Last night we had the pleasure of hosting one of our wine tasting groups. The wines and the company were great.

If you want to start a group, I have a few suggestions.

• Let one person pick the wines - either what to bring or they can just purchase them. We find the latter works best.
  
• Groups work best if the cost of the wine is split by the group - at least for the first few years.
  
• Do the tasting blind - much more fun.
• Talk about the wines - have people say which one is their favorite in a given flight.
  
• Keep flights to 3 or 4 wines - more than that is hard to track.
  
• Balance the serious nature with fun - one of the groups we left was so serious it wasn't fun. Wine should be fun - it is meant to bring you pleasure.
  

Last night, our first flight was Sauvignon Blancs from Alto Adige (SüdTirol) in nortern Italy. We had:

• 2007 Weingut Niklas Südtiroler Sauvignon
• 2007 Andreas Baron Widmann Südtiroler Sauvignon
• 2007 Niedrist Südtiroler Terlaner Sauvignon

All three wines were surprisingly good. Overall favorite was the Niedrist - classic Sauvignon Blanc flavors with excellent acidity and minerality.

All three were made and aged in stainless steel from what we found on the web though several in the group thought they could detect some oak. Several group members picked up the classical grassy and cat pee notes that one finds in "typical"Sauvignon Blancs.


The second flight was three different wines from a single producer - Garlider - which is also located in Alto Adige.

• 2006 Garlider Muller Thurgau
• 2006 Garlider Sylvaner
• 2006 Garlider Veltliner

The consensus of the group, with minor exceptions, was that the Muller Thurgau was the best of the three wines. No one really ventured a guess what these wines were. The noses each revealed intense floral notes with hints of apricot and a herbal note.

Our third flight was 2003 Piedmonte Nebbiolo.

• 2003 Germano Ettore Prapo Barolo


• 2003 Sella Lessona (80% Nebbiolo, 20% Vespolin)

• 2003 Elio Grasso Barolo Ginestra Casa Mate


• 2003 Castello di Verduno Barbaresco Rabaja

All four of these wines were showing extremely well. 2003 was a very, very hot year so they were much more open then one would typically expect from such a young wine.

The group's overall favorite was the Elio Grasso - some notes include dark fruit, spice, tea, coffee and chocolate.

Last up was a bottle of 1962 Chateau Suduirant Sauternes, Ancien cru de Roy. It was lovely.

We don't add nutrients during primary or secondary fermentation for several reasons. For purely philosophical reasons, we believe that one of the best ways to have the wine speak of the vineyard is not to add anything (our exception is SO2 but that might change). For practical reasons, we never learned how one handles nutrient additions since we trained under Eric Texier who shares our philosophy.

As we have learned more about world of additions (course work and industry seminars), we have also added a third reason, we aren't sure what it will help grow. Brettanomyces, for example, is a yeast which can thrive off nutrients which the Saccaraomyci don't devour. Adding those nutrients has always seemed counter intuitive. (If fact, it is often hard to keep Brett alive in the lab and for beer makers who want to utilize them for Lambics. Recipes for the agar, media which the Brett grows on, often include something rich in micro nutrients. See http://brettanomyces.blogspot.com/ for what looks like an easy recipe. Key growth nutrients are found in yeast extract and commercial yeast nutrients. )

Vitamins for humans may promote unwanted growths as well. The New York Times recently published a fascinating article on vitamins and their proven impact both beneficial and otherwise.

But some vitamin studies have also shown unexpected harm, like higher lung cancer rates in two studies of beta carotene use. Another study suggested a higher risk of precancerous polyps among users of folic acid compared with those in a placebo group.
Tara Parker-Pope - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/health/17well.html

The article made me think that what we do (or in this case, don't do) for our wines perhaps is a reasonable choice of us as well.

Steve Lightner sent us this beautiful photo of his vineyards. A friend of ours in Burgundy claims snow is good for vines - helps keep the bug populations in balance. If he is right, they should be in check this year. (To see the image full screen, just click on it.)

Isabel's Cuvee, named for our daughter, is about to be released. We bottled it last Saturday and, as Danielle blogged, it went well.

Our wines often remind me of our daughter. She is very independent, spirited, and can easily bring a big smile to my face and others.

We will let her friends parents try the wine at her birthday party in a few days. This year there will be two versions - the bottled version and a tiny bit left over from our gentle racking. A good friend named the un-racked wine Isabel's Crazy Cuvee. It has no SO2 and is a bit leesy. It is slightly darker and has a bit more body to it. If everyone likes it, perhaps we will bottle a bit next year.

Every year we host a holiday tasting for close friends and family. This year we were lucky to have Shay Sampson attend with her camera.

We don't heat the winery, so you can see we are all dressed for the 40 something degrees that it was inside.

Our open house is coming up. We expect 400 or so people. It should be warmer and lots of fun!

As our small team bottled around 200 cases of Rousanne and Rose this morning, I couldn't help but be reminded of a question posed by my Geography professor last semester: "Why haven't humans been replaced by machines?" Mostly, I was trying to figure out why we voluntarily squeezed into Caleb's truck of bottling gadgets for five hours, knees stiffening and shoulders tensing, on such a beautiful Berkeley weekend morning. My professor's overarching lesson had been that machines are inanimate, unintelligent, and susceptible to breaking down. Though I couldn't help but feel like a simple cog in the wheel as I systematically wiped off capped bottles and moved them down to the labeling station, I did feel like our team effort and rhythm was much more efficient than any machine. Although, I must admit that Caleb's rotating pourer and high-pressure capping machines that complemented our human assembly line did have a somewhat fascinating Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory appeal to them.

Our hands-on role in the bottling process also allowed us to personally say goodbye and gain some closure with our baby wines before sending them off to the real world. And I must say, the golden Rousanne and blushing Rose both look quite handsome. After the day's work was finished, we tasted their love child--the mix that was created in the pump as we transitioned from Rousanne to Rose. And the punchy result was surprisingly palatable. Perhaps we accidentally stumbled upon a new blend possibility?