Good News for Wine Industry?

Nielson reported yesterday that "Despite Improving Economy, Alcohol Beverage Consumers Cautiously Indulge." Wine Business Monthly chose to highlight the sub-title of the article, which I found somewhat misleading, "Consumers Who Trade Down Satisfied with Quality, Likely to Continue to Buy Less Expensive Alcohol Beverages." I don't think the sub-title is accurate having looked at the data and I don't see why WBM chose to highlight it. Overall, this is particularly good piece of news.

The real take away from this release is that, "While 'trading down' has been the buzz of the economic downturn, more than three-quarters of consumers surveyed claim they have not changed their alcohol beverage purchases because of price." Some buyers are choosing the same products, but less often; others wait till those products go on sale; but 20% "tried less expensive products but weren't happy with the quality or experience!" (emphasis supplied). Of the 25% of wine consumers who have traded down, 20% did not find good values, with some "willing to sacrifice some quality in order to save." This group is likely to trade back up with an improving economy. Additionally, Millenials are particularly "likely to trade back up, compared to other age groups."

And that, my friends, is something I can drink too.

Blending ... continued

Now that the cabernet sauvignon is ready for racking and blending I've started playing with sample blends. To get the party started I divided our cabernet sauvignon, which represents the lion's share of our available wine, into four categories:

(1) Tight, and tart raspeberry notes.
(2) Dark fruits.
(3) Mellow and round.
(4) Press wine (round, full).

Petit verdot showed very nicely in 2009. A 5% addition added a welcome chalkiness and increasing liveliness to the finish that everyone in the tasting group agreed improved the whole. Increasing the petit verdot addition to 10% resulted in a significantly less interesting wine than the 5% addition. A 7-8% addition added nothing more, either. The amazing thing with the 5% petit verdot addition was that it brought out the inherent vegetal characteristics (not green pepper, but very succulent fresh young celery leaf) that really turned the wine into something more than the component parts.

Likewise, an addition of cabernet franc did nothing for the wine. I enjoyed the merlot sample with 20% cabernet sauvignon blended in, but not the other way round. This is likely to become a second wine with some leftover petit verdot for substance.

This leaves us with a likely blend of our 2009 Napa Valley red wine: 95% cabernet sauvignon, 5% petit verdot, 75% new oak with one American barrel for good measure; alcohol by volume approximately 14.5% with a 3.9 pH.

Fruit Set In Napa Valley Vineyards

During a recent tour of Wilson Ranch, I had a fascinating talk with sales manager Daivd Heil about valley floor Sauvignon Blanc. You can see in the picture below that our Sauvignon Blanc fruit has set and begun to flower. Once all the fruit is in, we'll be looking at about 100 days until harvest, putting us about 1 week behind last year's schedule, which was admittedly earlier than anticipated. I'm expecting a larger crop than last year, as the spring has been wet, flooding the water table, and feeding those "big" sauvignon blanc vines in that nutrient rich valley floor soil.















A couple things David impressed upon me are worth repeating. For one, we're working with white Bordeaux varietals on a split canopy, also called a quadrilateral cordon, shaped like a double cross arm trellis, in rich soil near the river. Sauvignon blanc is a "big vine" and yields a considerable amount of fruit, but the vines are trained to maximize air flow and access to light. Considering the spring rains, he thinks we can naturally stress the vines by not irrigating once the fruit is ripening. We'll be shooting for about 23 degrees Brix this year, and putting the juice through the same low intervention treatment we did last: pick at down, cold press, straight to neutral French oak for fermentation, minimal SO2 additions, cold filter and bottle.

Blending with Audrey

There is very little that is more fun than blending wine. I'd have to say it's one of the best parts of the job. From February through the end of summer I will be spending a lot of time working with different barrels, varietals, and blends determining the single best wine I can make. This encompasses not just finding the highest expression of a particular vineyard or varietal, but consideration of a number of factors including varietal percentages in the finished wines, vintage characteristics, barrel choice and percentage of new oak, pH, sweetness, etc.

One of the first things we're doing in the cellar around February is starting to pull samples of the wines that have finished secondary fermentation and running some rudimentary analysis to get a handle on what we have. We're also tasting individual barrels to get an idea of how the young wines taste. Another important aspect is that by February the wines have sucked up a ton of new oak (in 2009 we purchased 80% new wood) and we get generally the highest sensory experience of vanilla and sweet tannin in the wines. This can be exhilarating but also frustrating, since on the one hand you get to taste pure oak and really develop an idea of how different coopers compare, but on the other there's really no way to determine how the wine is going to taste 12 months down the road. At this early stage you are only really tasting for saturation, tannin, density and what I think of as "high notes" added from the oak.

February Samples:
(1) Cocoa notes, dark fruits, showing less suavity than expected.
(2) Nice sweet tannin and starting to show some black fruits. Finishes nicely.
(3) Sweeter than the others. High concentration. Round, less spice than expected.
(4) Very French with tight smoke. Black fruits predominate.
(5) Velvety texture, purple fruits showing, has some sweet finish and hints at red peppers.
(6) Cocoa notes here again, purple fruits, slightly upfront tannin.
(7) Vanilla, mellow spice. Purple fruits predominate.
(8) Lots of grip, fine tannin in the mouth. Chewy. Mellow spice. Shows more upfront than finish.
(9) Velvet tannin here as well, with more dark fruits, sweet and spicy.
Blend (with press wine): nice synergy here, with the press wine adding depth and weight.















May Samples (same batches as above):
(1) Deep ruby. Chewy. Good bite. Tart raspberry with some citrus and loam. Finishes a little dusty.
(2) Good ruby. Nice nose on this. Rose water, purple fruits, finishes with citrus and mellow tannin.
(3) Dark red fruits on the nose here. Menthol and mint. Integrated acidity and very nice finish. Good body.
(4) Great nose. Still showing a lot of new wood. Tight, dark fruits. Very French.
(5) Purple color. Great nose. Spice on mid palate, vanilla, celery salt, licorice. Lots going on here.
(6) Deep color. Brine on the nose. Very definite impression of salt, minerality and dark red fruits. Long dusty finish.
(7) Mellow nose, at least compared to last sample. Some vanilla and a touch of celery showing up throughout the tasting, but this batch subdued. Dark fruits, not as tight as #4.
(8) Knock out nose: fancy French perfume, fruity purple notes with some sweetness in the tannin, still shows upfront but fills out the mid palate for the blend.
(9) Soft, tight dark fruits on nose. Soft and harmonious, not overt. Particularly tart raspberry on finish.
Blend (with press wine): Deep ruby color. Brine, celery salt, and tart raspberry on the nose. Succulent purple notes in the middle with a lingering sweetness on the finish.