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Punching Down the Cap
This brief video is a show and tell on why and how we punch down the “cap” of skins during wine fermentation. Enjoy!
Goosecross: First Day of Crush, 2010
We’ve had a busy day! In this 2-minute video you see Napa Valley old-vine Chenin Blanc being crushed and pressed. How sweet it is!
Wine Blending Q & A with our Winemaker
There are so many ways to look at blending wine: Blending grape varieties, different vineyard lots, locations, barrel lots and more. I 
sat down with Geoff Gorsuch, our Winemaker, and also Jeff Booth, our consulting winemaker, to discuss the endless possibilities.
Q: I think when we hear the term blending, we tend to think first about blending grape varieties. Can you talk about some of the other ways wine is blended?
A: You can blend different sections of the vineyard, whether or not they’re the same variety – maybe it’s a different clone of the variety or it has different exposure; you can choose different barrel lots: New barrels, older barrels, different coopers, toasting levels or forests; you can blend vintages if you want; you can blend different geographic areas together to broaden the palette of flavors, for instance blending the Yountville AVA with the Carneros AVA, Napa Valley with Russian River or even blending grapes or wines from different states together. As long as you label the wine accurately, anything goes!
Q: It seems like some varieties, like Pinot Noir, aren’t often blended with other varieties, where Cabernet and Syrah are blended all the time. Why do you think that is?
A: Part of it is tradition. Classically, in Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon is blended with other Bordeaux varieties such as Merlot, Cabernet Franc, etc. Or Syrah, a variety that comes from the Rhone, is traditionally blended with Grenache, Carignane or Mourvedre. Perhaps these traditions became traditions because blending improves the wine. We’re always looking for balance in the wine and if the Cabernet is too tannic we know that Merlot has a rounding effect. Also, in difficult climates, a relatively early-ripening red, like Merlot, is a form of crop insurance. If your Cabernet gets rained out, at least you already have the Merlot in the barn.
Q: Our Cabernets are often 100%. Is that by design or is it just the way it turns out?
A: It’s just the way it’s turned out. We always want to make the best possible wine we can, so we make trial blends with various amounts of the other Bordeaux varieties included and then we go with what tastes best, has good complexity and has the best balance. I also want to think about the possibility of making a separate bottling of one of the blending grapes like Cabernet Franc. Do I have enough to blend and also showcase the variety separately? We just released the 2007 Estate Cabernet and it’s 91% Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest Cabernet Franc. That’s what tasted best to us. We also managed to bottle a small amount of varietal Cab Franc.
Q: There are also different vineyard lots and clones of the same variety available. How does that work?
A: I always keep all the vineyard lots separate intitially so I can see how they turn out. Then, later, we can think about blending them together. At that point we don’t really think of them as different clones, necessarily. We just think of them as candidates and put together the blend we like the best. But, certainly, the fact that we have three different clones of Cabernet on our estate means we’ve got a potentially very complex blend without blending in other varieties. We just have to taste and find out.
Q: Can you explain how you set up a blending trial?
A: If, for instance, we were working on a Napa Valley Cabernet blend, we get samples of all the wines in the cellar that we consider to be candidates – the different varieties, clones and barrel lots. We taste them all individually to get a sense of what we’re working with. As we do this, we have a flavor profile in mind for the finished wine and we think about what role any of these samples might play.
It can start out kind of random – a little of this with a little of that just to see what happens. Later, it becomes a process of elimination. There are always candidates that are quite good, but not right for this particular blend, so we begin narrowing things down. It’s really kind of fun. We also like to compare our trial blends to a bottle of the previous vintage or two, to see if there’s good continuity. If folks have loved our Napa Cab we don’t want to turn any sharp corners, stylistically, and disappoint them. This can take a little time or a lot. We sometimes come up with a terrific blend in the first round of tasting trials. Other times it takes repeated trials to get there.
Q: How do you know which barrels to buy in advance of harvest? There’s usually a barrel blend for any given wine.
A: This is a a matter of getting to know the various coopers (barrel builders) over many vintages and knowing what characteristics to expect. Of course barrels, like wine, are agricultural products so they aren’t perfectly consistent from year to year. However, like winemakers, the coopers tend to have an established house style. The way they select and harvest the wood, season it, cooper it and toast it will be fairly consistent from year to year. Over the years we’ve come to prefer certain coopers for the attributes their barrels bring to our wines. But, the mix isn’t necessarily the same for the barrels we buy to age Chardonnay vs. the Syrah. And, we like to keep our eyes open. Just about every year we’ll try a new cooper – just buy a barrel or two – to see if it might be a good fit for us. Experience with both the wine and the cooper is the best way for us to make smart decisions when it’s barrel-buying time.
Q: How do you know how to time the blending? What kinds of advantages or disadvantages are there to blending early or waiting?
A: I believe there’s a benefit to giving the blend time to integrate in the barrels before bottling, so we usually start doing these blend trials at least six months before bottling to get a sense of what we’re trying to do and then we just go from there – these trials can be repeated and tweaked. Once we have a blend that we like it’s good to leave it alone for awhile and then come back to it to either confirm that we’re happy with it or decide to play with it some more. But, once we actually build the blend in tanks in the cellar there’s no turning back.
We can’t alter the blend too much when we’re getting close to bottling time because we have to get the labels approved with the federal government and then get them printed up in time for bottling. Bottling is really difficult to schedule so we have to keep that in the back of our minds.
Q: Geoff, can you tell us about why we blend the tank fermented and barrel fermented Chardonnay?
A: I don’t want to put too much oak on the fruit. The blend varies a bit from vintage to vintage, but approximately half of the juice is fermented in a stainless-steel tank and that wine is very fruity and perfumed – very pure. The other half is barrel fermented, which makes a bigger Chardonnay that’s richer, rounder, toastier, spicier and has more vanillan. Later, I bring the two together for the right balance of fruitiness, complexity and oak.
Q: Can you talk about the blend of our 2006 AmerItal? The blend of Sangiovese and Barbera is unconventional, but so delicious!
A: That’s one of those things we just stumbled on. We put together the blend just for the heck of it and then realized it was really good and also very food friendly. It just happened, but now I’m working on doing it again!
Q: Can you explain what a Meritage blend is and how it goes when you’re working with several varieties? Is it confusing?
A: A Meritage blend is a traditional blend of the major Bordeaux varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. You don’t have to use them all – the guideline is that no one variety can make up more than 90% of the blend. We’ve enjoyed using all five so far.
Deciding on proportions depends upon your goal. If you want to make a big, beefy style of wine, probably Cabernet Sauvignonwill dominate the blend. If you’re looking for elegance, Merlot and Cabernet Franc are good candidates. With Malbec and Petit Verdot a little goes a long way. Single digit percentages of those varieties will have a big impact on the color, body and spice.
Q: Speaking of elegance, with ÆROS, you’re looking for magic. How do you approach making that blend?
A: ÆROS is our flagship, our benchmark, wine. It’s the most complex, yet it can be the most elegant. We select the components carefully – we’re looking for the most interesting, flavor-packed wine we can make. By the time we’re done with the blend it’s exquisitely balanced – not too much tannin, not too much acid, easy to drink but with great complexity.
Logistically, we look for potential ÆROS lots first in the blending season - the ones with layers of flavor and elegance. Since this is a Meritage and we also make the Estate Cabernet and the Howell Mountain Cab we want each wine to have a distinct personality. So, taking out the ÆROS components first doesn’t really hurt our chance of making excellent blends for those other Cabernet-based wines. It’s really fun to have that challenge, as winemakers, and it’s a feeling of real accomplishment on those years when it comes together.
Q: Once you’ve created the perfect blend in the lab, how do you translate those very small lots in the lab to production-sized lots?
A: You’ve just got to keep a really accurate account of how that blend came together because it’s kind of complicated with all the different barrel lots. We use graduated cylinders to measure all the different components that go into the blend and then it’s just a matter of translating it into percentages to make the larger blend in the cellar. Of course nothing is bottled from barrels. The completed master blend is stored in stainless-steel tanks until it’s ready for bottling.
NVWR® 101 – Wine Clarification
April 6, 2010 by David
Filed under Napa Valley Wine Radio
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
There are many processes behind the scenes when winemaking, some more complex than others. In this episode we thought it would be interesting to present what is meant by “racking” and “fining” the wine.
Jeff Booth of Jeff Booth Consulting describes the why, when, and how of the various methods used to clarify the wine.
I suppose you could say that we’re going to clarify wine clarification!
Q: Sulfites/California Wine/Headaches
Question from Susan: We have a friend who claims that she can only drink French reds because California reds have more nitrates/nitrites and give her headaches. Is this possible or is it a bit of wine snobbery?
Reply: Hi, Susan! Thanks for writing! I think your friend must have meant sulfites rather than nitrites. I’m pretty confident that nitrites aren’t a significant part of the wine picture (although they’re found in water, so…). They’re used to preserve hot dogs and salami and stuff like that. The sulfite question comes up pretty frequently.
It’s hard to blame her for thinking that French wine doesn’t have sulfites because, up to quite recently, only the US and Australia required the sulfite warning on the label. If you vacationed in Paris and drank French wine, a few years back, you wouldn’t have seen the warning. But, now you would (unless it’s an old vintage) and this applies to all the wine-producing countries in the European Union.
The law is very similar to the American one and enologists have determined that a bottle of French or California wine is likely to have around 80 parts per million. Any variation is more from brand to brand than country to country. Goosecross wine usually leaves here at around 30-35 ppm.
Sulfites, or sulfur, have been used to preserve wine for centuries. Even in Roman times it was used to help create a seal for the container. Without a little sulfur the wine loses its fruit and has a short shelf life. Fortunately, if the wine spoils it’s not harmful, but it’s not much fun to drink, either, which is why sulfur is still in use. Sulfites turn up in a lot of foods, too, especially dried fruit.
At this very moment, enologists are working to try to eliminate the need for sulfur. The success, so far, is by way of reducing it. Today’s wine has much lower sulfur levels than wine did as recently as 50 or 60 years ago.
This isn’t to say that you can’t buy wine that doesn’t have added sulfites. The “Organic Wine” designation prohibits sulfur additions to wine, as opposed to “organically grown”, which only refers to the farming (and even there, elemental sulfur application to the vines is permitted to keep mildew under control). The reason you don’t see very many “organic wines” is that they usually don’t taste very good. I should add that organic wine may still contain sulfites because they’re a by-product of the fermentation. The level, in that case, is extremely low.
As to the headaches, chemists keep telling us that sulfites don’t cause headaches, but statements like that can set off a maelstrom of heated opposition from those who believe otherwise. Your friend might try eating some brightly colored dried fruit to see if that causes a headache. If not, something other than sulfur is the cause. California wine is quite often higher in alcohol than French wine, due to climatic differences, so that’s the more likely culprit.
I hope that puts your debate to rest! May you and your friends enjoy wine, whatever its nationality, in good health! Cheers! Nancy
Aging the Wine “Sur Lie”
In this 2-minute video winemaker Geoff Gorsuch of Goosecross Cellars of the Napa Valley does a show and tell on why we age our Chardonnay “sur lie” and stir the lees weekly. Enjoy!
What Puts the Sparkle in Sparkling Wine?
With New Year’s Eve rapidly approaching, you might wonder what puts the sparkle in sparkling wine?
Did you know that the pressure inside a bottle of Traditional Method sparkling wine has been compared to the tire pressure on a double-decker bus?? Typically about 5-6 atmospheres or 60-90 pounds per square inch. Open that bottle with care!
Dying to know more about sparkling wine? Check out Sparkling Wine 101! Read or Listen
All of us at Goosecross wish you a happy and healthy 2010!
Goosecross: Pressing Cabernet Franc
It’s all glamour, working at a winery! In this 2-minute video you’ll see the Cabernet Franc being drained and the grape skins being shoveled out of the fermentation tank and pressed after the fermentation is over. Enjoy!
Goosecross: What is Fermentation?
In this 2-minute video wine fermentation, the conversion of grape juice to wine, is explained. Enjoy!
Goosecross: 2009 Vintage Recap
Have you heard that every year is the same here in Napa Valley? Don’t you believe it! After the drama of the 2008 vintage with its roller coaster of weather-related challenges, we enjoyed a remarkably mild, blissfully uneventful 2009 growing season. That is, until Mother Nature tossed us a curve ball on October 13th. We had the heaviest harvest rainfall since the early 80s! Perhaps this will be called the Bordeaux vintage…
Spring
The vines came out of their winter sleep just about on time, in the third week of March, and we were off to a 
beautiful start. The weather was gorgeous – late March and early April brought us daytime temperatures in the 70s with lows in the 40s at night. The word frost was barely part of our vocabulary last spring, which was a delightful contrast to the spring of 2008. These mild conditions seemed to set the tone for the whole season – it was very comfortable for both the vines and the people!
By April, Geoff Gorsuch, our Winemaker, began the usual shoot thinning, essentially correcting the pruning work he did in the winter. The winter pruning is an attempt to determine the number of shoots and clusters that will appear in the spring but, as Geoff says, the vines don’t read the textbook and some thinning is inevitable to prevent crowding and over-cropping. See our video of springtime shoot thinning
That initial thinning was just the beginning. The vines seemed to thrive on the mild growing conditions and between the beautiful weather and a good soaking of rain in early May they grew like gangbusters. Geoff couldn’t remember a season when he’s done so much shoot thinning.
It’s important to keep the vines balanced – carrying the right number of shoots and potential crop for the site and spacing – and also to keep the ratio of leafy growth to clusters in line. Otherwise we risk vegetal characteristics in the wine. The thinning also increases ventilation which helps keep mildew in check.
The vines flowered around middle of May, right on time again, and the weather continued to cooperate nicely. Too much heat can burn the flowers and heavy rain may knock them off,
resulting in crop loss, or “shatter”. We lucked out and Geoff saw fairly uniform fruit set and nicely formed clusters.
When pollination is complete, it’s time to make cluster counts and this was the first indication that we’d have a nice, average-sized crop. Geoff did a little cluster thinning at that point to ensure good flavor intensity down the road – quantity and quality don’t necessarily go together in the world of wine.
Exceptionally mild weather continued through June and July, punctuated by a couple of heat waves. By the time the grapes here at the winery began to change color, the third week of July, many of the local growers reported being significantly behind schedule, most likely due to the cool conditions. An early or late harvest is neither good nor bad – it depends upon what happens between fruit set and harvest. The grapes need enough time to develop flavor maturity, which is why you hear talk of “hangtime” on the early years. On the late years we worry about running into rain.
Summer
The color change, when the grapes turn from green to yellow-green or purple, is such a significant event there’s a name for it: veraison (see video). It signals that the shoots have stopped growing and the vine’s energy has shifted into fruit ripening. At this point, Geoff did more shoot and leaf thinning. If there’s too much leafy growth, aside from encouraging vegetal character the grapes may get sweet faster than the flavors mature.
Veraison is also a good time to re-evaluate the crop load. Geoff walks the vineyard repeatedly to see if the clusters are coloring up nicely. Dropping unripe fruit on the ground isn’t something he likes to do, but if some of the clusters are lagging behind, they’ll add green, unripe flavor to the wine. So – off they come – it’s called a “green harvest” (see video). He also needs to make sure that the vines aren’t carrying more fruit than they can ripen with a high degree of flavor intensity – sometimes thinning is the answer.
Once the fruit is nicely colored up, it’s time to begin field sampling (see video), which is gathering grape samples for tasting and analysis (see video). Geoff knows the end point he wants to reach in terms of numbers and, more importantly, flavors for each variety and site. The sugar level or brix, is important because it determines the alcohol. The acidity gives the wine freshness and makes it food friendly. The pH is related to the health and stability of the wine. Flavor is the over-riding consideration, so he samples with increasing frequency until he finally decides it’s time to harvest!
When the numbers fall nicely into place at the same time the flavors are at peak it’s called a good year! Most winemakers will tell you that the most important decision they make on an annual basis is when to pick each section of grapes because that’s their best chance to make beautifully balanced wine that’s packed with flavor.
Harvest
The sparkling wine producers began bringing in their Pinot Noir and Chardonnay the third week of August. A few Sauvignon Blanc vineyards came in about that time, too.
The Chenin Blanc was the first to arrive on our crush pad, over Labor Day weekend, nearly two weeks later than the start date for 2008 (see video of crushing). Surprisingly, the Estate
Merlot was ready on the 7th. We think of Merlot as a mid-season variety. Perhaps it was because of the light crop in that part of the vineyard. The very sparse crop from Howell Mountain was next and we were off to the races!
September was the warmest month of the season, by far. If you check our harvest calendar, you’ll see that the fruit was coming in fast and furious at the end of September and the beginning of October. It meant very long hours for Geoff and his crew.
As local growers and winemakers began to talk about the vintage the most common themes were good flavor maturity at relatively low brix (sugar levels) – that’s no surprise given the cool weather – and very good news in terms of balance. Most winemakers seemed to agree that the reds had excellent color – a good indicator for flavor intensity. Opinions were all over the board regarding yields, so it appeared to be a question of location. The yields in our home vineyard, here in Yountville, were quite good while the crop up at Howell Mountain resembled that of 2008 – very sparse.
The upside of the rapid-fire pace is that Geoff and his fatigued crush crew could begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The advantage we didn’t anticipate was that almost all of our grapes were harvested in advance of a major, winter-style rainstorm on October 13th. We measured over three inches in 24 hours here in Yountville!
A little sprinkle doesn’t much matter but this kind of rain is a real worry – it brings down the sugar and can cause dilution and rot!
The good news for local growers was that Cabernet Sauvignon was the main grape still hanging. It’s fairly rot resistant, thanks to its thick skin and loose cluster formation. After rain we pray for wind to dry things out and with Cab, there’s a good chance it will all turn out fine. Many growers and winemakers thinned leaves to improve ventilation.
The only variety we had yet to harvest, at that point, was the Carneros Syrah – fortunately another tough-skinned grape. Geoff gave it a few days hoping things would dry out and, with some trepidation, went down to check things out. Much to his relief, it looked clean and the sugar was on a par with 2008. With more rain predicted in another few days he went ahead and brought it in the next day at 24% sugar – just about perfect – and the color was remarkably deep! It turned out to be a good call because we got another good soaking the next day. And, so ended the Goosecross harvest on October 18th.
For the Napa Valley as a whole, a number of growers had grapes out until the end of October but, with more rain predicted for the first week of November, there was a rush to finish harvesting by Halloween. There was some warm, windy weather along the way, which is ideal for drying things out and bringing up the sugar. But, the linchpin for any review of the 2009 harvest will center on what was harvest before, vs. after, the rainstorm.
Our first releases from the 2009 vintage will be the fruity whites: Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier and Chenin Blanc. They’re best when they’re young and we’ll bottle them in December, anticipating a springtime release.
After a beautiful growing season of mild, sunny days and cool, foggy nights, we were reminded not to count our chickens before they’re hatched! Geoff is grateful to have escaped the rain-related challenges, for the most part, and pleased with the flavor concentration and excellent balance of the 2009 vintage as he moves into getting the new wines barrelled up and blended. Now, on to 2010!
