Come check out the Labryinth!!! Summer Solstice Single Vineyard Chardonnay Tasting 6/20/09, 12-4

Chardonnay Celebration:

Saturday, June 20th Noon to 4 pm

This is our signature “whites” event of the year! Enjoy an afternoon of tasting our newly released 2006 Vineyard-Designated Estate Chardonnays and other summer whites inside our winery! Don’t miss the opportunity to taste and purchase the 2006 Albutom (All-buttom), Damiana, Langley Hill and Portola Springs Vineyard Estate Chardonnays!

Help us ensure a prosperous harvest by honoring the Summer Solstice! This “midsummer” celebration marks the middle of the growing season between the “farmers’ planting and harvest”, recognized as a time to share in special gatherings to ward off evil spirits. Winemaker, Michael Martella will be constructing a labyrinth amongst the vineyard to pay homage to the “Sun standing still”. We welcome you to walk through our labyrinth, known to have meditative qualities. $20 per person, Club Members (2 tickets) are always complimentary! Please RSVP by calling Melissa at 650.851.6777 or Melissa@fogartywinery.com

Trade Tasting and Unified Symposium

Finally back in the office after another week away.

Tuesday I helped Anne pour our wines at the Santa Cruz Mountains Trade Tasting at Farallon Restaurant in San Francisco. Farallon is an institution in SF and Peter Palmer,wine director at Farallon, is a true class act and one of the really good guys in the wine business. It was a nice event and a great way to get our wines in front of a number of wine buyers from restaurants and retail shops from all over the city. We poured our '06 Gewurztrmainer, '05 Chardonnay SCM, '06 Pinot Noir SCM, '04 Merlot SCM and the '03 Lexington Meritage. All were well received and someone even commented that this was the strongest lineup of Fogarty wines they had tasted in a while!

After the trade tasting it was up to Sacramento for the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium. This is the industries biggest trade show and also features a number of talks and presentations on all aspects of the wine biz. It also serves as a great chance to catch up with friends and old classmates.

The highlight of the show, outside of the numerous parties (the Scheid Vineyards after hours party is legendary), is the trade show. Vendors with products ranging from mechanical harvesters to corks all present displays showing off their wares. It is overwhelming at first as the Sacramento Convention Center is overflowing with booths, people and noise. Once the initial blast of stimulation wares off one can begin to attempt to get down to business.

I spent most of Wednesday and Thursday morning wandering the aisles, visiting suppliers i know and meeting with new ones. I quickly learned our barrel prices are going to go up, not only because we pay in Euros. The supply of top quality French Oak is limited and demand continues to grow. I was shopping for a new pump, a 2" Diaphragm or "bump pump". They are great for barrel work and an extra pump would come in handy during harvest.

Thursday at 2 Pm the rain began to fall in Sacramento pretty heavily, that was my cue to get on the road as I was meeting Michael and some fellow winemakers for a Friday on the slopes of Northstar, we were halfway to Tahoe after all. The drive was miserable, but Friday was an amazing day on the mountain!

Fogarty has been the subject of some great press lately. Laura Ness recently wrote a really nice article on Michael for Appellation America, check it out.

Wine and Spirits Mag also included Fogarty in their SCM Syrah article in the current issue, and while we only make 200-300 cases of Syrah a year it was great to be included.

Happiness is Chromatograhphy

After the turn of the year I spend a significant amount of time checking and tracking the progress of malolactic fermentations (ML or MLF) in our new wines. This secondary fermentation is a bacterial fermentation or conversion of malic acid (think green apples) to lactic acid (think dairy acid). This conversion softens the acid profile of the wine and also supplies a degree of stability as malic acid is essentially food for a number of spoilage organisms.

Most of our wines complete 100% MLF, save our Gewürztraminer, Riesling, Pinot Gris and stainless-steel Chardonnay. We add SO2 immediately after primary fermentation to block the MLF from occuring.

When the conversion is complete we can then add SO2 to our wines for protection (SO2 is inhibitory to the bacteria that perform the fermentation).

One of the ways we track the fermentation is by using paper chromatography. This is a relatively 'old school' technique for tracking the fermentation. It uses the principles of chromatography (essentially a substances affinity for a solvent) to separate the acids present in the wine. It's a bit convoluted but it is a pretty easy method for getting a basic idea of your MLF progress.


The rack above contains 60 test tubes, each representing a single barrel of wine. They are coded with a letter and number (A1-A10 though F1-F10) so each barrel is identified. Using special chromatography paper, I 'spot' 10 wines per page with a tiny capillary tube; the smaller the spot the better. After passing over each spot three times i leave the paper to dry.



When dry I roll the paper into a tube and staple it together. The tube is then placed into a sealed container that contains a small amount of chromatography solution. I leave the paper in over night.

Tomorrow I'll take the paper out, develop it and read the results. Ill post a pic of the results tomorrow afternoon and we'll see where we stand