Weird Science -- Blending the SB

We'll be doing some posts to fill in the blanks from between our trip to Crushpad in September 2007 and the arrival of the Fainwood Sauvignon Blanc last month. So, just how did Fainwood get to taste like it does? Part of it is in the blending or, more accurately, the lack thereof...

When we embarked on the sauvignon blanc project last summer, we searched our local wine stores for SBs for which the kindly winery and winemakers had provided lots of technical information either on the bottle itself or on their Web sites: information like pH and TA (total acidity) as well as if they did any barrel aging or if they let the wine undergo malolactic fermentation (a secondary fermentation that is always allowed in red wines and occassionally in whites, mostly in the case of chardonnays; "malo" as it is called contributes a roundness and fullness in the wine's mouth feel, often described as a buttery component). Some wineries had lots of info, which was quite useful in the many SB tastings we conducted ourselves last summer. While far from being truly scientific, we were able to begin narrowing down how certain technical components contributed to certain resulting taste features in the various wines we tried. This all served to help us convert the taste that we wanted in our finished Fainwood SB into the technical criteria we needed to discuss with the winemakers at Crushpad.


While almost all of the SB picked for our Fainwood bottling was fermented and aged in stainless steel vessels, Crushpad held some of the juice separate and transferred it to oak barrels for some barrel fermentation and ultimately a little malo. The question for us, then, was how much, if any, of that barrel fermented SB did we want to blend with the pure stainless.

From the tastings we had done of other SBs, all along we thought we wanted a little barrel and/or malolactic fermented juice to take the sharp edge off the traditional acidic SB taste and give it a little more depth. So after Crushpad shipped us samples of both the stainless and the barrel juice for us to blend in February 2008, we assumed we were in for some combination of barrel/malolactic in our final blended wine.

It was like being back in science class, as we broke out pipettes and graduated cylinders (thanks Joerg!), and started measuring out small amounts of both wines. First, we were struck by how much we loved the pure stainless and how pleased we were with the Crushpad execution of our wine plan. We ran the gamut from an even 50%-50% split to a 75%-25% to an 80%-20%...you get the picture. Marc had to get more and more exacting with his tiny droplets of barrel wine that he mixed in the stainless steel. We got down to about 5% barrel fermented and worked down 1% at a time. At 1% we simply declared that the unadulterated stainless SB was the taste we were after. Try as we might, nothing beat it. And alas, the blend was no blend at all.

Yum

Well, we couldn't be happier with the Fainwood sauvignon blanc. The folks at Crushpad executed our wine plan just as we had hoped and we have a delicious and imminently drinkable bottle of summer wine. It is a straight down the middle sauvignon blanc made in what we think of as the Napa style: brightly acidic, but not overly so, fruity, but not overly perfumed like many of those from New Zealand. We've found that it drinks best after it's been open for about 15-30 minutes and once it's warmed up a bit from the fridge, which makes it a bit too cold, masking the flavors. (As evidenced by the pictures, we've had many "test" bottles so far to figure this out.) In a future post we'll put all the technical details about the wine.

Fainwood Has Landed

Though we have been quite lax in our updating of this blog, fortunately our wines haven't followed suit down our lazy path. The first thing you may notice is that we chose "Fainwood" as the official name (thanks to all for participating with your fun suggestions).

While we were all busy with other things (including baby Daniel for Katie and Ryan), our wines have been continuing their individual journeys. Our zinfandel is on its last legs of fermentation -- a full eight months after it began -- but perhaps more importantly, the sauvignon blanc sprinted toward the finish line to become a full-fledged wine. We'll go backward in time and provide far more of the details of how this came to be in the next few posts, but, for now, rest assured that the sauvignon blanc is bottled, labeled, and currently recovering from its cross-country trip from San Francisco at Marc's parents' house in Setauket, NY.

A hearty thanks to Papa Goldstein and Uncle Arnie for picking up (literally) the 24 cases from the dropoff point in Queens and photographing the process (proud grandparents?). How's that for a little teaser? Tune in for a photo replay of the pickup and conga line of cases down to the Goldstein cellar.

And get ready to drink up with us in the Sauvignon Blanc Summer of 2008!

Trip Report Coming Soon

Marc and Lori have been really busy catching up on everything we had to drop for our last-minute trip out to Crushpad. We hope to have a complete wine update soon. For now, enjoy a couple of pictures from our visit.

Here's the before (our zinfandel grapes before sorting and crushing):



And here's the after (zinfandel grapes during fermentation):



Here's a chemistry lesson: the fermenting grapes literally go pop, pop, fizz, fizz, as those crazy yeasts eat away at the sugar and give off carbon dioxide, making the mixture bubble and giving off a tremendous amount of heat (upwards of 80 degrees F).

More fun facts soon!

Crushpad Sept. 2007 Visit

We're back from our visit to Crushpad. In a word, it was wild. We sorted the grapes, tasted the fermenting zinfandel and sauvignon blanc, met some great people, and learned a lot. There's no substitute to seeing the process in person. If you didn't happen to tune in to the Crushpad Web cam on Friday, Sept. 7 while we were sorting the grapes, you can get a little taste of what it was like by watching us in a video Crushpad produced:

Crushpad Video of Marc and Lori

They are just about ready to press the zinfandel grapes today or tomorrow. Hopefully we can watch remotely via Webcam.

We'll follow up with details on the whole experience soon.

California Here We Come

Okay, it's early. Forgive us for the cheesy title. Lame as it may be, it's also accurate.

With a heat wave that's taken hold of Northern California (high 90s and 100 in most wine country regions), the grapes just can't wait any longer. Just about everything is ripe and ready to pick, including our Teldeschi zinfandel grapes.

After first being told on Wednesday morning that harvest would be in "a few weeks," that abruptly changed at 5 pm that same day when we were told they'd be picking on Friday--this Friday.

In less than a day Marc and Lori had managed to clear work schedules, find airfare, hotels, and put together a trip out to Crushpad in San Francisco to participate in the zinfandel crush. We are extending the trip out to do some wine tasting in Boonville and Sonoma and to visit our friends and gracious hosts for our San Francisco leg of the trip, Tim, Mechelle, and birthday boy Lucas (thanks again guys!). The only part of the plan that didn't come together is Katie and Ryan being able to join us. We'll be sure to take lots of photos to post when we return.

We aren't quite sure what we'll be doing out there, but you can get a taste for it if you tune into the Crushpad Web cam on Friday, 5pm EST. You may just see us at the sorting table or stomping away "I Love Lucy" style.

Last One in the Crusher's a Rotten Grape!

Today, August 27, 2007, marks the official start to our wine-making venture as our Galleron Road sauvignon blanc grapes were picked very early this morning and are currently being processed at Crushpad's San Francisco facility.

Check out the progress via Web cam at Crushpad Cam.

On Friday, we were sent some statistics and a description of the taste of the grapes:

Galleron Road Sauvignon Blanc
Brix (sugar content): 24.2
pH: 3.24
Total acidity (TA): 7.8

On the home stretch, the leafy green component in the juice is just about gone, the fruit is showing lots of sweet melon flavors, and the pH and acidity are at the levels that suggest optimal maturity for SB.

More details of the sauvignon blanc to come soon!