The Covered Bridge Cellars Blog

Fire, Smoke and Wine

Many of you will no doubt remember the wildfires that ravaged wine country last summer. At the time, many grape growers were concerned about the possibility of "smoke taint" impacting fruit quality. Depending on the level of contamination, the potential for some finished wines to exhibit excessive "smoky" flavors, was said to be high, particularly for vineyards that endured many weeks of smoke filled air. This was a big problem in Australia in 2003 and led to some wines having to be poured down the drain, so to speak. The Australian Wine Research Institute conducted studies on the problem of smoke taint and published their findings in a study released in 2004. Here is the main conclusion from the report:

"The investigations, while by no means definitive in nature, indicated that exposure of grapes to bushfire smoke as early as veraison may cause levels of taint in the resulting wine which substantially reduces its commercial value. It is apparent that the taint compounds are present within the grape skin, and thus their extraction is difficult to avoid during winemaking, especially red-winemaking where extended skin contact is necessary. For white wines, winemaking treatments that minimise contact between juice and skin may be beneficial in reducing the intensity of any taint."

So really, smoke taint is nobody's friend. Because some of the fires were concentrated in the northern part of Mendocino County, there was a risk that Anderson Valley vineyards would be impacted by the billowing smoke. And indeed, after speaking with our winemaker at Crushpad there is an issue this year with fruit from both the Annahala and Hein vineyards. The good news though is that it appears to be a very minimal issue:

"A touch of smokiness in the Annahala and the Hein is fairly clean.  We will watch to see how they develop over the coming months. I will be happy to get you a sample once they finish fermentations."

When we get the samples we will definitely put up a post about how the juice tastes and whether we can detect any smokiness. The good thing is that we are only using 33% new oak barrels in our wine recipes, which means our wines have relatively little oak influence to begin with. I only mention this because one method for dealing with taint is to move to a 100% neutral barrel if you don't like how the flavor is developing. This trick works because the same compound that is present in the smoke that attaches to the grapes on the vine is also the same one present in the oak barrels used to age the wine. Additionally, our extraction goals are somewhat middle of the road, which means the grape skins are not going to be in contact with the juice any longer than necessary.

So just when you thought you only had to worry about rain, drought, frost, wind, pests, and other "issues" associated with commercial winemaking, mother nature again wields her power and let's you know fire should be a real concern too!

Jeremy

2008 Fermentation Graphs Available

Our fermentation graphs are now up on Crushnet. We are still in cold soak with our Hein Pinot, as evidenced by the 11.2C temperature reading. You can see at this point we are starting with a Brix level of about 25.5. Brix is a measure of the sugar content in the grape must solution. The higher the Brix, the higher the alcohol content of the finished wine. You can also see that our Annahala Pinot has just started primary fermentation, as the Brix level is falling fast with the rise in temperature. The yeast cells are devouring the sugar in the must at this point, busily converting it to alcohol. The byproduct of this chemical interaction is heat and CO2. On the right vertical axis of the graphs you can see how many punch downs were completely on a given day. A punch down is simply a mixing of the grape must to extract flavor and color. In small-lot winemaking, hand punch downs are the rule. This is a classical Burgundian technique that allows for gentle and precise handling of the fermenting juice.

In keeping with our minimalist approach, and similar to last year , we are again fermenting both 2008 wines naturally without the use of commercial yeast strains. The topic of fermenting natively versus inoculating with a commercial yeast is a topic for another post, as that debate has many sides and perspectives. For us, we want to minimize what needs to be done to the wine during the winemaking process and will be going native whenever possible. Now, it may be that we start a ferment natively, but then need to inoculate in order to get the job done. Sometimes this happens, but again, it's all about minimizing the interactions and treatment of the wine at every stage of the process.

You click on the wine name link to go to the real time fermentation graph for each wine:

2008 Annahala Pinot Noir

The link to the live Hein Pinot Noir graph was not working at the time of this post so I will update things once we figure out the issue. Here is the latest graph from earlier today:

*EDIT* Here is the link:

2008 Hein Pinot Noir

Jeremy

2008 Winemaking Underway

Our allocation of fruit from Annahala Vineyard in Anderson Valley was picked on 10/2/2008 and has already been hand sorted, destemmed, and crushed. We got an email update showing us the additions that were made at this early stage of the game along with some other information. Currently, we are still in cold soak, the step in the process where the wine grape must is brought down to around 50 degrees or so to stave off the start of fermentation. This is done to maximize the extraction of flavor and color from the macerating juice, grape skins, and other solids. Anywhere from 3 to 5 days is typical for a cold soak, which is also known as cold stabalization, or, cold maceration. After this step, yeast will be added and primary fermentation will begin. We can monitor all of the steps of the winemaking process--as well as stay updated on what is going on in the vineyards--through our "dashboard" on Crushnet. Crushpad has recently re-designed the Crushnet platform, making it more streamlined and user friendly. Here is a screen shot showing what has happened thus far with our Annahala Pinot.

Click for larger version

For our 2007 wines we provided real time links to our Fermentation Graphs here on the blog. These charts are a visual representation of the intense battle being waged between the yeast and the sugar. We'll be updating the links again so you can check in to see how things are coming along with our 2008 wines. Our Hein Pinot should be coming into the Crushpad facility shortly so we'll keep you posted when that happens too. At some point I'll layout our winemaking recipes we are using this year--hopefully in the next day or so. We didn't change too much and at this point we are really just starting the process of getting familiar with these fruit sources. Of course, that is where our consulting winemaker Chris Nelson comes in, he's working with us again since he is Crushpad's resident Pinot Noir expert. You can check in on the action at Crushpad via their live webcam. Fruit is coming in quite frequently at this point so there is lots to see.

Jeremy

Time to Bottle Some Juice: Watch via the Live Webcam

Tomorrow is bottling day for Covered Bridge Cellars. Both our wines have been aging quietly for about ten months in Francois Freres zebra barrels and now they must make that last--and oh so critical journey--to the bottling line! Bottling is a nervous time for wine folks as the hibernating juice must interact with the likes of this mechanical monster where all sorts of bad things can happen--contamination, label jams, overflows, etc.

Click the image for the large version

We won't be in San Francisco to watch first hand our juice go into bottle, but we will be watching the process via Crushpad's live webcam. They actually have two cameras setup in their state of the art facility and both can be controlled remotely over the web. This means we can zoom in on the action as if we were standing right there! Ok, well, you get the point. If you want to check in on things you can go to the "CrushpadCam" at this address tomorrow at 5:00pm PST.

http://www.crushpadcam/ccam.php

The camera window also has a chat functionality so fellow gawkers can interact while watch the action. In any event it should be pretty interesting. Hopefully everything goes well and at the end of the process we will have somewhere around 50 cases of finished wine. While we are not experts in commercial wine bottling methodologies, we do know a little about the process based on our own experience making wine in our garage. Here, see for yourself:

Drinking on the job!

Making sure things are going smoothly on the line.

Give and amateur winemaker a hammer and everything becomes a nail.

Jeremy

2007 Winemaking Plans Now Up

I just finished posting our 2007 winemaking plans to the blog. You can find them on, well, the Winemaking Plans page of course! The link is also on the sidebar under Our Wines. These plans were mapped out earlier in the year, well before the first bit of fruit was even remotely contemplating the idea of being picked. The general goal for these inaugural wines was to take a measured approach to extraction, keep alcohol levels more middle of the road, and really let the grapes speak for themsleves by not intervening with things unless it was absolutely necessary.(With respect to the Hein Pinot there were a few things that needed attention and I'll fill you in on the specifics later) I did write in my last post that a series of winemaking related posts was coming and I will be delivering on that promise soon enough!

Jeremy

Native Fermentation: Our Pinot Hits 92.3F!

After we launched the blog I decided to catch up on some reading and came across this interesting post over at Pinotblogger. It was the following snippet in reference to native fermentation that really caught my eye:

“According to Morgan there was a heart-attack inducing 2-day lag before the yeast took off, and when it did take off, it really took off. Fermentation temps quickly reached into the 90s and Morgan had to swiftly add dry ice to cool things off so the potentially heat-sensitive yeast didn’t end up killing themselves. The whole thing was hot and quick, finishing up in 3 or 4 days.”

My immediate reaction after reading this was similar to what you might expect to see from someone who just witnessed a bone crunching tackle in football—there was a wince, a pursing of the lips, and a slow ooooooh. I was starting to question whether our decision to go native with our wines was the right one, particularly for our first vintage, one you kinda don’t want to screw up! Then I took a look at our fermentation charts. Our Alder Springs Chardonnay had been fermenting nicely for two weeks without any problems and our Hein Pinot, after just two days, looked pretty good, too. Decision validated.

So I thought!

You can see from the chart below that something explosive happened to our wine on day four of the ferment. In the words of our consulting winemaker at Crushpad, Chris Nelson, “It just took off!” When I talked with him he said that they had put our bin in the cold room and were using dry ice to try and control things. He also said that David Dain, owner of Dain Wines, was keeping an eye on it throughout the night for us.

Click graph for larger version

So I emailed Casey and told her to check the fermentation charts ASAP. As I awaited her response, I kept repeating to myself…ferment to dryness, ferment to dryness, PLEASE ferment to dryness! I also emailed David to tell him thanks for tending to our wine. The next day he writes back to tell us that our wine is (thankfully) approaching dryness and will be pressed soon. Then, an hour later I get this chestnut from him:

Just put you into a nice sweet smelling zebra!!

Good to go, let 'er purr away doing malic, then sleeeep... :)

What a way to get our first wine into barrel--five days and it was over! We knew things could be unpredictable when we decided in our wine plan to go with a natural ferment and those little yeast cells certainly delivered! Overall, I think we'll end up with some really interesting juice, if not, we still have a good story to tell!

I'll be providing details of the winemaking plans we put together for both our wines in a future post so stay tuned...

Jeremy