Instead, I recommend you use this time of year to try something new and fun with wine. I’ve actually discovered that some of the most unique, uncommonly served wines end up being my favorite not only at holiday time, but year round.

Here’s my list of ten great wines, wine regions or varietals you should consider serving this holiday (okay, with a few safety nets in there too)…

One of my favorite under-the-radar white wines is a white Rhône blend. These blends, typically pretty affordable, blend white grape varietals most commonly found in the Rhône growing region of France. Think Marsanne, Roussane, Viognier, Grenache Blanc. They typically have great minerality (I admit, it’s something I adore in a white wine), but with ripe, honeyed fruit notes and a body big enough to stand up to whatever you’re serving on Thanksgiving. Try the 2007 Rosenblum Cellars Château La Paws Côte du Bone Blanc ($14), the 2009 Tablas Creek Côte de Tablas Blanc ($22), or the 2009 Tablas Creek Esprit de Beaucastel ($33).

I LOVE unoaked Chardonnay. Unoaked simply means that the wine was not fermented or stored in wood barrels at any time; instead, these wines tend to be fermented in steel tanks. The result is a clean, crisp flavor that lets the grape be completely expressive. It also would make an excellent match to a starter salad with a light, citrusy vinaigrette, or as a before dinner refresher. Heck, it’d also be delicious WITH dinner, if you’re serving something lighter like roast chicken with herbs. Try Passagio ($16) (amazingly good, and the winemaker is one of the nicest, most talented winemakers around), or Valley of the Moon ($15).

Okay, okay. You can’t really go wrong with a classic Sauvignon Blanc. Crisp, clean and acidic, if you’re entertaining a crowd that likes white wine, you should probably stock up on a couple bottles of Sauv Blanc. Try a Napa Valley classic, like the 2009 Cakebread Cellars ($25) or the 2009 St. Supery ($15).

It absolutely wouldn’t be a holiday without some sparkle, right? To really zhush up the occasion, buying sparkling wine or Champagne is a must. One fantastic, really affordable option that’s a bit unexpected is Spanish Cava. Somewhat similar to Italian Prosecco, Cava (in my experience at least) tends to be a bit more fruit forward than classic French Champagne. It’s becoming more popular too, but the price points have stayed very low. One Cava I’ve recently tried and loved was the Caves El Barcino ($15). Yum.

Without a doubt my favorite domestic sparkler. Roederer ($19) is pretty easy to find these days, and in my opinion, it’s far, far superior to the Gloria Ferrer’s, J’s, and Chandon’s of the domestic sparkling world. Louis Roederer is the gent that made a little French Champagne that you might know as Cristal (or Cris, if you listen to good early 2000s rap music). Roederer Estate uses many of the same techniques as their French counterpart, but it just happens to be located in Anderson Valley, a few hours north of San Francisco. If you can find it (though it’s much harder these days), try the 2002 L’Ermitage Roederer Estate Brut ($35). It’s toasty, yeasty, redolent of pears, and simply put, a beautiful sparkling wine. Personal aside: Joe and I recently shared a bottle of this on our 8 year anniversary. We figured out that the grapes in that wine were being harvested around the time we met (cue: Awwww).

Very popular on the brunch scene these days, like Cava, Prosecco is a wonderful, affordable sparkling alternative. I find Proseccos that are extra dry tend to be more to my liking, as they can otherwise be a bit cloying and leave that sweet, heavy feeling in your mouth. As a general rule, a Prosecco from Valdobbiadene won’t lead you too far astray. You can easily find a great bottle of Prosecco within the $10 to $25 range.

A lot of folks recommend Pinot Noir as a great red varietal to drink at Thanksgiving and I completely agree. However, even within California, there are SO many styles of Pinot Noir: the robust, intense, spicy Pinots from Santa Rita Hills in the south; the rich, velvety, cherried Pinots from Russian River. One style I think is great with Thanksgiving is the Anderson Valley Pinot. Lighter bodied, fruit forward, well-balanced, restrained. It’s a Burgundian style Pinot that I think suits Turkey Day well. Don’t miss Migration ($34). It’s made by Goldeneye, but in my opinion, is better.

Similar to the Anderson Valley Pinot, Sonoma Coast has been churning out some fantastic Pinot Noirs in recent years. In my mind, these wines are a bit rounder, fuller, with maybe a touch more spice than their Anderson Valley counterparts, but both are wonderful choices. From Sonoma Coast, look for Hirsch, FogDog (made by the Joseph Phelps family), or Dehlinger — the 2007 vintage in particular was one of the great wines I’ve had in the last few years (but then again, it was shared with two of my favorite friends over an awesome dinner. With wine, context can be everything!). Sonoma Coast Pinots can run from the mid $30s on up.

If you’re looking for something with bright, gorgeous berry notes, good acidity but a guaranteed medium body, try the Barbera grape, from Italy. The best Barbera’s all hail from Piedmont in the northern region of the country; look for Barbera d’Alba or Barbera d’Astis. Even though they’re imported, Barbera’s are a great deal. Most will be priced from around $15 to $25.

And lastly, something completely unexpected — a Greek wine! Amethystos is a Cabernet Sauvignon blend that Joe and I have seen at a few different Greek and Mediterranean restaurants around town. After giving it a try (and figuring out how to pronounce it), it’s become a favorite. Definitely the heartiest of the group (bigger tannins, bigger body, bigger everything), Amethystos (around $20) would probably be more appropriate if you’re serving lamb or beef on the big day. But still, even with turkey, it’s a wine that’s so juicy and delicious, you probably won’t mind the powerful pairing too much!

What about you? Do you have a favorite wine or spirit to drink with holiday meals? Share it in the comments!

If you haven’t heard yet, Crushpad actually moved up north to the Silverado Trail a few months ago, but I think their new locale will provide them with endless opportunities.

Thanks to a CrushCamper who took a bunch of really great photos while they were here, I finally have some images to share with you.  Consider this a truncated tour, for all of you who can’t make it out for a camp.  Check it out, after the jump!

Grapes arrive and are generally sorted for any leaves, sticks, rocks, or bad berries we don’t want fermented.  The exception to this are white wine varietals, which are generally pressed as whole clusters.  A winemaker (in this case, Chris) will often stand watch over the berries as they are sorted (and sometimes doubly sorted on the shaking table, pictured above) in order to judge their appearance for crucial winemaking decisions.  The T-bin, which has the red tape on it, holds 1 ton of berries, or 2 barrels worth.

Fast forward through cold maceration and several days of punchdowns.  This wine is about to be inoculated with yeast.  Just like in pastry making, when sauces and egg-based items must be tempered, so too does yeast need to be tempered with both sugar and warmth.  The dry yeast is stirred with warm water in the clear plastic bin you see here, then left out for 20 minutes or so to acclimatize to the liquid and “bloom,” so to speak.  Then, a bit of juice from the T-bin is stirred into the solution, so that the yeast can begin to feed — that’s why the above solution looks 1) really purple and 2) really foamy…these yeast are feasting!  Once acclimatized again, the yeast slurry is dumped into one corner of the bin, and the magic starts happening.  You’re just a few short days away from red wine.

Sometimes, yeast can get so excited that the ferment gets a bit too hot.  This is bad — too much heat can kill the yeast.  Sometimes, a wine plan also dictates that the ferment be kept below a certain temperature, even though the yeast can survive in a hotter environment.  This is because different levels of heat will lead to different amounts of color and character extraction.  Folks who want a “bigger” wine might want a red hot ferment.  Someone who wants a more restrained wine might go for something less hot.

In any case, if a bin gets too hot, we cool it off with dry ice.  Here, Mike is dumping in little dry ice capsules…

…and Ron’s going to town punching them in.  Very Halloween.  Even though I’ve seen this done many, many times, I never tire of looking at the “clouds” created by dry ice additions!

See?

Here, we’re teaching people about cap management, and proving to them that most of the wine lies below the huge, heavy cap of grape skins and seeds.  If you stick your hand down below one of these caps, it feels like very warm soda pop — especially if the wine is a few days into ferment.  The bin next to us has a subcap in it, and you can see CO2 being released through the holes in the cap plate.

Once a wine is ready to be pressed, free run juice is first siphoned out from underneath the cap and racked into barrels.

Then, the whole bin gets dumped into our bladder press.  Remaining free run juice is allowed to drain out, then the grape skins are gently pressed (at increments of .2 bars of pressure) to extract more juice.  This juice, calledpress fraction juice, will have more tannin in it and is often used forblending, to help add structure to a wine.

Total side note — white wines in barrel can sometimes have their lees stirred.  We have a couple of these fun clear-headed barrels to show people what this looks like.  The orange you’re seeing is from a light hung behind the barrel.  You can tell that once Stu stirs this, the lees cloud the wine so much that there is no light visible.  It’ll take about 2 to 3 weeks for the lees to completely settle on the bottom of the barrel again, and during this period, you’ll see them stratify like a tequila sunset.  If a wine has had its lees stirred, it’s often referred to as a sur lie wine.

Believe me, this is very much a truncated version of everything there is to see and do at the winery.  But in any case, I hope it gave you some insight into what it’s like to make wine.

November 21, 2009. Morning.

These were both taken at Sequoia Grove, in the exact same vine row. We were up there this last Saturday, picking up some Rebellious Red in preparation for Thanksgiving (yes, it really was that good). I love the contrast between the two photos, both in the color of the light, as well as the obvious changes in foliage. What a difference a month can make.

We also did a bit of hiking in Robert Louis Stevenson Park, our first visit there. It was a such a beautiful, crisp fall day. My point-and-shoot camera is quite old, with a battery that always dies after about half an hour, but here are some other shots of our hike to Table Rock.

From the top of Table Rock, looking back over the valley. Amazing.

Last weekend, I spent Saturday visiting a number of wineries with Joe and some of his co-workers. Phelps, Paraduxx, Grgich and Sequoia Grove all made the list. Verdicts?

Listen, you can’t beat the views at Phelps. The last time I was there was in the spring, and the valley below the tasting room was a lush, verdant green. Now, it was apparent that summer had come and gone, but the expanse of land wasn’t any less beautiful to look at.

See that first blush of orange and red I was mentioning? Perfection.

The wines? We’ll get to that in a bit.

Next on the tour was a stop at Paraduxx, where some kind soul in our group had arranged for a food and wine pairing. At this point in time, I’d had a glass of Veuve Clicquot, two glasses of a friend’s yummy (and newly released!) personal Howell Mountain Cabernet from Crushpad (all just in the van ride up), and the entire portfolio of tasting wines at Joseph Phelps, plus a glass of their Le Mistral. As such, the camera never made it out of the bag. I can tell you that their harvest is still in full swing, that they use a mix of T-bins and large fermenting tanks, and that the shaking table wasn’t out that day. Hmm.

After a leisurely lunch snack there (and four bottles of Migration and a bottle of Canvasback safely stored in the car), we headed to Grgich Hills.

Grgich Hills failed. Unmemorable wines at the general tasting, overly crowded, too dark. The end.

Redemption was found in the form of Sequoia Grove, just down Hwy 29, where we discovered THE wine of the day — perhaps the wine of the season (we’ll see how long the love affair lasts).

Okay, so what tasted good that day?

Wine notes from the trip:

Joseph Phelps

• Their Chardonnay! I know, I know, you don’t even know who I am anymore, right? But surprisingly enough, Phelps’ Chard winemaker learned the trade in Burgundy, so how else do you expect her wine to turn out other than Chablis style? Too often, Napa Chards go heavy on the oak toast and end up a buttery, butterscotchy, caramely mess. But not this gem. Slide me a dozen oysters and I would’ve been just fine. Wave it in!
• I don’t know how they manage this, but their Viognier is just too much for me. Heady, oily. I think I like a little more restraint in my Rhone-style whites. Maybe the Viogniers I’ve had were always blended with something to keep that perfumey quality in check (Pine Ridge makes a totally decent Viognier/Chenin Blanc table white, and who can’t resist a good Marsanne/Roussane/Viognier blend?), but this particular label always bowls me over — and not in a good way. Seller.
• Insignia. Meh. It’s good, but not $200 good. Seller.
• ’06 Cab and ’06 Merlot. Maybe I’m just not a Cab fan. I’m definitely NOT a Merlot fan, and this is pre-Sideways, okay? It clods along in the mouth, clumsily, like a big, sweaty oaf. Perhaps I’m a meanie for relegating Merlot to the realm of blending wine, but whatever. I don’t like it. Seller.
• Le Mistral. As far as I’m concerned, the most interesting red of the bunch. A unique blend of Syrah, Grenache, Carignane, Petit Syrah and Alicante Bouschet. Too bad Phelps recently sold the label to Ventana Vineyards, so the wine will be produced solely out of Monterrey now. Wave it in!

Paraduxx

• Some rosé, I forget the name, and Paraduxx hasn’t figured out how to put ALL their wines on the Duckhorn website. It was okay. I like them drier. Seller.
• Canvasback, a mix of Syrah, Grenache, Carignane and Cabernet Sauvignon (Oh. I just realized the trend. Good thing I’m going to Provence next year.). Obviously, we waved this one in, since we bought a bottle of it and drank it tonight with some pizza. It was good.
• Paraduxx red wine. The Zinfandel/Cab thing is interesting, but probably just not my bag. These wines are just too much for me. Maybe it was the setting — warm day, bright sun, cool breeze. I think this wine needs a ribeye and a fireplace to brood over. Seller.
• Postmark. See above. Although, Joe really liked this one, but we don’t have to listen to him.

Grgich Hills

• Inebriated though I might have been, I still maintain their tasting portfolio had nothing to offer. Seller.

Sequoia Grove

• Who cares about any of the other wines they were pouring? DING! DING! DING! DING! We have a winner in their 2007 Rebellious Red. It’s a proprietary red wine, and REALLY proprietary — they won’t reveal what’s in it. It could have rat pee as the secret ingredient, but all you need to know is that it’s good. Really good. GREAT spice, beautiful fruit, perfectly balanced acidity and a texture that’s smooth as a new velvet jacket. We bought two bottles. I would like to wave in two cases. It’s the new thing in our household.

All of this merry-making was followed by what seemed to be an extraordinarily short van ride back to the city (where, inexplicably, the entire populace of the van all needed to urinate very, very badly at the exact same moment when we were crossing the Bay Bridge), and a well-deserved dinner at Perry’s on the Embarcadero. I woke up on Sunday not wanting red wine for a week.

So of course, Joe and I drank an entire bottle of Rebellious Red on Monday. It’s just how we roll ’round these parts.

I can’t wait for the next trip!

Below the Fog

Vineyards in Sonoma County. Photograph by Andy Katz. Click on the photo for a larger version.

Hirsch Pinot is where it’s AT. Glad to see Obama thinks so too. [The Cellarist]

Magazines I should ask for this Christmas [SFoodie]

“I love the idea of a person’s garbage outliving him: that particular plate broken at a rather raucous dinner party or over the head of an unruly relative; the oysters from that incredible dinner party that paired so well with the crisp 1711 White St. Emilion…” [The Atlantic Food Channel]

25 brilliant wine label designs [Designer Daily]

Chateauneuf-de-what? A great label primer [Kevin Zraly]

And because I think her work (especially her calligraphy and typography!) is absolutely beautiful: [Cynthia Warren]

(Funnily enough, back then we could buy a bottle of Lazy Creek for $27, a total steal for decent Pinot Noir. Today, a bottle will set you back closer to $45 to $50. A bottle of their red table wine is like $25-30 at Whole Foods. As much as Lazy Creek holds a special place in our heart, we’ve moved on to other producers.)

About a week and a half ago, I was lucky enough to attend a Pinot clones tasting at Crushpad. My old buddy Stu had made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: come down  and help work the tasting (checking attendees in, pouring wines, helping with cleanup afterwards) and I could sit in on the tasting for F.R.E.E. He didn’t have to ask me twice. I was so there.

Unique to this tasting was the fact that a lot of industry folk attended, mostly because a tasting like this is hard to come by. The point of the tasting was to pit different clones of Pinot Noirs against one another–with as many winemaking variables taken out of the equation as possible–to get a sense of each clones’ individual characteristics. Pinot Noir has hundreds of different clones, some producing stellar finished wine, and some not so much. The other interesting thing about Pinot clones (and all varietal clones, really) is that where they were grown will absolutely affect the finished product. That emphasis on the importance of place is little term you’ve probably heard before: terroir.

At this tasting, all the wines had been aged in neutral oak, meaning barrels that were 3 to 4 years old. By doing this, we could eliminate most of the influence that new oak has on Pinot, so that the grapes could really speak for themselves. All the wines were also fermented with RC-212 yeast, a common yeast used for making Pinot Noir. During the first flight, we would be tasting Clone 115 grown at Amber Ridge Vineyard (Russian River Valley), Hein Vineyard (Anderson Valley), La Encantada Vineyard (Sta. Rita Hills), and Lone Oak Vineyard (Santa Lucia Highlands). For the second flight, we’d be comparing different varieties of Heritage clones; the three pours would each feature the Calera Clone, Swan Clone and 2A Clone. For the third and final flight, we’d taste different clones grown in the same AVA: the Pommard clone, Clone 667, Clone 777 and Clone 828 in this flight had all been grown in Sonoma Coast (the Pommard was from the Durrell Vineyard, the other three from Gap’s Crown Vineyard).

Whew. That’s a lot to take in.

It was also a lot to get through in just an hour and a half, so everyone had to get to tasting, stat.

Once I settled in and had a few bites of bread (okay, and brie…I know, way to keep my palate clean), the wine was a-flowing. Here are some scriblings from my tasting notes:

ROUND ONE

(I forgot to write any texture notes on this first flight)

Clone 115 from Amber Ridge

Clone 115 from Hein

Clone 115 from La Encantada

Clone 115 from Lone Oak

Winner: Amber Ridge, simply because the spice in the wine was unmatched. It was the only wine of the bunch with any complexity.

ROUND TWO

Heritage (Calera Clone)

Heritage (Swan Clone)

Heritage (2A Clone)

Winner: Meh. Not a fan of any of them. Like Stu said, most of these clones have a stronger back, and are much meatier–they’re not the delicate Pinot you normally think of. Definitely a blending wine.

ROUND THREE

Sonoma Coast Pommard

Sonoma Coast 667

Sonoma Coast 777

Sonoma Coast 828

Winner: the 667, just because of the texture.

So, as we can all see, my tasting notes got more spare as the evening went on. This is a good thing, because if I remember correctly, I made a few friends at my table, and I had started talking a lot more than I was writing.

It was amazing to taste how different all these clones were. And I think the moral of the story to the evening was BLENDING. Though none of the wines on their own were especially interesting, mixing bits of this one or that one created something entirely better. Imagine adding in a bit of new oak, and you’d have a whole ‘nother animal.

The first was my freshman year of college, when, as I was getting ready for an early morning class, I accidentally bumped my elbow against my closet door.  Actually, “bump” probably isn’t the right word — I hit my funny bone pretty damn hard, and a strange, tingling sensation overtook my entire body.  I got really sweaty, really dizzy, and keeled over.  Next thing I knew, my roommate (bless her heart) was shaking me awake, worried I had died.

The second and third times were related to dehydration during my second year of college, when I’d come down with mono and had been so sick for a few days that I hadn’t had too much to eat or drink (not smart).  I was with Joe one afternoon at a dining spot on campus, unable to eat a bowl of soup, lying all over the table with my head in my hands, burning hot with fever.  Nauseated, I got up to head to the restroom, then keeled over in the middle of the cafeteria.  A cashier saw me and ran over to me, then called an ambulance.  Joe had no idea what was going on, since he hadn’t seen me fall.  It wasn’t until he saw the huge commotion that he realized the girl laying on the ground was wearing the same outfit as his own girlfriend had been wearing that day.

The paramedics came and took me away on a stretcher, which was actually very embarrassing seeing as how we encountered several people I knew as they carried me out.  I proceeded to faint again, later that evening, after a long nap and still not a drop of water in my system in the last day or so.  Eventually, I figured it out and started drinking some Gatorade, and was much better.  You’ll be happy to know that I’m one of those lucky bastards who recovered from mono in like a week and a half.

But it only takes one fainting spell to know that it isn’t that fun, and I certainly don’t relish waking up on the ground, having absolutely no recollection of what the hell just happened.

That being said, the fourth time I fainted was this last weekend, and in true VMAC fashion, it was fairly inconvenient, embarrassing and spectacular.

I was doing some much needed grocery shopping at Whole Foods on Saturday, and as I waited in the checkout line, a bottle of wine I’d laid in the child seat of the grocery basket came crashing out of the leg holes and right onto my foot.  The second toe on my left food started bleeding, and the pain of having that single poor little toe break the fall of the bottle (I’m guessing?) momentarily overwhelmed my nervous system.  I got very, very dizzy, and I full-on fainted.  At the checkout line in Whole Foods.  And I hit my head (in two places) on the side of the checkout counter as I went down.  Joe reports that I was out a good 20 to 30 seconds.  This kind of thing only happens in movies.

Of course, when I told my mom afterward, she said, “Well, was it at least a GOOD bottle of wine?”  No, mama.  No, it wasn’t.  In fact, it was a really, really cheap bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that I was buying just to have some cooking wine around the house.  Rendered unconscious by a cheap white.  What is the world trying to tell me, exactly?

Two days later, and my toe is doing a lot better.  I’m not sure if it’s broken or just sprained, but it’s still pretty purple and swollen, though I’m getting much better at gimping around the house on it.  Ironically, my head hurts a lot more from hitting it against the counter than my toe does from that damn bottle.

Let this be a lesson to you, fair reader, that if you’re going to stash bottles of booze in the childseat of your grocery shopping basket, make sure the plastic flap featuring instructions on how not to injure your child is flipped upwards.  Otherwise, all bets are off.

The offending bottle

So in the spirit of yesterday’s winemaking photo tour, I thought I’d repost the barrel blog here.  After all, barrels are a huge part of the wine equation, and constructing them is (much like wine) a combination of art and science.  Here, I’ll show you:

(Most of these photos were taken at Radoux, up in Santa Rosa, by yours truly.  Photos demonstrating barrel firing and toast levels were taken at Seguin Moreau on a previous Crushpad fieldtrip)

The wood used for making barrels will sit out in stacks to age, seen here in the background. During this process, excess tannin is released from the wood, and can appear as black marks on the slats. American oak will age at least 12 months, whereas French oak ages at least 24 months.

Once the wood is ready, it’s cut into staves (the long, individual pieces of wood that are pushed together to make a barrel), fitted, and partially hooped. From there, it’s ready to be toasted.

Barrels are placed over small fires and toasted to a desired level. A Master Cooper monitors this process, rotating barrels as needed. Some barrels will even be momentarily covered with a metal plate, to intensify the heat and smoke inside.  In the same vein, note how barrels can be toasted while only half hooped (top photo), and others entirely hooped.  These variations in toast methods will contribute unique flavors into whatever liquid is stored inside.

A medium plus toast might look a little something like this.

Meanwhile at a separate station, shorter staves are sawed into the proper lengths, then have tongues and grooves cut into their sides.  Next, they’re mechanically pressed together to form squared planks of wood. These will become the barrel heads.

The plank is rotated in this machine, and the barrel head is cut out…

…so that it looks just like this. These heads can now be toasted, or inserted into the barrel.

To insert the head, a worker will angle it in, then use a cro-bar style rod to force the head upward until it is snug. More hoops are then fitted over the barrel.

Next, the barrels are rolled down to the bung hole zapper (har dee har har). The bung hole is drilled into the barrel…

…then smoothed out with this heat drill, which is hot enough to essentially cauterize the hole. This helps to create a good seal, which can help prevent microbial growth later on.

The barrel gets rolled over to the leak check station. After being filled with a bit of water, the cooper rolls it around, checking for any leaks in between staves, or at the heads. Minor leaks can be fixed by inserting tiny pieces of wood into any holes.

This barrel head is leaking even after several attempts to patch up the hole with the wood chips. It’s sent back down the line, where a new head will be inserted.

Once the barrels are entirely leak proof, many are sent to be sanded down. The barrels are loaded up onto this rotating machine, then spun at a high speed while a worker sands them. Sanding the barrels is purely aesthetic – the smooth, velvety exterior has no effect on the wine inside. If the public will never see the barrels, some wineries will choose to forgo this step.  Hey, wherever you can save a few bucks, right?

Almost finished! The barrel heads get sanded down…

…then stamped to indicate the year it was produced, the level of toast, the type of oak, and the cooperage.

Ta-da! A finished barrel, ready to go.

Grapes arrive and are generally sorted for any leaves, sticks, rocks, or bad berries we don’t want fermented.  The exception to this are white wine varietals, which are generally pressed as whole clusters.  A winemaker (in this case, Chris) will often stand watch over the berries as they are sorted (and sometimes doubly sorted on the shaking table, pictured above) in order to judge their appearance for crucial winemaking decisions.  The T-bin, which has the red tape on it, holds 1 ton of berries, or 2 barrels worth.

Fast forward through cold maceration and several days of punchdowns.  This wine is about to be inoculated with yeast.  Just like in pastry making, when sauces and egg-based items must be tempered, so too does yeast need to be tempered with both sugar and warmth.  The dry yeast is stirred with warm water in the clear plastic bin you see here, then left out for 20 minutes or so to acclimatize to the liquid and “bloom,” so to speak.  Then, a bit of juice from the T-bin is stirred into the solution, so that the yeast can begin to feed — that’s why the above solution looks 1) really purple and 2) really foamy…these yeast are feasting!  Once acclimatized again, the yeast slurry is dumped into one corner of the bin, and the magic starts happening.  You’re just a few short days away from red wine.

Sometimes, yeast can get so excited that the ferment gets a bit too hot.  This is bad — too much heat can kill the yeast.  Sometimes, a wine plan also dictates that the ferment be kept below a certain temperature, even though the yeast can survive in a hotter environment.  This is because different levels of heat will lead to different amounts of color and character extraction.  Folks who want a “bigger” wine might want a red hot ferment.  Someone who wants a more restrained wine might go for something less hot.

In any case, if a bin gets too hot, we cool it off with dry ice.  Here, Mike is dumping in little dry ice capsules…

…and Ron’s going to town punching them in.  Very Halloween.  Even though I’ve seen this done many, many times, I never tire of looking at the “clouds” created by dry ice additions!

See?

Here, we’re teaching people about cap management, and proving to them that most of the wine lies below the huge, heavy cap of grape skins and seeds.  If you stick your hand down below one of these caps, it feels like very warm soda pop — especially if the wine is a few days into ferment.  The bin next to us has a subcap in it, and you can see CO2 being released through the holes in the cap plate.

Once a wine is ready to be pressed, free run juice is first siphoned out from underneath the cap and racked into barrels.

Then, the whole bin gets dumped into our bladder press.  Remaining free run juice is allowed to drain out, then the grape skins are gently pressed (at increments of .2 bars of pressure) to extract more juice.  This juice, called press fraction juice, will have more tannin in it and is often used for blending, to help add structure to a wine.

Total side note — white wines in barrel can sometimes have their lees stirred.  We have a couple of these fun clear-headed barrels to show people what this looks like.  The orange you’re seeing is from a light hung behind the barrel.  You can tell that once Stu stirs this, the lees cloud the wine so much that there is no light visible.  It’ll take about 2 to 3 weeks for the lees to completely settle on the bottom of the barrel again, and during this period, you’ll see them stratify like a tequila sunset.  If a wine has had its lees stirred, it’s often referred to as a sur lie wine.

Believe me, this is very much a truncated version of everything there is to see and do at the winery.  But in any case, I hope it gave you some insight into what it’s like to make wine.

In a rare moment of public affection, he reaches his arm around my shoulder and leans in to kiss me on the cheek.  He stops, then recoils for a moment, his nose squinching.

“You smell like coffee,” he says, then leaning in for another sniff, “and grapes.”

Well, I think to myself minutes later as I lather up in the shower and rinse away the day, that just about sums up harvest.

If that sounds like a lot to process in a day or two, consider that the first week and a half of September — you know, when the pants were around the ankles — we received 225 tons worth of grapes.  THAT’S A LOT OF GRAPE JUICE.  And have I mentioned we make 900 DIFFERENT wines?  And that those 225 tons were about a THIRD of the total tonnage we’ll receive?

Anyway, with harvest back in full swing again, CrushCamps are back too, and I’ve found great joy in teaching other people about winemaking.  Folks show up so bright eyed and bushy tailed, truly interested in what we do and more than willing to ask lots of questions, and that’s awesome.  I love hearing people say that they had a great time and learned a whole lot, and better yet, that they can’t wait to come back and get more involved with wine.

For me, too, the learning curve there has just been exponential, and as I come home and report my days to Joe, I can’t even believe how much knowledge I’ve had to stuff into my brain over the course of a month.  If you ever need someone to explain cap management to you, I’m your gal.

I’m especially excited for Camps over the next few weeks, as I’ve graciously been allowed to invite a few friends and family members to join us down there and see what’s shakin’ this harvest.  It’s rare that any of my family or friends get to see me in any kind of “work” capacity, but I enjoy it when it happens because more than anything, I’m passionate about what I do and I hope that it shows.

That, and I figure if my loved ones see that I’m good at what I do and I’m really happy doing it, all the raised eyebrows at my zany career choices and the twists and turns of the past year will be quieted.

At least a little bit.

Welcome to Crushpad!

Attend Camp, get this nifty diploma!

I love this photo of the Tolovis. They're a client of ours from Sao Paulo, and trekked all the way to the Bay Area to make a little vino. How awesome is that?

So it came as a surprise to me when, one evening when I was in the 9th grade, she had the impulse to browse the wine section at our grocery store. It was a warm fall evening, and my mother and I had been out running errands, with a stop at the market the last of them. We needed something for a quick dinner, as it was already getting late and I still had math homework to attend to.

We’d made it through the produce section and picked up a bag of grapes, when my mother made her detour. I knew nothing about wine at the time, save the syrupy white Zin I’d been drinking with my grandmother since an age that would make most parents blush. I stood to one side, patiently for a moment, without interest, then moved closer to see what she was looking at. She’d been examining the labels, and all of a sudden, turned to me with an idea.

“What do you say we just have some good bread and cheese with the fruit for dinner? We could even pick out a wine to try with it.”

What did I think? WHAT DID I THINK? I think that sounded like the most sophisticated thing that could ever happen to me! Wasn’t eating bread and cheese as a whole meal something that ze French did?

“Okay,” I replied enthusiastically, “But how will we know which wine to pick?”

She turned back to the shelves, full of a dizzying array of bottles with colorful labels, most written in what felt like a secret language that neither of us could begin to understand.

“Maybe a Merlot?” she thought out loud, reaching for a bottle that seemed familiar.

I glanced at the bottle she reached for, and wasn’t impressed. For those with no knowledge of wine, an attractive label, or perhaps the fancifully scrawled name of a French chateau is all we really have to go on.

“What about these?” I said, pointing to a shelf filled with wines produced by Louis Jadot. Something about the plain beige label and simple lettering — as well as the unintelligible French — seemed appealing.

“Beaujolais-Villages,” she read. “That could work. I think I like Beaujolais.”

“Let’s try that,” I said. And we headed to the bakery and cheese counters to gather the rest of the items for our meal.

At home, we set out a wooden cutting board simply displayed with our sundries, along with some small plates and small juice glasses to drink the wine from, osteria style. I had perhaps two glasses with dinner, loving the relaxed style of eating, happy to eat half a loaf of baguette smeared with oozing brie.

Once we’d had our fill, my mother hurried me up to my room to finish my homework. “I wouldn’t have let you have so much wine if I’d known you still had work to do!” she said.

“I’m fine, Momma,” I told her, “I have just a little bit of wine left. Can I take it upstairs and sip on it while I do my homework?”

“Alright,” she agreed, “But just make sure you’re working.”

I sat down at my desk and opened up my math book, pulling out sheets of notebook paper on which to work the night’s problems. My small glass of wine rested by the side of my book, and as I worked through the problems, I’d periodically take a sip.

Without warning, I felt sleepy. I sighed, and twirled my pencil between my fingers. Working math problems seemed like the least interesting thing I could possibly be devoting my time to. I doodled on the side of the page. I played a game of Solitaire on the computer. I lazily reached for my wine, then, unexpectedly, a splash of the bright red liquid dribbled down my face and all over my math homework.

I guffawed, my hand flying to my mouth in surprise.  Crap.  What to do?

The problems were already three-quarters of the way done, I was tired, and it was getting late. Recopying them seemed like it would be a lot of work. So I finished the few remaining problems on another sheet of paper, stapled the pages together, then packed them away in my backpack to be turned in the next day.

As I submitted them in class, the distinct odor of Beaujolais wafted up from the pages, a red stain smeared boldly across the work. I was oddly proud that I had done something as grown up as drink wine while going about my math homework, and slightly embarrassed all the same.

I’ve always wondered what my math teacher must’ve thought as she corrected my work. I like to think she approved whole-heartedly.

All that the pages said when they were returned to me was “√+. Great Job.”

So on Saturday, we hopped in our rented MINI Cooper and jetted up to Yountville.  Pretty much instantly, I felt like smacking my head against the dashboard because Napa Valley is SO FREAKIN CLOSE.  Even with traffic in Berkeley and Vallejo, we got there in about an hour.  Why hadn’t we done this sooner?

I have little to no interest in hitting up tasting rooms these days — not to toot my own horn, but after a few weeks at Crushpad and a few months of living in the cellar at the Chron, I kind of know a thing or two about wine.  Needless to say, paying anywhere from $5 to $30 to taste flights of wine isn’t the best use of my money anymore.  So Joe and I decided we’d just park it somewhere, get a bottle of wine, and enjoy the perfect 80-degree weather.

We ended up at Domaine Chandon, primarily because they have an amazing outdoor space.  I’d been there once before, when Joe’s sister came to visit early last year.  Oddly enough, I like Chandon a lot more from one of their still wines than the sparkling they’re famous for.  They produce a still Pinot Meunier, a red grape sometimes used in sparkling wine along with Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.  It’s kind of uncommon to see it produced in a still form, but I really love it as an everyday, supremely drinkable table wine.

We like it so much, in fact, that we bought a case of it.  Hooray!

After taking down a bottle of the Meunier, a cheese platter and a charcuterie plate, we jetted over to Bouchon, also known as One of My Favorite Places in the World.  We got there early enough in the evening that we were able to snag a table in the bar, then proceeded to indulge in a dozen Salt Aire oysters, salads, macaroni gratin, and the CORN!  You may have heard of this corn, for its reputation proceeds it: sweet kernels, cooked sous vide with brown butter, thyme, Pernod (so THAT’S what the licorice-y flavor was!) and copious amounts of crème fraîche, I’m sure.  I could’ve bathed in it.

We washed the meal down with glasses of Sancerre and finished the meal with cappuccino.  It was a perfect afternoon.

Before heading in to Bouchon, we’d taken a little walk through Yountville, and ended up at The French Laundry gardens.  I hadn’t even realized where we were when we first saw the land — beautiful, colorful rows of tomatoes, eggplant, red bell peppers.  Perfectly manicured thyme plants next to fragrant sage and rosemary.  The backdrop behind the garden is the mountain range that creates the Napa Valley.  The sun was setting, the air was warm and breezy, and it was quiet.  Peaceful.

There are two benches that face the garden, and Joe and I sat there for a few minutes, taking in the day, the sun, the smell of the air.  It’s moments like those when I’m always reminded of how truly connected I feel to the land here, and how much I truly enjoy my work.  There’s no place I’ve ever visited that I adore quite as much as Wine Country, and heading up north is always so inspiring and rejuvenating.

I’m ready for the week ahead.

As in, pray you can jump from the top of the barrel mountain without spraining your ankle or breaking your leg,  then running thirty or forty meters out of the room in the vain hope of making it to the exit door without other barrels or boxes or T-bins or steel fermenting vats falling on your pretty little head.

In order to find this picture, I Google image-ed “barrel stacks,” and found this photo on a UC Berkeley website detailing a study that showcased the disastrous effects an earthquake could have on the wine industry.  Let’s all note the photo of the barrels post shaking, shall we?:

Well, then.

In related but less terrifying news, lots of red wines are finishing their fermentation cycle and are being pressed and barreled.  Our little babies are growing up so fast!

It’s been so fun tasting these wines from plain juice, to juice with native yeast fermenting in it, to juice with yeast inoculation, to nearly dry wine, to free-run juice, to hard pressed juice, to young wines with a year or more of barrel aging to complete.  I was talking about it with my barrel climbing, Brix measuring partner-in-crime today, and I concluded that tasting throughout the wine’s life before bottle has really helped me pick out particular nuances in the aroma and taste that can be pinpointed back to each individual step.  It’s really, really neat.

But fear not!  Tonnage wise, we’re only about a third of the way through harvest.  So there’s a plethora of new fruit coming in next week, and its life cycle will look much the same as the fruit we’ve worked with over the last two weeks:  Sort.  Cold soak.  Punch down.  Inoculate.  Punch down.  Measure Brix daily.  Punch down.  Press.  Barrel.  Rinse and repeat.

I began taking dance lessons at the age of 3, when my parents brought me to a small weekly class at a community recreation center.  There I was free to prance around in a pink leotard and scratchy tutu along with 10 other toddlers, feeling as graceful as a swan and ready to take ABT by storm.  Class consisted first of us walking then running across the room as delicately as we could, and finished with us standing in the center, lithely moving our feet into ballet positions.  I was hooked.

I danced for the next 13 years, until I was 16 and decided that I’d better focus on school and extracurricular activities if I ever wanted to make it into a good school.  So I stopped with the lessons.  As the last 8 years have passed, my once strong muscles have atrophied away, my turnout has disappeared, and I can barely do one pirouette, much less 3 or 4.

Throughout college and even recently, I’ve mostly gotten exercise from the typical hamster machines — a few minutes here and there on the elliptical or treadmill, along with some situps to get me by.  And hot damn, if it isn’t BORING.  In the last six months, I’d been considering putting on some dance shoes again, but wasn’t too serious about it.

But with all this winemaking, and seeing and tasting things I would’ve never dreamed of having access to, I’ve been totally inspired to get out there and pursue those little things that I know I’m interested in devoting my time to.  I mean, if I can learn how to make wine, and get a culinary degree, and even get published, what’s stopping me from doing anything else that I dream about??

So last week, I found an adult dance center here in the city, which offers all levels of ballet instruction, as well as jazz, lyrical and hip hop.  Today I marched my un-toned tush down to San Francisco Dancewear, and purchased a new pair of soft soled ballet slippers and some leggings (save my tap shoes, all my previous dancewear and footwear seems to have gone missing…though I must confess, I doubt I’d fit into any of it).

Tonight, for the first time in many, many years, I sewed elastic into dance shoes.  It was a good feeling.

Reader, the best advice I can give you is to follow your dreams in life.  It’s scary, and certainly requires ample amounts of soul searching along the way, but at the end of the day, it’s among the most exhilarating and fulfilling choices you can make for yourself.  Just remember that the easiest path is rarely the most interesting.  Take a chance on yourself…you’ll be surprised what you can do.

I only worked a half day at Crushpad today, mostly setting up and then taking part in our first Crush Camp.  We had two clients come through, which is abnormally small, but fun since you get so much interaction with them that way.  And clients are always such a great revitalizer — just when you think you’re totally pooped out, they show up so bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to talk, taste, and make wine.  It’s awesome.  And the community Crushpad has created is incredible.  I love that people can show up from all over the world, but are buddies in minutes because of their common interest in fermented grape juice.

I’m cutting this post a bit short, as I just scarfed down a late lunch and need to hit the showers and pack…I’m headed to LA for the weekend to tailgate and see the USC – OSU game.  And what would a trip to LA be without a dinner at El Cholo?  Oh, the many nights I spent at El Cholo as an undergraduate…but I’ll save those stories for another post.

Reader, have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you right back here on Monday.

Yesterday began bright and early for me: I was on the train headed towards the winery by 5:45 a.m., and measuring Brix and temperature of Pinots and Cabernets by 6:15.  There were probably around 70 T-bins to punchdown and take measurements on yesterday; we didn’t finish until 9:30.  Amazingly enough, in a few short weeks there will be least 300 bins sitting around, constantly needing to be punched and measured.  Though right now some of the wines only need a punchdown once a day, as they begin to ferment and are inoculated with yeast, they’ll need to be punched 3 or 4 times a day.  It’s a never ending process, this winemaking business.  And needless to say, your arms get in REALLY good shape from all the exercise.

Winery staff and clients sort through grapes, removing leaves, sticks, and bugs -- anything other than grapes!

Even though I worked from 6 to 6, the day FLEW by.  Punchdowns came and went, then it was time to measure Brix and temperature of the chardonnays that were pressed and put into barrel last week.  We hosted a tour, had some lunch at Hard Knox (best new restaurant find of the summer, for sure), then I talked wine making with my boss, clarifying some of the things I’ve seen over the last few days so I don’t look like a total idiot once I start hosting Crush Camps on Friday.  The end of the day saw me making water and acid additions to some of the wines whose sugar levels were a bit high, and finally, Teldeschi Zinfandel grape sorting.

I returned home, showered the stickiness off, devoured some leftover French onion soup, and passed out around 8:45.  It was a fun, but tiring day.

The winery has two cameras that film what’s going on 24/7.  If you click here on the right day and time, you might even see yours truly sorting some grapes!  (Be sure to say hi to me via the live chat if you do!)

I had grape skins under my fingernails when I got home; even when I cleaned them out, my nails still look dirty, and there’s a dark stain in my cuticles that refuses to come out, even after three rough scrubbings.

My shirt was so sticky with grape juice when I arrived home that when I released my tote bag from my shoulder to wearily drop it on the ground, it had stuck to the side of me.  I peeled my bag away, the fabric of my shirt making that same sound as when a label is peeled from it’s bottle.

My feet are so weary from 11 hours of standing and walking.  I haven’t been on them this much since culinary school.  And my shoulders are already beginning to ache from punching down cold-soaking grapes in their bins.

I’m scheduled to hit the winery by 6 am on Wednesday, and probably won’t leave until 6 pm that night.

And so far, I’m loving every minute of it.

Today though, with the afternoon off from work, he had more time to consider his dinner options going into Labor Day Weekend 2008 (is it September ALREADY?).

“Portobello burgers,” I was told before heading off to the Ferry Building for a meeting, “Portobello burgers with collard greens and malt vinegar.”

“Collard greens, eh?  What if there are no collard greens?  Will some other kind of sauteed green suffice?”

He considered it for a moment.  “That works too.”

The end result looked a little something like this:

If it looks like this photo was taken hastily and without much thought, it was.  We were in the middle of eating, I’d already devoured half of it, and I realized I best take a photo while the gettin’ was good.

Details: Large hamburger buns from Acme.  Drizzled with olive oil, then grilled.  Grilled portobello caps, marinated in a mixture of balsamic vinegar, dijon, fresh oregano, olive oil, kosher salt and black pepper (adapted from a recipe created by my good friend, Cindy, for a “Pairings” column).  Burgers then garnished with slabs of feta cheese, thinly shaved sweet onion, sliced avocado, mesclun greens and heirloom tomato.  Served alongside beet greens quick-sauteed with a mixture of garlic and chili infused olive oil, lemon juice and a sprinkling of sugar to balance it all out.

Accompanied by a bottle of 2005 Domaine Serene “Evenstad Reserve” Pinot Noir, which was good enough to bathe in.

It was a perfect meal to close out the summer.  And I still have the beets leftover to roast; a reminder that fall is just around the corner.