Wine Maker Musings January 2016

Winemaker’s Musings January 2016

 

Pruning is coming along well. Jimmy and Jeremy have been doing a fine job of it. Will probably plant another experimental ½ acre of some new hybrids form Minnesota. They have very good tannin in them and I am curious how they will do here “down south”!

As I said earlier because of the low volumes we will not be making some of our traditional wines this year, including Vignoles, Traminette, Brianna, Syrah, Ice Falcon. Not to worry too much as we   have extra of those from earlier harvest,.

The semi-sweet and sweeter wines are fantastic this year. The jury is still out on the drys. I expect to make a very nice Norton this year though. A dry Chambourcin is still iffy. Since we had so much rain the crops did not ripen as well as I would have liked.

We had a nice barrel tasting last night. Everyone enjoyed it and learned a few things . I am sorry to announce the 2011 Port is all sold out. For those of you who like the tawny ports you best buy what we have now. It is a no-vintage (blend of 2011 and 2012) port that will age a little better than the 2010 and 2011, but has not yet developed all those cool reductive flavors the tawnys are known for. Our newer ports are meant to last many years, so their flavor profile early in their life still has some acidic zip to it. I call them ruby ports. They will be absolutely amazing at the 10 year and older stage. We will be going into heavy production on these in the future. Yeah, I know, “what took you so long”? Well, it took years to see how this particular wine would age and then decide the best way to make it. It is a 5-20 year process actually. So this is going to take some more time. The good news is you can get a feel for those future vintages by trying the no-vintage I mentioned above.

Cheers,

Jim