Sunday, July 11, 2010

Homemade Wine Tasting Blow-out!

I spent an amazing afternoon yesterday sharing my wines and sampling the wines of Jason & Joanne, two home winemakers that I met at the 2010 Winemaker Magazine Conference in Stevensen, WA back in May. Jason invited us up to his and his wife Margot's house for a wine tasting extravaganza. I was really impressed with all of their wines--even Joanne's mystery red! Lot of people were in attendance--friends & other wine lovers.

I took up a broad sampling of wines. All of the current stock of 2008 grape wines (malbec, syrah, zinfandel), and both styles of 2009 chardonnay. I also pulled out the cranberry-banana and Craniagranoles just for fun. And at the last moment, I stuck in a bottle of the 2006 Seyval Blanc that has been aging in the basement. Really glad I did, because that wine was a hit! It was pretty tart when I bottled it back in 2007, so I've just let the last 3-4 bottles sit down in the basement. 3 years later, it's mellowed into a nice, crisp wine. Hard to believe that it's a 4 year old white wine.

And the best part of the day was meeting a wide variety of folks, including Chris & Nancy Obert, the authors of The Next Harvest... Vineyards & Wineries of New England. Very nice folks who had some great stories of tasting wines around New England. Also met Geno, the unofficial grape buyer of a home winemaking coop down along the South Shore that I've been toying with joining.

All in all, a very good way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon.

Cheers,
Noel

3 comments:

hampers said...

Nice blog. Wish if you could share the procedure of making wine at home.

Jason Phelps said...

Right on! We had a wonderful time. I'm jealous of your Zin. Margot rarels ASKS for red wine...

I am hoping to get the pictures from Josh this week. Hopefully some good stuff.

Jason

MA Winemaker said...

Hampers,
Best place in the world to start learning about making wine at home would be Jack Keller's website. There's a link at the bottom of my blog page in the Useful & Favorite Links box or here: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/