Our Life in Wine

Spring is just around the corner – although we’ve been enjoying historical boatloads of rain here in California!  Our total for the last 4.5 months has been over 30 inches!  Historical average for our area is 13-15 inches in a whole year.  Even though the ground is a bit soggy, this water is essential to refill our reservoirs, and the vines are perfectly happy with it since they are in their dormant state at this point.  Only once they start pushing out little green buds, shoots & then flowers, do we need to worry about too much moisture or frost. 

In terms of winemaking, we did some barrel sampling to see how our wines are doing.  They have just completed what is known as secondary fermentation or malolactic fermentation.  What does that mean? 

Wines undergo their primary fermentation (the most well-known part of the process) shortly after harvest when yeast converts the sugars in the grapes into alcohol.  After primary fermentation, the wine is put into barrels or tanks (usually in October or November) to finish its natural process.  One of the things that occurs is a secondary fermentation, where natural/good bacteria converts the malic acids present in the wine, into lactic acids.  This is why it is also called malolactic fermentation (converting malo into lactic acid).  Those two acids can be found in foods from our everyday lives.  The best example of a food with malic acid is a green apple – bright, crisp, acidity.  The best example of a food with lactic acid is milk – creamy, smooth and rounded.  When this conversion occurs with wines, the acids go from being sharp and crisp to rounded and smooth.  For red wines this is necessary to provide the right balance and mouthfeel.  With white wines however, some winemakers choose to stop malolactic fermentation in order to preserve an apple-like or lemon-like characteristic (think of a crisp sauvignon blanc), while others allow malolactic fermentation to achieve a creamy acidity (like rounder Chardonnays).  

Once malolactic fermentation is complete, the wines are moved from their current vessel they are in (in our case barrels) to a clean vessel.  This process is called “racking” whereby the wine is drained or pumped out of the original vessel into a fresh one, leaving behind any sediment or spent yeast cells at the bottom of the old vessel.  For example, our wines were pumped out of their current barrels, into a clean tank; the barrels were then cleared from all sediment and washed out thoroughly; then the wine went back into the freshened barrel to rest again for many more months.  The additional resting period will help it to mature, gain in complexity, harmonize flavors and overall come into its own.  We use neutral French oak barrels; neutral oak refers to an oak barrel that has previously been used for aging other wines.  After about 3 vintages of use, the oak no longer imparts significant flavors into the wine. However aging in the barrel allows a tiny amount of oxygen into the wine, facilitating that maturation process. 

Even though we're still early in the process, we're happy with how our wines taste so far.  

I was blown away by the aroma of the Mourvèdre!  It smelled like deep ripe blackberry, with a sprinkle of peppercorn.  On the palate, blackberries were pronounced, juicy and bursting with flavor. Immediately followed by the flavor of a summertime tea leaf.  The acidity was fresh, giving a nice balance to the fruit.  A summertime dinner on the patio with grilled hamburgers and this wine would be perfect. A bit more time in barrel will help ground the flavors and give the mouthfeel more depth, creating a very harmonious wine. 

The Grenache is a beautiful wine, elegant in body and layered in complexity.  A nose of plum and violet precedes a flavor of blueberry and baking spices.  As the wine ages, the acidity will provide a wonderful backbone for it to develop, and additional racking and barrel resting will enable it to become even more complex.  As a companion, I'd serve this with small bites like crostini with ricotta and honey, or a simple cheese & charcuterie board with hard salty cheese like gouda where the wine complements it like a plum compote would. 

There are many more months to go – making wine is a very long process!  Nonetheless, it's been incredibly rewarding, and we're excited to show you the fruits of our labor (ha ha). 

Cheers! 

-Sarah & Skye