Disgorgement and Dosage

A week ago Friday Michael and I headed out to beautiful Santa Cruz to visit with Barry Jackson, who produces Equinox, one of the best sparkling wines made in California.

We are getting ready to disgorge our 1998 Blanc de Blanc SCM sparkling wine, and we are having Barry handle the logistics of the project (we don't own the equipment necessary to disgorge, dose and cork sparkling wine.

It was a fascinating process as Barry prepared a series of flight with various components in the dosage and at varying levels of sweetness.



Our 2000 Blanc de Blanc was bottled with no dose, so called brut natural, brut zero or ultra brut. We began our trials at that level but found that the complex yeast aromas of this late-disgorged bottling demanded a bit more. Following another series of samples we decided upon 5g/L, or .5%, still well under the maximum of 10g/L or 1% for 'brut' designation. This 'dry' style seems to better fit our taste for sparkling wine as the acidity is emphasized.


I think the extra time en tirage has really benefited the wine and I'm pretty excited about the result, some 10 years after vintage!

Summer in February

After a much needed month of rain, we are in the midst of a serious couple of days of fantastic weather. IT has been in the high 60's/low 70's since Friday and I am loving it!

This past weekend in Anderson Valley was beautiful, and the event was a lot of fun and very well done, kudos to the Anderson Valley for organizing such a fantastic event.

I was solo for the weekend so was pretty busy and unable to taste a whole lot of wines. We had very good response to the 2 Gewürztraminers we were pouring.

Some favorite wines, other than ours of course (!)-

Riesling- Chateau Grand Traverse (From Old Mission Penninsula, MI) love their Whole Cluster Riesling (mark my words this region will be THE premier region for Riesling in the US in 10 years, better than anything from CA by far.

Chehalem Corral Creek Riesling is also the example of the Willamette style.

Gewurz- Navarro is always on eof my favorites along with Claiborne and Churchill and Londer.

Pinot Gris- Had a nice example from La Crema, using Carneros fruit.

Muscat- Again Navarro, their 2006 Dry Muscat is so unique and interesting.

The event seems to be growing every year, both in consumer and in wineries involved. There were wineries from Alsace, New Zealand, Michigan, Washington, Oregon and California represented. Riesling has been growing in popularity lately and this may have been reflected in the larger turnouts. Hopefully some of that will rub off on Gewürztraminer!

We were treated to great and traditional Alsatian cuisine all weekend: including loads of charcuterie and excellent flat-bread.

The real treat of my stay was my lodging, and i am hesitant to spread this around for fear of not being able to stay there myself! Mary Anne Wilcox runs Holly Hill Farm and her new Hillside Cottage, where i stayed, and her Guesthouse are both very well appointed and comfortable places to stay in an area where lodging is scarce. The cottage has excellent modern but comfortable decor and all the amenities one could want. I highly recommend a stay there if you happen to travel that way.

Off again

Things have been moving along rather briskly here for being the 'off' season!

We finished racking the last of our '06 BDX reds today, the 06 Cab Sauv Gist is back in barrel and looking great. Its a pretty suave wine for that vineyard, which usually produces ferociously tannic juice. One of the hallmarks of the '06 vintage is the seamless nature of the wines, they will drink awfully well in their youth.

I am off to a Biodynamic class at Joseph Phelps Vineyards tomorrow. Philippe Armenier and his wife are teaching it and it should be very interesting.

On Friday I am off to one of my favorite places in California, the Anderson Valley in northern Mendocino County. In my mental dictionary there is a large panoramic of the Anderson Valley under the word bucolic. The 3rd annual International Alsace Varietals Festival is being held on Saturday and we are there to pour our '06 Gewürztraminer and '03 Late Harvest Gewürztraminer. I attended last year and had a great time, there are a lot of interesting wines and the atmosphere is refreshingly laid back.

We are gearing up for a big month of bottling in March- 3 different runs no less! It should be pretty exciting as we bottle the first wines from '07 and our '06 Chardonnays. Bottling is always stressful, but once the wine is in bottle it is a large weight of my shoulder, no more SO2's, VA's, etc. All we have to do is sell it!

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.

Alabama

My trip to Alabama was a great look at a new market for Fogarty wine. I spent Wednesday in and around Birmingham. I had a great lunch at Chez Fon Fon, a classic French Bistro styled spot, and an incredible dinner at The Highlands Bar and Grill. Frank Stitt is the proprietor of both and is somewhat of a living legend when it comes to Southern Cuisine. The Stone Ground Baked Grits appetizer alone at Highlands is reason enough for me; man it was good!

On Thursday I drove to Huntsville and visited numerous restaurants and wine shops. Lara Isbell, from The Wine Source, had put together a number of appointments as well as spearheaded our involvement at the Museum Dinner; we are very grateful to have sales reps that are this driven! We had lunch at the Chefs Table where i had an awesome Crawfish Bisque! After a busy day of visiting accounts we were the featured winery at the Huntsville Art Museums Winter Wine Event. After the tasting we dined at The Chophouse, where i had a massive slab of seared Ahi, it was great stuff.

Friday saw more account visits and a great lunch at Cafe Michael and had another awesome Bisque; I think you are pretty safe ordering Bisque in Alabama, they take it pretty seriously!

Fogarty was the featured winery at the Backers of Bacchus Dinner and Live Auction. We poured our '06 Skyline Chardonnay and '05 Skyline Red with a series of appetizers. The dinner by 801 Franklin was paired with our 2006 Gewürztraminer, the 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley Yountville, Vallerga Vineyard and the 2003 Lexington Meritage. The food was really well put together, both the fillet and the scallop, the main course, were cooked to perfection; no easy feat when cooking for 150+ people.

After the dinner and auction we headed back to The Chophouse for a celebratory libation. I was lucky enough to try a 1977 Chateau St Jean, Cabernet Sauvignon, Wildwood Vineyard. This is a wine from my birth year and was graciously poured by Mark Flatt, a wine fanatic I had met the night earlier who had offered to bring the bottle after a conversation about old California wine and birth years. Thanks a bunch Mark that was great! The wine was in great shape and barely showing its 30 years of age!

A big thanks to Frank Hanson for and Glenn Tony, the Owner/President of the Wine Source, for the hospitality in Birmingham. And a serious shout out to Lara in Huntsville, thank you so much!

From afar

Greetings from the luxurious A terminal at Dallas Fort Worth Airport! I am on my way to Alabama to work with our distributor there, The Wine Source. Unfortunately there aren't any, to my knowledge, direct flights to Alabama from SF. The layover did allow me to catch up on the blog here, and have the privilege to pay T Mobile $10 to use their WiFi for the day (yeah!).

We are the featured winery at an event to benefit the Huntsville Museum of Art.

In other exciting news Michael and I meet with noted Biodynamic consultant Philippe Armenier about possibly trialling this exciting and controversial farming technique on a few blocks!

Gotta board my plane!

6 Gewurztraminers

As I mentioned, yesterday we tasted 6 Gewürztraminer with the winery staff. It's always nice to taste blind with the staff as you get a lot of honest opinions and some insight into how your wine looks in it's peer group. All wine tasted blind. I posted these from Cellar Tracker, if you are into wine and don't know about this site, fix it in a hurry!

• 2003 Cesconi Trentino Traminer Aromatico - Italy, Trentino-Alto Adige, Trentino (1/16/2008)
  Very pungent with high tone ginger, lime, some floral elements with candied fruit, pungent spice and fresh herbs. With air some red pepper elements really come for. Very complex if somewhat herbal nose. Very interesting and complex. Heady and rich in the mouth with exotic fruit and spice flavors.


• 2004 Claiborne and Churchill Gewürztraminer Alsatian Style - USA, California, Central Coast (1/16/2008)
  Sweet melon and orange marmalade one the nose with some green grass and herbal notes. Dry and lighter in style with firm acidity. Some pear and apple fruit complement the fine texture.


• 2005 Bott Frères Gewürztraminer Reserve Personelle - France, Alsace, Alsace AOC (1/16/2008)
  Smokey and spicy with bosc pear mango and ginger nose. Very rich and oily in the mouth with a good dose of ssweetness, balanced somewhat by the oiliness. Very full with cashew, smoke and exotic fruit flavors. very big and complex but a touch too flabby, saved only by the oily texture.


• 2005 Francis Tannahill Gewürztraminer Dragonfly - USA, Washington (1/16/2008)
  Some vanilla mango and pear on the ripe-fruit flavored nose. Fairly sweet and a little flabby with herbs, pear and persimmon flavors.


• 2006 Londer Gewürztraminer Dry - USA, California, North Coast, Anderson Valley (1/16/2008)
  Vanilla/linalool aromas with candied fruit, crystallized ginger and some citrus on the very sweet-fruit driven nose. Needs some air to open. Dry and steely with zingy flavors of herbs, flowers and melon. Fairly lean and showing pretty tight.


• 2006 Thomas Fogarty Gewürztraminer - USA, California, Central Coast, Monterey County (1/16/2008)
  Pungent spice, with chile, clove and ginger flavors complementing cashew and pineapple fruit. Good weight in the mouth with good balance of richness and acidity. very spicy in the mouth with more ginger and candied fruit flavors. Long finish.

Posted from CellarTracker

The Londer is always one of my favorites. This was my first go at the '06 and it seemed pretty tight; a few months in the bottle should do wonders.

The '04 C&C is from the Ventana Vineyard, where we sourced 50% of our 06 Monterey Gewurz. It was a really pretty wine, much more feminine than others in the tasting. It showed some similarities to ours; maybe that terroir thing is for real.

The Oregon entry, Francis Tannahill, was very fruit driven and had a beautiful floral nose. I'd like to see a bit more cut or structure but it was undeniably lush.

The Bott Freres is a new Alsatian producer to me. It showed the oily characteristics the varietal is noted for, but was pretty sweet. I liked the wine but It is further proof that "Alsatian" style is anything but dry these days. Maybe it is the house style, again I am unfamiliar with the producer, but it seemed a bit too cloying.

The star of the tasting for me was the Cesconi. What a fabulous and exotic take on Gewurz. I will definitely seek out more wine from this producer from Trentino-Alto Adige. Superb stuff and very compelling wine.

This was a fun look at a few wines and I found a real winner in the Cesconi, gotta get more from this producer.