Wine Trivia du Jour
Here’s a crazy one for you:
True or false: The substance that makes microwave popcorn buttery is the same as the one that makes Chardonnay buttery.
What do you think? Too strange to be true? So strange that it has to be true?
Find out in our Wine Trivia Challenge! Cheers!
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? Enjoy this 2-minute Fun Fact!
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!
Goosecross: Pumping Over the Cap
We continue with winemaking at Goosecross Cellars in the Napa Valley, two minutes at at time. The “cap” has risen, we’ve added the yeast, and now it’s time to begin “pump overs”. The cap refers to the layer of skins that rise to the top during red-wine fermentation. Enjoy!
Goosecross: Starting the Fermentation
Wonder how we get the fermentation started? In this 2-minute video Goosecross Winemaker, Geoff Gorsuch, inoculates the Syrah (mixes and adds the yeast) to begin fermentation. Enjoy!
NVWR® 92 – Wine Blending: When and Why?
There are so many ways to look at blending wine – blending the varieties, different vineyards, locations, and barrel lots – it goes on and on. In this episode, Winemakers Geoff Gorsuch and Jeff Booth talk about the endless possibilities with Nancy Hawks Miller, our Director of Education.
Sulfites and Wine
We get lots of questions about sulfites, and hope that this information is helpful.
Why do wines have sulfites in them?
The simple answer is that they’re a naturally occurring by-product of the fermentation. But that’s not the whole answer. World wide, most wineries add sulfur dioxide (SO2) during winemaking as a preservative, as has been done for centuries. It’s an anti-oxidant and anti-bacterial agent. It keeps the color bright, fruit flavors fresh and prevents spoilage. The best wineries add very small amounts. There are stronger preservatives we may legally add, such as potassium sorbate, but most producers find that they interfere with aroma and flavor.
Wines bottled with no added sulfites are often quite attractive at the time of release, but tend to have a short shelf-life because the amount of active SO2 produced during fermentation may not be adequate to protect the wine, plus the active sulfur diminishes with time. Most often, as a result, the flavors fade and the wine loses its freshness and begins to brown. This means the wine is less reliably good, and aging it will more likely lead to spoilage than added complexity.
Are sulfites harmful?
Sulfites from any source, food or wine, are harmful to about .25% of the population. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which keeps track of reported sulfite reactions in the U.S., listed just 1,097 such cases between 1985 and 1995. However, those reactions can be extremely serious and sulfite-sensitive individuals know that they must avoid wine, fruit juice, sausages and many processed foods.
Although the threat is small, since 1987 the FDA has required that all wines containing more than 10 parts per million of sulfites must bear a warning label. Since wine fermentation naturally produces between 5 and 20 parts per million, the 10 parts per million threshold is exceeded in virtually every wine produced in the USA and abroad. Wines made in the U.S. are permitted to contain as much as 350 parts per million, a level unlikely to occur, as it would be offensive. Some processed foods, in contrast, contain over 1,000 parts per million, because food laws are more lenient.
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How We Make Our Estate Chardonnay
Wine making is so simple, it was discovered by mistake. Fresh grape juice, unattended, will become wine sooner or later. But here’s the hard part: will the wine be any good? Science helps us bottle wine that is much more predictably sound than it was 100 years ago, but we can’t make memorable wine in a lab.
The real fun and art of winemaking lies in the endless variables that come up along the way. Where and how to plant? When to harvest? How to handle the grapes at the winery? What kind of yeast to add? What kind of fermentation vessel should we use? Which barrels to buy? It goes on and on.
We’re going to focus on the choices that Geoff Gorsuch, our Winemaker, makes along the way to produce Goosecross Chardonnay every year.
Planting A Vineyard
Geoff will tell you that the wine can only be as good as the grapes that make it. There is no way to make a wonderful wine out of mediocre grapes, no matter how skilled the producer. Geoff’s goal is to get his hands on the best possible fruit and then to conserve the beauty of the fruit through attentive, but not intrusive, winemaking.
In our case, as a small, family winery, the winemaker is also the vineyard manager. Geoff is hands-on from the planting of the vines, every step of the way, until the wine is bottled.
You’ve heard the old real estate saw: “location, location, location.” Well, it truly applies in growing grapes for wine. Getting the right variety in the right location is 90% of the battle. We grow our Estate Chardonnay in the coolest region of Napa Valley, known as the Carneros Region. This is an ideal location for Chardonnay, where the grapes ripen slowly in the persistent morning fog, and cool evening breezes. The resulting prolonged “hangtime,” literally means that the Chardonnay has enough time on the vine to develop completely mature flavors and to delight us with a little tropical character. The soil is typical of Carneros, in that there is clay, but it is interspersed with some gravel and sand, improving drainage.
Before planting a vineyard like this, we bring in experts to take soil samples from various parts of the property, and also to measure the specific mesoclimate1 throughout the vineyard. With this information, we can make good decisions about selecting the optimal clone2 and root-stock hybrid3 for the site, and also set up the best spacing and row orientation for eventual wine quality.
For this site, we selected the low-vigor, SO4 rootstock in order to keep the yields down and flavors concentrated. A vertical trellis system4 in this location, running east-west, allows for plenty of light exposure to heighten fruitiness with very little risk of sunburn.
With these choices made, we lay out the posts, stakes and wires for the trellis. We dug the holes, planted and trained the vines and attached the trellis wires by hand. A drip irrigation system completes the installation.
From planting the rootstock or benchgrafts5, it is 3-4 years to the first small crop. We think of the vineyard as mature when it is 6 or 7 years old, and hope that it will be with us for decades.
California Wine History
California wine is nearly as old as our country, believe it or not. People are nearly always surprised to learn that there were around 800 wineries in the state, with more than 100 wineries in the Napa Valley alone, in 1890. The fact that Napa Valley’s first non-native settlers arrived around 1838 makes it all the more remarkable.
Wine in Ancient Times
Like most good things in life, we’re pretty sure that wine was discovered by mistake. Wine residue has been found in containers that date back over 7,000 years, so that’s the official beginning. But, since yeast is everywhere like bacteria, no doubt someone at some very ancient time set aside a little grape juice as a treat for later and soon found they had something much more interesting all together!
The species that makes the world’s wine today, vitis vinifera, is thought to be native to the area south of the Black Sea, in what is now Georgia and Armenia, and eventually traveled west. There’s evidence that vitis vinifera was not only growing, but actively cultivated, in Tuscany before the Romans overtook the Etruscans in the 4th century BC and had been growing wild for centuries prior! Imagine what the wine must have tasted like then! Apparently, it was common to add herbs and spices to make it more palatable. Of course, Europe takes the credit for making these varieties famous. But, things really didn’t start to happen in Europe until the ancient Romans began classifying grape varieties and studying their characteristics in order to increase yields and improve quality.
Wine Comes to the Americas
Wine production spread throughout Europe, surviving many physical and political upheavals over the centuries, thanks mainly to the church. Finally, around 1500, wine made its way to Mexico and Argentina for the first time. Hernando Cortez was the first to successfully establish European wine grapes in what is now Mexico. There was little confidence that his venture would succeed because earlier attempts to grow them along the Gulf Coast of North America had been disastrous – a foreshadowing of our phylloxera problems. But, the vines did so well in Mexico, where there was no phylloxera, that by 1595 the King of Spain decreed that new plantings and re-plantings were strictly forbidden, for fear of competition to his export market. The restriction was enforced for 150 years, putting any potential for commercial production on hiatus.
As in Europe, thanks to the church, some of the wine plantings survived and the California wine industry was concentrated in southern California, known as Alta California, in the early days. It gradually made its way north as more and more missions dotted their way up our coastline. It seems that the padres always brought the vines along with them. Father Junipero Serra was responsible for planting the first California vineyard in San Diego in 1769. Many think of him as the first true father of California wine.
Apparently, his planting was limited to what we know as the Mission grape, presumably brought over from Spain, a bland variety that’s fallen out of use. From what little is written, it made very poor dry table wine and passable brandy. Its best incarnation seemed to be as a fortified wine, somewhat like Madeira, which they called Angelica. European immigrants began bringing in better varieties in the 1800s and so Mission began to fade away except for the brandy and Angelica.
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Q: Conversion rate for fermentation?
Question from Karen:Â I have a question for you… If you crush wine grapes and the juice has 20% sugar, is the alcohol 5%??? Looking forward to your answer. Thank you.
Reply: Hi, Karen! Thanks for writing!
Here’s a brief reply from our winemaker, Geoff Gorsuch: Depending on all the parameters, yeast, temperature, nutrients, and how the crush and pre-fermentation treatment is handled you should end up around 9-12% alcohol if fermentation is finished.” By finished, he means if you let the wine ferment dry rather than stopping it in order to retain some sweetness.
The most common conversion rate of sugar to alcohol is 50-60% and Geoff allowed for a little more than that. The choice of yeast is one of the biggest factors and late-model, “cleaned up” yeasts are playing a role in the whole “hang-time” discussion regarding the alcohol in the finished wine.
Here’s how Wikipedia explains fermentation. Hope that helps! Cheers!
Q: Sulfites/California Wine/Headaches
Question from Susan: Â 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
How Long Does It Take To Make Wine?
Fun fact by Nancy Hawks Miller: How Long Does It Take To Make Wine?
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