2008 September | Napa Valley Wine Radio

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Yountville, CA

Temperature: 52°F
Humidity: 66.5%
Wind: W at 10 mph
Clouds: Overcast
Sunrise: 7:23 am GMT-8
Sunset: 4:53 pm GMT-8
Updated: 11:54 am GMT-8

September 2008
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Archive for September, 2008

Q: What are the Best Wines for Thanksgiving Dinner?

September 29, 2008 in Answers. 0 Comments

Question from Janice: I’m hosting Thanksgiving for the first time this year and I want everything to be perfect! What wines go best with a traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, spicy stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, candied yams, etc? There will be about 20 people.

thanksgiving

Reply: Hi, Janice! Thanks for writing! I’m so impressed! Congratulations on being one of those organized people who plans ahead!

Wow - with 20 people, I hope some of them bring some wine so you don’t break the bank! But, you’re smart to assume they won’t…

The Thanksgiving meal is such a wild hodgepodge of flavors that it presents a wine-matching challenge. And, with 20 people, there’s no way everyone will like or want the same thing. So, over the years, I’ve learned to worry about it less and less. Truly, the best advice I can give you is to put several bottles on the table - some white, some rosé, some red - and some sparkling if you want! - and let people choose for themselves.

But, which white, rosé and so forth? Go for wines that are versatile - good, solid acidity and not too high in alcohol, not too tannic, not too sweet. So, here goes:

Bubbly wine: This is a great mood setter. Truly - how can you be in a bad mood with a glass of fizzy wine in your hand???? Plus, the high acidity can take you through from the first welcome until you scrape that last bit of gravy off of your plate. Sparkling Rosé or a Blanc de Noirs is a little more full bodied than the Blanc de Blancs and might go better with dinner, if that’s your goal. Of course, there’s always Aunt Marge or someone in the group that doesn’t like sparkling wine - IMAGINE!!! In that case…

Rosé wine: Well-made rosé that’s dry or off-dry is remarkably versatile. This is another wine that makes a very nice greeting for your guests, because it’s so pretty, and can sustain you right through to the very end of the meal. I have to say, we made a killer Merlot Rosé under our State Lane label. This wine is just slightly sweet and has strawberry and orange peel out the kazoo with a cleansing, ruby grapefruit finish. When you mentioned spicy stuffing this wine popped into my head because spicy and sweet like each other a lot! Also, a good rosé is darned tasty with turkey - white or dark meat. I thought of Gewürtraminer, too. The rosé and Gewürtz are great bridge builders when you have a cacophony of flavors like you do on Thanksgiving. Which leads us to whites!

White wine: You want a white with very good acidity, and also plenty of flavor, that’s dry or off dry. Unless your Sauvignon Blanc or Pinot Grigio are unusually flavorful, in spite of the acid, they may be out-shouted by the food. Reliable whites for this situation: High quality Riesling, to repeat myself, Gewürtz, Viognier and cool-climate Chardonnays that go easy on the oak. Hey! Goosecross Chardonnay has cool-climate acidity and goes easy on the oak! That should work well, too!

Reds: Not too heavy and low in tannin and alcohol. My top three recommendations: Pinot Noir, Pinot Noir and Pinot Noir! It’s one of the most versatile wines around. Finding a good one that’s actually affordable is another issue… Thanksgiving is a great excuse to get yourself a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau - the 2008 should be released exactly one week before Thanksgiving this year. The best ones smell like ambrosia salad, are very light on the palate, and are dry and refreshing (by red wine standards) - almost like a rosé. Relatively light-bodied Zins that aren’t too oaky would be nice for the red-wine lovers. By Thanksgiving, we should have released our AmerItal VI - packed with fruit, racy by red-wine standards and low in tannin - yum!

Can’t let Thanksgiving come and go without sharing one of Colleen’s favorite Thanksgiving recipes. She makes her famous Green Bean Casserole for the family every year (no, we’re not talking mushroom soup and canned onion rings…)! ;-)

Not sure what you’re serving for dessert, but the general guideline is that the wine should be at least as sweet as the food or it will taste sour. If you’ve got a really fruity dessert, like apple pie, Muscat wines can be refreshing and delicious! The State Lane Orange Muscat is something to keep in mind. If its a rich dessert, like pumpkin cheesecake, you may want to go with a late harvest. Our downtown-Napa tasting room carries a scrumptious Late Harvest Sauvignon Blanc by R.A. Harrison that might just fill the bill.

Of course, everything tastes better when it’s shared by good friends and family! Cheers! I know you’re going to have a great meal and a wonderful time! Happy T-Day!

Fast and furious!

September 12, 2008 in Harvest Report and Vintage Update. 2 Comments

Talk about your jack-rabbit start! If you’ve checked out our Harvest Calendar, you don’t have to ask how the weather’s been. The writing’s on the crush-pad, so to speak. I’m sure there must have been years that have been equally frenetic, but I can’t think of one right now. Everybody’s scrambling to keep up with these impatient grapes!

I must say our Winemaker, Geoff Gorsuch, is in awfully good humor considering the work load. Maybe he’s got his eyes on the proverbial prize - quick harvest means quick finish! Could be he’s delerious from lack of rest - kinda like last spring. Could be he’s happy with quality. ;-) The berries are small, which is good for flavor intensity and, apart from a couple of recent, rather intense heat waves, you’d call it a cool season. And cool is cool as far as the grapes are concerned! Gives them time to actually mature, in terms of flavor development, rather than just getting sweet.

After getting those hot flashes out of her system, Mother Nature has been just as sweet as a little lamb - it’s so mild and comfortable! And, Geoff says the sugars have actually gone down a little. Yippee! Next week’s forecast is cooler yet.

But, in the last three weeks it’s been Chenin Blanc, Merlot, Howell Mountain Cab, Viognier, Sauvignon Blanc - BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM!!! And, today it’s Estate Cab; Monday it’s Estate Cab Franc. Chardonnay’s not far off. Whew! You ought to be here - truly! It smells soooo good!!

Hopefully a couple of weeks of mild weather will pause the harvest before the last push. I’d guess every winemaker in the valley could use a break right now. And, while they’re pleased with quality, if they’re like Geoff, the more reports you see, the more we know yields are down quite a bit - not such a happy thing. Our Howell Mountain Cab was down by over 50%! Fortunately, that’s the worst of it, but it hurts.

Anyway - come by for a delicious sniff before it’s all over!

Crush: Day 1 at Goosecross

September 1, 2008 in Harvest Report. 2 Comments

So, it begins! Beautiful, yellow-green clusters of Chenin Blanc found their way from the east-Napa hills to our crushpad and began their long journey to the bottle.

As we reported earlier, many of our neighbors started a few weeks ahead of us, but we’re pretty much on schedule, maybe slightly early, so far (go to our harvest calendar to follow the blow-by-blow action).

Geoff, our winemaker, measured the tank juice at about 23% sugar - we’re talking seriously sweet stuff - when you buy grapes at the grocery they’re around 15-18% sugar. You can figure that a little over half of the sugar will wind up as alcohol in the finished wine. For the uninitiated, here’s how it goes:

1. The clusters are cut off of the vine with a small, hook-blade knife.

2. When they get to the winery Geoff and his indispensable side-kick, Rosario, sort through the clusters, pulling out leaves, dried grapes, anything that looks like something you don’t want to eat (or drink!).

3. The clusters are fed into the crusher-stemmer which, as you might imagine, removes the stems and “crushes” the grapes. Let me say, here, that crushing is a misleading term because it sounds violent. Violence against perfectly innocent little grapes is repaid by bitter flavors in the wine. The duty of the crusher is to gently break the grape skins and release the juice, thus facilitating fermentation.

4. From the crusher-stemmer, the grapes are fed into the press (we call ours “Lucy”, with affection for Lucille Ball - yes, she was pressing!). Lucy is like a giant strainer. After we load her up a whole lot of juice runs off into the drain pan. It’s called “free run”.

5. When the free run begins to slow down, Geoff applies pressure by way of inflating a membrane inside the press and gently squeezes out a little more juice. He has to be very careful not to squeeze too hard because he wants this Chenin Blanc to be full of flavor, but also delicate, almost ethereal, on your palate.

6. The juice goes into a stainless steel fermentation tank and Geoff turns on the refrigeration to keep the lovely juice cool. If we allow it to warm up, the gorgeous fruity and floral aromatics will be cooked off.

7. Clean up and hit the showers!! That’s enough for one day! All of this work is done outdoors and it was nearly 100 degrees out there!

What’s next? Geoff will give the CB a few days to get settled. There’s a lot of suspended vineyard dust and grape solids in the juice, right now, and this cool fermentation will go a lot better if the juice is nice and clean. So, after a couple of days, Geoff just has to move the clear juice off of the solids (it’s called racking), add some yeast and we’re off to the races!

**What is fermentation? A simple, natural chemical reaction. The yeast feeds on the sugar, converting it into heat, carbon-dioxide gas and the all-important alcohol.

The yeast isn’t all that crazy about the cool temperature (kind of like trying to get bread dough to rise in the refrigerator), so it’s going to take its sweet time - probably about three weeks. Geoff will stop the fermentation before all the sugar is gone, leaving it slightly sweet - around 2.5% sugar and about 12% alcohol.

In the meantime: Geoff sees several of other vineyards breathing down his neck. Viognier, Merlot, Howell Mountain Cab all on the cusp. So - it’s going to be hot and heavy on the crushpad in the very near future and Geoff will be the equivalent of a chef with a whole lot of pots boiling at once. This is why his lovely wife, Karen, is referred to as a “crush widow” this time of year…

Ultimately, in a few months, the Chenin Blanc will receive final clarification. Before bottling day, in December, it will pass through a micron filter to make sure all the yeast cells are removed so the wine doesn’t get any bright ideas about fermenting in the bottle (very bad PR)

It should reach your table by February or March!

And that’s Goosecross Chenin Blanc 101. Cabernet is a very different game, so stay tuned as we follow it from field sampling to the not-so-bitter end! Click here for an update on how the 2008 vintage growing season has gone, so far.