Aaronap Cellars Grand Release Party

While I'm waiting for the competition results to be announced and for my 2010 Chilean grape order to arrive, I decided to try to empty a little wine out of the cellar and throw my first Aaronap Cellars Grand Release Party this weekend. Spent yesterday grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning before the guests arrived but I do believe a fun time was had by all!

Initially, I had 5 wines open for tasting:

2009 Chilean Chardonnay V1 -- A snappy French Chablis style with a fruity nose and crisp finish (no oak or malolactic fermentation.

2009 Chilean Chardonnay V2 -- My version of a Burgundian chardonnay. Fruit forward with notes of French oak and a big buttery finish.

2008 Chilean Malbec -- Restrained dark fruit flavors aged in a new American oak barrel.

2008 Chilean Syrah -- Big cherry and vanilla flavors with a slightly herbaceous finish. Aged in a new French oak barrel.

2008 Northern CA Zinfandel -- Big fruit bomb with tons of jammy fruit. Aged in an American oak barrel.

If that wasn't enough, I also popped open one of my last 2008 Dry Blueberry bottles & the award winning 2008 Apple.

Based on the feedback from attendees, I do have to pat myself on the back and say that most wines were very well received. The Zinfandel was the biggest hit of the evening (managed to unload about a case of that!). We even ventured down to the cellar for some barrel tasting of the 2009 Chilean Syrah and another batch of the 2008 zinfandel. People are really looking forward to those wines, too!

So it was a very happy weekend at Aaronap Cellars. Now to go for a run and work off the junk food calories!

Salute,
Noel

Another competition--2010 AWCI Wine Competition

I was browsing through the Winepress.US winemaker discussion forum last night and came across a new notice that entries for the 2010 AWCI Wine Competition were due by April 15. I was intrigued so I did a little more digging. AWCI is the Amateur Winemakers of Central Illinois, a group of amateur winemakers that got together in 2004 for collective buying power to purchase premium grapes. They've started a wine competition limited strictly to the amateur winemaker that is the 2nd largest wine competition in the state of Illinois.

Since the wines were due soon, I made a snap decision to send in some of my recent vintages and see how they score. At $10/wine, that's a bargain entry fee! Boxed them and shipped them off this morning, so everyone keep those fingers crossed!

Wines entered:
2008 Chilean Malbec
2008 Chilean Syrah
2008 Northern CA Zinfadel
2009 Chilean Chardonnay, no-oak style
2009 Chilean Chardonnay, Burgundian style
2009 Apple Wine

Salute,
Noel

Say Hello to My Little Friends...

For those of you who think I'm completely obsessed with winemaking, well, you're right! And to prove it, I'd like to introduce you to my latest winemaking toys. I call them Bertha and Greta, and they are two of the loveliest 80-gallon (290-liter) stainless steel variable capacity tanks. Bertha is on the right and Greta is on the left in the picture.

I ran into a fellow winemaker & wine distributor a couple of weeks ago while he was pouring wine one Saturday afternoon at a local wine store. He's in the process of starting a licensed/bonded winery in his basement and was needing to increase his capacity. So he was looking to unload his used 80-gallons tanks and buy some larger ones before the Chilean grapes arrive next month. I had some tax refund money burning a hole in my pocket and had been thinking about upgrading from carboys to tanks, so I went out and took a look at them. I wasn't originally thinking of 80-gal tanks (more like 30-40 gal), but decided that this would be a relatively cheap investment for the future. These tanks would give me the option to ferment enough wine to fill a full-size oak barrel and the ability to do an extended maceration without much fear of oxidation. Plus, they are large enough to be of use for fermenting smaller batches when I make the jump to commercial production. I may not want to make several hundred gallons of a particular varietal if I intend to use it as a blending wine. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

As you can see, Bertha and Greta are lovingly ensconced in a cubbyhole nook in my basement, awaiting their first vintage at Aaronap Cellars!

Salute,
Noel

BlackElder/Elderblack Quick Update

As of 11:00 PM this evening, the Elderblack is safely in a carboy and in the basement to starting clearing. This wine fermented in crazy style. Not sure I've ever seen such a vigorous fermentation! Which is kind of good because it had to take care of itself. My schedule got crazy busy and I was forced to leave it sit by self for days at a time. Fortunately, the little yeastie buggers found enough food to keep themselves busy and now I have 5 gallons of a gorgeous reddish-black wine!

Salute,
Noel

Blackberry/Elderberry or BlackElder/Elderblack?

As many of you are well aware, MA had a bit of rain this weekend. If you call 10 inches of rain a "bit" of rain! While I was in the basement anxiously checking to see if I still had a dry basement, I noticed for the billionth time that I had some cans of blackberry & elderberry puree that I had purchased over two years ago. Well, it's raining cats & dogs, what's a winemaker to do? You guessed it, he makes wine! Decided to finally go after the bold, dry fruit red wine that I've been contemplating for a couple of years. I had to go play for church on Sunday morning, so I stopped by the grocery store on the way home to get a few more ingredients and then started mixing things together while doing laundry & cooking my annual St. Patty's Day dinner of corned beef & cabbage.

Now, I'm a little perplexed of what to call this wine. It's about 50/50 elderberry & blackberry based, so could call it Blackberry/Elderberry or Edlerberry/Blackberry.... Or how about just plain simple BlackElder or Elderblack? The BlackElder could lead to interesting label designs with take-offs from the cult classic TV series "Black Adder". Maybe I can get Rowan Atkinson to do celibrity endorsements. Hmmm.... Going to have to think about this one for awhile, so let's move on to the wine.

BlackElder/Elderblack Recipe
2 49 oz cans of Oregon Fruit Products Blackberry Puree
1 96 oz can of Vintner's Harvest Elderberry wine base
4 gallons 100% Niagra grape juice
1 tsp Scottzyme Color Pro Enzyme
6.5 g Laffort Tannin VR Supra

I mixed all of the above ingredients together to make about 5.5 gallons of must. OB = 14.2
Added 5.4 lbs sugar to reach OB = 22.0 (PA = 12.5%)
At this point, I took a pH reading. pH = 3.27. That's pretty much in the optimal range (perhaps a little low for a red wine) so I chose to make no further acid adjustments.

Have to say that the must tastes yummy. Lots of blackberry flavor with a husky undertone from the elderberry! I let the must sit overnight to allow for the SO2 in the grape juice to dissipate. The next evening I hydrated a packet of Llavin BM45 yeast (8g) in ~175 mL of distilled H2O with 10.5 g of Go-Ferm nutrient. After about 4 hrs, there was a good amount of bubbling and burbing in the starter so I added it to the must. Within 24 hrs, I'm observing visible signs of fermentation.

At this point, all systems are go! BM45 is a nitrogen hog, so I'll need to add a couple of good doses of FermAid K as the fermentation progresses. Will keep you updated!

Salute,
Noel

Chilian Earthquake Aftershocks Reach Massachusetts

It's not often that you're personally affected by a massive earthquake in another hemisphere, but today's magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Chile has resonated as far north as Massachusetts. I was amazed by the initial news of the earthquake, but was even more startled when I learned that the epicenter was near the town of Talca. For those of you not intimately familiar with the geography of Chile, Talca lies in the Curico Valley in central Chile south of the capitol city of Santiago. You should be able to manipulate the map to zoom in and out for more detail.


View Larger Map

How does this affect me way up in Northern Hemisphere? Well, the Chilian grapes that I order each spring come from near the town of Sagrada Familia, a mere 70 km north of Talca. Those grapevines were definitely swinging in the air earlier today. Harvest is still a couple of months away, but who knows how this event will affect the harvest & shipping of the crop. Ironically, I had just placed my order for some carmenere & sauvignon blanc grapes on Thursday.

Of course, here I am worrying up my upcoming grape shipment... My heart goes out to everyone in central Chile. Reports are still spotty, but there has to have been massive damage to the infrastructure and residents in the region. Aid organizations like the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders are already responding to the Haiti earthquake, so they will undoubtedly need new donations to respond to another tragedy. Please, folks, if you are able, consider a donation to help our southern friends in their time of need.

Salute,
Noel

An Old Zin vs a New Zin

Quick post before I head to bed tonight. I've had a case of the zinfandel wine that I made as my very first wine from grapes way back in 2006. The grapes came from the CA Central Valley and I've never been happy with this wine (quite a blow to my winemaking ego that the first wine I make from grapes stunk). Very light in color, not all that flavorful, and there was this harsh phenolic taste in the finish. In a word--blech!

I ended up bottling this stuff in 2007 before I was forced to move to MA and I've had a case of the bottles sitting in the basement ever since. Frankly, I've been wanting to free up some storage space, so I decided to open a bottle of the 2006 tonight.

Pause...

In it's defense, the fruitiness is finally beginning to emerge. The phenolic taste is greatly diminished. But, it's still a very light color, light tasting wine with a fairly disagreeable finish. I forced myself to finish the glass and then poured the rest down the drain. I've made a decision--I'm dumping the remaining wine and reclaiming the bottles. The storage space & bottles are worth more to me than the wine.

To please my palate after that experience, I popped open a bottle of the 2008 Zinfandel. This was made from supposedly premium northern CA grapes. I do have to admit to liking this wine--a LOT! Aged in an American oak barrel for 9 months, this wine is dark, heavy, fruity, rich, pure heaven!

Probably not a fair comparison. I've had some practice making wine from grapes since 2006 and used some additional techniques to extract both color & tannins, so shouldn't be a surprise that a later vintage is better. The grape source for the 2008 Zin was much higher in quality. And I barrel aged vs adding oak flavors with oak cubes or spirals. But, darn it! I like the 2008 Zinfandel!

A picture is better than words, so here's a couple to illustrate the difference in color between the 2006 & 2008. In both pictures the 2006 is on the left and the 2008 is on the right. Isn't the difference in color between the two wines amazing?



I've come a long way, baby!

Salute,
Noel