If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. Sorry for the misfire - harvest got me out of practice!
Episode 0024:
Wine Reads – November 18, 2021
Welcome back to Viti+Culture, and welcome to season 2. It’s been a few weeks since our last podcast, but here we are, rested and ready to deliver some great content. Harvest is finally over, a few fermentations remain bubbling away, the cellar is cleaned, our equipment is winterized, and we are moving into our next phase of cellar work - stabalizing and bottling sparkling wine, preparing to bottle our early release wines like our Cabernet Franc Rose, our White Merlot, and some of our Chenin Blanc, and finally disgorging some of our sparkling wines, such as our 2017 and 2019 Chardonnay based Blanc de Blanc, and Chenin Blanc. I’ll keep you updated as to what winemakers are experiencing in the cellar as we move forward with season, and key you in to some of the winemaking decisions we have along the way.
We are also launching a new segment - Wine Reads - where we choose an article from the world of written content on wine, read it on the show, and share our thoughts and opinions on the topic. If you’re a wine writer, feel free to forward me an article for consideration at viticulturepodcast@gmail.com. I’m happy to look it over, and maybe even discuss it with you on the show. We will continue to produce and publish our long-form interviews on YouTube, but some of the shorter content will be podcast and Substack only, so make sure you’ve clicked subscribe in your favorite podcast platform, and sign up to our Substack newsletter.
For our first Wine Read, I figured I’d actually reflect on the 2021 vintage by reading the letter I’m preparing to send out to our Missick Cellars Wine Club. I’m excited to be shipping out the first Finger Lakes produced Sparkling Chenin Blanc with that shipment, as well as some other really cool small lot wines, but I also generally engage with our members by sharing some of my deepest thoughts, and letting them know what is going on in the cellar. Here’s a sneak preview of the vintage, an audio taste of our wine club, and a survey of what the final tally of the 2021 vintage felt like.
Remember, if you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. It really helps with the ratings and in introducing new folks to the show. Be sure to tune in next week, where I speak with Phil Plummer, winemaker at Montezuma, Idol Ridge, and Fossenvue wineries. Phil embraces the ethos of our show, those of the philosopher-maker, and intertwines culture, art, history, and music in some subtle, and not so subtle ways, into each of his wines.
So, here we go, our 2021 Missick Cellars Wine Club Newsletter:
Dear Wine Club Member,
When I was deployed as a soldier in the Army with Operation Iraqi Freedom, every few months we were able to take an R&R day, and head down to the large U.S. base in Kuwait on the coast of the Persian Gulf called Camp Doha. Camp Doha had a PX (post exchange) that was both sized and filled with the inventory of a Super Walmart. It was where we could stock up on nearly everything we needed, or wanted, to get us through the long weeks back at our small desert outposts.
Camp Doha also had a Starbucks and a Burger King, all of which brought a sense of normalcy, but also a little bit of cognitive dissonance. I remember browsing those location oriented Starbucks mugs while waiting in line that list the city you are in, and looking at the one with Kuwait City and the skyline depicted. I wish I would have bought one as a memento. The pearl of Camp Doha in those days however, was a place called the Marble Palace. It was a short bus ride from camp, and had a large recreational pool adjacent to the Gulf, there were therapeutic masseuses, and in many ways, offered everything you could find at a luxury resort. It was, for a day, potentially overnight if you had some other business to attend to, a respite from the dusty tents we slept in, the day to day monotony of my job as a Signal Corps non-commissioned officer, guard tower shifts in 110 degree temperatures, and hours spent sitting under the skud bunkers scattered all throughout my home camp with a battle buddy, talking about home.
Harvest certainly does not carry the emotional intensity or gravity of deployment, I would not sell our servicemembers short by drawing a straight line between the experience of deployment and the intensity of the harvest or the crush pad. There are analogies though, and in many ways, the pace of harvest rarely allows for the periods of pause and contemplation that a deployment permits. Nonetheless, as harvest approaches, the mind prepares for what you know will be extremely long days, endless physicality, isolation from family and friends (outside the wine industry), discomfort, and exhaustion. Similarly, it provides a purpose, a mission, with goals that must be accomplished, in specific periods of time with little room for error. The elements of weather, of available resources, the risk of physical danger around powerful equipment if you’re careless or thoughtless, and the knowledge that there is an end date, all provide a very similar psychological framework to that the soldier experiences. You have set out on a path, the end goal is known, there will be surprises and challenges, but at the end of this period, victory is in sight.
I recalled my time at the Marble Palace, a place I hadn’t thought about in years, after returning home for the first time in what felt like weeks (though it had only been a few days), to spend an entire day and night with my family. It was mid-October, about half-way through crush, and having the chance to push Andrew and Audrey on the swing-set in the backyard, sharing dinner at the table with the family, and having my wife Laure massage my shoulders that night made home feel like the R&R I had been craving. I particularly enjoy pairing our wines with meals during harvest. It puts a perspective on the hard work we are presently enmeshed in, and opening the time capsules of vintages past during dinner with the family, ties moments of our past to moments of the present, even as we all sacrifice and work for the future that is gurgling away through its fermentation in the cellar.
Perhaps the moments from my deployment were fresh with me this year after what we witnessed in Afghanistan in August, and during which I spent countless hours speaking with other veterans and checking in on friends that I knew had spent years of their life in that country. Perhaps it was because we were shorter on cellar staff this year than in years’ past, placing extra burdens and extra work on myself and my assistant. Maybe it was simply because I see my children growing so fast and am realizing how quickly time goes with every year we gather around the table to watch them blow out that additional candle on the cake. And finally, it may have been because this was such a difficult harvest, where extra vineyard work coupled with crucial picking decisions dictated the quality of the wine that was made, and with our first year of a significant harvest from our estate vineyard, I felt an enormous amount of pressure to deliver the best possible effort to everyone who enjoys our wine.
2021 was our most difficult vintage since 2018. As with 2018, moisture was the catalyst for a lot of stress on vineyard crews this vintage. The heavy rainfall, high temperatures, and high dewpoints which kept vineyard canopies and clusters too wet for too long in 2018, had analogs for all of us who farm grapes in the Finger Lakes this year. Granted, temperatures were not as high as three years ago, and dewpoints were not as deleterious, the rain proved a difficulty that we had to navigate around. There were indeed some much needed breaks, three or four days here, maybe a week there, but from August through the end of October, the rain fell, and we needed to be cognizant of when it was falling.
Though 2021 wasn’t our largest harvest, between our own wines and some custom crush projects, we processed nearly 70 tons of fruit, with about 6 tons coming from our own vineyard. We managed an incredibly clean harvest of Chenin Blanc, Riesling and Cabernet Franc, with multiple passes in the Riesling in order to produce some different styles of estate wines, from sparkling to still. Our vineyard, planted in 2019, is in what is called its third leaf, in other words, its third growing season. The third leaf is generally when you can expect to get your first real crop, with an expansion of yield occurring in the following vintages. Of course, yield is not the most important aspect. The vineyard must be balanced, producing enough fruit to match the energy output of the vine, but not so much that you stress the vine or dilute the concentration of flavors that a vineyard can deliver.
In addition, we worked with our traditional growing partners at Gibson Vineyard and Morris Vineyard, to bring in varietals like Seyval Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Valvin Muscat, and some other hybrids that will go into our Foreword series.
Although we have a significant amount of wine still fermenting, I must share with you that I am more proud of this vintage than nearly any in the last 10 years. There are vintages that naturally make great wines. The weather is perfect from April to November, harvest happens on your schedule and not based on the risk of rain, and every piece of equipment cooperates fully with no downtime or repairs required. I think of vintages like 2012, 2016, and 2020, where a winemaker can only get in the way of making good wine. Nature gave us great, clean and ripe fruit, and we need only fulfill its promise. Vintages like 2021 require inordinate amounts of attention to detail, a willingness to sacrifice bad fruit in the vineyard in order to make good wine in the cellar, a dedication and time commitment unparalleled in many other fields, and a drive that overlooks exhaustion, lack of sleep, and sore muscles. Those ingredients have added up to what amounts to be the proof of work, required in challenging wine regions like the Finger Lakes, and years like 2021, that deliver high quality, deliciousness, and inspiration even under trying circumstances. These are the vintages that prove the mettle of the winemaker.
2021 will be a vintage that I believe will deliver some of our best sparkling wines. On their way in the years to come will be a small lot of estate Chenin Blanc, Cab Franc Rose, Chardonnay based Blanc de Blanc, Estate Riesling, and Gewurztraminer. Our sparkling wine program has continued to grow and witness strong sales, and we are responding by increasing production with the focused goal of being known as one of the great sparkling wine producers in the region and the U.S.
In other areas of “winery life,” our brand change continues moving ahead. New signage should be up by the spring, and new labels showing up on shelves in Upstate New York retailers. Our new labels shipped in October, and we began labelling wines as quickly as we could. Our new labels speak to our place, with the shoreline of Seneca Lake outside our cellar presenting the background frame for where we are, our new logo, as discussed in our previous letters playing a prominent role, and each wine now suggesting a specific food and wine pairing. Of course, these are only my opinions, but I welcome you to try them out and send me your suggestions as well!
I generally try to make our Fall Wine Club shipment focused on wines that I think will pair well for Thanksgiving, and so with that backdrop, each of these wines will be on our Thanksgiving table, paired perfectly with all of the classic accoutrements of my favorite holiday.
2020 Sparkling Chenin Blanc
I’ve mentioned in the past that we have been pioneering Chenin Blanc in the Finger Lakes since 2015, when we engaged in our first contract planting of the varietal at the Gibson Vineyard. The logic was pretty simple… I love Loire Valley wines. The Loire, being a cool climate growing region in France, famously grows Cabernet Franc and Chenin Blanc. One of the most premiere subregions in the Loire Valley, is Vouvray. What is wonderful about Vouvray wines, is that so many different wine styles can emerge from them. From dry crisp whites, to sparkling, to wonderfully rich and sweet styles, Chenin Blanc from Vouvray exhibits an amazing amount of versatility. Knowing that the Finger Lakes can have such variable vintages, with there being a necessity to alter the styles of wine depending upon what the year gives us, combined with the fact that Cabernet Franc is, in my opinion, our premiere red varietal, planting Chenin Blanc just made sense to me. We garnered our first harvest in 2017, making only a few dozen cases. We have continued exploring the varietal, planting our estate block, and making a wide range of Chenin Blanc wines. This spring, I hope to release our 2020 barrel fermented dry Chenin Blanc, alongside our 2021 estate Chenin Blanc which was fermented in stainless steel and finished with a touch of sweetness. In the meantime, I’m extremely excited to share this first, Wine Club disgorgement of our 2020 Chenin Blanc.
We began producing sparkling Chenin Blanc in 2019, but that wine remains in tirage, resting on its lees in bottle, with an anticipated disgorgement in 2023. Only 50 cases were made in 2019, and with its level of acidity, it will need time to grow into its full potential. 2020, being a beautiful and ripe vintage, also managed to deliver to us some exhilarating and fresh sparkling wine bases. Our 2020 Sparkling Chenin is technically an early disgorgement. Most of the 100+ cases will be disgorged at a later date, but with the profile of this wine showing such elegance, I wanted to disgorge a special lot for our wine club members to enjoy this holiday season.
Just prior to harvest, we disgorged 30 cases, removing the spent yeast sediment and finishing the wine with a small dosage of a few grams of residual sugar. This sparkling wine is still dry, but accentuates the wonderful fruit that comes from Chenin Blanc from the Gibson Vineyard. Rather than topping the bottle with a Champagne cork, we opted to use a stainless steel crown cap. Most of the time, when I use cork on sparkling wine, I will let the wine sit in the cellar for up to 6 months before release. It can take quite a bit of time to allow the cork to cease its propensity to expand. Trying to open a sparkling wine that has just been corked is nearly impossible, and can be dangerous if it is tried with a corkscrew due to the pressure inside. Opening with a bottle opener isn’t as exhilarating as popping a cork, but I assure you, it has no impact on the quality. It also means, you won’t have a problem opening it on Thanksgiving, should you want to share it with family and friends.
Produced in the classic traditional method, the base wine was picked slightly early, fermented to dryness, and chaptalized with 24 grams per liter of sugar prior to bottling with a yeast culture. The wine then went through its bottle fermentation and aged for around a year on the lees in the bottle prior to disgorgement.
This is the first sparkling Chenin Blanc ever produced and released in the Finger Lakes, and we managed such a small disgorgement in order to ensure that our Wine Club members received the first chance at tasting the “unicorn” wine. It has actually been one of the fun benefits of having the only two plantings of Chenin Blanc in the Finger Lakes, since ever demi sec, barrel fermented, sparkling, and dessert Chenin will inevitably be the first ones ever produced and released. My hunch is, given some time and the opportunity to taste what these wines can do, we’ll start seeing more and more plantings of the varietal in the region. When that happens, you’ll be able to say you joined us in this journey before anyone else.
2019 Morris Vineyard Riesling
As you may know, my philosophy on Riesling is to treat it with utmost care, producing dozens of small lots from which I can later blend our mainline Dry Riesling and Riesling. I do that because I see these two wines as the canvas upon which I paint my view of that vintage through this varietal. Fermenting in small lots, in different mediums with different yeast cultures, provides the color palette from which we can paint these pictures. It is from these small lots that some exciting single vineyard, or specifically designated wines come from. Our 2019 Morris Vineyard Riesling is no exception.
An incredibly small lot of 22.5 cases, this bottling represents a single barrel of Riesling which exhibited such immense appeal to me, that I wanted to be able to share it with our wine club. Fermented in a ten year old barrel that delivered little to no oak flavor influence, this wine was uninoculated. In other words, no commercial yeast culture was added to this wine, rather, only ambient yeasts converted the sugars in this wine to alcohol. The Australians have a term for these wines - ferrell ferments. Ferrell, referring to the fact that the fermentations are wild, are characterized by their lack of intervention from the winemaker. Interestingly, it also means that there likely wasn’t a single yeast culture that fermented the wine, but rather, numerous different cultures that rose and fell in dominance depending on the conditions of the wine, i.e., the alcohol, nutrient load, etc., at any given time. It was our job to merely produce fresh clean wines with as light of a hand as possible. Consequently, after fermentation, the wine was allowed to rest on its lees (spent yeast) until March of 2020, when it received a small dose of sulfur to prevent oxidation. It was removed from the barrel in June of 2020, and bottled in July. We allowed the wine to cellar in a temperature controlled room until this shipment and its release.
In ten years, we have likely released more than 50 Rieslings. Some vintages have seen as many as 8 different bottlings of the varietal. Of all these different wines, this specific bottling is likely my favorite bottling of still Riesling to date. Although dry, it provides generous fruit and balanced, but bright, acidity. It is a perfect food pairing wine, and will be an excellent accompaniment for Thanksgiving Dinner.
2018 Cabernet Franc
Of all the wines I produce, if there is one that my wife will most frequently ask me to grab for dinner from the winery, it will be one of my Cabernet Francs. She loves them, and she also loves the variability they provide vintage after vintage. Our 2017 Cabernet Franc, with a bright and sunny fall, but coming from a slightly larger crop, was refreshing and light with prominent notes of cherry and raspberry. It has been the kind of wine enjoyed with a meal, and just as often, with some chocolate and television, relaxing after we have put the kids to bed. Our 2018 is a much deeper wine, with slightly more pronounced tannin, richer color, and complement of herbs to match the fruit. It’s richer texture can carry fattier meats, and pairs just as well with game. It has become the new favorite around our house, and it is wine I am thrilled to be releasing shortly. As with the other wines in this shipment, Wine Club members are getting the first tastes of these exciting new releases.
When it comes to producing red wines, I do engage in some slightly different cellar practices than many of my other colleagues in the Finger Lakes. I have mentioned many times before, but saignee is a French word for “the bleed.” This practice involves removing portions of juice from a red wine fermentation before the fermentation has begun. The goal of this technique is to naturally increase the skin to juice ratio of the red wine fermentation, thereby increasing the availability of anthocyanins and tannins. Anthocyanins are the red color molecule that gives red wine its color, and so by increasing the availability of this molecule in the fermentation, I am able to produce deeper color red wines. Additionally, increasing the tannin naturally provides more bonding points for the color, and adds structure to the wine. All of this is in the backdrop of understanding that berry size tends to be much larger in the Finger Lakes, due to the amount of rainfall we receive. Saignee provides the winemaker with a natural tool to make deeper, more structured red wines, while also making some pretty delicious rose from that initial “bleed.” Finally, there is an impact on the acidity of the wine. Grape skins contain potassium, and potassium can help precipitate tartaric acid during the fermentation, naturally lowering the level of acid and increasing the pH of the wine.
If you like this podcast, please be sure to rate us 5 stars in Apple podcasts and like our videos on YouTube. It really helps with the ratings and in introducing new folks to the show.
S2 - EP0024v2 - Wine Reads - Welcome to Our New Segment