Posted by Gus on December 12, 2011 – 5:29 pm
I had the great pleasure Saturday evening of being surrounded by the scent of truffles. About forty lucky guests enjoyed the multi-course tasting menu prepared by Chef Erik Brown and his talented kitchen staff at Amuse Restaurant here in Ashland, while I had the simple task of providing a few wines and strolling the dining room to breathe in the heady aromas which rose from the various dishes.
To start, as always, an “amuse bouche”:
Here is Erik, shaving a black truffle over the second course, a celeriac soup served with my 2008 William Augustus Cabernet Franc.
We had started planning about two months ago, with a tasting of multiple vintages of Velocity, my new Cabernet franc, two vintages of viognier-marsanne, and even my long sold-out rosé, of which I had just one case left in my personal cellar.
Erik and Ben put together magnificent pairings throughout the meal, from the belgian endive radiccio salad with duck confit and truffle vinaigrette, to the celeriac soup and the wild boar risotto.
Dessert was an astounding truffle crème bruleé tart whose flavors lingered on the palate for nearly an hour after I had the good luck to drop in and have a nibble before the dinner started.
I have heard of the scent of truffles being intoxicating, but had never before experienced first-hand the near blissful state this modest little fungus could produce.
Erik gave me three truffles to take home – like gold! – and tonight I’ll try my hand at a risotto, though sadly without the wild boar. Or the culinary wizardry – but I will try to do them justice.
Posted by Gus on November 2, 2011 – 5:42 am
Randy, Gerardo, two tractors and two full picking crews descended upon Gold Vineyard this morning to bring in the Viognier for the 2011 William Augustus White.
They had picked nearly four tons before the sun even came up. Randy drives his International with its patented “Torque Amplifier” (I need to ask him what that really is).
With the sun finally lighting up the vines, the crew made short work of block B.
The truck awaits its load.
And in what seems like no time, the pickers are done and on their way to the next job.
Randy loads eight-and-a-half tons of Viognier for transport to the winery.
And – surprise, surprise – everyone else is picking today, too! The longest wait for harvest now turns into the most condensed harvest in decades, as six weeks’ worth of grapes seems to land on crush pads around the valley in a matter of a few days.
Not to worry, we’ve waited this long and can surely wait a few more hours. The fruit is cold and safely stacked, and we will tackle it first thing tomorrow – before the sun is up.
Posted by Gus on November 1, 2011 – 6:24 am
This what October has felt like. When are we ever going to harvest? And now the sun has yet to rise on the first day of November, and I can honestly say that we are a solid month behind.
But the calendar is just a piece of paper with numbers on it, and now we can put to rest all those worries about whether it would ever come. Today we will finally bring in the harvest from Gold Vineyard…as soon as it is light enough to see the clusters:
and light enough to spot the occasional bit of rot, which has been rearing its ugly head as fruit has stayed and stayed and stayed on the vine.
Patience! Here it comes at last.
Posted by Gus on October 14, 2011 – 7:23 pm
Out in the vineyard today, tasting practically cluster by cluster, I did some hands-on late fruit thinning. It appears that some of the bunch stems are damaged, and the grapes hanging from them are showing some are seriously arrested development (as would any fruit whose connection to the vine is nearly severed). So, my tongue is raw from tasting, and the ground is littered with the sad outcome.
The good news is, this is only going to help the remaining clusters as we head into the ripening home stretch, and now I won’t have to pick so many of these out when harvest comes along.
This is one very, very late year!
Posted by Gus on September 1, 2011 – 1:14 pm
I am proud to mention, belatedly here, that the wine label for the new William Augustus wines was designed right here in Ashland by the magnificently talented John Higley, of Higley Design.
Check him out if you ever need beautiful work done.
He felt good enough about his work to share it with a design network called The Dieline, who posted some delicious images of the bottle and label on their blog.
Of course, it was my wife Julia who referred me to John, so she gets all sorts of credit, too.
Thanks Dieline, John, and Julia!
Posted by Gus on August 30, 2011 – 4:23 pm
Linda, Fred, Maria, Nick and I bottled the 2010 William Augustus Viognier-Marsanne on Friday. This was my first “soup to nuts” wine at Pallet, which felt good (the first bottling of a wine that had entered the winery as grapes). Everything went smoothly, “like butter” one might say, expect for some early label mishaps resulting from condensation on the bottle as the first (and coldest) wine came off the bottom of the tank. A few well-placed fans helped dry the bottles and cool the folks on the line, and the rest was fine.
Fred was good enough to do a careful filtering the day before…
…as the wine had been reluctant to finish malolactic (just like last year).
Fred sparges the empty bottles with a healthy dose of nitrogen to chase the oxygen out, then the GAI filler does the rest.
Meanwhile, I wait for the bottles to emerge so I can drop a fresh screwcap onto each one, trapping a little nitrogen in the bottle’s headspace (thanks, Linda, for this picture).
Then it’s off to the screwcapper and we’re home free!
See those two white things just before the wine enters the labeler?
It’s too tempting to mention that this wine already has some big fans.
Posted by Gus on July 8, 2011 – 8:57 am
One of the things we winemakers forget to do sometimes (maybe we’re not the only ones) is look up from our busy lives and stop to have a good time with a friend. Eric Weisinger and I have done this off and on for more than a dozen years now, and it seemed appropriate to at least document our two hours of agenda-free chat, some of it wine related and much of it not.
Eric chose an excellent ten-year-old Riesling and we nibbled a flavorful sampler platter as the twilight settled over the Peerless Restaurant’s incomparable patio.
Next we need to go for a bike ride together. Eric? Now it’s in writing.
Posted by Gus on July 8, 2011 – 8:32 am
It is summer vacation, and sometimes Theo or Josephine tags along with me on my visits to the cellar or on less glamorous sales visits or deliveries. On this occasion Theo’s eyes lit up when he saw the labeling process for a small dessert-wine lot for Madrone Mountain, and he decided the grown-ups needed his help. Clearly we did, for when I finished up in the cellar and he coaxed me to join him, it was I who immediately knocked over a bottle.
“Be careful, Dad! Its ok, everybody makes mistakes.”
Posted by Gus on July 8, 2011 – 8:18 am
I am a big fan of early blending, for reasons of wine stability and flavor integration, but my 2010 vintage red wines had other ideas about how I should conduct the élevage (the raising, upbringing, or education of a wine). For starters, they have taken a solid six months to find their way through malolactic fermentation, a situation some winemakers would consider horrific and others can only dream of. Randall Grahm of Bonny Doon fame (and of the latter school of thought) has even argued for blending pre-ML, but I am not brave enough to try to imagine a finished wine when tasting it in its most raw form.
To make a long story short, here are the wines now, back in their barrels after a nice racking, a little oxygen, some SO2, and…absolutely no blending.
The Malbec wanted no part of the Cabernet Franc, and the Cabernet Franc felt no need to play along with the Malbec.
Is this because I have lost my touch with blending? (Perfectly conceivable)
Is it because each wine is flawless by itself? (this can hardly be true)
Is it because each wine expresses regional and varietal character? (I sure hope so)
We’ll bottle these wines this winter as part of my general plan of élevage which moves towards less barrel time and more of a focus on bottle time, and then we’ll see.
Posted by Gus on June 8, 2011 – 9:30 am
I know, I know, all of us winemaking folks are supposed to adhere to the philosophy of “gentle winemaking” at every step of the way. Gentle winemaking has become one of those catch-phrases whose meaning is almost, well, meaningless. I am sorry to have to report that sometimes a wine needs to be roughed up a bit.
In this case the 2010 Malbec has had a long, long secondary fermentation, not completing its conversion of its high levels of malic acid (due to the cool vintage) until mid-May. Towards the end of the process, it was clear the wine was getting tired of being cooped up in barrels with a bunch of ML bacteria, no matter how beneficial they were.
The wine needed to breathe! So out of the barrel it came – gently, at this stage. A few days later, though, we took the unsuspecting wine and aggressively splashed it out the racking valve into a Brute, then pumped it back over into the top of the tank, agitating and aerating for about 7-8 minutes. I tasted every minute or two and enjoyed the evolution from a tight, brooding, closed-in style to a wine expressive of blackcurrants and black tea, reviving the freshness and intensity I remember enjoying in the vineyard.