Some good, bad vine-brations

Two quickies before I head off to work. Wrote Bert Basignani at BasignaniWinery in Maryland's north Baltimore County a few days ago asking how the vineyard was holding up through this summer. His response? "Things here are pretty good. A lot of rain early when we needed it, but not too much now. A pretty good growing season so far but a lot cooler than last year." No doubt that winery owners from Virginia north will be watching the tropical system move up from Florida through the week. Current Projections at the National Hurricane Center show what's left of the storm to be located in western North Carolina by Saturday.

Another month and a half and my wife and I will be down there picking for the fourth straight year. You can pick there on various Saturday mornings through late September and October. It all wraps up with a homemade lunch and some fruits from the vineyard just after the noon hour. No one puts out a better spread to celebrate the harvest than the lovely Lynne Basignani.

Also, many in the Philly area saw this story in Sunday's Inquirer on the latest hearings for House Bill 2165, the latest bit of legal fallout since a federal judge in 2005 ruled against the state's ban on direct-to-consumer shipments. This new bill would limit direct shipping to wineries that produce 80,000 gallons or less per year. No one we've talked to in this state's wine industry is happy about the bill, including Bob Mazza, the president of the Pennsylvania Winery Association, who talked about the subject in a post a couple of months ago. The most recent hearing was held at Paradocx Vineyards in Chester County.

A few bottles of this one headed north

So the biggest hurdle that Anthony Vietri of Va La Vineyards in Avondale will have with this second batch of a white blend called Fioretti that he’s just finished bottling? It won’t be selling out of it, since he figures he’s making only about 70 cases of it, a little more than the first batch they made. “This one is longer aged and has a slightly different blend to it,” he said the other day. The difference is very small. We [first] wanted to kind of trickle it out and see what the response was and it was very strong. So we felt a bit more confident to actually go to the second batch.”

Probably the most vexing problem is getting a batch into his uncle’s hands in New York. Fioretti means little flowers, Vietri explained, “and that refers to the varietals that are in it. It also refers to my uncle, whose name is Fioretti, just kind of a tip of the hat to him.”

The blend features mostly Viognier, but also contains elements of Toccai, Petit Manseng and [Hungarian] Bianca. “It’s kind of an unusual blend,” he said. “It’s designed in our lineup to go with mostly white sauces, cream dishes including mushrooms and a white sauce, if you’re doing that kind of thing.”

It’s served, he added, around 50, not too chilled or it will subdue the aromas and flavor of the Viognier. There are similarities to La Prima Donna, another white Va La blend. “This one would be fatter because it has a higher percentage of Viognier, less of the pronounced aromatics that Prima Donna has,” Vietri said. “It has aromatics . . . but is in a different style. It’s hard to describe.

“The idea with this was a Rhone white. So we wanted to have some fatness but still have some acidity, so when you serve it with the dishes that I was talking about, including risotto, which I should have mentioned before, that it has the ability to stand up to them.”

The Event Grapevine: Aug. 15-21

Scenes from the 2007 Wine, Jazz & Art Festival at Fiori Winery in Pylesville, Md. The event, this year being the 19th annual, will be held at Fiori from noon to 6 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday.



Even those of you who are regulars of the Nissley Vineyards & Winery Estate might not realize that the series, now in its 26th year and expected to end next weekend, instead will continue for another week and end when it’s supposed to, on Labor Day weekend.

“It just didn’t feel right to quit on Aug. 23,” Judy Nissley, the winery’s proprietor, said this afternoon, noting that some years the last concert didn’t end until the first weekend in September. The winery for years had started on July 4th weekend and continued through Labor Day weekend, but Nissley said earlier this summer in an interview that it was difficult getting help on those holiday weekends and that they were reducing the number of concerts from 10 to eight. Well, make that nine. The last one will take place on Aug. 30 and feature the area band Flashback headlined by singer Donna Mark.

Nissley noted that they’re not planning heavy advertising for this subbed-in show, so while it might draw a bit smaller crowd that might please the regulars who will have a little more room to dance than they normally do.

No doubt that whoever shows up will be bringing in everything from tables and tablecloths to candelabra and flowers. And loads of food. Nissley, whose winery is celebrating its 30th year in business, noted in an interview earlier this summer that the fancy silverware crowd, and those are my words, began to evolve this popular central Pennsylvania event about 10 years ago. Now it’s a show just to arrive early and watch the rest of the crowd file through the tent and head for a vacant spot on the grass; it takes some groups 5 to 10 minutes to finish setting up and uncork their first couple bottles.

“I think part of the reason they do that,” she said then, “is that we try to make an upscale presentation, and by that I mean, the band area is sort of rustic, the whole thing is a little rustic, but we . . . used to chill our wines in a big trough, which was a cattle feeding trough -- we still use it on big nights -- but we installed refrigerators and put them in cabinets that look antique, hoping they look that way, and that’s just one example. So that when people [come up for their wine] we don’t say, ‘Here’s a bottle, here’s some ice cubes,’ [instead] they get a chilled bottle of wine.”

They’ve made other improvements, she said, such as replacing the gravel in the archway with flagstone and laying macadam on the parking lot.

“So it gradually took on a better look,” she said. “It gradually became increasingly upscale. We also charge, not an expensive admission, but, it is $15 per person, so the people who are willing to spend that are probably . . . let me phrase that a different way. People in their 50s and 60s, especially the women in that age group, they like to be pampered, and if there’s not going to be anyone there to pamper them, they pamper themselves, and I really do think that’s a lot of what that candelabra is. They want to feel like . . . they're in a nice place.

“They are in a nice place but they want to embellish their experience.”

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SCHEDULED EVENTS

Adams County Winery, Ortanna: Free summer concert, Saturday. 1 to 5 p.m., food and wine available, bring along a lawn chair and blanket, http://www.adamscountywinery.com/

Blue Mountain Vineyards, New Tripoli: Sangria Sunday wine tasting ($$), Sunday, 2 to 5 p.m.; Fridays of Gary Day fund-raiser, Monday, 6 to 8 p.m.,
http://www.bluemountainwine.com

Boyd’s Cardinal Hollow, North Wales: Concert on Saturday, 5 to 8 p.m., http://www.cardinalhollowwinery.com/

Chaddsford Winery, Chaddsford: Reserve Tasting ($$), Saturday, sittings at 1, 2:30 and 4 p.m.; Thursday, the 21st, 7 to 9 p.m., “Look What We Dug Out of the Cellar!” with Chaddsford Wine Educator Melanie Chadwick, Melanie and winemaker Eric Miller went into the cellar to dig out a memory trip of Chaddsford’s best vintages. See what Eric has chosen, and how some of his favorites have held up to the test of time. $30/person; reservations at 610.388.6221.,
http://www.chaddsford.com

Crossing Vineyards & Winery, Washington Crossing: Wine Tasting for Singles ($$), Friday, 7 p.m.; Summer Concert Series ($$), Friday, 7 p.m.
www.crossingvineyards.com

Kreutz Creek Vineyards, West Grove: Summer Outdoor Concert & Slushyville ($$), Saturday, 6 to 9 p.m., Jimmy Buffet style music by Pelican Brief,
http://www.kreutzcreekvineyards.com/events.html

Moon Dancer Vineyards & Winery, Wrightsville: Music Friday night and Saturday and Sunday afternoons; Summer Concert series Saturday night ($$), http://www.moondancerwinery.com

Naylor Wine Cellars, Stewartstown: “Summer Sounds” outdoor concert series ($$), Saturday, 7 to 10 p.m., http://www.naylorwine.com

Nissley Vineyard & Winery Estate, Bainbridge: Music in the Vineyards 2008 ($$), Saturday, 7:30 to 10 p.m., music by the Headliners, http://www.nissleywine.com/lawn_concerts.htm

Paradocx Vineyards, Landenberg: Summer Concert Series ($$), Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m. http://www.paradocx.com/

Twin Brook Winery, Gap: Gazebo Concert Series ($$), Saturday evening, 6:30 to 9:30, http://www.twinbrookwinery.com/

Vynecrest Vineyards & Winery, Breinigsville: Summer Tours With the Winemaker ($$), Saturday and Sunday, 2 p.m., about 1 ½ hours long,
http://www.vynecrest.com/whatsnew.htm


MARYLAND winery events can be found at this link and VIRGINIA events at this link.

($$) – Admission charge

'Great Eight' make up Bucks County trail

Chris Carroll is one of the principal owners of Crossing Vineyards & Winery in Bucks County whose responsibilities spill over into directing the public relations and marketing. She’s also one of the key voices of the Bucks County Wine Trail, one of the newest among the seven or eight that stretch across Pennsylvania.

She’s a major proponent of the strength in numbers philosophy that the California wineries adopted years ago and that the wineries in other states, including Pennsylvania, have gravitated toward. “You learn that you can have a much greater impact when you work together,” she said by phone the other day.

The team philosophy makes particular sense for the eight members of the Bucks County trail, a diverse lot that Carroll said, at the most, are separated by no more than 15 miles. You couldn’t stop at all of them in a day, she noted, but you certainly could in a long weekend. It’s a strategy that has worked well for wine trails such as Brandywine Valley and Lehigh Valley. Draw folks to the area, where they can reserve a room at a local hotel and a table at a couple of restaurants, then spend a couple of days sampling wines at all the wineries on the trail.

To that end, Carroll said that they’ve applied for funding through the Bucks County Conference & Visitors Bureau to assemble a brochure that provides basic information on each winery in the trail, info that can be placed at the multitude of B&Bs that dot that region. If it “gives them a reason to stay even that one extra day,” then it’s worth the investment, she said.

The trail is a mix of old -- Buckingham Valley, Peace Valley and Sand Castle -- and new -- Wycombe -- wineries with the mix of varietals and blends that you’d expect from such a diverse group of winemakers. Several are open just on weekends, such as Rose Bank Winery, while others such as Crossing Vineyards & Winery, Sand Castle Winery and New Hope Winery open their doors daily.

Already they host what would be considered the mainstays of a wine trail’s annual schedule: a Spring Fling in May, a Harvest Celebration in October and a Holiday Celebration in December. What's planned for the future is continued development of the Web site and an improvement in the trail's outreach. In addition, that events schedule figures to get longer in the coming years. Those aforementioned events complement a unique mid-November celebration called a Nouveau Release, which gives wineries a chance to roll out some of the juice from the recently harvested grapes just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Give that new bottle a bit of time on its own

Saw the term "bottle shock" used in a newsletter I received last week from one of my favorite wineries. It had to do with wine that was tasted in March and ordered; the wine had been bottled and was ready to pick up. But purchasers were warned to wait one to three months before diving in.

So in the midst of a conversation with Anthony Vietri of Va La Vineyards, last week, I steered him toward that subject. Probably more suited for a podcast, I’ll just roll out his response in a straight out quote and let you read it:

“It’s essentially something that happens in the process of moving the wines several times before you get to the bottle,” he began. “You’ve got this wine that has for one, two, or three years essentially lived a very quiet life in the cellar ever since fermentation. Every now and then you roused it . . . moved it to another tank or barrel, and that’s called racking. And then it . . . went to sleep again, depending on the winemaker, for two months, maybe a year, and nobody bothered with it. Occasionally somebody poked their head in there and topped up, or they added SO2 to keep it from oxidizing, but essentially the wine itself is not being moved very often. And then before bottling and in the preparations for bottling, there is a whole bunch of movement and, in some cases, the wine moves more during that week before bottling than it had since it was fermented. And in doing that it takes in copious amounts of oxygen or copious amount of nitrogen or CO2 depending on how you are gassing it.

“You’re adding SO2 to protect it from oxidizing. You might be adding touch-up acidity because perhaps the acid level has risen to a point where you feel that the PH is too high and you feel that perhaps you need to bring it down a little to keep it stable, and maybe you’ve added different things to cold stabilize it. All of these things tend to stupefy the wine for a short period of time.

“And let’s say you didn’t even do that.. let’s say you are an old-timer and -- I learned this way myself -- and you took it out of the barrel through a . . .siphon and into a bottle. Just that movement of going from that inert state, which is a state without oxygen, to filling the bottle, that simple little movement is a huge movement that we make on that small amount of wine that is in that bottle that suddenly now has been all completely moved and exposed to oxygen. It’s not a detriment to the wine because we’re careful as winemakers to not make it detrimental. But shock is a very good term. It basically stupefies the wine so what it will do is deaden the aromas and the flavors and so what happens is, you’re getting a much more subdued version than you’re going to get once the wine stabilizes in the bottle and goes back to its stasis and that has to do with the barometric pressure in the bottle and outside, and that has has to do with the SO2 that is in the wine stabilizing. It has to do with whether or not it’s been filtered or unfiltered. A lot of different elements go into that.

“That’s why though you can’t say that Bob’s wine will be ready in one month, my wine will be ready in 2 months, her wine will be ready in three months. There are so many factors involved that you can have a guess as to how long bottle shock will last, but no way of knowing for sure. So a simple way of saying it is, if you warn people [to wait] one to three months [before opening their wine that has just been bottled], that’s usually a good little window. Sometimes it’s less and sometimes it’s more, but normally 90 percent of the time the wine will fall within that window.”

Keep it in a quiet, dark spot, away from the direct sun. Preferably on its side, allowing the cork to remain wet. “There are a lot of studies going on right now about the amount of oxygen literally passing through the cork during resting,” he added, “even when it’s on its side by the way. What we’re finding is that there is definitely breathing going on; the wine definitely is breathing the atmosphere around it, so the atmosphere in your cellar is actually part of what is going in to your finished wine. . . . I just read a study talking about this, I believe it’s from Australia or New Zealand."

He stopped for a second, then added, "It’s really an amazing beverage in just every way. So the idea is that if you get a brand new wine it’s best, if they say if it’s just been bottled, to put it aside for a little bit. Find out when they bottled it and just subtract from there. If you wait three months, you’re probably fine. But the bigger the wine the more it needs to wait, generally speaking. So if you have a light picnic white, it probably doesn’t need to wait as long as a Cab from Napa.”

Able Grape: One stop information shopping

This post comes from someone I hope to meet someday, a woman named Deb Harkness who lives out on the West Coast and dispenses as much info and advice on wine as anyone I've been able to find on the Web. Her Good Wine Under $20 blog is one of the few I've linked onto my blog, and it features enough links to a variety of wine and food sites to fill the biggest barrel in Tuscany. Sigh. Mine's not one of them, but I'll kow I've made it when I do.

She filed this post last Thursday:

Posted: 07 Aug 2008 07:30 AM CDT

The web is a big place. No matter how good you are at concocting perfect search strings on Google or whatever search engine you're using, when it comes to finding information on wine it can be damn hard to locate something useful. Enter Able Grape. They say they're in Beta, but they look like they're all set to become the Alpha Wine Information Search Engine. With over 13 million pages of online wine information indexed and searchable, this is like a one-stop online reference library. And because it's dedicated to wine, just a word or two in the search box will usually yield results -- the kind of results you're looking for, not the stuff you have no interest in when you type in Cabernet Sauvignon (as in, Cabernet Sauvignon bath products).What kind of information is gathered on Able Grape? Reference works, producer Web sites, blogs, scientific articles, event information, tasting notes are all included in the database, and then they're just a click away.Check out the site next time you have a wine question, like what does Pineau d'Aunis taste like, or what kind of soil Pinot Noir likes. It's probably faster than driving to your local library to try to find the answer on Able Grape.

Kreutz Creek East thriving 'downstream'

Carole and Jim Fitzpatrick remember living in York and heading out to the few wineries in the area back in the 1980s, such as Naylor and Fox Ridge. Then Carole bought her husband a wine-making kit and “he started winning amateur competitions.” They bought a three-acre plot across the Susquehanna River in Wrightsville, and began their passion. Years later Jim was "being transferred to a job in New Jersey and this [West Grove, Pa.] was central to where we were going, so that’s how we kind of picked it.”

The desire to open a winery weren’t the only thing they brought with them. They also carried along the name of a creek running close to their home in Wrightsville that they took as the name for their winery. A member of the Brandywine Valley Wine Trail, the Kirkpatricks planted grapes at their present site in 1998. Today, they sell out of their winery and at a satellite site in West Chester, Pa. And it’s obvious from the sales that both draw their own distinct clienetele.

“We’re known for a couple of wines,” Carole said recently from their West Chester tasting room. “One is our ice wine. But it’s funny, our popular wines are different in both locations. Up here in West Chester our Cabernet Franc is the most popular, and then in West Grove it’s more the sweeter things. So like our rose, [called] Steuben; we even had a fruit wine for awhile, a red raspberry, that was popular. Our port is very popular.”

Why the difference? “I wish I knew,” she said. “We actually pride ourselves in having something for everyone so we have always had a range, from sweeter wines to dry wines. We’ve always had a variety and we want to keep the variety.”

Their list currently features 16 wines, including what they call a Kordeaux, a Bordeaux blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot. Carole said they have eight acres of grapes planted and sell about half of what they harvest. Her husband still works his day job; the winery and tasting room remain in the basement of their home. One of their plans for later this fall is to remodel that room, but not move anything out of there. “Actually, people like to see everything when they come down there,” she said.

Outside of that, the only other item on their “to do” list is tear out some of their Niagara grapes and plant Pinot Grgio or Sauvignon Blanc grapes. “We’ll have to talk to a couple people . . . and see what grows well in the area.”

Asked what advice she gives to people who ask about going into the business, she said, “don’t do it, don’t do it” before breaking into a laugh. “I actually do. People will come into the winery and the husband will look around and say, ’Oh, this will be good. This will be fun.’ I’m like, don’t do it.’

“It really consumes your every minute, but owning [any] business does.” Suggestions? “I would just say to research grapes that grow well in the area, and have your soil checked before you purchase the property; make sure it’s going to be conducive to good grape growing. And use the resources that are out there.”