2010 Cedar River Cellars Vintage Sensory Eval

I just finished taking 50ml samples from each of our varietal barrels, mixing, and doing some sensory evaluation on each individual sample, as well as the conglomerate. What I have in the barrels for 2010 are Merlot, Cab Sauv, and Syrah. Most everyone knows that the 2010 Viognier was already released and is long gone, however, I will give some notes/thoughts on the Vio as well.

The wino talking heads, if you read all of the wine blogs and such, will say that 2010 is a cool year and look for stronger acids and such in the 2010 vintage Washington wines. My primary impressions are...I am finding a nice balanced drinkable wines at 10 months old. I also get my grapes in two areas...Yakima and Pasco...some other regions may differ.

Here is the breakdown:

2010 Viognier
Tropical fruit aroma, starting to show a bit of honey in the flavor, pear and apple flavors, finishes dry, crisp and acidic with a perceived sweetness. I had some customers say it is the best Vio they have ever had.

2010 Syrah
Added re-toasted French barrels to the mix. A bit lighter in color than our 2009..brick red. Mocha nose, baking spices, blackberry/cherry aroma. Medium anise flavor, barrel spice, berry flavors and a medium acid-ethanol finish. Medium body and a light trailing aftertaste, and light tannin finish..ready for next sip. Definitely a bit different from the 2009 in terms of a bit more tannin and acid and not so much blueberry. Acid is not tart or over-the-top.

2010 Cab Sauv
Added re-toasted French barrels to the mix. A bit lighter in color than our 2009..plum red. Pie cherry nose, black currant, baking spice, and slight clove/eugenol. Very light smoke/tar-like aroma. Flavors of black currant, clove, vanillan, and barrel notes. A medium-full body with medium-full tannin and balanced acid finish. Acid is not tart or over-the-top. I find the 2010 Cab Sauv a bit easier to drink at this time than our 2009, with much more complex flavors.

2010 Merlot
Added a new M+ American Oak barrel to the mix. Classic Merlot brick red color. Aromas of vanilla, brandied cherry, and light smoke. Meaty game-like flavors, ripe plum and cherry flavors, light cola, with light clove notes. Aftertaste lingers of barrel toast. Full bodied, clean tannin, and crisp acid finish, but not tart. I speculate this will be a popular wine for our 2012 release.

I think that the 2010 vintage is just fine..in my cellar..and I would guess in most every other winery's cellar. However, 2010 did bang on the vines a bit and 2011 harvest will be light in some if not most vineyards. It will be interesting to see how the concentration and flavors change in 2011 vintage.

If you liked our 2009 rookie vintage, I think the 2010 will be a bit different and fun to drink.
Cheers!

Cedar River Cellars 2010 Vintage Is On!

Well it has been quite a while since my last post, but geez, there is nothing going on during the summer and I did not have much to talk about. I have done some bottling of the 2009, but that is about it.

Today we kicked off the 2010 vintage. Myself and a friend crushed about 3000 lbs of Cabernet Sauvignon from Portteus Vineyards. Good shit baby! The tech specs came is similar to last year. Here are my notes thus far...

My numbers at the tank are
22 degrees Brix (I thought it would be closer to 23) so that is about 12.3 alc (last year I was at 23-23.5). I may recheck this a couple of times..although..I have already..I will recheck with a hydrometer as well and get a S.G. It is no big deal, the flavor and acid is nice...so the grapes are ripe.

Ph 3.65 (last year 3.56)
TA 0.66 g/L (last year 0.75 g/L)

The flavors are good, the seeds are really spicy compared to last year and not as tannic in the mouth as a whole berry. However, with all of this must in one 48S bin, I will extract the shit out of it and get lots of skin contact. There are NO pyrazines (bell-pepper or green flavors) that I taste and the stems look ripe and mature. These grapes looked better and taste better than last year all around. A little less black currant this year, more spice and fruit. However, I can taste Portteus house flavor and once I start to press, I get a better picture of the flavor profile. Last years grapes seemed a bit smaller and much more tannic and concentrated in cherry and currant flavors.

I will process Syrah and Merlot next Thursday. The vineyard numbers on those grapes are looking similar to last year from my Pasco grower, Burgess Vineyards.

Things are a bit crowded in the cellar, but looking good.

Handcrafted

Handcrafted:
"Made by hand or using the hands, as opposed to by mass production or using machinery." - some internet dictionary site.

I was reading consumer responses on a wine blog the other day and the word "Handcrafted" got kind of bashed a bit. It is a term that is used a lot in wine marketing materials, websites, and labels. I got the impression that most of those consumers seemed to shrug off the word as an "air quotes" term that the marketing department uses to give the illusion of being small or intimate with their product. And I think that these folks are also thinking of very large wineries and not the small craft wineries.

I saw a 5000 case a year wineries use the word handcrafted on their website. Five thousand cases a year is small compared to a lot of wineries, however, I doubt that they hand fill, cork, label, and capsule, their bottles, or use a bucket to scoop out must. I think that as a winery gets a bit larger, you have to use some automation to keep costs in check and speed up production. Is it sill handcrafted? Sure, but the word loses a bit of cache.

A winery that uses machine grape picking, belt-driven sorting, hydraulic bin dumpers to fill the crusher/de-stemmer, pump must to fermentation tanks that are then pumped over as fermentation happens (if red), pumped to aging barrels, pumped through a plate filter on to the bottling line and bottled to the tune of 50,000+ cases a year. Is it still Handcrafted? I would not use the word in their marketing material or back label. However, the vines are farmed, the yeast are cared for, and the product still has some kind of a human touch.

Cedar River Cellars uses the word handcrafted in our mission statement and we believe that the word is a synonym for small, intimate, variable, and unique. In other words, we are so damn small that we have to do things by hand and that our product may have a bit of variance from bottle to bottle as each fill comes from a different barrel instead of a larger blending tank.

Our grapes are hand-picked. The grapes are hand dumped, bucket-by-bucket, into the crusher/de-stemmer, and then hand dumped bucket-by-bucket into the fermentation bins. We kept our red fermentations agitated by hand (yeah..yeah.. I hate that word punch-down), we moved thousands of pounds of grapes and must around with a manual pallet-jack (on a slightly graded crush pad I might add). And we will hand bottle and cork when our product is ready.

As Cedar River Cellars gets a little bit bigger, we will introduce automation to save our backs and to speed up production. But we will still be handcrafted because we care about our operation, we have fun doing the work, and love getting our hands dirty. Our product will be more consistent, and maybe a little less intimate, but it sure as hell will be unique and small.

It is up to the consumer to take a look at some of the marketing terms wineries use and follow-up on their websites and get to know the wine they are drinking. Then at that point is when the consumer can determine the weight of the word handcrafted.

Getting High On Your Own Supply

This week has been the wine pressing week in our operations. I like to press when there is a couple of degrees Brix or bit over 1.000 Specific Gravity of fermentable sugars in the must. So far, Cabernet Sauvigon and Merlot are completed and in the barrels. This weekend the Syrah will be pressed off into the barrels and then I can stowe away all of the fermentation tanks and transfer buckets and regain some of my winery space.

So, I wanted to share that I think that the wine pressing process is my favorite of the entire wine making process. Why? Because the product is at a point where the true flavors start to shine and is not masked by so much of the sweetness of the grape sugars. And the fact that we are pressing, transferring, and sipping..ooohhhh..12-13 percent ethanol wine.

I love sipping the first runnings, with a bit of particulates and getting an idea of the flavor profile. Then once the must is transferred to the press and the bladder starts to push out liquid, I take another sample that is a bit clearer from the natural filtering of the skins. Mmmmmm...thats-a-niice.

Finally there is the final press runnings that shows me it's time to slower 'er down and not let too many harsh flavors make it through, but enough to give the wine some balls.

By this time, I probably have had my equivalent of a bottle of wine in sampling through out the pressing process and I just love every bit of it. It is very, very hard to resist putting your sample glass under the stream of red liquid flowing like a fountain from the press.

Hell, it is the results of my damn hard work..why shouldn't I get high on my own supply.

Panning For Gold

When I was a young boy I used to love panning for gold. Growing up I spent a lot of summers in California with my grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles; I would dig up handfuls of dirt and sand in the Tuolumne River and pan it down. I remember digging up bagfuls of dirt on my aunts property, and panning it down or breaking up quartz rocks looking for a nugget. I even had one of those metal detectors thinking I would be able to hit the motherload if I searched long enough. Even where I grew up in Willamette Valley, in the Santiam River and the famed Opal Creek, I panned for gold.

While it was a fun hobby and while I had dreams of striking it rich...it was hard work for zero return.

As with the gold rush in the mid 1800’s you staked claim in a belief that your hard work would result in some-kind of payoff or squeak by a living. Similar to these pioneers, we are working for the love of our product and the hope of earning a living. You read a lot of stories of how the wine industry is just plain hard work…well I guess I just love to get my hands dirty.

When my confidence starts to get rattled or I am up nights doing the “what-if’s”, I reach in my wallet for some words of inspiration I keep with me.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

Cedar River Cellars has staked a claim in Washington, and we will slowly be sifting through the black sand to find our little nugget of gold.

Hats off to the TTB!

So I got a call from the TTB today and they were conducting a satisfaction survey..I am assuming for users whom recently completed the bonded winery application process. I got a handful of questions that were set up on a 5 point ranking scale. The questions ranged from TTB Forms access and TTB Forms Instructions to helpfulness of the TTB officers and general expedience of the officers in correspondence....they even had a question about the ranking of acceptance of web based form submittal and addendums to TTB forms....uh hell yeah!

In the end of the survey, I asked if I can make some comments and the surveyor entertained my comments.

So here are my thoughts on the whole TTB bonded winery experience...

Issue 1: What is the deal with the TTB Website and the crazy links to the wine forms?

-One of the things that I suggested was that the TTB audit their website and point all links to TTB Forms to one page with one uber list of required forms. I mean c'mon, you can click on Wine Forms in the "Quick Links" section and be taken to ->forms.shtml list of forms. OOOORRRR.. you can click on the How do I..? Become a member of the wine industry... and be super deep linked to the following... What TTB application forms.. -> wine packet -> which takes you to wine_packets.shtml page which is a different list of required forms...OOOOORRR on the same page as Federal Application Process there is a link "What documents are submitted by a company wishing to qualify as a producing winery?"..that takes you to yet a different set of required Forms.

Please!!! TTB... let's get this all summed up in one place with multiple examples and clear instructions.

My takeaway... I think the forms submission process is confusing on purpose to weed out the bad grapes :-).

Issue 2: The TTB is adding example forms filled out as a visual aid to help future wineries with the process.

- My suggestion..give multiple examples for all of the possible permutations allowed for each form. Not every start up winery is a Corporation, has a board of directors and plans to make 10,000 cases in the first year.

Issue 3: TTB, let's talk about the 60 days.

- The TTB likes to have it's applicants be ready for business and apply 60 days before operating business. Why would I invest in space and equipment before I am approved to make wine? Well, this is one of those regulations to keep business honest and I get it.. but lets make it 6 months...since that is how long it takes to get approved...if you do get approved. As we did here at Cedar River Cellars, I would assume most new wineries would apply at the beginning of the year and be ready for the fall crush...if approved. So, TTB, I say come up with a really good application deadline schedule that marrys well with the grape harvest schedule.

Issue 4: It's 2009! Embrace Rich Internet Applications and the possibilities it beholds!

- This ones easy, TTB... create an online forms submission, addendum, compliance and review web application that let's applicants log in and review their forms status, history of transactions, taxes paid ( yes..integrate pay.gov ), change logs, etc. I forsee a rich dashboard type UI that pulls in bulk and bottled wine volumes, sales, taxes, alerts to changes in federal code, label approvals, etc., all in one accessible place.

I'll tell ya what TTB.. you can hire me to write it..call me and I will submit a RFP and BRD.

Finally, I am stoked that the TTB is doing a survey and I hope they listen to the participants and I hope they do make some major changes to the web site (winery section..speaking here) and collate the applications and instructions in an easy to read and use web application.

Wine Is Only Two Ingredients

Wine is simply two ingredients, fruit and yeast. And if you really want to get picky, then it is just one ingredient...fruit..that contains its own yeast. However, if you read the Code of Federal Regulations section 24.246 , then you can clearly see that wine is not simply two ingredients..if a winemaker so chooses so.

Well this winemaker chooses to only use the bare, bare minimum of the approved food additives that our government has so deemed as safe.

There are times when you need to make an adjustment to your must or wine. Maybe the grapes did not have the right acidity; either too much or too little. Thus an adjustment needs to be made with natural tartaric acid, found in grapes and cucumbers for example, to bring acid up. Or acid can be brought down by means of a decarboxylation acid conversion of Malic acid to Lactic acid via Oneococcus oeni, a bacteria naturally found in our environment. Or maybe I want to make sure that I combat oxidation and/or keep O. oeni from propagating in the bottle. So I would add about 50 ppm of Potassium Metabisulfite as a form of Sulfur Dioxide (SO2..aka.. sulfites). These are all acceptible ways to manage the wine, so that we have a stable and sensorially pleasing product.

One thing that turns me off about wine is going to a big tasting or just trying a bottle of some vintner and tasting this nasty-ass egg flavor in the wine. Maybe I just have a lower threshold for identifying egg-white as a clarifying agent in wine, but I hate it and it makes me want to throw up.

At Cedar River Cellars, you will not find excessive finning with egg-white, fish bladder, sea-shells, Polyvinylpolypyrrolidone, gelatin, clay, or any other clarifying agent in our wines. I just feel it is not needed, and with gravity, cool temperatures, racking, and time.. small particulates, like yeast, will settle out, and tannins and phenols will mellow out. Now I am being a little dramatic here, these additives all have nice friendly names like Polyclar, isinglass, chitosan and bentonite..and of course they have benefits. Some of these clarifying and smoothing additives have been used in beer and wine making for centuries. If the need comes to get some of that haze out of a white wine, then bentonite would be my primary choice.

I just want to make easy drinking flavorful wines that you enjoy glass-by-glass unadulterated by any foodstuffs or foreign aromas. What I mean by this is, enjoy Cedar River Cellars with friends and family in a social atmosphere, and respect the sensory attributes of the wine. Don't just assume that the wine MUST be paired with some kind of food dish.

Birth of a Washington Winery

Welcome to Cedar River Cellars, one of Washington's newest wineries. Information, news, and updates can be viewed here at http://blog.cedarrivercellars.com/ and as well on http://www.cedarrivercellars.com/

2009 will be our first crush, so it will be some time before our product is to market. However, we invite you to follow our adventures so that you may be better prepared to enjoy our Northwest style wine when it is released.

About Cedar River Cellars and our mission statement:

Cedar River Cellars is a nano-winery dedicated to producing Northwest style wine, using Washington vinifera, local Northwest vendors, and supporting our local economy.

Our mission is to produce high quality, hand-crafted, sensorially pleasing wines from Washington state vinifera. Using quality winemaking techniques and good manufacturing practices, our philosophy is for the wine to naturally settle, thus reducing the need of excessive clarifying additives, filtering, and keeping sulphite levels low.