wines, or in Burgundy or Bordeaux - this wine is more about the grapes and the place than about the winemaking technique. To me, when young they have a floral grapiness with defined astringent tannins, while remaining decently acidic and agile on the palate. With age, they lose some fruit, and the floral moves toward dried petals and spices, sometimes they have almost a mineral, gamey 'blood' aroma, and the tannin structure does not seem to move appreciably. It is common for these wines to age 20 years with proper cellaring, and even longer than that in the best cases.

I learned a fair deal about the appellation just by being there. It is a relatively large area when compared to a Burgundy commune - a bit over 3000 hectares (nearly 6,200 acres of vines.) It encompasses a range of soils, aspects, and elevations, but the defining soil is on the plateau to the east of the village - a vast plain of potato-sized rocks cover the ground (up to 30 meters deep in places,) with vines struggling up out of the meager ground. Red wines are 'goblet-trained' or grown like a small bush, with just a small post to cling to. Their clusters hang within 6 inches of the ground, which helps them to catch reflected light from the rocks (improving color in the grapes,) as well as keeps them warm through the evening as the rocks give off their accumulated heat (moderating the acidity of the fruit.) My back hurt just thinking about working and harvesting in these vineyards - you'd be bent double all day, with only a loose pile of shifting rocks to stand upon. Probably a lot of twisted ankles and sore backs!

The whites looked much more familiar. They were trained in rows on a standard VSP-type trellis, and were planted on some of the less stony ground in most cases. The whites were the eye-opener here for me; while 95% of the wine produced in Chateaneuf du Pape is red, and this is the bulk of what is exported, the whites were uniformly delicious. Rich in texture, dry, with balanced acidity and minerality, they seemed loaded up with white peach and apricot flavors, and floral/herbal aromatics. The blancs are based on Grenache Blanc, with Roussanne, Clairet, and Picpoul.

We tasted wine at a couple of domaines, then went up to the Chateau to see the view over the tiled rooftops of the village. From here, one can see Mt. Ventoux, Les Dentilles, the beginning of the alps, and the wide bend of the Rhone river as it splits to encompass an island near Avignon. The Chateau is mostly a ruin, however there is a meeting room in the "basement" of the castle which still functions as a banquet hall which can hold 200+ people for a feast. Several people whom I know have been at banquets here for their induction into the society of Chateauneuf du Pape (mostly for being influential in spreading the reknown of the region, or for importing and selling the wines of Chateauneuf du Pape throughout the world.) In order to be inducted, you have to memorize and recite all of the allowed grapes for the appellation (there are something like 13 or so of them, mostly with difficult names...) Then there is much drinking, eating and drinking. That would be very fun to be a part of someday!

More photos: click here for my flickr.com account

L'Isle sur la Sorgue

2008-07-04T12:05:00.000-07:00

L'Isle sur la Sorgue is a village located somewhat downstream from Fontaine de Vaucluse, lower on the plains of the Luberon Valley. It is famous as a town for the sale and purchase of antiques. It has several waterworks throughout the city, along the river which harnessed the power of the river for textile, grain, and mechanical mills.

It was a perfect place for lunch, and a cute town. Lots of tourist shops, with olive oil, lavender soaps, etc...

On the way there, we were not far from Lacoste, where the Marquis de Sade maintained a residence (now the ruins are owned by Pierre Cardin, and there is a summer theatre series given there...) We also passed by a village of cliff-homes - people actually live in caves built into a cliff, and have since prehistory - they still live there today as well, in much modernized versions...

More photos here on my flickr.com site:

Fontaine de Vaucluse

2008-07-04T08:23:00.001-07:00

The Fountaine de Vaucluse, for which the entire department is named, was just a short side trip from the main road between Avignon and Gordes. It is pretty famous as one of the largest springs in the world - essentially an entire raging river flows fully formed, directly up from a hole at the base of some high cliffs and becomes the river Sorgue. When we were in the area, Francois was not even sure that the village was open to visitors - the recent rains had swollen the river to much more than the normal flow rate - I think he said something like 200 cubic meters of water per second were flowing up from the earth recently, causing the officials to limit access to the area out of concerns for safety! (That sounds ridiculously high, but I looked up the spring online, and the annual flow rate is about 630 million cubic meters per year, or an average of about 20 cubic meters per second, so 200 would only be ten times that....)

Needless to say, this is a huge amount of water. And a lot of the success of Provence as a historically rich farming region is due to the availability of this water for irrigation and more importantly for transport to market, and for motive power for linen mills for textiles, grain mills for grain, and to a lesser degree for manufacturing.

The water was roaring and swishing - running almost right up against the bottom of some of the bridges. There was even a low wall along the village square which was barely holding back water from inundating the town. Walking up toward the source, there is a ruined paper mill that you can visit, and a large stone plaza from which you can observe the river as it surges and falls. There is a ruined fortification high over the village as well, looking down on the steep, narrow valley - 'Vaucluse' is apparently adapted from the Provencal words for 'Closed Valley' or something like that.

More photos and videos here at my flickr.com site

Gordes

2008-07-04T07:06:00.000-07:00

"Are you ready to see something magnificent" Francois the wine tour guide asked the three of us on his tour. We were winding our way through the Provence countryside, alongside olive orchards and beautiful stone walls everywhere, herbs, lavender, cherry trees in bloom, 'Borries' or beehive-shaped rock dwellings from long, long ago.

We all said that we were, but as we rounded the corner I was still stunned by the view before me. Towering over the valley that stretched off to the mountains in the distance was a beautiful village, seemingly carved out of rock, clinging tenuously to the side of the cliffside. Gordes.

Apparently, this is one of the sights for which Provence is famous. It is so stunningly beautiful that it has attracted a long list of famous people who live or have lived here. It is the village that Francois Mitterand lived in, and apparently the Princess of Monaco has a home here, where Princess Diana was to have come to live with her. There are other French movie stars who keep homes here as well.

I walked the streets, which seem to go mostly up and down, except for at the top plaza portion of the city at the top of the hill. There is a fortification here, plenty of shops and bakeries. You get the sense that this is a touristed place, but that also people manage to live their lives still.

Below, the fields stretched out on the plain, orchards, vegetables, vineyards, small farmsteads. Very beautiful!

More photos here at my flickr.com site

Rousillon

2008-07-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

In Avignon, I signed up for a full day wine tour with a local guide. Francois was the perfect guide for me - he speaks English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. In addition, he had worked for 15 years as the Maitre D' for a top restaurant in Avignon, (until he and his wife started a family together, and he didn't want to miss her childhood while he was working long hours,) so he knew all of the domaines from his business interactions with them, purchasing their wines, etc... On top of that, his wife is an Oenologist and works in sales for a French firm that sells winemaking supplies to wineries, so he is very well versed in the technical aspects of wine as well.

Francois already had 2 clients lined up, a very nice retired couple from England. They were not hugely into wine, but they did want to see the region, so Francois apologised that we would be spending the first half of the day sightseeing around some of the villages in the area, and then we would go to Chateauneuf du Pape for the afternoon.

This was fine with me, and I loved streaking along the Durance River, seeing the Cherry orchards being harvested by men on tall ladders, seeing fields of lavender not just yet in bloom.

One of the villages that we visited was Rousillon, located high atop a hill. As we drove through the pine forest up to the village, quarries could be seen on the side of the road, bright, chocolate red with Ochre, which has always been mined here - in fact it is traditional for the people to plaster their homes with it, and as we gained the village at the top of the cliffs, it was a mass of reds, oranges, yellows, and other rich earth tones of ochre.

The view from the top was beautiful, the mountains, the rivers, the fields and vineyards that stretched out below. The tiny cobbled streets, the churches, and the windy gardens at the very top of the town.

More photos click here

2006 Pahlmeyer Chardonnay, Napa Valley

2008-06-30T10:45:00.001-07:00

Winery:	Pahlmeyer
Location:	Oakville (Napa Valley) California
Wine :	2006 Chardonnay, Napa Valley
Appellation :	Napa Valley AVA
Price :	$65 to $75
Color :	Green – gold.
Nose:	Smoky, burnt almond, orange peel, botrytis ‘marmalade’, fresh cut hay, burnt caramel. Butterscotch, cream Bruleé, browned apples, bananas, roasted pine-nuts.
Palate / Balance / Flavors:	Mouth is rich and full, seems high in alcohol, moderate acidity. Buttered popcorn and smoked oak, a light continual astringency and light bitterness of oak tannin. Our guess is Napa Chardonnay
Style:	Style-driven. No faults in this wine at all, rich and oak based. Going for maximum richness and sweet / browned character over fruit. A triumph of winemaking over fruit character (maybe that’s too harsh, but definitely an example of a wine that was ‘made’ as opposed to ‘grown.’ I know that a lot of people really love this style of Chardonnay – I am a white burgundy guy at heart though…)
Analysis:	14.4% Alc, 3.67 pH, 5.5 TA, 0.0 ML, 1.0 g/l rs(FOSS winescan)
Comments:	95 pts Robert Parket (Wine Advocate,) 90 points Jim Laube (Wine Spectator,) 90 points Steven Tanzer – We tended to agree most with Robert Parker’s assessment that this is a baked and spice wine with astringency and smoke, but we aren’t sure about the score bit. 3,000 cases produced.

Avignon

2008-06-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

I intentionally did not plan my entire trip before leaving for Europe. I like the flexibility of several unplanned days; I like being able to say ‘Yes’ to opportunities that crop up, and I like getting the lay of the land and a sense of what else is available nearby. I will point out that this has led to some disasters in the past – but on the whole, being open to the moment has brought me great memories, experiences that have broadened my understanding of this world, and in several cases new friends who continue to enrich my life every year.

I weighed the options – I could go back to Barcelona, or I could stay in Montpellier for a longer period of time – or I could do something else entirely. Barcelona had proven to be beautiful and exciting, but also quite expensive, and I knew that I would have at least one more night in the city before flying out from the airport. Montpellier was great, and I had been enjoying it a lot, but I wanted to see more of the countryside.

Marseille was not far away, and reputed to be France’s second city, after Paris. Nice and Cannes were also within reach, with great beaches, etc… But the weather was still cloudy and cold.

In the end, I decided to go to Avignon. It was right on the rail line to Lyon, situated in the midst of the Cotes du Rhone wine region, with the famous rocky vineyards of Chateauneuf du Pape just a few miles outside the walls of the city, and within the historic kingdom of Provence.

It was an easy 1.5 hour ride to Avignon, with castles and cities, rivers, windfarms harnessing the energy of the Mistral, and as we approached my destination more and more vines and orchards. Departing the station, the ancient walls of the old city are immediately in front, amazingly well-preserved and dominant. My hotel was immediately up the main street about a half-mile, and I just walked with my rolling suitcase. I am glad that I did, as the choked, narrow main way was so crowded that a taxi would have taken twice as long. After a short nap and a change of clothes, I went out to walk in the narrow, medieval streets to get my bearings.

My hotel was right by the center place, with the city hall and its impressive clock. Lots of street restaurants, tourist shops, and shopping everywhere. Within 3 blocks or so was the Palace of the Popes – immense and imposing, with a small cathedral adjacent. Avignon actually functioned as the seat of the Popes for about 100 years – the papacy lived in exile from Rome, due to political instability and infighting that made them feel not entirely safe. The Avignon popes lived under the protection of the French king of that time – though the city of Avignon was still within the Holy Roman Empire at that time, France began just across the Rhone river. The residence of the popes in Avignon brought a huge amount of fortune in the form of trade, commerce, and political and religious importance to the region – this is reflected in much of the fortification and architecture in this region. (And the city remained a possession of the Catholic papacy from 1348 until the French Revolution in 1791.)

Avignon is situated near the confluence of the Durance and Rhone rivers, which have always been important to trade – even today the Durance provides huge amounts of water for irrigated agriculture in the Provence region, and river barges can enter the mouth of the Rhone and follow the systems of canals ultimately as far as Paris and the North Sea!

Wandering around the walls to the Pont d’Avignon (bridge of Avignon) which once connected the Roman Empire to neighboring France just across the river, (only a few of its arches still remain,) I learned that when the river crests and threatens to flood the city, they can close the tower gates, barring them, and the walls keep the river from inundating the streets and businesses within the walls. Not bad, to think that even 800+ years later these walls are protecting the city!

It was really windy, but I climbed up the towers from the bridge side to a rocky garden atop the cathedral area – from here one can look out over the countryside, seeing the river stretch off into the distance – Mt Ventoux, the beginnings of the Alps, over the rooftops of the city, and the jagged toothlike low range called ‘les Alpilles,’ which were painted famously by Van Gogh.

Click here for more photos from Avignon and surrounding areas on my flickr.com site.

O2 Wine & MacroWine

2008-06-29T09:02:00.000-07:00

I realize that I have neglected to mention much about the very reason that I ended up in Montpellier. I was in town to attend two wine science conferences – the first, ‘O2 Wine,’ was the first annual gathering of an industry / academic partnership by the same name which is dedicated to defining and in some cases funding needed research into the interaction of oxygen in wine at all stages from crush through bottle aging. It is made up of members from primarily industrial equipment and materials suppliers, as well as laboratories and scientists affiliated with the top wine universities and research institutions in Germany, Australia, France, South Africa, Spain and the United States. The second conference is called ‘MacroWine’ and it is the second annual meeting of this group, which has a similar mission, but is more related to uncovering the secrets of macro-molecules in wines, such as tannins, polyphenols, colloids, proteins, and protein / phenol complexes and the way that they influence wine quality, sensory perception, and stability.

(I was invited to attend by a synthetic closure company whom I have been in contact with following (or rather during, as it is still ongoing,) a production-level trial in which I have been following the development and aging of a wine that was finished with a variety of closure types, including screwcaps, synthetic corks, natural corks, and an engineered cork closure. All of these products allow varying amounts of oxygen into the bottled wine during aging, and thus provide different rates of oxidation, different life spans for the wine, and different sensory results in what was at one time an identical wine.)

This was a pretty heavy week of information – much of what was presented was very academic and assumed a daily familiarity with the subtleties of organic chemistry, protein and enzyme synthesis and activity. It was very cool to be seated in a room with some of the best names in wine science – I seriously know most of these guys from reading the papers that they have published in AJEV and other research publications that are becoming foundational to these fields of research. Several of the presentations dealt with laying the basics – what are the best methods to categorize and measure such complex and diverse groups of chemical species – the scientific equivalent of building a language that can be understood and used by all who are pursuing research in these areas. Secondly, these kinds of meetings of the best like-minded scientists in the world can only lead to more rapid advances and better understanding for the industry as their discoveries are shared and cross-pollinate and illuminate one another. The industry affiliates whom are largely funding this group are also poised to be the first to benefit as they incorporate and have access to the minds and information that are involved.

I am sure that this will lead to better products, better understanding, more rational winemaking, and ultimately better wine made in a more efficient way in the future. Not quite at the level of curing cancer, (although some of the phenols involved are being shown to do just that, so who knows!) but I believe that better wine is a cause we can all get behind!

The conferences were hosted at the INRA (Institute National for Research Agricultural) which is certainly well-known as the birthplace of many wine-related improvements. Many of the specific yeast strains that are used worldwide, many of the certified rootstocks and grapevine scions were developed here, and it was very cool to walk along the edge of the experimental vineyard.

Montpellier is actually a strong center of Agricultural research of many kinds – SupAgro (the specific part of the INRA that we met at,) is the nickname for the top agricultural school (Superior Agronomy, or something like that,) in France, and there is another related research facility called Agropolis, basically an academic research campus that is dedicated to developing new ways to farm crops worldwide, with an emphasis on hot-climate agriculture for the developing world, specifically food and cash crops for Africa, Asia, and elsewhere. In addition, this campus hosts one of the most important research projects into the questions raised by agriculture and global climate change. Very interesting place, and very important in the world!

Shatter

2008-06-27T14:45:00.001-07:00

2008 is proving to be a tricky year for wine growing in Paso Robles, for a lot of reasons.

With severe frost in the first few weeks after budbreak, many grapevines in the colder areas had their primary shoots frost burned down to the cordon. When this happens, the vine has a safety mechanism - the main bud has secondary and tertiary buds which, while smaller and less robust, at least allow the vine a second chance at getting some shoots and leaf area out for growth during that season. The problem is that these secondary shoots are weaker, and typically contain few viable clusters - and those that actually are able to pollinate and set will be weeks behind the rest of the vine in maturity, making harvest a nightmare of over-ripe and under-ripe side by side on the same vine.

For varieties and locations that escaped frost damage, the extreme swings in temperature have had further implications. Much of Paso Robles' Cabernet Sauvignon (along with other Bordeaux varieties like Cab Franc, Sauv Blanc, and to some extent Merlot,) all seemed to bloom right around the time that warm, balmy weather changed back to cold days and nights with drizzle and overcast. Although grape vines have perfect flowers, (they have male and female parts right on the same flower, so they don't require bees or insects to help with fertility,) they don't do well with cold, wet weather. When this happens, we are left with a lot of "Shatter" the name for the stage at which the vine aborts the unfertilized berries, and when you shake a cluster at this stage, the dried up brown berries fall out of the cluster, leaving only the viable berries behind, reducing the crop sharply. (See the lower photo above - these clusters have 100% shatter, or NO BERRIES AT ALL!)

Sometimes there is incomplete fertilization - the berry fertilizes, but the seed inside doesn't grow. This condition is called "Hen & Chicks" - in the middle photo you can see how the berry size is mixed - some berries are sizing up - they are normal and have 2-3 seeds in each. The small berries do not have viable seeds, and they will remain tiny and sour. If the vine gets stressed, the small berries will become necrotic and fall out of the cluster later in the year. If this doesn't happen until the other berries size up, they can become trapped inside the cluster and promote growth of mold and disease. If they stay living in the cluster, they can go through to harvest and contribute their green, unripe, tart flavors to the wine.

The bottom photo shows the most extreme example of infertility - this is at a block of our Petite Sirah which was frost damaged, and then just recovered when it was hammered by cold weather during bloom. The vine just gave up on reproducing this year, and the clusters have all died and dried up. Very sad, but it is a mechanism that will allow the vine to put all of its energy into storing carbohydrates for next year, when it will make a renewed attempt at carrying a crop load.

Overall, estimates seem to be that we will have a 20-30% smaller crop than average this year locally for Cabernet Sauvignon, and several other varieties will be affected as well. The bigger picture seems similar - there were severe frost events throughout Northern and Central California which should make for a very small overall grape harvest, (and thus potentially higher prices for grapes on the spot market this year, and for bulk wines early next year.)

Brown Bag Fridays - 2004 Tenuta L'Illuminata "Colbertina" Barbera d'Alba

2008-06-24T17:53:00.001-07:00

Winery:	Tenuta L’Illuminata
Location:	La Morra, Langhe (Piemonte) Italy
Wine :	2004 Tenuta L’Illuminata Colbertina - Barbera d’Alba
Appellation :	Barbera d’Alba DOCG
Price :	~$30 retail (Imported by Blavod / Sapphire Brands)
Color :	Deep Claret. Translucent ruby, to slight orange. Pleases the Eye, giant Legs, viscous.
Nose:	Crushed Currant, juniper, orange peel, pepper, salumi. Black-cherry. Musty, fresh-dug earth. Earthy – espresso & chocolate
Palate / Balance / Flavors:	Unripe raspberries and cherries. Herbal, camphor, dried-fruit, citrus. Acidity higher, tannins lower than the balance we are used to in California. Cleansing acidity. Raspberry & plum. Long finish, slight back-palate bitterness. Cleansing acidity – would be an excellent wine with food. Paired with the right meat, something with a high fat content, this wine would show well, (Lamb, duck confit?)
Style:	This is definitely a wine that is balanced toward the herbal and earthy as opposed to overt fruit – it is lean, a bit racy, and moderate in tannin. Appropriately earthy for a wine from a region famous for wild truffles! The fruit character that is present seems like dried strawberry & slightly unripe raspberry. Definitely opens to more floral, rose-like aromas with some air. A well-made wine, it will shine at the table without overwhelming the food. It is nice to taste something that is so clearly not of the California mold. -NRC
Analysis:	13.76% alcohol, 3.24 pH, 7.3 TA, 0.00 g/l RS, 0.00 g/l ML, 0.073 g/100ml VA
Comments:	Barbera tends to be a fairly high-acid grape variety – there is not much of it here in California, but it does well in hot areas that tend to shed acid. Barbera a moderately deep-colored variety, but can be very aromatic and long-lived.

We started having ‘Brown Bag Fridays’ at work – this is a tradition that I am borrowing from Edna Valley Vineyards. The idea is to bring in a few wines, from anywhere in the world, stick them in a brown bag so that they are not visible to anyone, and leave them open so that members of the winery team can taste them throughout the day and offer notes on aroma and style of the wine, as well as venture guesses as to the origin of the wine. At the end of the day, the bottle is revealed to all, (I think that EVV used to give out a prize if anyone guessed the variety and region correctly, but we haven’t developed this that far yet.) The comments are a composite of all the tasters, (though style comment is my own.)

Green Mango

2008-06-22T09:01:00.000-07:00

Just the other day, when trying to come up with some tasting notes for a wine that will be released soon, I was struggling with a taste/aroma that was hard to define in a white wine. An intense fruit character, very tropical, but not sweet, a little floral, and quite green - unusual and different from the more common peach / citrus / pear / white floral notes. Whatever it was seemed familiar, but just out of reach.

And then it hit me; green mango! When we were in El Salvador earlier this year, and though ill-advised were wandering through the shantytown market area of the center of the city, I saw a woman slicing up green fruit into bags. On close inspection, the fruit was a hard, green mango, which she peeled and pitted, then sliced like a potato or apple into hard, thin slices. I asked her if I could purchase a bag, and she added lime juice, powdered chillis, hot sauce, and pepper to the bag. The combination was cool, refreshing, crisper than an apple, and piquant from the spice. The underlying flavor of the mango was definitely floral and green in a positive way, tart, and pretty darned delicious! A terrific snack, and one I wish we could find here.

Je t'aime, TGV

2008-06-22T07:41:00.001-07:00

I just need to point out here how much I truly love the TGV; or rather rail travel in general throughout Europe. Speeding from city center to city center in very little time, efficient, on schedule, frequent, comfortable, relatively clean and through interesting countryside. The TGV has almost eliminated commercial air travel within France, as it is so much more convenient to simply take the train, with similar travel times, less stringent security screening (though in Spain it looked like they were getting more serious about it on some routes, no doubt in wake of the Madrid bombings,) and generally you can grab a metro from near your home to the main railway station, eliminating the need for parking hassles, etc... Even the local trains are very quick, and since they run on electrical lines overhead, they don't kick out pollutants non-stop, and are fairly quiet compared to the big Diesel-Electrics on American rails. (We know, we used to live next to the train station in SLO!)

I am sure that someone might point out how European rail travel is imperfect, or subsidized by the government, etc... But think about how we subsidize the auto industry in this country, with our road building and maintenance, our billions-of-dollars-a-week oil wars, publicly funded parking structures, etc... Or the way we keep bailing out the domestic air carriers when they fail to manage their businesses effectively (though Southwest is proving that a company can cut costs while keeping service at a high level, providing some of the lowest fares by ensuring its bottom line is healthy - without government handouts or nickle-and-diming its clients.)

Rail travel here in California is a far cry from that of Europe. I took an Amtrak train from San Luis Obispo to Martinez CA last year, when I had a meeting up in Sonoma, and a ride home available. It was a study in mediocrity. The trip took nearly 8 hours, (driving takes about 4-5 hours,) the train was nearly empty of people. The train was slow - we had to pull over numerous times to let freight trains pass. Mostly, it traveled through the industrial areas of the towns we went through, although the scenery on the Central Coast is pretty amazing to look at (particularly on the way south, along the ocean toward Santa Barbara.) The train was filthy, the windows were all smudged, so it was tough to get a good view outside. The interior was stuffy and uncomfortable, the food that was available was comparable to that available in a second or third-tier gas station. I at least expected that there would be a wireless internet connection, so that I could be somewhat productive on the journey, but no, not even that was available. And with crappy schedules, I could only arrive at 11pm in Martinez, the train station nestled alongside a grubby portside oil refinery with no travelers amenities at all - had to wait 20 minutes for a cab to arrive after the station master locked me out in the drizzle.

Imagine if there was a high-speed train available on this route instead. At 150-200 miles per hour, a trip into San Francisco could be cut in half - even with a number of station stops, it would take less than 2 hours. Or Los Angeles to San Francisco in 3 hours, even with stops in San Fernando Valley, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Salinas, San Jose? I have to think that ridership would be very high, particularly with the frustration involved in getting to LAX / SFO with your car, security clearances, flight delays, etc... And using electric energy rather than gas is a no-brainer - most of California is so sunny that a large amount of the daytime need could be met by solar arrays along the right-of way, with nighttime runs using less expensive off-peak transmissions.

What if we could cut the number of cars driving back and forth on highway 5 & 101 by a few hundred thousand a year? Maybe millions of trips a year? That would have to do something good for the oil situation, right? Probably a lot faster and a lot more permanent solution than drilling in the Arctic, or off the coast of South Beach for oil that we couldn't fill our tank with for at least another 15-20 years?

Farewell to Montpellier

2008-06-20T17:38:00.000-07:00

I eventually had to say goodbye at the end of my week in Montpellier. I will always have fond memories of this city that is not too big, but full of things to do and of warm hospitality. I definitely must make it back - I really want to explore the region of exceptional wines surrounding it, and to enjoy the laid-back atmosphere of a city that is first a city of real people, not a tourist place. Thanks to everyone who made it a fantastic time!

Many more photos - some with my real camera, with better quality at my flickr.com site

Say Cheese

2008-06-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

One of my friends emailed me to ask if I encountered any good cheese in France / Spain.

Indeed I did! I think that in Spain I was so favorably overwhelmed with the Jamon Serrano / Iberico that the cheese took a backseat - but there were really good semi-hard and mountain cheeses there too.

In Montpellier, I visited an affineur, or cheese seller - although here they do much more than simply sell cheeses wrapped up in cellophane - it might be more proper to say that they 'finish' the cheeses here, taking them from relatively young and immature, and bringing them to the glory of full maturity carefully over the course of weeks of time at careful temperature and humidity, delicately turning and washing the rinds, and finally choosing them at just the right moment to be offered to their customers, to be taken home and enjoyed.

The local cheeses of the area are mostly Chevre - small goat's milk cheeses which are semi-soft and range from fruity to pungent. As you can see in the photos, they can take on an almost ashen coat of fungal growth as they approach maturity - this is a beautiful thing, trust me! The aroma in the shop was nearly overwhelmingly delicious - a mix of truffle-like fungal and fresher dairy / goaty aromas.

Also of interest were the farm-cured sausages on offer at the outdoor market. Too bad that I was in a hurry and leaving for Avignon in the morning - these looked amazing too - I just had to snap a photo!