Category Archives: In The Cellar

Bottling the 2010 Velo Malbec

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Posted by Gus on May 14, 2012 – 10:26 pm
Filed under A Matter Of Style, In The Cellar

On Thursday, May 10, we bottled the 2010 Velo Malbec without a hitch. New labels by John Higley graced the bottles, still being reliably topped under the same familiar red screwcap as was on the inaugural 2002 Velo.

Back then the screwcap (Stelvin, or ROPP) was still a pretty renegade way of closing up a bottle, but the last decade has seen a huge jump in its acceptance and popularity – for good reason, namely that the wine tastes fresher, brighter, more fruit-driven and shows off absolute bottle-to-bottle consistency even with age. I owe a big thanks to Elaine Smith who had the vision to recommend that I use the Stelvin on Velo from the beginning.

But what about the wine? Finally Velo joins its big brother Velocity as a varietal Malbec bottling (although there is a tasty addition of Cabernet Franc here, at about 20%) and achieves that bright, spicy, intense blackcurrant character which is starting to define Rogue Valley Malbecs.

And, of course, well done by Fred and the crew at Pallet Wine for the flawless (well, nearly) bottling process. We are now sold out of the last bottling of Velo, except what the stores and restaurants have managed to stash away, so look for this new Malbec to become available before the end of the month.

Bottling the 2010 Viognier-Marsanne

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Posted by Gus on August 30, 2011 – 4:23 pm
Filed under In The Cellar

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.

Theo Helps Out

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Posted by Gus on July 8, 2011 – 8:32 am
Filed under In The Cellar

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.”

2010 Vintage Blending (or not)

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Posted by Gus on July 8, 2011 – 8:18 am
Filed under A Matter Of Style, In The Cellar

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.

First Racking – Not So Gentle Winemaking

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Posted by Gus on June 8, 2011 – 9:30 am
Filed under In The Cellar

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.

William Augustus Viognier-Marsanne

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Posted by Gus on October 27, 2010 – 8:40 am
Filed under In The Cellar, Open Bottle

Have I mentioned that I am making a white wine? It does often take me a while to get around to these things. The fact that my middle name is White (really) finally forced me to give in to the inevitable. Here it is, at least to look at:

The wine is a blend of Viognier (72%) and Marsanne (28%) and is named after my great, great grandfather, William Augustus White. That’s his silhouette on the bottle, from a 1923 photograph depicting him atop New York State’s highest peak, Mt. Marcy, on his 80th birthday. He was both a great book-lover and an enthusiastic outdoorsman, and I suspect that at even half his age I would have had some difficulty keeping pace with him on his birthday ascent.

The idea for this wine took hold two years ago, after I had made various whites in the Rogue Valley for eight years under several labels, from a range of varietals such as Pinot gris, Pinot blanc, Chardonnay, Roussanne, Grenache blanc, Marsanne and Viognier. As I brought the grapes in and made the wines in a variety of styles for clients or employers, I couldn’t help but be impressed by how consistently Viognier performed. Bursting with flavor, with a mouthfilling richness and an ability to stand up to barrel fermentation and lengthy lees contact, it promises to be one of the wines with which our little fledgling valley can really make a name for itself.

There are, however, some challenges to making Viognier here: it has a tendency to have higher alcohol and lower acidity than I think are appropriate for a good white wine. My approach was the same as with my other winemaking projects: select a site that yields balanced fruit. As it happens, Gold Vineyard came through again for me. With its higher elevation, easterly aspect, and Randy’s meticulous farming, we have so far been able to harvest two successive vintages (the ’09, bottled last month, and the ’10, just harvested last week) with moderate sugars, balanced acidity, and rich, mature flavors. No de-alcoholization, no acidification, just the straight deal from vineyard to glass.

And the Marsanne? To be honest, I was hedging my bets. I liked what I had seen of Marsanne so far, and was planning on using its lower sugars (below 22 Brix both years) and higher acidity to further correct Viognier’s potential problems of alcohol and balance. From a chemistry standpoint, my choice was unnecessary, since the Gold Vineyard fruit came in so nicely. However, the Marsanne brought a beautiful melon character to the wine, and further fleshed out the midpalate while slightly toning down the overtly floral nature of the Viognier. The grapes are grown on a west-facing slope out at Crater View Vineyard, near Jacksonville, Oregon.

We’ve been enjoying the wine at home, certainly, and I have released it in the Bay area through my excellent broker down there, Real Wines Company, so now I need to release it in Oregon and get it up on my website. The website thing may take a month, so be patient, but the wine is only improving since September’s bottling. Can I just say that I am very, very happy with it?

Bottling the 2009 Velo Malbec Rosé

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Posted by Gus on June 16, 2010 – 8:46 am
Filed under In The Cellar

The 2009 Velo Malbec Rosé was bottled on May 4th with a mobile bottling truck at RoxyAnn Winery in Medford. Working at better than a bottle per second, the line and crew made short work of my tiny (156 case) production.

Two days later Vernon Rollins at New Sammy’s Cowboy Bistro in Talent, a few stones’ throws from where the grapes are grown, paid me a high compliment by taking a case of the new wine as his house rosé pour.

Now, more than a month after bottling, the wine is really showing its stuff, with fabulous aromas of grapefruit and strawberry-rhubarb, and a now signature racy acidity against a bone-dry finish with vibrant flavors of wild strawberries and cream.

Velocity Moves to Pallet Wine Company

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Posted by Gus on June 14, 2010 – 2:09 pm
Filed under In The Cellar

May 27th, 2010 was moving day for Velocity Cellars. After eight fine vintages under the roof of RoxyAnn Winery in Medford, including six for which I worked as RoxyAnn’s winemaker, the day finally came for me to move on.

How does a winery just pick up and move? In my case, the advantage of being a winemaker with neither buildings nor equipment comes through in just this sort of situation. I hired a big truck and we moved eighty barrels across town in one morning with the help of Les (the driver), Peter (loading at Roxyann) and Linda and Josh (unloading at the other end).

Pallet Wine Company, my new home, is located just across town from my old digs at Roxyann, in an historic industrial building which has found a new life as a winery under the direction of Dan and Olivia Sullivan and their talented winemaker/partner Linda Donovan. Besides the lovely new paint job, they have transformed the interior into a full-scale production facility, complete with underground barrel storage, state-of-the-art crush equipment, and even a ROPP head on their bottling line (that’s industry-talk for a screwcap applicator, of which I am a big fan).

Why move? It is never an easy decision to make a big change, and in this case I was certainly in the enviable position of having a choice between two excellent facilities. In the end, the driving force had to be wine style. Pallet will permit me to undertake three significant shifts in my production: native yeast fermentation, micro-lot fermentation, and on-demand bottling under a screwcap, all of which will, I hope, allow me to better pursue my goal of truly regionally distinctive wines.

Thanks, Roxyann, for eight great years. Thanks, Pallet, for the opportunity to share your great facility in the coming years. And thanks, Linda, for a flawless job unloading barrels!

Blending 2009 Velocity and Velo

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Posted by Gus on February 24, 2010 – 9:39 am
Filed under In The Cellar

It’s time to head back into the cellar. In these winter months it is easy to be distracted by the unfortunate necessities of business planning, marketing, and other dreary desk-work, but the wines are calling.
Barrel tasting at this stage actually becomes (yes, it’s true) hard work. Over the next few days I’ll be individually sampling each barrel from the 2009 vintage in preparation for one of the most crucial steps in the élevage (upbringing, or raising, of wines, as children more or less) of the new wines: blending.
I like to blend early, to encourage integrated flavors and stable wine, so the blending decision is a bit like deciding what you’re going to be when you grow up, except that you don’t get to change your mind later. So, I go through the barrel stacks and look for wines that show structure, intensity, purity of fruit and age-worthiness; those barrels are put into consideration for the Velocity bottling.
If the wine tastes friendlier, yummier, perhaps a bit softer and more vigorously youthful, it is a clear candidate for bottling under the Velo label. Then comes the fun part – assembling the components. Just because, say, seventeen barrels show Velocity-level promise, that doesn’t mean that those should simply be tossed together and called a wine. Now I get to play with the proportions in an attempt to blend a wine which will display the kind of balance, elegance, and focus I strive for. Perhaps a bit more block B, or less block A; maybe a dash of Cabernet franc will spice up the Malbec, but which barrel is best suited for the job?
So, off I go armed with my palate, my instincts and a sturdy glass, to start clambering around the barrel stacks.

Viognier Barrel Tasting

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Posted by Gus on February 2, 2010 – 2:17 pm
Filed under A Matter Of Style, In The Cellar

Yes, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. I am making a white wine. The reasons are many, but the strongest one may be simply that my middle name is, in fact, White.

Since coming to the Rogue Valley I’ve made Chardonnay, Pinot gris, Pinot blanc, Viognier, Roussanne, Marsanne and even a little Grenache blanc, but always for wineries and labels other than my own. Settling on a style for my own white, I started with Viognier, which I feel has demonstrated a real affinity for the dry, sunny growing conditions here, and supplemented it with a bit over 20% Marsanne, which is a relative newcomer to the region.

Winter sample of Viognier/Marsanne

The Viognier is from Gold Vineyard in Talent, where Randy Gold has been reliably growing the Malbec and Cabernet franc for Velocity since 2002. Having nibbled some grapes the previous fall, and having tasted some of Trium Winery’s Viognier bottlings from the site, I felt confident that the moderate elevation and easterly aspect, combined with Randy’s skillful farming, could yield the kind of fruit I was looking for. The 2009 vintage did not disappoint me; we were able to bring the fruit in at a civilized 23.0 Brix, with plenty of tropical and stone fruit flavors, sufficient natural acidity, and the kind of balance I am looking for when trying to produce a moderate-alcohol wine.

We harvested the Marsanne on the same day from Crater View Vineyard over by Jacksonville, and went ahead and pressed the fruit from both vineyards together into one tank. I just closed my eyes and trusted that the blend would work. As I had hoped, the Marsanne brings some additional roundness to the wine, and a pleasant melon character. I had expected the Marsanne would also provide some additional acidity, since my experience with the grape from the previous vintage was that it held onto a nice low pH well into maturity, but for this year it wasn’t to be, and I had to be satisfied with the natural acidity of the Viognier.

Barrels for my White Wine
My goal with the wine is to bottle it unfiltered, and to give it plenty of lees contact for mouthfeel, complexity, and stability. So right now it is moving slowly through malolactic fermentation in barrel, has yet to be given any SO2 (even at crush I avoided SO2) and is, as the picture suggests, in 100% two and three-year old French oak barrels. I bought the barrels from Far Niente winery in Napa, where they were used to make a three-year barrel aged late harvest Sauvignon blanc called Dolce, which explains the filigreed decoration on the barrel heads. I am just happy to have some clean, fairly neutral barrels to age my new project in.

Now come the two toughest questions. What should I call it, and how much should I make next year?