Upstate New York wineries have begun issuing yellow and red “warning” cards to rowdy and inappropriate tasting room customers.  Having spent a solid eight years slogging through the cold, relentless winters of upstate NY, this is pretty frigging hysterical, on many levels. (I’ll leave the snide remarks about people braving a blizzard to sample a few ounces of NY wine to the Weather Channel).  First and foremost, do you really think an obnoxious, loud-mouthed, sweaty, disheveled drunken slob is going to respond favorably to the card system?  My guess is that he thinks it’s all a joke, unless the winery refs can pilfer some half-cooked uniforms from the shoe salesmen at FootLocker.  “Excuse me sir,” intercedes the costume-clad winery ref, complete with the black shin guards and knee-highs.  “I am going to have to issue you a yellow card for deliberately spitting your riesling at the tasting room attendant.”  Note lengthy pause as ref interprets drunken slurring as actual English language elocution.  “No sir.  I understand you think our wine is ‘crap.’  No sir, this in not Opus One.  I understand sir – no sir, you are correct; it does not snow in Napa Valley.” 

To be fair, upstate New York is spectacularly beautiful, four days a year when the weather doesn’t suck.  My recollections of biking around Lake Cayuga and wine touring around Seneca are all dappled sunlight, thick verdant canopies of leaves and uncrowded, winding roads – all great stuff.  I know the wine industry has matured significantly since I first wine toured as a med student, back in (gasp) 1996 or 1998.  A wedding I attended at Red Newt winery in 2004 was impossibly beautiful.  I just can’t fathom the soccer card system handling unruly drunks in tasting rooms.  The obvious corollary is neither can I imagine nerdy med students ever being rowdy enough to merit such disciplinary action.  Then there is the sticky slope of assigning the escalating tiers of drunken indiscretion the appropriately color-coated card.  What exactly distinguishes red card reckless stupidity from a yellow card merlot-miscue?

Let’s consider some complex cases culled from my own family experiences.  Watching my children (among others) demolish the colorful ornamental foliage decorating the perimeter of Mauritson Winery in Dry Creek Valley – yellow card.  OK, that one was easy.  Breaking stemware?  Red card.  What if I joined the wine club to redeem myself, even if their wine was overrated?  Am I demoted back to yellow?  What about spewed crackers?  Allowing kids to visit a winery at all?  Gotcha!

Many years ago, when our son was quite small, Brian and I toted him along to our deluxe-plus tasting reservation at Duckhorn.  This being a well reputed and hoity-toity kind of establishment, Duckhorn kindly provided an endless supply of dry, mouth-coating, thick & chewy wine crackers.  I am talking about the ones that turn saliva into paper mache.  I, in turn, fed them to the squirmy, restless toddler perched on my lap.  A few rounds of merlot into our vertical, Bruno lurched forward.  He started to gag and a long, yo-yo of glue-colored drool descended from the corner of his mouth.  The kid needed water, and all we had was hundred buck merlot.  Like a superhero, I spun around and grabbed the sippy cup of yesterday’s tepid water that I had stashed in my diaper bag for just such emergencies.  Then, before I could melt the Plaster of Cracker, Bruno hurled.  Thick, moist chunks of half-digested cracker cascaded across our table with a discharge radius 3 tables deep.  Red card.  We bought a case of wine.  We joined the wine club.  No reprieve.  Red card stays.

Now again let’s examine last summer, when I ran the Napa to Sonoma Half Marathon.  (I cannot believe I am about to reveal this to the internet community at large).  The event was over-sold, and like most running events, the Port-A-Potty line snaked in endless circles.  Pre-race, my nerves are always raw, and I feel like the sorry ladies in the overactive-bladder commercials that run during Desperate Housewives.  With minutes until the gun sounded, I took a cue from the gal in front of me.  During the Star Spangled Banner, I dashed behind her into the vineyard rows behind the crowd.  I dropped trou and relieved myself among the budding vines of Domaine Carneros.  I’d imagine drunken urination on trespassed property is a red card gimme.  But what about pardons for pre-race conditions?

My limited understanding of soccer is that one red card equal automatic expulsion.  I have already accumulated multiple red cards in both Sonoma and Napa counties.  I face ejection from my both my own and adjoining cities.  I’m reminded of Marge Simpson lamenting to Homer, “Oh Homer, we’re the worst family in the neighborhood.”  He brightly replies, “Maybe we should move to a larger community, dear.”

On Monday, Kerith authored a brilliant post titled Wine Blogging Is Dead (please click on the link and read it if you haven’t already).  That same morning, I flipped through the most recent edition of Inc. magazine and, as usual, made a point of reading Joel Spolsky’s column.  Joel is an accomplished writer and founder of Fog Creek Software.  In a weird coincidence, his piece Let’s Take This Offline was an announcement that he intends to retire both his Inc. column and his long-running and hugely popular blog, “Joel on Software.”  Uh oh, I thought – something’s in the air.

In his column, Joel tied together a couple of themes that make him question the value of business blogging.  First, he believes that most current business bloggers are simply doing it wrong.  He contends that for a blog to have any sort of traction, it can’t be about the blogger (or his/her company) directly.  If you run a chocolate company, he cites as an example, don’t blog about your most recent bean-hunting trip.  Instead, post on how to make the most perfect chocolate dipped strawberries.  That information has greater traction and longer lasting appeal.  It reaches a wider audience which will ultimately draw more readers to your site (and, hopefully, customers to your company).

Secondly, he rightly points out that some of the most successful companies of the past decade, like Google, Facebook, or Twitter, have either no blog or a very half-hearted one.  I’m not a fan of trying to draw general business conclusions from outliers like those three companies, but there is certainly some merit to Joel’s point.  As he says, “Apple’s employees produce virtually no blogs, even though the company has introduced several game-changing new products in the past decade.  Meanwhile, hundreds of Microsoft’s employees have amazing blogs, but these have done nothing to stave off that company’s slide into stodginess.”

Finally, he makes a compelling argument that as an enterprise grows the returns from employing blogging as the primary marketing vehicle diminishes.  Blogging may make a lot of sense when first starting out – it’s cheap, direct, and effective.  The only real “cost” is the time of the blogger, usually the company’s founder or senior executive officer.  The problem is that the time spent to populate a compelling blog is significant – thinking about a post, actually writing, editing.  It all adds up.  As a business grows and matures, additional sales channels and marketing venues evolve.  From this vantage, Joel questions the effective value and relative compensation from a CEO spending a disproportionate amount of time blogging and penning a monthly magazine column.  His decision is that no, after 10-years, it doesn’t make sense anymore.  He concludes that he spends way too much time devoted to a miniscule fraction of his total market audience, and to further grow his company, he must redirect his focus to the majority.  For those of us who enjoy reading his column this is a sad realization, but as a business owner it’s a decision that I certainly understand.

So, what does this all have to do with us at Bruliam?  When we first launched our blog two years ago, we intended to use it to hype our product and build brand recognition in advance of having any wine to sell.   We assumed that as soon as we had actual product to promote, we’d cut back or stop entirely.  Our plan succeeded in that we’ve been able to attract wine buyers from all over the country who happened upon us via the Bruliam blog.  But interestingly, most of the people who found us online did so through non-wine searches – for example Kerith’s recipe videos, our interviews with chefs/sommeliers, and yes, even from the famous calorie intake vs. calorie burn challenge.  Once we hooked those internet surfers with one of our posts, many then become avid followers and, ultimately, wine buyers.  Proving Joel’s second point, we’ve garnered the most success from this blog when talking about stuff other than wine.   And along the way, Kerith and I found that we very much enjoy the process of writing and hearing feedback from our readers and we decided to continue this blog past its originally planned end point.

That said, writing for this site expends a lot of time and energy.  There are days when the well is dry and producing a meaningful post is difficult.  Compounding the problem is that the wine making process is cyclical – harvest, crush, ferment, barrel, taste, blend, bottle, sell.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  We know that as we enter our third trip through this cycle, there are only so many ways to make the chemistry of fermentation interesting and only so many times you want to see us glaring into the camera sorting grapes or tasting barrel samples.

So, what to do?  Well, we’re not quitting.   Instead we are recommitting to make this blog about more than just our wine.  More recipes, more self-deprecating parental disasters, maybe even more musings on the meaning of life (and, yes, even a calorie intake rematch – scheduled for the morning of July 18^th at Bouchon in Yountville if anyone is up to the challenge with me).  Don’t worry; we’re not going to keep you in the dark about our progress with Bruliam Wines.  We’re just going to make sure we have a good mix of content. 

And with any luck when we hit our 10-year mark, we’ll be established enough to be like Joel and exercise the option to retire from the blogosphere.  Until then, the MS Word spell check and thesaurus will remain our trusted and valued companions on this journey.

“Wine blogging is the attention-seeking barking of lonely poodles.”  Ouch!  But wait, it gets nastier.  Ron Washam, creator of the wickedly funny Hosemaster of Wine website, dedicates his own blog to eviscerating other wine bloggers.  He portrays wine bloggers as a self-important, puffed up crew of verbose and prolific hacks with no audience beyond mom and their fellow wine blogging brethren.  (For the record, both of my parents read my writing regularly.  It’s only my mom who comments).  “Basically the whole wine blog world is like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, a whole bunch of loudmouths trying to shout over each other, only less dressy.”  Fortunately Brian would be more flattered than offended when Washam declared he could not distinguish the wine bloggers from the Trekkies at a recent wine writers’ conference.  Washam, himself a former fine dining sommelier with near 20 years experience, finds many wine bloggers’ absence of formal wine training particularly egregious (and it is).  Still, it’s an easy caricature- wide-eyed Midwesterners descending on the Santa Rosa wine blogging conference like bombastic, laptop toting locusts, “I’m actually in wine country, where they grow grapes and stuff.  I tried a couple of grapes right off the vine!”  Low blow, Washam.  We can’t all be lucky enough to live in Healdsburg (like you and me)!  And while it may not be nice to reduce wine bloggers to huffy, audacious phonies, Washam has a point.

By one estimation, there are 500 English-language wine blogs, with 200 more in Europe.  That’s a lot of background static.  And how could all of those folks be appropriately credentialed to sell you their opinion of wine?  I am not convinced they are.  One lecture topic from the Napa Valley 2010 Symposium for Professional Wine Writers was entitled “What Wine Writers Need to Know about Winemaking.”  Let’s hope they know something about enology before they headline “professional wine writer” atop their C.V.  Better yet, how can a wine blogger convince you to buy the wine they snagged as freebie, industry swag last week?  And to what end?  The San Francisco Chronicle notes, “For the most part, a blog mention doesn’t register on any radar.”  One winery owner explained that a blog mention “almost never” parlays into actual sales.  Millions (OK, thousands) of people read either Wine Spectator or Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, but very few read more than one or perhaps two wine blogs with any regularity, ours included.  Heck, we’re not even good enough to underwrite the booze at our kids’ preschool fundraiser.  Their inclusion criteria demands 90 points or better from only Spectator or Parker.  Add to this cesspool the growing leverage of social network sites like Twitter and Facebook, and wine blogging is already a hulking, obsolete dinosaur.  Not only am I an ineffectual lackey blowing smoke up my own ass but I’m already a washed up has been.  And even if I wanted to Tweet a post, I’d have the strenuously difficult and arduously, grueling and laborious task of trying to condense my often long winded, wordy, and dense literary voice into a butchered, condensed and profoundly curtailed, 140 word-limited, verbal skeleton of the incredibly important and useful things I feel compelled to say.

Few wine blogs command meaningful traction in the marketplace.    Alder Yarrow’s blog, Vinography appears to be the singular exception.  Noting the uptick in sales after a blog mention on Vinography, one small winery owner compared the sales effect of Yarrow’s online review to “a 93 from Wine Spectator.”  That is high praise considering most blog mentions don’t convert to tangible wine sales of any sort.  Much of Yarrow’s influence is attributed to the detailed behind-the-scenes information he provides about the wines he reviews- stuff examining the personal histories of the winemakers or vineyard owners, information that breathes vitality into drab commentary about gravely soil or oak barrel regimes.  His website reviews wine “through its emphasis on the stories, the people, and the passion behind wine, all told from a decidedly down-to-earth perspective” (lifted from vinography.com).  This website also happens to be quite glossy and very professional, the side galleys decorated with all sorts of food, bev, and cooking product placements.  Writing about the colorful anecdotes behind the wines is a strategy familiar to most readers of this blog- only we lack endorsements of any sort.

Perhaps much of Hosemaster’s ire stems from the tsunami of misguided, convoluted, and incomprehensible wine reviews littering the wine blogosphere.  It’s a little like the commercial with a random guy in scrubs, scalpel in hand, about to operate on someone’s brain.  The nurse says, “Are you Dr. Smith?”  Random guy replies, “No, but I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.”  In defense of the Bruliam blog, and in full disclosure, I am sure readers already know I am a phony.  Rather than shill any old juice, we only try to sell you our wine.  Look deeply into your screen.  Your eyes will grow heavy and weary.  Repeat after me, “I only drink Bruliam wines…I only drink Bruliam wines.” While I am not comfortable providing you with tasting notes from every bottle I consume, I am confident that I can relay the basic mechanics of wine production in a literate and entertaining way.  Only now my anxiety hinges on crafting the condensed Cliff Notes to my blog.  Of the 864,000 online wine discussions tracked last October, ¾ transpired via Twitter and other social networking sites.  I am now seeking 762,208,972 friends so I can compete with Kim Kardashian’s $10,000 per Tweet payout.

Although our 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard just scored a 91 point score from Wine Enthusiast, it wasn’t always that great.  In fact, in our first  barrel sampling last year the wine had some serious structure problems.  You can get a recap of that tasting by clicking here.

So how would the 2009 first taste measure up?  Well, we knew the pressure would be on to try to live up to the hype surrounding the ‘08.  Check out the video below to see how it’s coming along.  If you can’t see the video, please click here.

We were thrilled to receive the first barrel samples of our 2009 pinots last week. 

First up, we taste our Sonoma Coast pinot noir from the Split Rock vineyard.  The wine exhibited some great fruit and earthiness.  One might even say it was a little funky.

If you can’t see the video, please click here.

In the Broadway musical “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown,” a bereft, famished Snoopy laments that Charlie Brown has forgotten his supper.  When Mr. Brown arrives moments later with his dog dish, Snoopy culls his deepest baritone and intones, “Behold!  This brimming bowl of meat and meal, which is brought forth to ease our hunger.”  It’s a great mock-up of the famous Italian verismo opera style.  Similar sentiments should be incanted when serenading the lowly organ meat known as “sweetbreads.”  “Lo!  This rich and tasty beast neck gland, chock full of protein and cholesterol!”  I might be more inclined to pen another stanza and further sing its praises were it not so readily available in numerous fine dining establishments near you.  Yes, sweetbreads are staging a comeback, bringing their rich, smooth deliciousness to the current food scene.  Organ meat is sexy, and organ meat is back!

Less than 5 years ago, I knew of only one San Diego restaurant serving up crispy, warm sweetbreads – Piattis in La Jolla.  A chain restaurant that once operated a branch in Yountville, it was the only game in town known to me.  We all know San Diego is known for great, temperate weather and a laid-back surfer mentality but it’s far from a food lovers lair of rapture.  But fortunately, change is in the air and in the kitchen.  Within the last 6 months, I have relished perfectly cooked sweetbreads in three different preparations at three different places.  I’ve been raving about Whisknladle’s crispy sweetbreads with brussel spouts and salty pancetta for the longest but have tasted equally satisfying bites at both Addison and Cucina Urbana.  At Addison, Chef Bradley does a crispy coated, deep fried number alongside lemony risotto.  Most recently, I was absolutely delighted to nosh on sweetbreads atop sautéed spinach at Cucina Urbana.  All three plates are terrific choices for the uninitiated sweetbread novice.  As scary as “organ meat” sounds, when well prepared, sweetbreads are easy to eat- crispy on the outside with a rich, savory, melt-in-your-mouth revelation within.  In fact, preparing sweetbreads at home is one of my loose 2010 kitchen resolutions, along with dishing up some homemade rabbit stew.  But somehow rabbit seems easier – just dredge in flour, brown and braise.  Sweetbreads are less approachable to the novice home chef.  Or so I explained to our patient and awfully indulgent Cucina Urbana waiter.  Not 10 minutes later, he returned to our table with “really simple” instructions from Chef Joe in the back.  “Chef said you can’t go wrong with this at home,” he repeated, hoping to butress my confidence.  Basically I got a pared down skeleton recipe highlighting the most important technical details of organ meat preparation.  Chef instructed me to 1) blanch in aromatics 2) peel off the membrane 3) slice into disks 4) refridgerate and weight them down to flatten ‘em out and finally 5) dredge in flour and pan sear.  Unfortunately, I am a cook and not a Chef.  I require on more detail, like exactly how thin do I slice?  How long in the fridge?  How long do I sear them?  What kind of aromatics?  If Chef says, “3 minutes and 12 seconds,” I set a stopwatch to 3 significant figures.  More information was required.

Sweetbreads are really the thymus gland, a neck organ that involutes (ie shrinks) with age in both animals and people.  In humans, the thymus is responsible for generating the T cells of our immune system and involutes after adolescence.  Older livery lacks significant thymic tissue as well, so sweetbreads come from young veal and sheep.  Veal sweetbreads are more popular in the U.S. and should be plump and firm when purchased from the butcher.  According to the table in Harold McGee’s seminal text (On Food & Cooking), sweetbreads contain two to three times the cholesterol of normal cuts of meats.  He attributes this to the smaller size of thymic cells relative to the larger skeletal muscle cells.  Thus thymic cells posses proportionately more cell membrane per unit weight, with cell membranes being comprised of fatty sterols and acids.  I guess that explains the rich, tender texture.  Sweetbreads are 12-33% protein and 3-23% fat, with 220-500 mg of cholesterol.  Good stuff.  McGee also points out that blanching (submerging in a slowly simmering liquid) washes proteins and microbes off the meat and coagulates them so they can be skimmed off.  He helpfully notes, “Blanching also moderates strong odors.”  In our house, I am guessing that sweetbreads will rank well below the perennial preschool favorites like unseasoned mac and cheese and bland, tasteless chicken nuggets. 

I consulted both The New Professional Chef, CIA, 6^th ed. and On Cooking, Techniques from Expert Chefs, 2^nd ed. for more detailed mise en place.  I now know that prior to cooking, sweetbreads first must be soaked overnight in cold water to remove all traces of blood.  I am hoping Chef Joe presumed I already knew that one.  That critical step kind of got lost in the game of telephone connecting his busy, restaurant kitchen to my four top table.  Next you must blanch the organ in court bouillon for 20 minutes (Ah-ha! Aromatics defined!) before removing the membrane by hand.  The CIA text provides great color photographs detailing the pressing technique.  Adjacent photos demonstrate how to bisect a kidney and deglove cow tongue of its tough, outer membrane.  This was starting to look awfully familiar to me- like autopsy pathology, except the last time I bisected a kidney it was to identify infection or tumors.  The whole sweetbreads-yourself experiment was starting to look more ick and less sweet.  But February is a good a time as ever to whack out those pesky New Year’s Resolutions, so I intend to bravely forge ahead.  We all know Julie & Julia has already been done so I will spare you my whining about how I’m pining for a book deal, too.  Instead I promise you Bruliam video footage when I prepare sweetbreads at home in the upcoming weeks.  After all, it’s a great pair with pinot noir.

91!!!!!

We can’t believe we’re actually typing this, but we’re thrilled to announce that we got our first review back and our Doctor’s Vineyard 2008 Pinot Noir scored a 91 from Wine Enthusiast!

Remember all of those posts we did denigrating the magazine scoring system?  Well, we clearly didn’t know what the heck we were talking about.  In fact, we were just downright stupid.  Magazine ratings rule!

A score of 91 puts us firmly in the “Excellent” category: 

90-94 — Excellent. Extremely well made and highly recommended.

The score and their full tasting review are going to be published online and in print in the May issue.

We only have a little bit of this wine left so if you haven’t ordered, or if you want to order more, do it now – you can click here to order.

Once the magazine hits, all bets are off!

We hardly knew thee.  Well, that’s not exactly true.  We actually knew you all too well.

For those of you who have been following our journey since the beginning (almost 2 years!!), you’ll recall that our original plan included crafting two  different pinot noirs for our inaugural 2008 vintage – the Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir from the Santa Lucia Highlands and an Annahala Vineyard Pinot Noir from Anderson Valley.  Two different AVA’s, two very different wines – but Mother Nature sometimes foils the best laid plans.  For those of you who are newer to the Bruliam world (or those of you who’d like a refresher), we’ll now link in a number of our past posts and videos to get you up to date on the fate of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 (sorry, wrong refresher).

As we learned after fermentation, the Anderson Valley grapes had been hit with pretty heavy smoke taint.  We decided to initially let nature take its course and put the newly pressed wine into neutral oak in hopes of diminishing the unappealing BBQ flavor.  After a few months of rest, we conducted our first tasting of the wine and found, much to our chagrin that it still tasted like chewing on a charcoal briquette.

With a heavy heart, we decided it was time for drastic action, and we authorized our wine maker to send the tainted wine through a reverse osmosis process to strip out the guiacol and 4-methylguiacol compounds responsible for the smoky flavors.  We understood that the cleansing process would inevitably strip out some of the fundamental fruit flavors and unique terroir of the Anderson Valley.  But, at that point our wine was on life support, and we were going to give it our all.

The reverse osmosis process was a success, albeit a qualified one.  Post treatment, the smoke taint was gone.  Unfortunately, the flavor was too; we were left with a bland, soulless wine.  Our last remaining hope was to revive some of the flavor and heart through blending. 

We ended up going through two extensive blending sessions on the wine, tinkering with small amounts of different clones and even juice from other Anderson Valley vineyards unaffected by smoke taint.  Even though this would prevent our bottling from being a single-vineyard designation, we were willing to blend a “cuvee” if the resulting wine was up to our standards.

After blending, aging, and re-tasting, we came to an unfortunate conclusion.  The wine, while 1,000 times better than what we first tasted, still wasn’t good enough. 

We were faced with a difficult decision.  We could bottle the wine as-is and offer it at a lower price to reflect the quality or we could flush it.

Businesses big and small face tough decisions like this all the time and there is usually no clear cut right or wrong answer.  Considering cash-flow first (which is crucial for a young business), it made sense to sell the wine cheap and fast to recoup the costs and roll the proceeds into the 2009 vintage.  But, thinking more long-term, we already knew that our 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard was a very special wine, and we didn’t want to jeopardize the reputation of our nascent brand by putting out a wine that wasn’t quite up to snuff.

And so, a couple of months ago, we called our winemaker and told him not to bottle the 2008 Bruliam Wines Anderson Valley Pinot Noir.  We believe it was subsequently offered as a sacrifice to the porcelain god.  It was a sad day, but tempered by the success we’d seen in the Doctor’s Vineyard pinot, the excitement over the 2009 harvest, and all of the goodness that those wines will bring.

I’ve been putting off writing this post for quite some time since its much more fun to discuss success than failure.  But, I was spurred to action today after seeing a post in the Dr. Vino blog about Hirsch Vineyards. 

Hirsch is a fantastic producer of Sonoma Coast pinots and chardonnays.  We had heard rumors that they too had suffered from smoke taint after the 2008 fires but assumed that like most vintners, they’d be keeping it quiet and/or blending it with juice from other vineyards/regions to create marketable wine.  So, I was impressed, amazed, and stupefied to learn that they had actually decided to go ahead and bottle a small amount of their smoke tainted wine. 

Quoting from their wine notes on the 2008 Bohan Dillon Pinot Noir:

“…out of this cauldron of chaos came spectacular wines. Dark plum and smoked meat fruit flavors are bound to our classic complex of acids and expressive tannins. The result is dark, lusty complete wines that combine the wonderful fruit of our ‘06’s with the structure of the 2007’s to make a comprehensive and profound expression of the site. If you want terroir, you will get the whole hog, its sty, and even the lard with this wine.”

 Unfortunately, this is a mailing list only wine which means it’s going to be hard to get.  I’m dying to see what they were able to do since they took a very different approach to smoke taint than we did.  Fortunately for Hirsch, they have a strong enough reputation that they can afford a little experimentation.  But still, going down this path is incredibly brave and admirable.  I hope they sell every bottle and that people can appreciate what they’ve done here, even if it is vastly different than what pinot drinkers may be expecting.

I only wish we were established enough (and had enough chutzpah) to have done the same.  Unfortunately, we made our decision to let our 2008 Anderson Valley pinot go.  The good news is that tasting/blending of the 2009 is just around the corner, and we have a lot of great wine coming down the pike, including a smoke-free 2009 Anderson Valley offering.

Thanks everyone for your continued support!

Only one of my children is truly wine obsessed.  While we eat dinner, she waits patiently nearby, one ear tuned to the TV and the other to the clink of our glassware.  Every ten minutes, she saunters over to investigate.  “Is it wine time yet?”  she propositions.  Exasperated by the repeated interrogation, Brian and I guzzle the last third of our bottle, if only to point out, “Look.  It’s empty.  We drank it all.” 

“No it’s not,” she persists.  She reaches for the rose-colored meniscus of backwash pooled in the belly of the stem. 

“Fine, it’s yours,” I concede.

“Guys!  GUYS!  It’s wine time,” she joyously proclaims with too much gusto, commandeering her sibs for the obligatory tasting.  She sips with great relish and thoughtfulness, mimicking the whole swirling and sniffing charade.  It would be cute if it weren’t so weird.  (Do I really look like that?)  She is still contemplating the contents when her siblings reply with the preprogrammed, “Mmmm!  Pinot,” even when it’s not.

Having endured innumerable wine tastings disguised as kid-centric picnics, our children are pretty well versed in wine lingo.  Words like “press,” “zin,” and “the crushpad” color our vernacular, so the kids assimilate our conversations, even when it’s not directed to them.  Interest, understandably, waxes and wanes with the natural cycle of the vine.  When Brian and I are in the throes of harvest, the kids pretend play “winery farm” or “tasting store,” reinventing our jobs and hobbies for the pinot precocious preschooler.  I wasn’t sure whether I’d be subtly reprimanded or excommunicated from the playground when our girls’ teacher reported back that one of them was offering up “tastes of her wine” from her water bottle at lunchtime.  (I’m relived to report she was sampling pinot, at least).  The wine business can be a touchy subject for elementary aged school kids.  We’d hate to give the wrong impression or support underage drinking.  On the other hand, our son supplied wine grapes for sharing last year, so his class could sample ripe wine grapes firsthand.  That seems benign enough, but I’m still in the dark as to my child’s ultimate plan for his burgeoning cork collection.  Would it be too embarrassing if he toted 100 corks to school for his 100 Day celebration?  More specifically, 100 wine-stained, used corks hidden inside an unmarked brown paper bag?  Would his fellow doe-eyed, innocent kindergarten mates ever correctly guess what he’d collected and counted for 100 Day?

I’m hopeful playing vino-curious is the kids’ effort to engage themselves in our world rather than a creepy foreshadowing of alcoholism.  After all, I usually puke if I drink more than 3 glasses of wine in an hour; metabolizing juice with more than 15% alcohol defies our nerdy DNA.  So I turn the other cheek and pretend to not know my own children when they loudly banter outside of well known Sonoma County tasting rooms querying one another if they prefer, “Viognier or the pink one.”

“Rose.  You mean, rose,” my preternaturally mature wino-baby corrects her twin.

My wine consumption started in college, with Gato Nego, a South American red decorated with a miniature plastic cat leashed to the bottle neck by a teeny cord.  My wine education started with the Wall Street Journal.  I have been reading John and Dottie’s weekly “Tastings” column for so many years now that I consider their vino-dictions an immutable precondition of the Weekend Edition.  And so I was disheartened, befuddled, and stupefied to read that their 579^th column (over “12 years- a full case!”) would be their last.  I suppose they are the latest victims of the economic woes slaying newspapers across the country.  While their dual salaries plus the cost of all of that wine must have been a tremendous financial undertaking for the Journal, their column was the only one that brought great heart and humanity to this notoriously staid and data-driven newspaper.

You’ve probably already noticed that I refer to Mr. Brecher & Ms. Gaiter by their first names, John and Dottie, as if they are my actual friends.  This is because I feel like they are, in a more tangible way than my weird, fetishist obsession with wine/fiction writer Jay McInerney.  While John and Dottie’s wine column educates across wine regions and varietals, it is actually about the intersection of life and work, wine and love.  They divulge both family vacations and romantic dates, all for our voyeuristic pleasure, carrying us readers along in the sidecar of their wine-centric lives.  They open their hearts joyously and share their contagious enthusiasm and passion for drinking wine.  In fact having read their heartwarming autobiography, Love by the Glass: Tasting Notes from a Marriage, I’m privy to the details of how they fell in love, dual career trajectories, their painful journey to conceive a child (they have 2 girls), and how they finally landed such a plum gig in wine journalism.  It was in that autobiography, reading about their hard-won firstborn’s birth, that I first learned of the French tradition of putting a drop of wine to a just born baby’s lips.  This act seemed so simple but so graceful, connecting new with old, the drink of the ages with fertile soil and fertile bodies, that I co-opted it as my own when my children were born many years later.  So yes, I know John and Dottie well, and like any friend, I mourn their job loss, too.

I hadn’t actually intended to post a blog about two wine journalists I only half-way know.  Can you imagine my writing about my buddy Bob (Robert Parker) or hanging out with Jim (James Laube)?  But the other morning, during an especially sweaty and treacherous spin workout, my mind wandered to the way this influential husband and wife wine tasting team informed my personal wine style.  Countless times their column has served as the springboard for my own musings.  Again and again I’d read how John and Dottie were so moved by a certain wine’s moxie that they’d call up the vintner to discuss what made that bottle a standout.  Super sleuths first, their traditional journalism background provided the tools to dig to the bottom of any barrel!  Just last year it inspired me to pick up the phone and call the actual Josh Jensen, in the flesh, to inquire after Calera’s vino-lok.  And like John & Dottie, I try to avoid endorsing a specific wine for you to buy or taste (other than my own!).  Instead I encourage readers to taste more often, try new varietals or regions, and think about why they did or did not enjoy them.  What you think is dreadful may represent my favorite producer, and that’s OK.  It makes wine is fun, satisfying, and deeply personal.  Well before kids, the Tastings column inspired my monthly wine tasting club, comprised of dorky, fledgling pathologists-cum-novice winos.  Never have I been as proud as when Brian and I were mentioned by name in the 2003 Open That Bottle Night post-festivities retrospective.  Ironically, Brian received more “Hey, I saw you in the Journal” e-mail tidings after John and Dottie’s shout out than he has for all of his finance citings combined, over 15 years.

And about Open That Bottle Night, that genius of a holiday borne entirely from John and Dottie’s merlot-tinted imagination.  Singlehandedly they transformed a dreary, winter weekend into a country-wide wine party and annual tradition.  For nearly ten years now, John and Dottie have implored, cajoled and noodged us readers to open that special bottle of wine that we’ve been hoarding for centuries for the mystery occasion that never materializes.  On the final weekend of February, they urge us to shake off the winter blues, pop the cork, and tell them about it.  It’s unprecedented really.  A few weeks after the event, John and Dottie publish a multi-page compilation of anecdotes, recipes, and one-liners cataloging America’s most treasured bottles and the people who drank them, with a little footnote explaining what they imbibed at home.  It’s an interactive give and take, and they make us readers the stars, like real friends would do.  Can you fathom Paris Hilton inviting the collective readership of US Weekly to party next Thursday night in their favorite panties and then tweet her explaining which skivvies they selected and why?  It’s preposterous.  Those stars are not like us, but John and Dottie are.  They’re just a regular ‘ole married couple who fervently love wine and want us to share their fun.  Although their column is kaput, John and Dottie will always have a special place in my heart and in my cellar. 

Should they need (an unpaid) wine writing gig, I give them an open-ended forum and opportunity to share their thoughts here, on the Bruliam blog.  If they do, we’ll donate $500 to the charity of their choice.  John and Dottie, are you out there?

We’ve been making a big deal about landing some of the coveted Rockpile zinfandel fruit for the 2009 harvest.  To give you a better idea of why this area is so special, we’d like to take you there (virtually, of course). 

Enjoy the video below – and if you can’t see the video, please click here to view it.

A number of you opened your first Bruliam bottle recently and we’ve been overwhelmed by your feedback.  We’re very pleased with how the 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard pinot turned out and we’re even more pleased that you’re all enjoying it so much.   A selection of your reviews are posted below.

Just some of the reviews we’ve received:

We just finally had a nice dinner at home and opened the Bruliam treasure! We LOVE it!!!! What a great wine!!! We’ll make sure to share our love for your wine with all of our wino friends. Thank you for making such a great pinot! – J.K.

The wine is excellent!  We drank it on Christmas eve and loved it!  I wish I could offer some enlightened impressions/comments people made but we are not a sophisticated group.  So the gist of it was “Wow it’s good” and “Can I have some more?”   We are all super-impressed.  Bravo Bruliam! – K.R.

Congratulations on your beautiful, velvety, delicious wine!  We enjoyed our first bottle during Hanukkah and we just finished the 2nd bottle last night!  Yum!  I am ordering more, if there is more available! – L.G.

Happy New Year!  We just wanted to drop you a note to tell you how blown away we were by the Bruliam Doctor’s vineyard.  The wine was one of the best Pinot Noir varietals that I have ever tasted.  My preference is for big bodied, rich, flavorful pinots, and the Bruliam certainly delivered.  Our friends were equally thrilled and I will forward to them the Bruliam link.  –M.K.

Just wanted you to know I brought a bottle of Bruliam to dinner last night I was having with some girlfriends. We loved it! It was so yum, I’m glad I have 5 more bottles! – J.F.

Wow – with fans like that who needs those glossy magazine scores anyways?  Well, obviously we do, which is why we decided to tempt fate and submit the 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard to a couple of the major publications for scoring.  If they choose to review the wine, we should have scores in 2-4 months.  Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

While getting my hair colored for the holidays, my hairdresser recounted the itinerary from his recent South African getaway.  His trip included a stay in Stellenbosch, a famous wine growing region, where he lustily overindulged in the local red wines, which he “absolutely cannot” tolerate here “because of sulfites.”  He went on to explain that South African wines contain fewer sulfites allowing one to drink all day long, without feeling bad. 

“What do you drink when you’re at home?” I asked.

“Chardonnay,” he quipped with flourish.

Now I have no idea whether or not South African wine producers employ a lower concentration of sulfites than we Californians do, but it is an interesting question.  More pointedly, though, I can definitively tell you that the preservation of white wine requires more sulfite than red ones.  So drinking white wine domestically but red vino abroad exemplifies the miraculous, phantasmagorical power of what I call The Vacation High.  Drinking anything in South Africa’s wine country sounds divine but fails to unravel the myth of sulfites.  So why is it that red wine requires less SO4 than whites?  It’s the phenolics, the lovable chemical compounds with the funny name.  And they look like this:

 ************DISCLAIMER- CARTOONS ARE MERELY A USEFUL PICTORAL- TEXT TO FOLLOW IS ENTIRELY COMPREHENSIBLE.********************

(Sorry, guys.  I know I’m a real S.O.B to lure you with a sassy hairdresser anecdote only to bait-and-switch with the biochemistry…)

Phenolics, sometimes referred to as polyphenols, are chemical compounds produced by plants, including grapevines.  The phenolics we care about are soluble chemical compounds located predominantly in grape skins and seeds.  Phenolics include things like tannins, which make your mouth feel dry and puckery and the anthocyanins that color red wine red.  As you know, grape juice from both red and white grapes is clear.  Red wines are hued because they are fermented in conjunction with the grape skins; white wines are not.  In other words, to make white wine, you smoosh grapes and ferment only the juice, discarding the skins, pulp, seeds, and stems.  With red wines, you squash the grapes and mix the juice, pulp, skin, seeds, and maybe even some stems together and then ferment the whole thick, gooey glob en masse.  Then you drain off the juice later.  This means that through the process of fermentation, unique skin and seed components are extracted into red wine that are absent from whites.  These diverse compounds are united in that their chemical silhouette each includes a hexagon-shaped ring.  Beyond that, the compounds look and function differently, modifying different aspects of a wine’s personality, taste and mouthfeel.

There are 6 different classes of soluble phenols.  Only one team, the cinnamate esters, is found in the pulp, their great distinction being the only soluble phenol present in white wines.  Two different phenolic gangs control color: the anthocyanins and the flavonols.  Players on tribe anthocyanin have names like peonidin, delphinidin, and petunidin-3-glucoside.  Of course these compounds were first isolated from a colorful garden of peonies, delphinium, and petunias before being noted in grape skins too.  The flavonols are color co-factors that make red wines appear richer and redder.  The flavan-3-ols live only in grape seeds and taste bitter.  This is why we squeeze the grape skins and seeds so judiciously at press, lest we crack the seeds and leach the bitterness into our finished product.  When the flavan-3-ols congregate into chains called polymers, they make tannins.  Tannins, of course, are responsible for astringency.  Then over time, as wines age, the tannin chains grow even longer, softening that distinct, mouth-puckering quality.  Tannins also polymerize with oxygen exposure, via oxidation reactions.  In a way, tannins act like an oxygen sponge, absorbing the harmful effects of oxygen without wrecking the juice.  Since red wines contain more phenolics than whites, they can absorb, or “consume” more oxygen without detrimental effect.  In fact, sometimes oxygen exposure improves red wines, by mimicking and hastening the effects of aging thereby mellowing any acerbic, tannic harshness.  In contrast, white wines fade from vibrant straw and honeyed hues to murky brown after very little exposure to ambient air.  This is why white wines require more sulfites, potent anti-oxidants, to maintain their delicate color.  Hearty red wines already posses a built in oxygen buffer through the phenolics extracted from the grape skins and seeds.  (Plus brown discoloration is more obvious in pale, white wines than inky, purple reds).

Lastly, phenolics are important to our health.  You have probably heard about them on 60 Minutes or read about them in the newspaper.  Indeed many of the cardio-protective effects of red wine are attributed to phenolics, in particular the final chemical class called “stilbenes.”  Within squad stilbene, the most famous player is resveratrol, touted to reduce heart disease, prevent dementia and diabetes, protect against colds and influenza, increase bone density, and even slow aging.  As you can imagine, resveratrol is the focus of frenzied scientific and drug research.  But before you guzzle away your inhibitions in the name of science and good health, remember “a 150 pound man would have to drink 1,500 bottles of pinot noir a day to get the same dose of resveratrol that [one researcher] gave his mice.”  (Wine Spectator, May 31, 2009).  So yes, science supports red wine for healthy hearts because red wines are chalk full of phenolics, the loveable chemical compound with the funny name.

On December 31^st at 1pm, I packed 15-years of my professional life into three white cardboard file boxes and turned out my office lights at Sagient Research for the last time.  My departure had been in the works for almost 18-months, but right then in the finality of the moment, it seemed all too sudden and way too fast.  But with the flip of the light switch it was over, just like that.

The number one question I’ve fielded over the past few months as I’ve told people of my decision to leave the day-to-day management of the company I started so long ago is, “what are you going to do next?”  The measurable shock (and mostly disbelief) on people’s faces when I tell them, “I have absolutely no idea,” has been priceless.  As someone who has always been a meticulous planner, to have no plan at all has seemed unnatural.  But, it’s been a great few months – to be rudderless, boundless, and listless all at the same time.

The second question that inevitably comes is, “does this mean you’re going to focus on wine full time?” or the variant, “when are you moving to Healdsburg to work on the wine full time.”  Sadly, the answers have been “no” and “not yet”, respectively.  We’ve been overjoyed at the quality of our first pinot noir (and your reactions to it so far) and we ramped up considerably for the 2009 harvest, but the reality is that we still have a long way to go before Bruliam Wines is a self-supporting, profitable venture.  And even when that happens, we don’t intend for Bruliam Wines to be a source of income for us – all profits are designated for charity.  Our reward is pursuing a shared passion, meeting and working with some really amazing people, writing off some of our wine purchases as “due diligence expenses”, and using this blog as an outlet for our pent up need to over-share.

That said, there has been one additional (and completely unintended) benefit I’ve received from Bruliam Wines.  Working with Kerith to create Bruliam Wines reminded me of just how much I enjoy starting new ventures.  So while I can’t fairly pin my decision to leave Sagient on Bruliam, there is no question that starting a wine company from scratch (while knowing absolutely nothing about starting a wine company) sparked the epiphany that I am much more energized, passionate, and focused at the start-up phase than managing the growth and operations phase of the corporate lifecycle. 

As we embark on 2010, my answer to the “what are you going to do next” question has shifted from “I have absolutely no idea” to “I’m going to start something new”.  That something new is only beginning to take shape and will probably change 50 times before there is anything of substance to write about. 

But, the most important parts – the passion and drive – are already there.  As Kerith will confirm, I was already busy by 10am on January 1^st researching ideas and shooting off e-mails.

So much for retirement…

Are you looking for a New Year’s Resolution you can really keep?  One you can sustain for 365 days with minimal deprivation, asceticism, or hardship?  One you can contemptuously flaunt with derisive success while your neighbor schleps to Weight Watchers?  One that showcases your will power, persistence and gut-wrenching drive while your office mate surreptitiously scarfs down Krispy Kremes in a dark closet?  How about “drink more wine?”  For the second consecutive year, John and Dottie from the WSJ have compiled their annual list of wine resolutions.  They advocate wonderful stuff like engaging a sommelier and jotting down tasting notes from your first sip to the last swallow, observing how wine changes over time.  For their complete list, please click here.

Sampling wines from different states sounds especially entertaining.  If you have competitive friends, craft a map of the United States as a Bingo card.  The first person to finish wines from all 50 states yells out “Sloshed!” before passing out and buying the next round of drinks.  Joshing aside, I fully champion the resolution to research your wine.  When you can’t tread the clay soil of Pomerol, at least you can Google it.  Every nugget of wine knowledge contributes to the story of that bottle, making it more personal and more enjoyable for you. 

To that end, I would add to their stellar list, “Pay a Restaurant Corkage Fee.”  Unearth that precious bottle of wine that you’ve been saving for a festive occasion and let someone else cook and clean for you.  Better yet, compile a crew of food and wine loving pals and ask each to contribute a bottle of wine that is meaningful to them.  Get lost in your friends’ rapturous wine tales and be transported.  This is what happened to us when we joined 2 other couples for dinner at a local Italian joint near Healdsburg over the holidays. 

As soon as we’d packed into the minivan (pathetically unhip but practical for transporting 6 adults), audible burbling of “What did you bring?” crackled in the Cheerio-scented air.  It was all very dishy and conspiratorial.  I reverently asked the driver if I could hold her bottle on my lap as it was rattling around precariously in the driver-side cup holder, one designed for a Venti Starbucks, not a 750 ml bottle.  None of us had discussed bringing wine in advance of our gathering, but it was obviously a given for such a vino-centric crowd.  One couple grew grapes and the other worked in wine distribution.  Amazingly our three bottles spanned 2 hemispheres, 3 countries (United States, Australia, and Italy) and three varietals (cab, Shiraz, and a Brunello di Montalcino).  But best of all, each wine told a unique story and embodied the sentiments and memories of the donor. 

We selected a 1997 Kenwood Artist Series Cabernet Sauvignon that was gifted to us by a winemaker friend.  This particular bottle represented the first vintage from his first year working at Kenwood.  It was presented with the caveat, “drink it…soon.”  Ever literal and with the giver’s warning still reverberating in our eager ears, we cracked it 24 hours later.  Plus we rarely purchase cabs ourselves so we felt inspired to pop open an old California classic, especially one from such a decorated local label.  (Beyond Kenwood’s long-standing reputation, the label showcases the green and gold rolling hills of a landscape portrait by French expressionist Rizo).  The grape growers proffered an Australian Langley Shiraz of deep personal importance.  Years ago, the wife passed an extended sojourn in Australia, befriended the daughter of the winemaker, and ultimately worked at his winery.  So for her, this wine was a potable reminder of her winemaking roots and cherished friends abroad.  Then double dipping in sentiment stew, this particular bottle had been gifted to her on her wedding day by the other couple dining with us, who understood how meaningful her Australian experience had been.  Since it was our first time dining with the grape growers, we were touched to be included in consuming this extra special bottle.  Lastly, the wine importers toted a youngish (2004) Gaja Brunello, a nod to our love of Tuscan wines and the regional fare of our Italian restaurant. 

Since the Gaja needed some air, we started with the old cab.  In fact when the poor waiter accidentally reached to decant the Kenwood instead of the Gaja, we all screamed, “Noooooooooooo” in geeky, panicked unison.  As for the old stalwart, the tannins were soft and supple.  Muted whiffs of dark berry and cherry complimented a smooth, mellow texture.  The shiraz was bright and fruity with a little spice, singing with homemade fennel-flecked sausage and lentils.  Lastly the Brunello was lusty, fruity and delicious.  Of course we were lucky to dine with friends who swoon over wines like tweens watching Gossip Girl.  But it was the story, passion, and conviction driving their wine choices that made each bottle magical.  Like knowing the musical themes before you first hear an opera or studying Michelangelo in print before a trip to Italy, Art, even drinkable art, becomes yours.  The stories forge connections.  Context and details make every wine more delicious. 

So in 2010 I say, dear Brigade, do your research, pick wine tales above fish tales, and pay the darn corkage fee. 

Cheers to a great 2010!

The most common misconception about Bruliam Wines is that we actually own grapevines.  Contrary to popular belief, one needn’t own vines to produce wine.  Most anyone can buy grapes from farmers and make the kind of wine that they love to drink.  But that seems counterintuitive to folks.  So instead the conversation usually goes something like this:

Kerith is approached by old friend whom she hasn’t seen in a long time.

Old friend: “How are you?  Geez, your kids are getting pretty old.  You must be back to work by now, right?”

Kerith: “I’m not practicing medicine, but we’ve started a wine brand, so I work on that.”

Old friend: “Oh, so you own a vineyard.”

So I launch into a 25 minute treatise about our operation, vineyards, clones, fermentation temperatures, and yeast, which pretty well scares them away until another 20 or so months have passed.  But I can’t help myself.  There is a siren-song allure to crafting a perfect wine.  By that I mean concocting a beverage that reflects a certain growing season in a particular place, truly “time in a bottle.”  (OK, you can gag now).  This heroic quest fuels our insanity, a peripatetic crusade to amass small lots of grapes from a bunch of select locations.  And we’re not alone in our grape grabbing mania.  Outsourcing fruit is becoming increasingly popular, especially in this age of boutique wine producers.  The model we follow aspires to the success of Brian Loring (Loring Wines) or Adam Lee (Siduri Wines).  Both labels produce a number of exceptional pinot noirs from California and Oregon, without owning any vines at all.  In fact Siduri purchases grapes from 20 different vineyards, creating small lots of vineyard specific pinot noir.  Indeed we shared that vision when we opted to purchase grapes from both Monterey County (Santa Lucia Highlands) and Mendocino (Anderson Valley).  We sought to make two distinctly different pinot noirs, products of two very disparate climates, soils, and terroirs.  Unfortunately as you know, Mother Nature got the best of us in 2008, with the smoke taint.  But for the 2009 harvest, we’ve given the Anderson Valley another try, after a terrific, fire-free growing season.  Plus we’ve added a Sonoma Coast offering, from an exceptional vineyard called Gap’s Crown.

The most fantastic success story to date is the modern fairy tale of Kosta Browne.  Once upon a time two guys wanted to make some pinot.  Like Cinderella herself, they worked and toiled, cleared plates and tidied up after dinner service.  When no fairy godmother materialized to bankroll their dream, they pooled their collective tip money (widely acknowledged in urban wine myth as $20 bucks / night) to purchase their first ton of grapes.  This past September, Michael Kosta and Dan Browne sold the controlling interest in their company to Vincraft, a wine-focused private equity group, for almost $40 million.  Their mega cash payout is not exceptional given their insane track record for crafting critically acclaimed wines (43 of 49 pinots scored by Wine Spec ranked 90 points and higher).  What is astounding is that these two “stoked….really excited” guys don’t own a single vine (WS, 9/09).  Vincraft is essentially buying their star power and enology “It-factor,” and I presume full access to the Sebastopol warehouse where their mastery spins grapes to gold.  To top off their can’t-get-any-better year, Wine Spectator has named their 2007 Sonoma Coast pinot noir their #4 wine in the top 100 of 2009.  Oh yeah, did I mention their Sonoma Coast is a blend from 4 vineyards, including Gap’s Crown?

In my very first viticulture lecture, UC Davis professor Dr. Mike Anderson warns students against trying to both grow grapes and vinify them.  He admonishes, “I’m going to now, and probably later, caution you against doing these things.”  He goes on to show a diagram with three bubbles: one surrounds a photo of grapevines, another displays a barrel room, and the third overlaps both with a couple of baseball-capped guys standing on a crusher-destemmer.  The caption reads, “You have to do both, don’t you?”  Dr. Anderson scolds, “I’m gonna tell you again, I think it’s a really bad idea.”  So my first farming lesson proved that even the experts endorse winemakers buying grapes from dedicated farmers.  My second epiphany confirmed the above adage.  Farm science should be left to those better suited than I.  Enduring 4 hours of lecture on irrigation was about as boring to me as your reading my jargon-heavy musings on sugar transporters. 

A few weeks ago my girls’ swim teacher voiced an out of the blue request.  He asked if we ever allowed weddings at our Temecula vineyard.  I said, “We don’t own a vineyard…” 

“But you make wine, right?” he protested.  His delightful presumption was not illogical; if we live in San Diego and make wine then we must own a vineyard in Temecula.  To be magnanimous, I offered up full access to the warehouse in the meth-laden corner of San Francisco where we work, but that wasn’t exactly the idyllic, pastoral setting he’d envisioned.

Wine touring with children is different from wine touring without them; it’s worse.  Over the recent Thanksgiving holiday, we were brazen enough to attempt this suicide mission with not only our three children but also an additional 5 kids ages 6 and under.  We were joined by two other families, other parents with equally barbaric thresholds of pain tolerance and self-destructive tendencies.  We started at Mauritson, which seemed a reasonable choice given the beautiful green swath of front lawn where the kids could joyfully frolic while we adults savored the Rockpile bounty.  As you can guess, nothing with kids is ever quite as idyllic as you envision.  At one point, just my babysitter and I were left to corral the herd of children while the other adults (who are obviously much smarter and babysitter savvy than I) enjoyed a leisurely winery tour.  She and I just stood there, horrified, as the boys sabotaged the defenseless foliage decorating the periphery of the lawn.  One boy after another dove head first into the flowering bushes, their wild arms opening and closing in a primitive chomping motion.  For well over 15 minutes they entertained one another by repeating the same frenzied crunching, like the teeth of hungry lawn mower killing anything in its path.  And I just stood there, frozen, unable to rally from this fog of awe and bewilderment.  There they were, ages 6, 6, 6, 5, 3, 3, 3, and 2, the physical embodiment of birth control, ready to scare any leaf-peeping, love-blinded honeymooners into immediate celibacy.  Luckily the winery was low on tourists that morning.  Sometime after the plants were near dead, my son ambled over to me, bow legged and visibly uncomfortable, picking at his bum.  “Mom, I have rocks in my underpants,” he whined.  And that about sums up our experience; it was as prickly as sitting on a cactus – naked.

But still we adults begged for more self-flagellation and deeper emotional canings.  We wanted to taste at Papapietro Perry, an absolutely wonderful, small production, boutique label specializing in pinots and zins.  Their tasting room is simple, a single tasting room absent any winemaking facility or vineyards or grounds beyond the gravely parking lot.  It is one structure among the many mom and pop producers comprising the aggregate “Family Wineries” on Dry Creek Road.  In addition to the tasting bar, their facility is brimming with wine country mementos, t-shirts, and house wares, sparkly doodads beckoning chubby preschool fingers to grab and touch.  Miraculously though, they provided family entertainment, a glass bowl of crayons and paper.  (As a quick aside, I am always reinvigorated to discover another winery that recognizes the elementary school set.  It doesn’t require much effort to finance some coloring books, markers, paper or Otter Pops.  It’s incredibly generous, and impactful on us consumers, when a winery demonstrates such thoughtfulness.  Obviously Child Protective Services may be alerted should we leave our wee kin tied to a stake in front of a winery.  Pleasant or not, we must tote that baggage along.  If you’d like a list of more kid-friendly wineries, please drop me an e-mail).  So yes, Papapietro Perry is equipped to deal with children, but not the entire kindergarten.  Of course the glass bowl shattered, and my twins started to howl.  What could I do but grab as many handfuls of touristy trinkets as I could palm?  I hoped compounding my wine purchase by several hundred dollars worth of useless ornaments would assuage my guilt, for I was responsible for a path of destruction piloted by 8 kids amped up on fruit rolls and no nap.  For me, the crash of the bowl was like an alarm, signaling the end of a long, trying day.  It was time finally to head back home, relax, and open a couple of bottles of wine in our backyard, where our neighbors don’t mind when we duck tape the kids to a tree (or at least they don’t say anything to us about it).  Sitting outside, I sifted through the Papapietro loot.  Nestled among the trinkets was the niftiest wine cork key chain.  What cheap and genius advertising!  Immediately I swapped out their cork for a Bruliam one, a project requiring no skill, tools, or hot glue gun.  It’s a craft that even you can do at home, with some 29 cent eyes from the hardware store.  What better way to preserve the memory of your first Bruliam experience than with a brand-new-for-the-holidays keychain?  Twenty times a day, every time you schlep to the grocery store, dry cleaners, soccer field, or drug store, you’ll be reminded of our label.  And who knows, if your kid tosses your electronic car keys into the toilet, maybe they’ll bob to the top before the fetid water shorts the circuit. 

We’re pleased to announce that all pre-orders shipped on Monday afternoon.  Depending on where you are, you should receive your wine in the next 1-4 days.

A couple of pointers for getting the maximum enjoyment out of your bottle of 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard:

1.  Don’t open it the day it arrives – PLEASE!  While we understand that the anticipation is killing you, wine (pinot especially) is subject to bottle shock during shipment.  If you can hold out at least a week before you open your first bottle, we promise that the payoff will be well worth it.

2.  The wine is ready to drink now and should age beautifully for the next 3-5 years.  Pinot in general is not built to cellar for extended periods (although there are certainly many exceptions).  We’ve waited beyond the 5-year window on some California pinots and the fruit was significantly diminished.  So, drink up!

3.  If you don’t have a dedicated wine storage unit, store your wine in a dark place with a relatively consistent temperature and humidity.  Most people use a closet that isn’t subject to regular use.

4.  If you’re storing the wine at room temperature, pop it in the fridge for 15 minutes before you open it (don’t wait more than 20-minutes!).  That will bring the temperature down a few degrees, maximizing the flavors.

5.  If you have pinot specific stemware, that’s great.  Otherwise, any clear glass with a wide bowl and rim will work wonders with this wine.  The only time we’ve noticed a drop in flavor is when we tasted the wine in narrow glasses (those that are generally used for white wine).  While crystal (Reidel, etc.) is great, we’ve gotten very good results using our Ikea glasses with a wide bowl and rim.

6.  Exercise a little patience – one of the really great things about this wine is that as it warms and opens in the air, it develops a beautiful floral note, usually after 15-20 minutes in the glass.  Make sure you set aside some of the wine in your glass to see if you can pick up this unusual enhancement.

Finally, and most importantly, make sure you take a moment to enjoy your first bottle of Bruliam.  Many of you have been on this journey with us since the very beginning.  So, open the bottle with a special meal, a special someone, or any sort of special occasion.  Or, if you’re like us, open the bottle to celebrate getting the kids to bed on time and the resulting momentary calm.

Make sure to drop us a note to tell us your impressions of our first vintage.  Or, even better, snap a picture of yourself with your bottle for our Brigade page.

In their annual pre-Thanksgiving Wall Street Journal column, John and Dottie proclaim, “There is no perfect wine for Thanksgiving dinner,” which really takes the pressure off of those guys looking to impress their fiancée’s Screaming Eagle-guzzling dad.  On the other hand, our most beloved WSJ wine columnists strongly endorse savoring an American pinot noir with the cranberries and bird this year.  And you know what?  It’s the best time ever to be a pinotphile.  After years of playing the shrinking violet behind the shameless, self-promoting shadow of big brother cabernet sauvignon, American pinot noir is poised to explode.  Be thankful this year that we’ll celebrate restraint, elegance and balance instead of brazenly overoaked, astringent fruit bombs (not that I’m biased or anything!).  Never mind that John and Dottie themselves are planning to drink an aged California cab on Thanksgiving Day; if we’d attentively cellared a 30 year old Mondavi Reserve, we’d devour that too.  But for those of us lacking a deep, thoughtful cellar brimming with spectacular old reds, indulge instead in a sexy, berry, floral-spiked or earthy funk-flecked American pinot noir.  John and Dottie cajole and implore us to “go with an American pinot noir” for good reason.  Pinot’s cranberry and red berry mirror the tastes in our favorite Thanksgiving foods and are soft and wonderful to drink.  In fact they confess to being “somewhat obsessed with Pinot from Hirsch vineyards.”  Their words must thrill the whole Hirsch pinot noir operation because only weeks before, Matt Kramer from Wine Spectator cited Hirsch among the finest examples of Sonoma Coast pinots.  He went so far as challenging us readers to relish an “extreme Sonoma Coast” pinot noir before dying.  Is that ever a divine endorsement of wine or what?    Oh transcendent incantation, Kramer extols “America’s pinot noir treasures” like the holy sacrament.  (By the way, as a Jew I can say that).  So go with pinot, dear Brigade, and support our brethren. 

Last year, I was so undone by schlepping our children from San Diego to Los Angeles in our infernal family adventure of misery and pain that I never though to ask our hostess what we drank.  Whatever it was, it was absolutely perfect.  Grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins, and friends eclipse any wine label I can fathom.  In this year’s episode of wretched perdition and suffering part deux, we intend (stupidly) to extend that 2 hour drive to LA all the way north into Sonoma County.  No wine in the world, not even the most fortified ports of old, can soothe the excruciating, endless torment of 10 long hours in the car with 3 kids aged 6 and under.  I am hoping that by Thanksgiving Day, my heartburn will have abated and my bald patch will have resprouted (no such luck for Brian, unfortunately), after having pulled out handfuls of hair just past the Long Beach freeway exit (3 hours and 20 minutes down, only 6 hours and 40 minutes to go!!). 

But beyond the travails of toddler travel, this Thanksgiving Brian and I are incredibly thankful for the opportunity to oblige our passion for winemaking and finally release our inaugural offering to you.  So this Thanksgiving, we will pop open a bottle from our personal stash of Bruliam wine and toast you, our loving cheerleaders and ardent supporters.  We thank you, Brigade, and cheers!  May you enjoy a peaceful and fulfilling Thanksgiving holiday.

On the Monday following Thanksgiving we intend to release all of the pre-orders for shipping, so you should have your wine by December 7th.  If you haven’t already placed an order, there is still time to get an order in and receive the wine for the holidays. 

In addition to the overwhelming pre-order response we’ve received from our Brigade members, we’re thrilled to announce that three of the best restaurants in town are planning to carry our 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir.  If amazing food, top atmosphere, and great people weren’t reason enough to support these places, now you have a real reason to go – to order a bottle of Bruliam wine to enjoy with your delicious meal!! 

And even if you’ve already ordered wine from us, make sure that when you eat at these terrific restaurants, you let the fantastic people listed below know that you’re a Bruliam Brigade member and that you appreciate their support of our fledgling wine brand.  It’ll mean the world to them and to us.

Restaurants Carrying the Bruliam Wines 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir:

Addison – the only 5-Star /5-Diamond restaurant in Southern California has already won just about every food and wine award imaginable, including the coveted Grand Award from Wine Spectator.  Chef William Bradley and Wine Director Jesse Rodriguez are both ardent Bruliam supporters, so make  sure to return the love.

Cucina Urbana – the turn-around superstar of 2009, Cucina Urbana’s small plates / locally sourced menu has taken off like a rocket, leading a ressurgence of the entire Banker’s Hill dining scene.  We’re overjoyed that the place is packed nightly and a lot of the credit goes to General Manager Ben Kephart.  A fervent Brigade member, we expect Ben’s allocation of Bruliam to fly off his wine list and out of his unique retail shop.

Whisknladle – our go-to neighborhood place for everything from burgers to bone marrow and scallops to sweetbreads, Whisknladle proves that good food prepared exceptionally well wins the day every time.   Make sure to say hi to Bruliam backers owner Arturo Kassel, General Manager David Balanson, and our all-time favorite restaurant server ever, Jenny Deutsch.

UPDATE:  We’re also excited to announce that a fourth local restaurant is picking up our wine for their wine list.  Lupi Vino Cucina is our favorite local Italian restaurant.  If you live in Bird Rock, you’re probably already a regular and know how special Lupi is.  If you live elsewhere in San Diego, we urge you to go in and support this great place.  Tell Raffo that Bruliam sent you!

A huge thanks to all of these great restaurants for their support of Bruliam!

Like so many life experiences, I knew about it, I’d read on it extensively, but I’d never experienced it firsthand.  After all, I never thought it could happen to me.  In fact, just this past summer, I’d boasted in an online discussion that I’d never suffered a stuck fermentation (in my oh-so-extensive single year of harvest experience).  Now let me eat crow and cower at the toes of the great karmic gods, for hubris followed me to Rockpile.

“High Brix juices pose a fermentation problem for yeast” (Bisson and Butzke).  We knew the Rockpile fruit would be challenging.  Given the high Brix and the variable berry composition, which ranged form super ripe to full fledged raisining, we braced for an uphill battle against every conceivable handicap.  Our grapes came in at over 30 °Brix.  My UC Davis literature doesn’t even propose guidelines for the nutritional supplementation of grapes over 27 °Brix.  We were in unchartered territory, for me at least.  None of this was addressed in my neatly packaged, academic syllabus.  Further complicating matters, the acid was high (yeah!) but so was the pH (boo!), meaning that if we added neutral water to dilute the sugar, it would just push the pH even higher.  But we went for it, starting “au natural,” waiting for the must to start churning and bubbling on its own before supplementing with Clay’s cultured “Rockpile” yeast.  Everything looked remarkably good.  The sugar dropped, and the cap held firm.  In fact, fermentation began so smoothly that we’d almost forgotten about those pesky raisins.

“Once cells lose viability or permanently adapt to the adverse conditions of the environment by reducing sugar consumption, it is very difficult to restore the rate of fermentation” (Bisson).  Zinfandel is infamous for unevenly ripened clusters, and our super ripe fruit was no exception.  We’d have to contend with raisins living in our must.  Since we’re a mom and pop-sized operation, we ferment our wine in small, one ton plastic bins.  I think you’ve seen them in video clips and photos.  They are plastic boxes, devoid of fancy hoses, screens or pump attachments.  As the must ferments, the raisins sink to the bottom of the box and stay there, rehydrating in the juice, leaching their potent, sugary venom into our percolating concoction.  Contrast this with large production fermentation tanks.  These bad boys employ sieve like grates so that during pumpovers, the raisins are ensnared in the mesh and removed from the vessel.  This is a tremendous advantage which is lost to us.  Instead, for every bit of sugar our yeast consumed, the raisins just spit out more.  And the yeast got used to it, foreshadowing the problems ahead.  Not only does this hinder any attempt to get a “true” sugar reading, but also for every step forward, we took two steps back.  Amidst this chaos, the alcohol content was slowly rising.  Unable to sustain a reasonable rate of fermentation against an unrelenting tide of sugar and stressed by the ascending alcohol, our yeast first grew sluggish, and then they gave up.  Simmering quelled to the tranquil lull of the single, rare bubble.  Brix chipped away in appalling 0.1 degree increments until it arrested altogether.  And there was still substantial residual sugar in our half-fermented must.

“By the time the rate has dramatically slowed, it is often too late” (Bisson).  It’s not like we hadn’t tried every trick in the book.  As the tizzy of agitated turbulence slowed to a near simmer, we hurled life vests and buoys at our sluggish juice.  We dumped in yeast hulls, ghostly silhouettes of deceased yeast, thought to sop up toxins and magically bring dead fermentations back to life.  We moved the must into a small heated tank, hoping the warmth would stimulate the yeast to rev their engines for a final push.  We aerated the juice and ultimately racked it, hoping to get some oxygen in there, too.  None of it worked.  Obviously, like Dr. Bisson warned, it was too late.

“Re-initiation of fermentations that contains a large population of nonviable cells is particularly challenging” (Bisson).  Amen, Dr. Bisson.  We were sitting on a box of dessert wine riddled with dead yeast, with no option other than to restart the entire process in earnest.  So Clay’s awesome second in command mixed up some new yeast with fresh juice and added it back in small aliquots to our steadfastly stuck stuff.  Behold the sugar dropped by a point and then stopped again.  Everyday our morning e mails started with an excited, “What happened today?  Is it dry yet?  Is it dry yet?  Is it dry yet?” only to be answered by a mournful, “Not yet.  Down 0.1.”  It was excruciating.  Days rolled into weeks, and finally the cap began to collapse.  When the once-firm raft of floating grape skins started to soften, disintegrate, and sink back down to the bottom, we knew it was time.  We had to press our zin, even though it wasn’t dry.  We had no choice.

We dropped into the winery on Halloween weekend (with pumpkin bread).  Clay was all smiles, as that morning’s chemistries declared that our wine had ultimately fermented to dryness in the barrel.  And it had been a sizeable drop, from about 1.3 °Brix into negative numbers (which indicates dryness).  Nobody knows if this dumb luck was secondary to the aggressive racking, final aeration, or any of other Hail Mary gimmicks we employed in final desperation.  None of this, by the way, is either sanctioned or condoned in my trusted textbook.  But that doesn’t sway my interest in or appreciation for academic enology.  I’m still that nerdy, literature searching, article reading kid with specs and braces.  It’s just cool to have some renegade maneuvers in my winemaking armamentarium for the next time my yeast go rogue.  But I promise you this, next year we’re gonna harvest that fruit a lot, lot sooner.  

Works cited:

Linda F. Bisson
Stuck and Sluggish Fermentations
Am. J. Enol. Vitic., Mar 1999; 50: 107 – 119.

Linda F. Bisson and Christian E. Butzke
Diagnosis and Rectification of Stuck and Sluggish Fermentations
Am. J. Enol. Vitic., Jun 2000; 51: 168 – 177.

It is always good to get a second opinion.  Whether to question a medical diagnosis or to confirm your worried belief that a pair of jeans makes your butt look too big, a second opinion can be very helpful.  The same is certainly true of wine and as we approach our intended release date for the 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir, it’s been helpful to garner a second opinion on our inaugural vintage. 

In our blog post on opening the first bottle, we threw in an open invitation for anyone who wanted to come taste the wine to contact us.  To our surprise, only one of you did.  Fortunately, that one person actually has some legitimate wine credentials.

Brigade member Keith Hoffman is a published wine and lifestyles writer who has penned over 30 wine articles for U.K.-based Gambling Online Magazine, primarily about South American wines.  He’s also just launched a blog to record his extensive wine tasting notes at BrainWines.com.  Oh, and he also happens to have a Ph.D. in neuropharmacology and spends his days working with local biotech start-ups.

But all of that is beside the point.  You see, Kerith and I went to high school with Keith.  He was two years ahead of us, making him a senior when we were sophomores.  And so my earliest (and strongest) memories of Keith are of him pummeling me in football practice.  Keith, while certainly very nice off the field, was one of the guys that you really didn’t want to match up against in 1-on-1 drills.  Yet when it was the varsity’s turn to hit on the younger guys in practice, Keith and I seemed to be lumped together more times than mathematically possible.  Needless to say, the drills would universally end with me on my back trying to get my wind and wondering why in the world I ever signed up to play.

So, as you might imagine, it came as quite a surprise after twenty years to get an e-mail out of the blue from Keith who had heard about our wine venture somehow and was excited to learn more.  A few weeks after that initial flurry of e-mails, our invite to taste the wine went out and Keith gladly accepted.

A couple of Tuesdays ago, Keith came over to sample our wares.  We enjoyed an evening catching up and tasting the wine paired with Kerith’s pinot pizza.  Knowing that Keith had actually written about wines, we asked him to write up his tasting notes for us to put on the site.  Not a review, per se, but a qualified second opinion that we’re happy to share with you.  Best of all, the evening ended without me having to endure any sort of punishing physical violence.

Of course, the only opinion that matters is yours and we’re excited to have you all try your Bruliam wine in the near future.  In the interim, the original invite still stands – we could use a third, fourth, and even fifth opinion.

Keith’s notes on the Bruliam Wines 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir:

Nose:   Crisp, plum-steeped, spring water. Elegant leathers. Light lavender. Violets. Candy.

Taste:  Clean, amazingly so. Smooth plum and light spice. Mature earth.  Mature cherry. Perfect structure and sexy mouthfeel.

Overall:  Astounding.

I had been dissed for sure but worse than that, I’d been ignored.  A “dis” implies an acknowledgement followed by the deliberate rebuff, but I hadn’t even been acknowledged.  In fact, I yearned to be dissed, to relish that singular moment of acceptance before being thrown to the rabid, foaming dogs.  Instead, my ego was spurned in a scornful heap at the bottom of the cold shoulder totem pole.  Instead of a scarlet “A,” I was branded “loathed & rejected.”  Obviously, this is not what I had intended.  Folks are generally happy to be at the receiving end of my home-baked goods and tell me so profusely.  One woman in Brian’s office, for whom I have been baking lemon pound cake for over 10 years, still ignites my self-esteem by admiring how my cake trumps all others.  It makes me feel great.  I am not used to being snubbed over pie.  But that is how it started.

Sonoma County provides a sensational bounty of fresh produce, and the mouth-watering, summer blackberries are no exception.  Extraordinary eaten right out of the cardboard container, the berries are outrageous in a fresh fruit galette.  “Galette” means “free form tart made without the confines of a pan.”  Instead of sculpting the dough into a pretty, fluted pie pan, you just roll it, toss in the fruit, and fold up the edges.  Rustic and lovely, you can chalk up the irregular circumference and aesthetic variance to artful, homey appeal.  (I meant this part to be cracked, really).  This divine dessert, I staunchly believed, would be my gateway to Rockpile heaven.  Never mind the chutzpah or smug conceit that drove my irrational fantasy.  I thumped my chest like an aggressive ape, ready to conquer.  I had enough swagger to imagine my unprofessional cooking non-credentials as edible bullion, a glistening treasure.  I would woo the Mauritson wine collective with the hypnotic aroma and mesmerizing taste of my blackberry-peach dessert, and they would do my wine biding.  Unencumbered by the “rules” of viral marketing or conceptualizing the paradigms of a marketing MBA, I figured I’d just show up, ambush the winemaking team at the winery, and deliver my caloric creation in person.  After securing my salivating, dessert-craving audience, I’d get down on my knees and plead for grapes.  Well you can guess exactly how that went down.

When I showed up in the tasting room lobby, flaunting the glory of my tarte terrifique, a kind tasting room attendant ushered me back to meet with Clay’s wife, since Clay himself was out of town.  She introduced me with a breezy, “An old friend of Clay’s is here to see you.”  Gulp.  “Old friend” was generous; we’d never met (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night).  His wife queried, “So how do you know Clay?”  Of course, I didn’t.  Suddenly the whole “ambush ‘em with a pie” tactic felt dirty and wrong.  Celebrity stalkers have been arrested and charged for transgressions less creepy than this.  Note to self: mistake #1- never bake for someone else’s husband.  It makes the baker (i.e. Kerith) seem pathetic, desperate, cloying and weirdly stalker-ish.  Double that if you don’t personally know any of the parties involved.  I dropped my galette in the employee kitchen and quickly exited the winery, shamed and deeply embarrassed.  I sent a follow-up e mail explaining that I have no criminal record, I stopped eating bulk candy without paying in college, and I am a fairly decent human being looking to legitimately purchase a small volume of Rockpile grapes.  I never heard back.  Stalker-gate was closed for the season.

After that fiasco, I re-strategized.  I figured I’d complete my UC Davis coursework and then devote the summer 2010 to acquiring quality Zin grapes for next year’s harvest.  But the plucky, can-do attitude rattled around in the back of my head.  After all, between the recession and the bumper crops of grapes in 2009, I’d eavesdropped on some anecdotal mumblings about small time mom and pop producers like me actually securing some pretty sensational fruit.  Some dude working out of CrushPad managed to score a ton of pinot from Gary Pisoni, quite a sensational feat.  Another bought some grapes from Savoy in Anderson Valley, another coup.  So once our 2009 pinot was secure, I spontaneously cold-called a Rockpile grower listed on the AVA website.  I explained my predicament, a small time wine maker looking to purchase a ton of zin.  Suspicious, he demanded, “How did you get this number?”  (I think it may have been his personal cell phone).  “It’s posted on the website, sir,” I stammered.  And despite evidence to the contrary, I am so not a stalker, thank you very much!  Luckily, this guy was very, very nice and offered up some leads.  One call led to another and astonishingly, I got a phone call a few days later from a grower looking to unload some Rockpile zin that needed to be picked yesterday.  The fruit was that ripe (over-ripe, I suppose).  I explained that I wasn’t exactly in the position to vinify the fruit on my own just yet, although I hoped to down the road.  “Don’t worry,” he said.  “My nephew does custom crush.  I’ll talk to him, and he’ll do it for you.”  “Who is your nephew?” I wondered aloud.  “Clay Mauritson” he gamely countered.

I didn’t want to flub our big score by blurting out, “I don’t think he’ll work with me.  He thinks I’m a crazy stalker.”  So I just handed the phone to Brian.  Details were disclosed; a deal was drawn.  We’d get the grapes at Mauritson Winery as soon as we could get to Healdsburg to receive them.  I think you’ve seen the video, so the rest is history.

Ironically, when I first met Clay in person he said, “So you’re the pie girl!  You know I was out of town and didn’t even get to taste it…” 

Now every time we meet up to work on the Bruliam zin, I proffer some home baked treats.  I want Clay and his hard working crew (you know who you are!) to like me.  Unfortunately, I think they still view me as a stalker, albeit one armed with delicious baked goods.

Herein, dear Brigade, we commence our final musing on normal fermentations for the 2009 harvest season.  When we last convened, we’d abandoned our heroic yeast to fight a lonely battle against the rising tide of ethanol toxicity.  But as I’d mentioned last week, those plucky yeast rely on some nifty tricks to fortify their body armor and better withstand the alcohol soak.  As you know, high alcohol concentrations mess with yeasts’ cell membranes by forcing a tsunami of acid inside their insides faster than they can push it out.  Alcohol also inhibits proteins like enzymes or sugar transporters and screws up their membrane fluidity (that is the Austin Powers beaded door curtain-like component of their outsides).  This concept of “membrane fluidity” is paramount.

The plasma membrane is like a double layer wall surrounding the yeast, with fixed, unbending parts and fluid, flexible parts.  The wall includes certain windows and docking ports that uniquely fit specific things, like sugar or nitrogen.  When a fructose molecule floats through the grape juice to approach a hungry yeast, it looks for an open parking spot so it can “park” on the yeast’s surface.  Like compact spots for mini Coopers and giant spots for Hummers, the yeast has different hexose transporters (sugar corridors) that recognize different substrates (like glucose versus fructose).  A glucose molecule fits into a specially configured parking place like a puzzle piece in a puzzle.  After the sugar docks and locks, the transporter becomes a Transformer©, changing its orientation and configuration.  It will about-face and flip from facing the grape juice side to facing the inside of the cell, taking the sugar with it.  The sugar is dumped inside the yeast and consumed for energy.  The Transformer© transporter then undergoes a second shape shift to face back outwards again, ready to usher another sugar through its membrane wall.  Obviously the Transformer© transporter is pretty rigid, since its shape is fixed to receive only sugar.  However it sort of floats around in a lipid (i.e. fatty) bilayer.  If the plasma membrane is too stiff, the transporters are straight-jacketed.  The proteins can’t shape shift, and the sugar is stuck outside.  If the membrane is too fluid, then the transporter gets all wiggly-wobbly, loses its shape and can’t do its job either.  High alcohol concentrations disturb this perfect balance.  But if the yeast can adapt its membrane composition before the must is too ethanol toxic, it will live long enough to take the wine to dryness (i.e. consume all of the sugar in the juice).   

Yeast tolerate a higher alcohol environment by altering their plasma membranes in a number of technical ways.  These include amping up the levels of sterols, swapping out saturated fatty acids for unsaturated ones (which means more double bonds), and increasing the relative protein content.  What you need to understands is that #1) these membrane adjustments require oxygen and nitrogen (the building blocks of protein) and #2) the changes must be securely in place before the alcohol level gets too noxious.  Adding more nutrients or nitrogen once the yeast are already petering out is like fastening your seat belt after you crashed; you’ve already missed the boat.  In other words, unless the yeast have ready access to a protein source, sterols, and unsaturated fatty acids at the beginning of fermentation, they won’t have the necessary tools they need to bulwark their body armor.  When a brisk fermentation grows sluggish and the rate of sugar consumption slows down, it’s usually an alcohol tolerance problem.  You’ve got to understand this fundamental concept.  The more sugary the grapes at harvest, the higher the potential alcohol of the finished wine.  Those yeast are going to need a lot of protection and TLC.  They’ve got to buckle down and secure their cell membrane or face death by acid-fried innards. 

With our Rockpile lot, that’s exactly what happened; our inaugural zin fermentation stuck.  What happened and how we overcame this potential disaster will be the subject of future posts.

Kudos to all readers who themselves endured three consecutive weeks of fermentation kinetics.  Next week’s post will be a light hearted carrot to lure you into a final discussion of stuck fermentation.

We spent this past weekend at our place in Healdsburg.  It was great to bring the kids back to their “wine cottage” and have them participate in exciting events like the Pumpkin Car Race at the farmer’s market (see a picture of our entry at the bottom of the post), and a real harvest party at Mauritson Wines.

For those of you who have visited Healdsburg, you’re likely well versed in it’s main attraction – being at the crossroads of the Dry Creek Valley, the Alexander Valley, and the Russian River Valley.  Ready access to world class food and wine is certainly what draws most people to this little slice of heaven.

And there is no denying that that was the main attraction for us initially.  But as we spend more time here, other things pop up that make this place so special for us.  One of the quirks I look forward to every time we visit is reading the Healdsburg Police Log that is published by the local newspaper in town.  Nothing, it seems, sums up this community better than reading the weekly list of crimes and misdemeanors.

An exerpt for your reading pleasure (presented without edit or comment):

Tuesday October 13, 11:16pm:  A woman asked police to check on her husband on Stirrup Loop after she was unable to get him on the phone, but the man had only been sleeping.

Wednesday October 14, 8:51am:  A called told police that some “plants of concern” had been found on University Avenue.

Wednesday October 14, 8:35pm:  A caller told police that a woman was sitting in her car at a Healdsbrug Avenue fast food restaurant drive-through and was refusing to pull out into the parking lot to wait for her order.

Thursday October 15, 11:43pm:  A caller told police that two teenage boys were drinking on Hassett Lane.

Saturday October 17, 10:57am:  A man told police that someone had dug a hole under his fence.

Saturday October 17, 11:56pm:  A man on Johnson Street told the police that someone had stolen his marijuana.

Really, how can you not love a town when the residents actually report their stolen pot to the cops?

Check out our pumpkin car below.  We came in second place in our racing heat.  Unfortunately, there were only two cars racing in our heat…

You can click here if you can’t see the picture.