It’s hard to believe that it has already been ten weeks since I wrote a post about leaving San Diego to come up to Healdsburg for the summer.  We’ve had a fantastic time here – getting reacquainted with old friends, making new friends, doing a lot of strong Bruliam work, and eating and drinking way too much. 

As we prepare to say goodbye to summer there has been one looming cloud on the horizon.  A whip cream cloud.

I made a deal with our 6-year old a number of weeks back: work hard on math, reading, and soccer practice and you can have any wish fulfilled at the end of the summer.

It didn’t take him more than a nanosecond to decide on his prize – a chance to “pie” Dad.  That’s right, he wanted to throw a whip cream pie in my face.  And I agreed.

He worked hard all summer and yesterday was payday for our son.  We have a video of the event, but we won’t post a link here since our son is in it.  If you want to see it, reply to this e-mail blast or send me an e-mail at brian@bruliamwines.com and I’ll send you a link.

In the interim, you can check out the resulting carnage below.  And, yes, I wore the shirt thinking this would end up on the blog.

I am not ready for summer to end.  Outside my window, purple Morning Glories are still blooming, and my first heirloom tomatoes just barely ripened.  It’s been an unusual summer here in Healdsburg.  This past summer has been the coldest on record in 50 years, with July fully 7 degrees below the annual average.  Most mornings have been swathed by soupy costal fog so dense it’s nearly drizzly.  And then just as the summer heat took us by surprise, local kids went back to school.  In fact, Wal-Mart has been promoting 25-cent crayons for weeks already.  Around me everything, except my tomatoes, points to autumn too soon.  Darker, longer mornings, fleeting summer light.    While the academic calendar nudges me ahead, Mother Nature lags behind, about two weeks behind according to local grape growers.  Most of the grapes in our neighborhood have finally turned purple, absent a few stubborn holdouts in shady vineyard corners.  It’s shaping up to be a late harvest.

I suspect our first grape chemistries will start to trickle in just as our kids settle into school.  For the first year, I will be in charge of assessing the sugar and acid levels; I decide when to pull the gun and haul in our fruit.  And it makes me queasy.  I am going to rely heavily on our growers to help guide me through my first solo harvest season.  Harvest – you cut the cord (or literally cordon), and your babies leave the mama vine and suddenly become your responsibility.  I have spent months cold calling, begging, letter writing, and baking to procure the finest quality fruit from the best known growers in each region.  And now I have to do everything I can to not f*#$#*k it up!  It really hit home when Mark Pisoni said, “I will send you chemistries when you’re down south and fruit samples when you’re up north.”  Crap!  I can’t even identify “melon” or “pear” correctly in a finished wine let alone chew a grape, spit the seed and divine when it’s “done.”  Bruliam is growing up fast.

It’s hard to imagine that just two years ago we selected our first grapes from a pre-fab, drop down menu, with no real knowledge about how to make wine.  This year we are sharing vineyard space with some of the best respected names in the business.  Our barrels have been selected, wine plans detailed, and specific yeast strains ordered.  And now we wait.  The end of summer is always bittersweet, but I look forward to officially becoming your winemaker.

As we announced last week, we’re ecstatic to be sourcing our 2010 Anderson Valley pinot noir fruit from the legendary Rich Savoy.  Check out our video below from our first meeting with Rich earlier in the summer.  And stay tuned for more updates as we move into harvest season.

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

This morning we’re on our way south to visit the source of our new Santa Lucia Highlands vineyard for the last time before the 2010 harvest.  As we’re battling traffic, caffeine overdose, screaming kids and their raging DVD selection conflict in the back row, we thought now would be a good time to formally announce our 2010 pinot lineup.

Our goal, always lofty, has been to land fruit from the top growers in each of our target regions – Santa Lucia Highlands, Anderson Valley, and the Sonoma Coast.   We’re ecstatic to reveal that we’ve hit the mark in all three AVA’s.

Santa Lucia Highlands

We’ll be sourcing our Santa Lucia Highlands fruit from the Pisoni family.  Along with long time partner Gary Franscioni, the Pisonis virtually define pinot noir for the Santa Lucia region.  Siduri, Kosta Browne, Patz and Hall, and other famed wineries source fruit from Pisoni family vineyards.  The Pisoni and Franscioni families have two newer vineyards that we’re honored to be sourcing from this season – Sobranes which is adjacent to their famed Garys’ Vineyard and Sierra Mar, a higher elevation plot that lies very close to the Pisoni Vineyard.  We’re particularly thrilled about this relationship since it was a Garys’ Vineyard pinot that first turned us on to California pinot noirs so many years ago.

Anderson Valley

Like Pisoni is to SLH, no grower in more synonymous with Anderson Valley than Rich Savoy.  Fruit from his vineyards have helped launch high profile brands Littorai, Radio-Cotteau, Roessler, and more into the stratosphere of top pinot producers.  We’re thrilled that Rich has carved out a small parcel in his high elevation Deer Meadows vineyard for us in 2010.  We knew we had found a soul-mate when he told us at our first meeting, “if you’re planning to pick this fruit above 24 brix, I won’t sell it to you.”  Rich knows what he’s doing, and we’ll be reaping the benefit.

Sonoma Coast

The Sonoma Coast appellation is a huge area that many argue ought to be subdivided into more well defined zones.  We agree – and while some are transfixed on fruit from the so-called extreme Sonoma Coast, our fascination is with fruit from the so-called Petaluma Wind Gap, a growing zone heavily influenced by both the Pacific Ocean and the Tomales Bay.  Steve MacRostie is growing some of the best pinot fruit in this area at his Wildcat Mountain vineyard, which is quite close to the Carneros-Sonoma Coast dividing line.  In addition to an estate bottling by Steve’s MacRostie Winery, this fruit makes its way into a lot of top rated Sonoma Coast blends from a number of producers.  Remote, high elevation, and highly stressed, this fruit is sublime. 

Look for more information on these vineyard sources – including videos and pictures – in the coming weeks.

In the interim wish us luck as we bottle our 2009 pinots on Monday August 30^th!!

And as a teaser, here’s a great shot of the Wildcat Vineyard with views to the Tomales Bay and San Francisco to the south.

Photo credit:  Ed Overstreet

Sometimes writing for this blog is a real pleasure.  The words flow, the stories gel, and the positive feedback makes it all worthwhile.  Other times, I’d rather be sentenced to a good old fashioned caning than have to sit here and force the prose out like I’m passing a kidney stone.

Today is a golf ball sized kidney stone day.

It’s time to talk about LICENSING & COMPLIANCE.  Whoo-hoo!!!!  And you thought Kerith’s posts on biochemistry were boring.

A necessary evil in any regulated business, delving into the process of obtaining our own wine selling licenses was one of the most daunting aspects of moving out on our own this year.  Under our previous winemaking arrangement, we operated under another winery’s licenses.  We paid a huge premium for this, but we didn’t have to worry about compliance, reporting, or licensing.

Not so in 2010.

In order to sell our wine in 2010, we need to have our own licenses and operate as a permitted seller of wine.  As we found out, there were two basic paths we could follow here in California.  Option #1 was to obtain a full winery/winegrower’s license (a Type 2 license) and option #2 was to obtain a combination of wholesaler and off-sale retail licenses (a so-called 17/20 combo). 

I’m not going to get into a long description of each and would implore anyone reading this who may be researching these licenses to consult an actual attorney or winery compliance specialist.  In short, a Type 2 license is a more expensive and time intensive process, but it gives the holder more capabilities.  The Type 2 covers the production of wine along with the sale of wine and enables the holder to be a full service winery (operate a tasting room, sell wine wherever and however desired, etc.).  The Type 17/20 combo is quicker and cheaper, but limits direct sales of wine only to consumers in California and through wholesalers in other states.  It also requires the holder to produce its wine through a Type 2 holder under a custom crush agreement.

After consulting with a number of industry professionals, we decided to go with the 17/20 combo.  All of our sales are already made online and most are within California so we were comfortable with the limitations of the licenses.  We already had a custom crush arrangement in place with Mauritson Wines, so that part was easy.  And the fact that the process was faster and cheaper than the full-bore Type 2 license was an added advantage when faced with the myriad of new harvest expenses we’ll be incurring this year.

Once we knew what direction to go in, the question was how to get there.  For us, this was a no-brainer.  I fully endorse using a compliance specialist firm to guide you through this process.  Not only do they know all of the hoops to jump through and can fill out all of the forms perfectly, but they also have relationships at the various agencies to help move the things along.  You can certainly save some money trying to do this yourself, but sometimes, “you can’t save money by saving money”.  We used Compliance Connection in Santa Rosa and highly recommend them to anyone considering getting licensed.

Even with the best help available, however, the process wasn’t painless.  Other than the cost, we first had the excitement of hanging our big ABC pending liquor sales sign outside our house.  We then had a fun phone interview with the TTB where they informed us that, among other things, they now had the right to send agents to our place of business to inspect our records at any time.  Unfortunately, our “place of business” is a corner of our master bedroom where we have the desk.  Surprisingly, they didn’t see the humor when I asked if they could call ahead to make sure we were decent before they came storming in.

But after a few short months, I’m proud to announce that Bruliam Wines last week became officially licenses to sell wine!  Unfortunately, now that we’re on the state and feds’ radar screens, we’re subjected to regular sales and tax reporting and ongoing compliance issues.  But, it’s a reasonably small price to pay to be out on our own.

Coming up in the fourth and final installment of our Bruliam in 2010 series, we’ll look at fulfillment.  How are we going to get the wine into your hands – safely and legally – even if you don’t live in California?

Stay tuned!

I almost fell backwards off the ladder and onto my ass.  My involuntary yelp startled the forklift operator who reflexively reached halfway out of his cab to pull the emergency stop on the conveyor belt.  The grapes piled up accordion style, then came to a brisk halt.  Everyone was looking at me.  I had barely regained my composure before pointing mutely at an 8-inch lizard slowly creeping across our grapes.  We locked eyes – (wo) man to amphibian, each equally stupefied by the presence of the other.  Listen, I am not particularly squeamish.  I spent most of my previous life chopping up body parts in a pathology lab.  But the humungous (relatively), stowaway lizard, half paralyzed by a 5 day cold soak with our grapes, had taken me by surprise.  And suppose he’d gone through the crusher-destemmer, lizard innards coating our fresh, ripe grapes?  What then?  What’s a little lizard rillette when you’re brewing up fungus and bacteria anyway?  Surely he’d (or she’d) be racked off with the lees and sediment before bottling, Bruliam drinkers no worse for the wear.  Not so says the TTB (the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau)!  Federal authorities are proposing legislation that requires wineries to list potential allergens on their wine labels, somewhat akin to the ubiquitous “contains sulfites” warning.  Such legislation is rooted entirely in the use of fining agents, products used to clarify wines.

Fining agents are added to wines to react with and mop up undesirable wine constituents.  Examples of those unwanted components might include brown discoloration, overpowering tannins or murky hazes.  Sometimes winemakers fine their wines proactively, so that hazes don’t form down the road in the bottle.  As you can imagine, chalky, murky wine is off-putting to consumers.  The problem is solved by mixing specific fining agents into the wine that react on contact.  The undesirable stuff (be it protein or protein-polysaccharide conglomerates) is bound up as a precipitate that can be filtered out and tossed away.  The resulting wine is alluringly sparkly and brilliantly clear.  Particular fining agents are selected specifically to gum up exactly what needs to be removed.  Protein-based fining agents are chosen to reduce the bitterness and astringency of excessive tannin polymers.  Since most proteins have a net positive charge at wine pH, they are the perfect agents to tie up unwanted tannins with H-bonds.  It all sounds pretty benign on paper until I reveal what is behind door #1…

 animal hooves, albumin, and fish swim bladders 

Let’s say it collectively and get it out of our system, “EEeeeww!”  Animal hooves and hides are the source of gelatin, raw egg whites provide albumin, and sturgeon swim bladders are the active ingredient in isinglass, a collagen protein.  (Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  The EU banned the use of ox blood years ago because of mad cow disease).  Yes it is true.  Animal derived protein products abound in the savvy enologists’ arsenal of tricks.  Other gross outs include polysaccharides mined from brown algae and insect parts (specifically the positively charged chitin derived from their exoskeleton).  You see, winemaking is a pretty ancient art, and our forefathers exploited everything in nature to achieve stability and clarity.  These fining agents predate silica beads and synthetic polymers and continue to work really well even today.  Frankly, most consumers would rather consume a hermetically sealed, perfectly formed hamburger patty from the supermarket than knowingly drink hooves and hides.

For most winemakers today, the core of this contentious debate is not whether to ban certain solvents or quit fining wine but instead how best to disclose this information to consumers.  Copious consumer education is required if “full disclosure” becomes government mandated.  A label proclaiming your wine may contain “potential allergens including but not limited to raw eggs, animal products and fish parts” is not only off putting but also overblown.   Never mind that only minute amounts, if any, of the fining agent is retained in the finished wine as a negligible residue.  It is the possibility of a theoretical allergen that drives the labeling frenzy.  Used correctly, fining agents are dosed at the smallest possible aliquot to achieve clarity and stability, with each molecule sticking to its respective partner.  And again, the fining agent+unwanted solute aggregate is removed from the wine before bottling.  An early study funded by Australia’s Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation concluded that residual allergens are indeed negligible in finished wines. 

Sometimes fining represents a last minute decision, a way to comb through and polish a wine just before bottling.  In this scenario, the wine labels would have been approved and printed far in advance of this winemaking choice.  The wines could not be bottled and re-labeled without deep financial consequences to the winery.  A blanket consumer warning on all bottles of wine represents the other extreme.    Ironically enough, warning labels would be slapped on bottles at wineries that don’t employ any fining procedures, freaking out consumers unnecessarily.  Or maybe it becomes more information overload, yet another “food warning” consumers scan without mentally processing.  In any event, the thorny labeling issue is sure to invite consumer outcry from vegans and lawyers and folks afflicted with “allergies” like headaches after they drink too much at parties. 

To be sure, life threatening food allergies are not a joke.  So perhaps a clause about eggs, fish or milk proteins is warranted.  But one must tread thoughtfully.  The Situation may crave raw egg protein shakes, but it’s a tougher sell for premium pinot noir.  Once you riff on algae and horse hooves, the romance is gone.  With potential legislation looming and Australia and New Zealand already required to disclose “allergens,” niche discussions about potential wine allergens are sure to find their way to Wikipedia soon.

To date, Bruliam has not employed fining agents in our winemaking strategy.  We are not opposed to using any natural materials that might make our wines better.  As with all of our winemaking choices, we will post our decisions here on our blog.

Wine blogger Keith Hoffman at Brain Wines updated his review of our 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir after re-tasting the wine recently.

Here’s what he said back in November 2009:

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.  97.

And here’s what he had to say after opening a second bottle last week:

Nose:   Nose notes same as above, but some of the crisp wafts have tamed a bit.  This is a broader, red berries and lush earth, nose that has deep cigar and spice box now.

Taste:  If anything this baby has sexed up even more. This is amazing.  Wow and wow.

Overall:  Astounding.  98.  This pinot is off the charts, I hope they keep this quality up for the 2009 vintage, and I can’t wait to try their new Zins as well.  Buy this wine.  Yes, $52, but it all goes to charity.

Otherwise, a selection of short tidbits for your information and enjoyment:

Police Blotter

We’ve written before about the charms of Healdsburg as typified in the weekly paper’s Police Blotter.  This item jumped out at us this week:

Thursday July 22^nd, 5:15am – A woman on Heron Street told police that she had received an annoying phone call from an unknown caller, but it was later determined that she may have dreamt it.

Gotta love it!

2009 Pinots

We’re back at the winery to make last minute blends on our 2009 pinots this week with bottling scheduled for August 30.  Maybe we’re drinking our own Kool-Aid, but the 2009’s are drinking better now that the 2008’s did at this time last year.  Hopefully that trend continues as we begin the bottle aging process.  We’re tentatively looking at late November for a release date – and maybe even a release party in San Diego!

Dry Creek Kitchen

Had dinner this week at Dry Creek Kitchen.  Served to confirm our belief that it’s the best dinner spot in Sonoma county.  Neighboring Cyrus gets all of the acclaim, but you can’t beat Dry Creek Kitchen for consistently great food, sophisticated yet friendly service, and a wine list that is deep with local Sonoma county gems offered with minimal mark-up.  Wish we could say the same of Cyrus, but all we can tell you is that it’ll cost you twice as much and it’s not even close to being twice as good.

2010 Harvest

It’s been a cold California summer, even up here in Healdsburg.  Last year, we saw regular daily highs in the mid-90’s and a few days over 100 degrees.  This year, it has been mostly low to mid-80’s.  Much more comfortable for us, but not so great for the grapes.  After a ton of winter and spring rain, the grapes are still waiting to go through verasion (turning to red from green).  Most growers are telling us that they need to start dropping fruit in the hope of getting the rest of the crop to ripen in a reasonable time.  The concern is that if the grapes take too long to ripen and push harvest into late October, there’s an increasing chance of rain, which can lead to mildew and rot.  Not a good thing unless you really like dessert wines.  We’ll keep you posted.

Last week, we had a blast blending our 2009 Rockpile Zinfandel.  Check out our short video below.

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

P.S.  If you need a refresher on the origin of the galette references, please click here.

Sure, Kerith can run a half-marathon in under 1:45 and burn through 1,500 calories.

Shoot, anyone can do that. 

But it takes a real competitor – a man’s man – to ingest that many calories in the short time between dropping your wife at the starting line and picking her up at the finish.

And I am just that sort of man.

Last year at this time, Kerith ran the Napa-to-Sonoma half marathon.  My son and I left her at the starting gate and then sprinted off to Yountville to hit Bouchon Bakery for breakfast.  It was only after that feast, in a fit of extreme post binge self-loathing, that I started to wonder whether I’d managed to out-consume Kerith’s calorie burn from the race.

As I later calculated, I fell just short.  I estimated that my meal of a non-fat latte, croissant, blueberry muffin, and TKO cookie (an oreo cookie on steroids) totaled 1,388 calories and 58.2 grams of fat.  Not bad for a rookie, but not quite good enough to top Kerith’s 1,505 calorie run.

Disappointed in my performance, I took solace in the fact that I had launched into competition unprepared but now had an entire year to train for an epic rematch.

And my dejection was further tempered by the overwhelming response to my blogging about the showdown – it became our most popular post of the year (you can click here to read it).  And to this day, if you Google “bouchon bakery nutrition” my post ranks as the number one link.  Apparently I’m not the only one obsessed with Chef Keller’s heart-attack inducing pastries.

So, with defeat still fresh in my mind and the added pressure of knowing that our Bruliam Brigade was behind me in full force, we flash forward to this past Sunday…..

“Last year was just a warm-up”, I told myself driving down the 101 freeway en route to the Carneros drop-off point.  Kerith was in her head getting psyched for the race.  Our son was busy spotting tractors and pick-up trucks.  But I had much more serious concerns on my mind.  I knew I had to win.

My mantra for the day replayed in my head, “You’ve got this.  You can do it.  Be a man, for once in your life!!”

I knew what I had to do.  It was simple math.  Kerith’s calorie burn would be about the same – 1,500 calories.  So, just one more TKO cookie would propel me over the line.  Today was my day.

I practically threw Kerith out of the car at Domaine Carneros, turned to our six-year old son, and with a most serious look said, “Let’s Roll.”  He gave a silent thumbs up in return.  We were two men on a mission.

We arrived at Bouchon at 6:53 am, 7 minutes before opening.  First in line.

By 7:10 I was ready to face this most difficult of tasks.  My son had his customary chocolate macaron with hot chocolate.  My line up was the same as last year’s with an additional TKO:

• 1 croissant
• 1 blueberry muffin
• 2 TKO cookies
• 1 non-fat latte

By my estimate: 1,788 calories and 75.7 grams of fat – all wrapped in flaky pastry flour, eggs, shortening, sugar, and butter.  Lots of butter.

Admiring my feast, I had to laugh.  This was so easy – I could do this in my sleep.  It would be a piece of cake (pun intended).

My game plan was to go out fast, eat hard, and plow through.  If I stopped to either enjoy the food or consider the absolute foulness of the endeavor, I knew I’d be lost. 

I went for the croissant first.  Four bites and 30 seconds later, it was gone.  Washed down with a slug of latte, I was on to TKO #1.

I broke the TKO and quickly downed half.  I tried with all of my might but couldn’t help but savor the rest – relishing every bite of chocolate sable dough and white chocolate ganache.  Oh god, it was good.  So good.  And then it was gone.  I stared down the muffin.

Muffins are a tricky business.  They look so unassuming.  But when you cut into them they’re dense, fruity, sugary, and very, very filling.  After the first couple of bites, I recoiled.

What was this I was feeling?  This strange sensation in my gut?  It couldn’t possibly be, could it?  Was I getting full? 

Hardly half-way through my challenge, I’d already hit the wall.  I slowed down and relied on the latte for lubrication.  I must have appeared visibly uncomfortable because my son was giving me a very odd look. 

But, I had to soldier on.  That’s what champions do.  I made it, barely, to the half way point of the muffin and had to take a break.  I got up and took a lap around Bouchon’s outdoor dining patio.  The other patrons, immersed in their Sunday newspapers, dogs, and saner breakfasts, were impervious to the epic battle raging just a few feet away.  They seemed annoyed as I circled their tables creepily.

I set myself back down and took stock of my situation.  Half a muffin, a TKO, and about a quarter of a latte left.  I called an audible and decided to move away from the muffin and on to the second TKO, figuring I could always force down that last half muffin.

It was one of the worst decisions of my life.

While the muffin was dense, the TKO was overwhelmingly rich and sugary.  The deliciousness of the first became defeating in the second.  My saliva glands kicked into overdrive, and I stared feeling queasy.  The cookie should have tasted like chocolate and dough and everything good.  But all I could taste was oncoming regurge.

I threw the remaining TKO back down in disgust.  In runner’s parlance, I’d already bonked.  I knew I wouldn’t make it.

“I can’t do it buddy,” I said to my son.  “That’s OK Daddy,” he replied.  But the look in his eyes told a different story.  In that one moment, it was clear that the myth of his father as immortal superhero had died.  Now, I was just some bald fat guy who had eaten way too much breakfast.

And sure, Kerith ran a great race, and we made it back in time to see her finish.  Our son even crossed the finish line with her and won his own medal.  Blah, blah, blah, blah.  Who cares!  I had failed.

During the drive home, I was distraught.  Not only had I fallen short of my goal but also I’d done worse than last year.  Maybe it was the pressure.  Maybe it was over-confidence.  Maybe it just wasn’t my day. 

Whatever the reason, the shame and despair from wildly overeating AND failing at a year long challenge was staggering.  I drove home in silence, gently nursing my crushed ego and my cramping stomach, totally deaf to Kerith and my son prattling on about how much fun they had running the end of the race together.

And when I got home, I did the only thing I could think of to make myself feel better.

I ate lunch.

I really enjoyed my month long anesthesia vacation, I mean “rotation,” during my surgical internship.  It was a nice break from general surgery.  Nobody threw sharp instruments at your head when you misidentified a blood vessel.  The hours were better.  You could flip through a trashy magazine, hidden inside the cover of the New England Journal, while the patient was asleep.  Reclining in that cushy stool, you could snicker at the poor surgical intern holding her bladder and the retractor and rejoice, “Thank God I’m not scrubbed into that 12 hour vascular mess.”  But karma is a bitch; anesthesia is all about the spit.  And the phlegm.  And the disgusting saliva you had to suction away with a maddening, nauseating slurp.  Saliva is not my thing.

Unfortunately the study of wine necessitates spit, gross but necessary.  A few weeks ago, when I attended the Pinot Days festival in San Francisco, I spent 4 hours trolling from booth to booth with my red plastic spit cup.  I never really dwelled on the content of that icky plastic spittoon until recently.  Nestled within last week’s reading assignment, my UC Davis syllabus contained the following gem.  The author noted that the murky mixture of spittle and discarded wine will “cause “clots” in expectorated wine samples.”  To imagine a flocculating coagulation of spit + wine protein floating like an island in a frothy merlot sea will kill an appetite.  Even mine.

As it turns out, there is a considerable body of academic research concerning wine and saliva.  Who knew?  One researcher went so far as to measure how much spit your mouth produces after sipping, swirling, and spitting out a mouthful of wine.  In case you were curious, saliva production revs up after 10 seconds and peaks at 20 seconds.  After that your mouth kind of peters out and dries up without the “additional stimulation” of water or a saltine (Lesschaeve and Noble).  Better yet, researchers have identified a “new [spit] protein.”  Investigators invited folks to drink wine and grape seed tannin solutions and then analyzed their spit eight minutes later.  Spit study revealed a novel protein peak, presumably a conglomeration of icky saliva goo stuck to wine funk (ibid).

Most of this research derives not from pranksters and lovers of all things gory and gross but instead from folks studying the sensory analysis of wine.  Much is rooted in the study of wine tannins.  Tannins are of course the stuff of fuzzy purple teeth.  Tannins are what make those big cabs and syrahs so mouth drying and “puckery.”  Tannins are responsible for what the cabernet crusaders call “astringency.”  I am talking about when your tongue gets rough and sand-papery, your cheeks are sucked dry, and your lips crack after swigging too large a gulp of $12 cabernet.  Have you ever had the sensation that the more cab you drink, the more prickly your palate feels?  You’re not crazy.  Actually, research proves that unpleasant feeling is cumulative.

As you slosh back glass after glass, the tannins accumulate, and their effect is compounded like the vig you owe the bookie.  Researchers can actually test this by asking judges to keep sipping vino at specified intervals while continually rating the intensity of the astringency.  The fancy term is “carry over.”  Please tell us, sirs, is your tongue (a) barely brambly, (b) chapped and coarse or (c) harsh and coarse-grained like a scouring pad?  Does the NIH fund those scorecards?  By the way, increasing the time intervals between sips to 30 seconds “considerably reduced” the sand paper effect of each subsequent sip (ibid).

There happens to be logical physiology to explain why your mouth feels like a pumice stone.  Tannins, which are promiscuous chemical chains, like to hook up with any available proteins, whether intrinsic to the wine or not.  Saliva is chock full of proteins, including proline-rich ones, which are particularly attractive to polyphenols (i.e. tannins).  When you sip a tannin-heavy wine, the tannins stick to your salivary proteins and gum them up.  You feel your salivary flow rate drop, and “oral lubrication” decreases.  This is friction in your gums and postulated to be the mechanism of astringency.  (By the way, this is also the premise of protein “fining.”  You mix your immature wine with a protein solution to suck up the extra tannins before bottling).

The next time your host serves some young, outrageously tannic behemoth, your best bet is to pace at one swig/minute.  At least you’ll overcome the tannic carryover until you’re able to dump the remaining drops in a nearby planter.

Works Cited:

Lesschaeve, I., and A. C. Noble. 2005. Polyphenols: factors influencing their sensory properties and their effects on food and beverage preferences. Am J Clin Nutr 2005 81: 330S-335. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/81/1/330S.

I’ve never had a 100-point wine.

I’ve had a slew of wines that have scored in the 90-94 point range (which fall into the Outstanding category) and even a few that have reached 95 or 96 points (which are considered Classic). 

But I’ve never had a 100-point wine.

A lot of people, especially inside the wine industry, discount the importance of the 100-point scale.  And truthfully, I doubt that I could tell you which pinot noir was a 92 and which was a 94 if I tasted them blindly side-by-side.

But, still, a 100-point score is a 100-point score.  It means the wine is perfect.  And while a 90+ point score isn’t rare, a 100-point score certainly is.

To get a sense of just how rare a 100-point score is, click here.  It’s a list of all of Robert Parker’s 100-point wines as of July 2009.  By my count, it shows that Mr. Parker has awarded a perfect score to a mere 191 wines.  According to Mr. Parker’s site, he’s reviewed over 150,000 wines.  And only 191 of them have hit a perfect score.  That’s an infinitesimally small 1/10^th of 1 percent.

Between scarcity and pricing (click on some of those wine names from the Parker list to get a sense of how expensive they are), it’s no surprise then that I’ve never had a 100-point wine.

Until now.  Maybe.

One of the very nice things about spending time in Healdsburg is that almost everyone is somehow related to the wine business.  So, when we went to dinner with some friends last week it was no surprise that the husband is a winemaker.  Specifically, Cameron Frey is the Associate Winemaker at Ramey Wines Cellars.  And yes, he brought the wine.

Kerith and I don’t drink much cabernet sauvignon anymore.  We’re pinot snobs, with a little bit of zin-craziness thrown in for good measure.  And, of course, Ramey only makes cabernet and chardonnay (and a bit of syrah).  So, it was with a little bit of polite weariness that I feigned excitement about Cam’s wine selection for the evening – a 2007 Ramey Cabernet from the Pedregal Vineyard in Oakville, CA.

As we began to enjoy the wine, I realized this was much better than the average high end cab.  It had a great nose of dark fruit and a little bit of oak, but the tannins were very well structured and integrated without turning your tongue into sand paper.  His wine displayed a cleanliness and restraint that I had never experienced in a California cabernet. 

We delved into a discussion about the winemaking techniques, and I was floored to hear that the wine had spent two years in 100% new French oak.  The last time I had a wine with that much oak on it I had to spit – the overwhelming vanilla-oaky mess reminded me too much of those Glade vanilla candle scented air fresheners.  But this wine was delicious, and it actually paired well with just about everything we ate that evening.

And then, about half way through the bottle, almost off-handedly, Cam mentioned that back in October 2009, Robert Parker had tasted it while still in barrel.  It scored a preliminary range of 97-100 points.

It took about a half-second for my brain to register that information mid-gulp.  Then I proceeded to almost cough up half a glass through my nose.  I managed to hold it together, but for the record, the wine wasn’t quite as good coming back up as it was going down.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the evening with my nose buried in the glass, savoring every last little drop of that precious juice.  Did knowing that score make it taste or smell any better?  I’ve got to admit that the “100-point fantasy” probably contributed to my enjoyment. 

And all I could think for the next hour or so was, “Wow, this could be my first 100-point wine.  And it’s a freebie!” 

Later that night, I looked up the Parker review on the Pedregal page online:

97+ Robert M. Parker Jr.’s The Wine Advocate, December 2009, Issue 186

Ramey’s sensational 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Pedregal is a blend of 82% Cabernet Sauvignon and 18% Petit Verdot. Notions of blueberry pie, charcoal, camphor, blackberry, cassis, and smoky oak are followed by a wine with sizeable tannins as well as structure. The extravagant fruit, richness, and intensity result in a remarkable, young Cabernet Sauvignon from one of Napa-s finest areas, the Oakville Corridor. Anticipated maturity: 2013-2035. Drink 2013 – 2035

Mr. Parker returns to Ramey this October to taste the finished product and assign a final score.

If for no other reason than to say that, yes, I’ve had a 100-point wine, I’m certainly rooting for Cam and the team at Ramey.

A picture of our bottle from that night is below (note the few drops that we allowed to drip on to the label – what a waste!).  Most amazingly, the wine is available and can be pre-ordered online.  At $150/bottle it’s definitely pricey, but compared to similarly high scoring California cabernets, it’s a steal.

Check out a brief video of this year’s pinot noir blending session below.  If you can’t see the video, please click here.

By now you all know that blending is the art of winemaking.  As you blend, taste, and spit, you strive to craft a composite wine that outshines each component individually.  What one wine lacks in aromatics is complimented by another that smells divine but lacks tannin.  And so it goes.  Last week, for the first time, Brian and I faced the quality vs. consistency dilemma.  Last year being our inaugural year, we had no benchmarks to match (other than the bottles of cult pinot noir we hoped to emulate).  Our 2008 Santa Lucia Highlands bottling offered ripe berry aromatics, sweet floral notes, and a killer structure with ample tannins and body.  This year’s batch from Doctor’s Vineyard had to measure up.  As we tasted through different blends, some were decidedly lovely but lacked the grip of last year’s juice.  We changed directions and re-blended to achieve greater year-to-year consistency.  We added more of the 667 clone to flesh out the body and amp up the tannins, plus a tad of the heritage Swan clone for those sweet aromatics. 

In the end, I think you will be thrilled with the results.  The Santa Lucia Highlands has the same ripe blackberry/raspberry profile with that wonderful underpinning of savory smoke and spice.  And it’s got muscle to boot.  Our Sonoma Coast offering has a great nose of fruit and earth and some pretty strong tannins.  Our Anderson Valley pinot has a trademark cranberry nose and a velvety smooth finish.

For now, the wine will meld in the barrel for another two months before bottling.

The pinot noir was tepid and so was the sauvignon blanc.  The bucolic serenity of sprawling grapevines harmonized with guttural spews of exhaust.  A serpentine parade of FedEx trucks stretched from the “Welcome!  Tasting Room Open!” sign on the gravel road to a nearby storage shed, each transport vehicle awaiting full palates of wine shipments.  A concrete patio led to the “tasting room” facility, co-opted from NBC’s The Office. 

We were welcomed by a trio of wood laminate desks surrounded by plentiful office cabinetry.  I would not have been surprised if a perfunctory front desk attendant had asked me to take a number and then handed me a clipboard of blank insurance forms.  In an adjacent room, another laminate wood desk/table was set with four open wine bottles, resting comfortably at room temperature. 

An uninspired tasting room attendant begrudgingly poured us a cursory sip from the first bottle of pinot noir, explaining we were lucky to be at the winery tasting a proprietary blend destined mainly for restaurants across the country.  Note to self: do not order this wine the next time you dine in Des Moines.  But hey, kudos to them; at least it was consistent.  The pinot was just as I remembered it, a cherry cola / cherry Triaminic hybrid, and warm too.  A cloying artificial red fruit taste stuck to my cheeks’ insides.  Not even the warm sauv blanc (served last) could wash the flavor away.  Talk about a long finish. 

When Brian and I inquired if we could buy a chilled half bottle of the white to go with our picnic lunch, I was politely informed the winery lacks the alcohol license that permits guests to drink wine on their patio.  Who knew?  I washed down a homemade sandwich with the water that had been baking in my minivan; the dashboard thermometer up-ticked to 93 degrees.  As we retreated to the patio, I noticed the tasting room manager swap out the warm sauvignon blanc for a cold one.  I hope the next visitors have a better experience than ours.

To be fair, the winery offers an expanded tasting of their single vineyard designates, which I presume must be booked in advance.  Brian and I were only allowed to press our sweaty noses against the glass partition dividing the insurance claims cubicle from the good juice on the other side.  While Wine Wednesday was kind of a bust, I have to give this label props for consistency.  Every year the winery blends that restaurant bottling to embody the essence of a cherry Vicks cough drop.  This approach is one, well-practiced side of the blending equation.  The flip side is blending wine to produce the best concoction you can muster.  Ideally both goals are the same.  Other times consistency and quality are mutually exclusive.

Brian and I frequent different local wineries for different reasons.  Some we visit for the awesome wines.  Others have gorgeous grounds that afford us a brief respite from reality as our kids run amok, and we gulp down a perfectly quaffable libation.  But it’s rare to seek out a spot that offers neither. 

Still I’d be an imbecile to bitch about it.  A bad day of wine drinking is still a pretty good day.

As you recall from Part I, we’re moving our production to Mauritson Wines in 2010.

Next up in this series:  Sourcing Premium Wine Grapes (or, can Kerith bake our way to another 90-point wine). 

Under our previous winemaking arrangement, choosing grapes was simple – all we had to do was select from a menu of pre-arranged vineyards.  Now that we’re out on our own, finding just the right grapes from just the right growers is yet another major endeavor that we are undertaking on our own.

We should have many choices.  There are over 1,800 wine grape growers in Sonoma County alone.  And between Napa, Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino counties, 444,000 tons of grapes were harvested in 2009.  That translates to a whole lot of juice (roughly 270 million bottles of wine – give or take). 

But, as we’ve learned, not all grapes are created equally.  Even by restricting ourselves to pinot and zinfandel, a number of factors come into play:  location, clone selection, rootstock, soil, growing practices, water, etc., etc.

Adding to the puzzle is that this business is all about relationships – relationships that have been in place for years, if not generations.  So when a couple of yuppie winemaking-wannabes show up at a grower’s door looking for fruit, we’re about as welcome as a sales call just as you sit down to dinner.

Fortunately, we do have a couple of things going for us.  With the confluence of a bad economy and big crop production in 2009 (and likely 2010), the current supply of fruit far exceeds demand.  A lot of superior grapes are either being dropped (not harvested) or falling out of contract.  This provides unique opportunities for upstarts like us to step into deals that were unheard of three years ago.

And lucky for us, we already have a head start.  Our 2009 Rockpile zinfandel is currently in barrel and we’ve managed to not piss off the lovely Mauritson family too much, so a 2010 Rockpile zinfandel from our very own vineyard bloc is already in the works.

As for sourcing pinot noir fruit, we had to start from scratch.

From the beginning of the process, we knew that we wanted to keep continuity appellation wise – which meant focusing on the Santa Lucia Highlands (where our Doctor’s Vineyard pinots have come from), Anderson Valley (where our 2009 Hayley’s Vineyard pinot is coming from) and the Sonoma Coast (where our 2009 Split Rock Vineyard pinot is coming from).

As we examined each appellation and looked at the various opportunities that could be available to us, we decided to take a top-down approach.  On a piece of paper, we listed out our favorite two or three winegrowers in each appellation and pledged to only make wine from an appellation if we could get grapes from one of the producers on our list.  We knew this was a somewhat ridiculous approach, but being ridiculous is pretty much the norm over here.

And with many months of hard work, calling, cajoling, baking, begging, more baking, some hand-written thank you notes, and even more begging, the end result is that we have good news and bad news on the pinot front.

The good news is that while nothing is 100% final, we think we’ve finagled our way into grapes – not from one of our top choices – but from our number one top choice grower in each appellation.  Even with all of our guile and chutzpah, securing small lots from growers of this stature is almost unheard of.

The bad news is that since nothing is 100% final, we can’t disclose where our pinot is coming from in 2010 just yet.  Sorry! 

But, we are very much looking forward to making those announcements since we think you’re going to just as thrilled as we are. 

Stay tuned for some fun and exciting news in the coming weeks!

Wine Wednesdays: we’ll drink the wines so that you don’t have to.   

Happy summer to all.  We at Bruliam Wines are thrilled to announce the highly anticipated return of our greatly lauded summer fluff series.  Good Morning American brings you a summer concert series, and I spew discordant logorrhea, every single week.  Rejoice loyal readers; “Wine Wednesdays” are back.  Even my mom told me last year’s were great, and she and my step-dad are avowed teetotalers.  (Take that you crummy wine blog award judges!).  Summer 2010 promises an expansive look at northern Sonoma County wines with a decided emphasis on the Russian River Valley.  We vow to cover as many wineries as we can between 9 am and 2 pm (preschool hours) or until Child Protective Services squelches our penchant for retrieving the twins mildly buzzed.  And trust me.  I’ve completed over eight years of post graduate study in areas wholly unrelated to enology, so I am uniquely qualified to be your tasting guide.  After roto-rooter sinus surgery as a teenager, the ENT promised my sense of smell would be permanently dampened.  I cannot identify mulberries, sarsaparilla, or gooseberries.  After scoring a rare seat in Cornell University’s ultra-popular “wines” course my senior year, I dropped the class before it started.  And so went my only formal wine tasting curriculum.

In previous blind tasting flights, I have demonstrated my incompetence again and again, with both domestic and foreign wines.  If asked to compare three wines blindly, two identical and one different, I am certain I could not distinguish the different wine from the others with any more accuracy than chance alone.  I generally can detect whiffs of raspberry and blackberry because I buy them in bulk containers at Costco.  Although I also consume copious amount of chocolate, descriptors like “cocoa nib” and “raw cocoa bean” routinely elude me.  So dear readers, prepare yourselves to meet yet another internet wine expert.  Trust that my mellifluous wine analyses are accurate and reliable today.  If I were to re-taste the same wines tomorrow, they might be different.

Before summer even started, a wine that was new to me elicited a gluttonous moan of joy followed by gulps and slurps.  It happened to be a Dutton Goldfield pinot noir from the Green Valley appellation.  (To be exact, it was the 2007 Dutton Goldfield Sanchietti vineyard pinot noir.  Don’t even try.  It’s sold out.  The winery literally sold the last two bottles the day before our visit).  This wine happened to be part of a pinot pack we’d snagged for cheap at a wine auction.  The other bottles hadn’t been particularly memorable so I had no real expectations for this one.  I was happily surprised by it’s rich, layered aromas of berry, spice and smoke.  The flavors were integrated; the mouth feel was grippy with good palate weight, and the finish smooth and long.  It was a Wow! wine, and the riot in my mouth inspired the first Wine Wednesday of the season.  (OK, I cannot believe I just wrote something so cheesy).

The Dutton-Goldfield tasting room is located in southwest Russian River Valley in Sebastopol.  The tasting room is lovely, spacious, and brand new.  Self-anointed “world’s most reliable taster,” I couldn’t wait to find out if I still liked their wines the second time around.  Happily, I did.  I thought their gewürztraminer was insanely and unapologetically aromatic.  It took me back to being a tween playing dress up and sneaking dabs of “exotic” perfumes like Shalimar.  The wine was heady and potent, with tropical fruit, jasmine and honeysuckle.  I kept thinking of that passage in The Sound and the Fury where Quentin is overpowered by the pervasive smell of honeysuckle.  But we are here to talk about pinot.  I especially liked their Freestone Hill pinot noir for its complexity and core of “baking spice” layered atop berry fruit.  I use “baking spice” as a wastebasket term when I smell cinnamon/cardamom/mace/nutmeg, the players in banana bread or pumpkin pie.

If you do decide to visit, you could bundle the trip with a visit to equally illustrious pinot producer Merry Edwards, just down the road.  Even if you don’t trust my wine reviews, and I use “review” loosely and humbly, I can identify a picnic table in a lineup that includes end table and pool table.  So I can relate with confidence that the Dutton Goldfield tasting room houses a lovely outdoor patio with shady picnic tables.  Pack a basket and savor your pinot al fresco.  And ladies, I won’t tell if you dab on that gewürztraminer in a pinch.  It’s sure to attract the likes of Steve Heimoff or James Laube across a crowded bar.

The girl who bikes next to me in spin class graduated from the same local high school as I.  We finished maybe five years apart (plus or minus 15 years).  When I get amped up over the extended Cure / Depeche Mode remixes that carry us over 17 minute “hill” excursions, her eyes glaze over.  After all, she was a zygote back in 1983.  So I was surprised to learn this bitty baby was a fledgling cork-dork.  In fact our spin instructor (who shares my musical sensibilities, not hers) gifted the wine baby a bottle of Toasted Head chardonnay to fete her completing her first marathon.  So after class, I asked wine baby if she knew what a “toasted head” was.  She thought it might have something to do with a bear or fire, since their label sports a cartoon of a fire breathing teddy.  When I explained it was a reference to the charred end-pieces of oak wine casks, she seemed genuinely interested, for the first 3 minutes.  Before long, I was stretching alone and talking to myself, like those folks with the stealth hands-free phone devices.  Luckily, I can finish my conversation with myself right here.

Almost all red wine and many white wines experience oak contact en route from fermentation to bottle.  Usually this is in the form of oak barrel aging, but cheaper alternatives like oak chips are also available.  Untangling the mysteries of wood barrels is a thorny process.  Fundamentally, oak can be classified as used or new, French or not.  But within these overarching categories, there are innumerable details that may affect the outcome of the finished wine.  So let’s begin where it all starts, with a tree.

The most highly pedigreed oak hails from France.  Premium French oak derives from specially designated forests in special parts of France (Alliers! Nevers!).  The trees are sawed in a particular way, and the planks are planed and dried.  Only then do highly trained coopers (i.e. barrel makers) use heat to bend individual wood staves into picturesque arcs.  The arching staves are placed within the metal hoops that stabilize the barrels.  There is no glue, no nails, and the barrels are water tight.  Besides using heat to bend wood, there is another byproduct of direct flame heating, a residual char affectionately called “toast.”  Toast comes in different levels, ascending from low to medium to high.  Each cooper does it a little bit differently, and you order barrels by cooper and toast level, custom wood for your premium juice.  It’s like designer jeans, with minute permutations changing the fit just enough that ladies care, and the men are confused.  Trained tasters can totally taste the difference between wine aged in a Francois Frere barrel vs. Seguin Moreau vs. Remond.  You could too if you had all 3 wines lined up in a row. 

Some scientists believe these differences have more to do with barrel age and duration of oak contact than with the origin of the barrels themselves.  So I have some more explaining to do.  The char lining the barrels contains unique chemical compounds that are neither intrinsic to grapes nor generated by fermentation alone.  In other words, crispy Cajun barrels give the wine somethin’ extra you can’t get anywhere else.  When you put wine into a barrel, these compounds seep into the juice and change the texture and flavor and aroma, generally in a favorable manner.  New barrels have more to offer, since the pool of special sauce is finite.  After a year of use, fewer chemicals remain to diffuse into next season’s juice.  After three cycles of use, the barrels are deemed “neutral” and have nothing more to offer than cheap storage, presuming you’ve fully paid off your barrel bills from two seasons ago.  Furthermore, the longer the wine is in contact with the barrel, the more stuff seeps in.  The highest rate of diffusion occurs during the first months of barrel aging.  So one could correctly argue that wine aged for 6 months in brand new French oak has more oaky tones than wine that sits for two years in neutral oak.  But bear in mind, there can be too much of a good thing.  Wine aged in 100% new oak for too long will taste like a Home Depot 2X4.  And some folks turn their noses up at barrel aging altogether.  The tag line “100% stainless steel fermentation and aging” has become a trendy moniker.

Oak aging serves a number of useful functions.  First and foremost, it accelerates the aging process.  Hard edged tannins are softened, vegetal and bitter notes are diminished, and varietal character is enhanced.  The wine is more nuanced, layered and complex.  How can this be, you ask?  Drum roll…and now for the biochemistry (quick and painless, I promise).  The biochemical players comprising the toast can be roughly divided into 3 categories.  (1) Byproducts of polysaccharide pyrolysis.  This means that fire breaks down the sugars in woody cellulose.  This yields stuff like furanic aldehydes, which include guys like eugenol and vinyl-4-guiacol.  Sound familiar?  These are the same players in smoke taint, but to a much lesser degree. (2)  Oaky lactones which tend towards oaky and coconut flavors (3) Decomposition of wood ligins yielding almond and vanilla flavors.  OK, done!  Please, don’t unsubscribe…join the legions of Bruliam fans who tolerate biochemistry once/quarter.

As soon as we finalize the contracts on our grapes for 2010 harvest, we’ll be ordering our custom oak barrels from France.  We plan to keep you posted.

This morning, if all goes according to plan, we will pull out of our driveway at 5am in the Swagger Wagon, cruise through LA downtown traffic at 6:45am, and make it over the Tejon pass and down to our Starbucks stop at the southern tip of the central valley around 8:30am.  By the time you receive this e-mail, around 10 am or so, we’ll be a good five hours into our journey and yearning for the good old days when it was perfectly acceptable to just pull the car over and leave the screaming/kicking/whining kids on the side of the road.

Assuming the entire family completes the trip, Tuesday will mark the beginning of our summer decampment to Healdsburg.  We have a number of exciting upcoming Bruliam summer events to share with you.  We’ll be blending and bottling our sophomore 2009 pinots, blending our inaugural 2009 Rockpile zinfandel, and securing our grape contracts for the 2010 harvest.  In between, we have a lot of due diligence to perform (i.e., legitimized excessive wine drinking), the Calorie Challenge Rematch, and a number of visiting friends to look forward to.  We have ten whole weeks in Healdsburg in front of us, and we can’t wait to get the summer started.

But, before we left we had one last SoCal hurrah.  The weekend started off the right way.  By Friday evening we were drinking Muira’s 2007 Pisoni Vineyard Pinot Noir on the beach with a number of friends.  Saturday morning our saintly wives entertained the kids at the park so we soccer fanatics could watch the U.S. – England game in peace (prediction:  England over Spain in the final.  2-1 final score, winning goal coming off the head of Peter Crouch in the 84^th minute.  Just remember you heard it here first).  On Saturday evening we were treated to the best sushi/sashimi I’ve ever eaten.  This was an especially delicious treat since everything was homemade and served family style with fantastic wines and lovely company.  And we wrapped up our last pre-summer Sunday night watching Sting with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which was just a phenomenal show.

Healdsburg holds a special place in our hearts, and our desire to be up there can sometimes feel overwhelming.  But this past weekend served as a reminder that life down here in the southland is pretty darned good too.  And despite our passion for Sonoma County, it’s our friends and family down here that will always be a strong draw pulling us back. 

Thanks to everyone who made this last weekend so special.

Happy summer everyone!

We just received another strong review for the 2008 Doctor’s Vineyard Pinot Noir. 

This came in today from Dr.  Rusty Gaffney who authors the industry favorite PinotFile newsletter.  Rusty has been a big supporter of our blog from the get-go and we’re excited that our wine lived up to high standards:

2008 Bruliam Doctor’s Vineyard Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir 14.7% alc., pH 3.64, $52, sold out. Inaugural release from this new producer who donates 100% of profits from sales to a charitable foundation. 100% destemmed.  Primarily Dijon clone 115 and Calera selection with smaller amounts of 667, 2A and Swan. Barreled as 70% free run juice and 30% press fraction.  Aged 11 months in 50% new French oak barrels. Moderately dark reddishpurple color in the glass. Brooding aromas of blackberries, ripe strawberries and a hint of oak sap and toast. A fruit-driven wine displaying charming and generous flavors of plums, dark berries and quince. Thick and bold, but not jammy, with supple tannins leaving a bit of heat in its wake on the finish. Very typical of Santa Lucia Highlands Pinot Noir.  Good.
 

I don’t know about you guys, but I strongly prefer brooding to brusque…

For those of you who have already polished off your 2008’s, we’re gearing up to blend the 2009 pinots later this month and should have them in bottle in August.  Look for details and videos in the coming weeks.

Dear Mr. McInerney:

Please find enclosed one extra large pair of women’s underpants and one magenta sharpie marker for you to use to autograph my left buttock.  A pre-paid/pre-addressed mailer is also included to facilitate return of the aforementioned autographed panties to me.  Thanks in advance.  I am really and truly your biggest fan, Mr. McInerney.  I’ve read most everything you’ve written and really liked your last 3 columns for the WSJ quite a lot.  (That first one was tough to swallow – but then again what juices of love are not?).  In case you couldn’t tell, that’s your face on the front of the panties.  I enlarged your dot-matrix portrait at Kinko’s and then used my bedazzler to recreate your likeness with pink rhinestones.  That’s why the panties are XL.  I couldn’t fit your whole face on the sexy, little ones I’d originally bought at Victoria’s Secret.  But no matter, so long as you know that the President of the Jay McInerney for Editor of Wine Spectator Fan Club doesn’t have an extra large ass.  It’s kind of more medium plus.  I am also writing to find out about any upcoming tour dates you might have this summer.  You may recall from my Facebook page that I already have a picture of me and my other boyfriend, Tyler Florence posted up top.  I was hoping to add a picture of the two of us to my ultimate fan link.  By the way, I have tried to friend you like 5 times, and you never respond.  Someone told me that you can reset your preferences to ignore friend requests, but I’m sure that’s not true.  You’re probably just busy writing the next Great American Novel about an impotent white ex-pat who meets a whale, dreams of throwing kids off of a cliff, and moves from Oklahoma to California to drink oaky chardonnay.  (Ha ha get it? “Oakie” and “oaky?”  I graduated with honors in English Literature from an Ivy League college).

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, I imagine you ask me to edit your work for grammatical errors.  After I point out that third comma splice, you look deeply and gratefully into my eyes and wonder out loud how you ever wrote anything before I came into your life. 

I also have this weird recurring dream about the two of us.  We are at a trendy Manhattan bistro sipping Dom rose champagne, oddly enough.  (I guess that first column affected me more than I thought).  You take my hand in yours and whisper, “This is so fruity, like Kyle’s gay dog dry humping Cartman’s leg.”

I respond back, “No, this is fruity like Ricky Martin’s coming out last week,”

Ever the king of wine-centric similes, you quip, “No, fruity like Maksim’s spangled spandex on Dancing with the Stars.”  Just wait until I get to the part about the acid, mouth-puckering like Kate Gosselin’s angry paparazzi face.  Oh Mr. McInerney, you make me woozy.  As an avid reader of US Weekly and People, I really “get” your columns.  You know just how to make a gal feel like a real wine pro. 

Please let me know about your summer tour schedule as soon as possible.  I’d like to book my airfare before it gets too expensive.  I’m a little short on cash after I bought 35 cases of rose sparkler at BevMo.  It’s the closest I’ll get to the Enotheque.

Sincerely,

Your #354 Fan

As we announced a couple of weeks ago, there are many changes afoot for Bruliam Wines in 2010.  Over the course of a few posts, I’ll walk you through the different elements of our new business model and describe how we arrived at various decisions covering some of the major winemaking issues.

The first thing we did was examine, identify, and segment the various services that we had received through CrushPad.  We broke down the process into four main categories:  grape sourcing, winemaking, licensing/compliance, and fulfillment. 

I’m going to examine each in some greater detail.  First up, winemaking.

Winemaking encompasses everything “wine” from harvest day when the grapes first arrive at the winery to the final bottling.  For pinot noir, this is usually a 10-12 month period.  For zinfandel, it is 18-24 months.   During that time, the majority of the work is done in two tranches:  i) harvest to press, when the winemaker is consumed with managing fermentation and controlling all of the variables that could quickly ruin the young wine, and ii) blending, which happens about two thirds of the way through the aging process.

The first segment is highly technical.  As you may remember from Kerith’s many posts on the matter, managing fermentation is all about chemistry, disciplined process, and absolute cleanliness.  Blending, on the other hand, is artistry.  This is where the winemaker’s palate, nose, and varietal experience are united.  Through tasting trials, one determines what different clones, vineyard locations, and other variables are best combined through minute permutations to make the very best wine.

Now, think about yourself and your circle of friends and family.  My guess is that you can segment most of the people you know into either the technical or artistic camp, but probably not both.  But when looking for a winemaker to work with us on the 2010 Bruliam wines, this is exactly what we wanted, not just someone who is proficient in both right and left brain talents, but a master of both. 

Fortunately, for us we didn’t have to look very far.

As many of you know, through a combination of wacky circumstances and baked-goods bribery, Clay Mauritson worked with us to craft a small batch of Rockpile zinfandel in the 2009 harvest.  We’re happy to announce that Clay has agreed to become our consulting winemaker for our pinots as well in 2010.  All of our wines will be made at his fantastic facility on Dry Creek Road in Healdsburg (only 5 miles from our place!).

In addition to the award-winning wines that Clay makes under his Mauritson Wines, Rockpile, and Loam brands, Clay and his team also provide consulting winemaking and custom crush services for a number of well-known wine brands in the Dry Creek, Russian River, and Alexander Valley areas.  Beyond his expertise with Zinfandel, Clay’s most well known foray into pinot noir is through his collaboration with restaurateur and hotelier Charlie Palmer.  Together, they craft the Charlie-Clay and Duelist brands of pinot with grapes sourced from Chef Palmer’s property and other vineyards in the Russian River AVA.

We’re thrilled to have Clay’s expertise behind us as we begin this next stage of Bruliam Wines.  Working with him and his team will provide Kerith and I more opportunity to build up our hands-on winemaking experience during the harvest, aging, and blending periods.

Next up:  we’ll discuss the arduous process of sourcing premium pinot noir grapes and we’ll find out whether Kerith can successfully bake her way up and down the coast of California.

There is a little bit of Rachel Berry deep inside all of us, some more than others.  If Taylor Swift’s music pierces the soul of anguished tween girls across the Midwest, then Rachel Berry embodies every over-achieving, approval-seeking, type-A adolescent.  These are the girls who grow up to become overbearing, validation-craving, histrionic Jewish mothers.  During a recent episode of Glee, after Rachel wailed, “I am like Tinker Bell, Finn. I need applause to live!,” my husband just turned at me and stared, very hard, for a long time.  And it’s true, that elusive gold star is sweet to accrue (and wear like a gaudy wrist corsage for all to admire).  But my obsessive, self-absorbed quest for world-wide admiration is exhausting and requires work.  Like I have to put myself out there to be judged, by doing things like blind tasting wines, where I usually fail.

I recently re-visited the source of my greatest shame and again subjected myself to that most loathsome and tedious of tasks – blind tasting wines before an audience.  I am happy to report I’ve shown very little improvement from my last ineptitude where I failed to link “pencil shavings and cassis” to the vines of Bordeaux.  On this occasion, my only clue was “4 different red wines.”  My mission: correctly identify each grape varietal while Russian gangsters blindfolded me with burlap scraps they ripped apart with their teeth and caressed my brainstem with the trigger of an automatic rifle.  Each bottle was randomly assigned a color-coated wine bag to distinguish it from its neighbor (and presumably make me feel red rage at my infantile green envy when my colleague outperformed me).  While tasting, I made incoherent tasting notes like “hmm- smells briny, like oysters – what is it?” and “berry nose reminds me of pinot but it’s not pinot - what is it?”  And that’s the joke of the game- I had no f*&%&king idea.  Happily I still got the steak and passion fruit mousse prize even though my score was only 25%, dropping me below the bottom third of my graduating medical school class.

Blind tasting wine is all about sensory memories and sparking neural connections between stuff you drink sober enough to recall on cue and what is in your glass right now.  When I marvel how my Master Sommelier pals not only identify varietal but also region, producer, and year of vintage (!!), they are humble and blather about their “taste database.”  Whatever.  It’s still the coolest party trick I’ve seen.

If you want to blind taste wines at home, you probably ought to follow some ground rules.  First you need to pick a theme.  For example, you might taste only merlots, then purchase ones from around the globe and pick your favorite (although I don’t know why you’d ever pick merlot for anything).  Only the most sadistic of men will rig the game so that devouring the glistening, juicy steak crackling before you is contingent on correctly identifying the contents of each bottle.  Instead spare yourself the humiliation; blind taste for fun and choose your favorite.  Generally, the bottles should be about the same price.  This is no caveat of snobbish whim, although it is always entertaining to see if your wino-wonko buddies can pick the boxed wine from a lineup.  I encourage you taste around a similar price point because it helps equalize winemaking techniques that affect taste and aroma.  For example, new French oak barrels are really expensive.  Cheap wines cannot afford to lounge around for 2 years in new French oak.  Instead they settle for used barrels or swimming over a small mountain of oak chips (like the stuff in your bbq smoker).  Furthermore, cheap grapes from hotter climes, like the San Joaquin Valley, have lower acid.  The amount of acid in finished wine affects how you perceive taste, mouth feel, and finish.  (You can always add acid back to unfinished wine, but that trick is costly too).  Across a level playing field, you can select your favorite wine with more assurance and precision.  Lastly, follow the 4 S’s (plus 3 more).  See, swirl, smell, sip, (slosh it around your mouth, then either spit or swallow).  Only the self anointed pros taste in black glassware as to remain uninfluenced by color.  You should not.  Look at the color.  If the wine you suspect neighbor contributed looks brown and murky, tell him to stop being such a cheap prick and pawning off the wine stashed behind the radiator.  Plus, you’ll only lose friends when your colleague screams, “I know it!  Gruner Veltliner!” and it’s actually cabernet.

(Special thanks to our good friends and Bruliam fans who went all out to organize a truly wonderful evening of wine tasting and fabulous food.)

“Golf’s big problem: No kids.  Still intimidating for beginners, the game isn’t attracting young people.”  Now that’s a Wall Street Journal headliner you’ll never confuse for a reference to the wine industry.  Can you imagine reading “Tasting room’s big problem: No kids?”  Of course not, although fledgling wine drinkers are often intimidated.  But it’s really the kid part that sounds so audacious.  Because, let’s face it, nobody chooses to wine tour with kids.  They are a cumbersome afterthought, dragged from one tasting room to the next like a whining, complaining, cheerio-encrusted white albatross.  And I understand.  You never even intended to bring them in the first place, until suddenly you had a babysitting crisis or crisis of mindfulness that made gutting it out at a winery with three kids seem like a terrific idea. 

Generally I’ll mislead and betray my own kin to lessen the blow:

Start with, “Hey kids, we’re going to a farm!  You guys love farms!”  The forced peppiness is requisite.

“Will there be ponies?”  (Darn it!  She always asks that one, and it always ends badly).

“No, no ponies,” I continue gamely.

“How about cows?  Or chickens?”

“No and no.  This is a very, very special kind of farm.  A grape farm.” 

Be prepared for glum resistance, crestfallen faces, and occasional sobbing.  My kids usually regain composure after they’re strapped into the car.

The other plausible misrepresentation is to play out the picnic scenario.  “Hey kids, we’re going on a picnic…at a winery.”  Armed with coloring books and plenty of candy for bribes, my kids and I have covered much of the Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley, and Alexander Valley.  But with summer around the corner, I am not sure my one-year-smarter kids can still be baited by last year’s “grape farm” hoax.

Fortunately, Francis Ford Coppola seems to like my children, even if I don’t.  He is reinventing his namesake Geyserville winery as a family friendly enterprise.  It’s scheduled to open July 4^thand is just one freeway exit north of our Healdsburg home.  Construction appears on schedule, and a job fair to hire over 100 people was advertised in our local newspaper.  However, exact “family friendly” details have not been fully disclosed.  But to be fair, in the past year, the winery has hosted both Halloween and Easter events as well as the starting corrals for the Healdsburg half marathon.  Friendly stuff.  Once opened, the new facility promises two wading pools with rentable changing cabins, a big courtyard patio, poolside bars, a stage, amphitheatre, and eventually bocce ball.  According to the paper, Mr. Coppola envisions folks “playing freely and joyfully throughout the property” with “music and dancing and puppet shows.”  The winery will even host the summertime Geyserville Neighbor’s Farmer’s Market.

It’s easy to be snarky.  Hey Mr. Coppola, what wine do you pair with goldfish crackers?  Yeah, well what about the colored ones?  Do you provide child care so I can ditch these pipsqueaks and actually enjoy the place?  Are those “uncrustables” or palate cleansers?  But this is the first I’ve ever heard of a winery actively recruiting families.  And it sounds like a smart marketing campaign to me.  The focus is on his more moderately priced wines.  And really, what parent couldn’t use a glass of wine on a weekend afternoon, when our kids don’t have school for entertainment?  In fact I will risk being a pariah and state that most moms will spend more money at wineries that accommodate or even tolerate our kids (low expectations, friends).  I for one maintain an ongoing mental tally of which wineries provide kid-friendly amenities like paper and crayons, old legos, or cookies and crackers without being asked.  I am not expecting Disneyland, but please spare me the disdain.  I don’t always like my own kids either.  I’ll offer up this real life occurrence as proof.  On a recent date night at Dry Creek Kitchen, our favorite Healdsburg sommelier Drew suggested a pinot noir from Arista Winery.  “Oh I know those guys,” I interjected.  “They gave my kids otter pops last summer.”  And yes, we ordered their wine.

This past weekend some friends joined us for a Zinfandel blending party at Alderbrook Winery in Healdsburg.  The event was designed to replicate the blending process winemakers’ use to orchestrate the final composition of the finished wine.  For this exercise, Alderbrook provided each participant with three different glasses of Zinfandel, base wines “A-C,” plus a glass of Carignane, wine “D.”  Using pipettes, graduated cylinders, and a judicious dose of moxie, we were set loose to mix, blend, taste, spit, dump, re-blend, and try again until we hit gold, that unified chorus of harmony in a glass.  (Cheesy but true.)  After crafting our personal super-blend, we were asked to mix up a big 1000 ml beaker-full which was individually bottled, corked, and foiled for us to take home.  Then we made our own labels using magic markers and colored pencils.  I may suggest this artistic D-I-Y to the mommy hosting our next preschool birthday party.

Wine blending combines artistry with methodical precision.  Different lots of wine are mixed, tasted, and remixed until the integrated parts fuse perfectly.  It is incumbent on the winemaker to gauge how minute permutations in the ratios of the blending wines affect the final mix, if at all.  Adding or subtracting < 5% volume of a given wine from the composite brew can perceptibly alter what you taste and smell.  Sometimes nudging a blending wine just a few percentage points in either direction renders the final concoction undrinkable; other times it’s way better.  The base wines integrate differently based on their relative proportions.  And when blending on a small scale, say in a wine glass, it’s imperative to document exactly how much of each base wine muddles the mix so that the recipe can be extrapolated from that one glass to hundreds of barrels, in identical ratios.  Sometimes tasting glass after glass of nearly identical wines is maddening, since eventually my taste buds burn out, and they inevitably all taste the same.  I think that’s called “buzzed.”

Presumably your base wines are different enough to provide a template of how to proceed.  You may aim to blend a more tannic, astringent wine with something rounder and softer or a wine with more front palate-weight with one that warms the back of the throat, to indulge every single taste bud.  Base wines may be as similar as same varietal, same vineyard, different clone or as divergent as zinfandel and petit syrah.  And winemakers are at liberty to blend and bottle their wines in any way they wish.  However, what the label can say about it is another issue altogether.  In the United States, state-specific laws dictate the connection between the label and the concoction inside.  For example, a label stating “Cabernet Sauvignon, Rutherford Hill, Napa Valley” means that 100% of the grapes are from California, 85% must be from Napa Valley, specifically and 75% of the grapes are indeed cab.  Theoretically, through blending trials and taste tests, a winemaker may decide her melange-du-95-points should include 50% cabernet grapes from Colgin, 30% cab grapes from Harlan, 5% cab from Della Valle, and 15% Thompson seedless from a Salinas Valley grocery store.  And happily you don’t even need to specify which grocery chain it is on your label. 

Disclaimer: This is purely a fictional example.  I made it up for fun.  Sonoma County vintners will in no way suggest, insinuate, or blindly guess the composition of Napa Valley Cabernet.

Blending is an art and a science, to me one of the most fun and rewarding aspects of winemaking.  I like to think that we really elevated the aromatics of our ’08 Santa Lucia Highlands pinot by adding a mere 2 ½% of “Swan clone,” a California heritage clone from the contiguous vineyard site.  Last Saturday, for example, I started with wine “A,” which I felt had the richest, most beautiful color, fruitiest aromatics, and heavier tannin.  Brian, in contrast, started with wine “B” which had a lovely, mouth-filling richness with much softer tannins.  Clearly mine will be killer drinking at next year’s event while Brian’s label should read “drink now through May 15, 2010.”  In fact, all four of us participants selected a different base wine to use in greatest proportion.  That is what makes wine so wonderful.  Everyone’s palate is different.  My supremely awesome blend of wonder is very different from my husband’s.  If you’ve never attended a blending seminar, they are a blast.  Educational and fun, they really provide a lively window into the details of winemaking.  They are even better when they conclude with a decadent lobster boil and ice cream.  Just don’t forget your calculator, point dexter. 

Lobster Boil – Before…..:

….and After:

Go ahead and pick your overused cliché:  change is a good thing; change we can believe in; change is inevitable.

Change is all of the above and more.  For us, change is what we’re jumping into with both feet for the 2010 harvest.  After making our wine at CrushPad for the past two years, we’ve decided to take the training wheels off and learn to pedal on our own.

Why?  How?  Huh?

These are just some of the initial reactions we’ve received as we’ve started to inform our friends of our decision.  In the coming weeks, we’ll learn to tackle the “how”.  Because CrushPad is a soup-to-nuts operation, leaving them means that we’ll now have to do most things on our own.  From sourcing grapes, to obtaining licenses, to buying barrels, to finding warehousing and fulfillment – it’s just me and Kerith now, cobbling pieces of the puzzle together.  We’ll examine every step along the way, detailing the importance of each to the wine making process and its impact on the quality of the finished product.

But for today, let’s tackle the “why”.

Let’s be clear – CrushPad is great. Great people, great product, great idea.  Realistically, without CrushPad there would be no Bruliam Wines.  They enable microscopic wine brands with absolutely no prior experience to make world-class wine with limited upfront capital expense.   Nobody holds a candle to CrushPad in the niche they’ve carved out.

That said, two primary issues lead to our decision:  logistics and economics.

CrushPad recently announced that they were moving from San Francisco to Napa.  For many of their clients, this is a great boon – there will be a tasting room on the Silverado Trail, greater client access to the vineyards, and a number of new marketing opportunities.   At the same time, we’ve entrenched ourselves in the northern Sonoma town of Healdsburg.  I don’t particularly buy into the whole Napa vs. Sonoma rivalry, but I do know that it is a major inconvenience to split time between San Diego and Healdsburg if our wine making facility is in Napa.  When CrushPad was located in San Francisco, we could (and often did) pop in on our way to or from the airport.  We could also do same day up-and-back trips during harvest.  Drop the kids at school, sort our grapes, and fly home in time for swim team and after school curriculars.  Sadly, that’s impossible with the relocation to Napa.

As for economics, there’s nothing wrong with the CrushPad model.  It works perfectly fine for those who can’t or don’t want to fully manage the winemaking process (and all the non-winemaking activities that are a necessary evil in the business).  Fortunately, we’re Type A enough to do just that.  And, as I modeled our growth plan and looked into the cost structures of alternative solutions, I saw a number of potential and very significant cost savings.

For many, winemaking is a labor of love – not a job.  While we feel the same, the hard truth is that I can’t turn off my business background when staring at an upside down P&L and projections that show no light at the end of the tunnel, regardless of the revenue ramp.

Our aim is to create world class wine, raise awareness about charities we care deeply about, and donate 100% of our profits to those charities.  Along the way, we want to involve you in all aspects of this project – including the charitable giving – making the accomplishments of Bruliam Wines a communal effort.  I think we’ve succeeded at all levels to date. 

But, the hard truth is that if we can’t ultimately generate a profit, there really is no purpose in this endeavor.  So, simply put, moving out on our own provides us with a much clearer path to profitability, thereby ensuring the long term viability of our label.

For those of you who loved our 2008 pinot and are anxiously awaiting our next release, we can understand some apprehension.  All we can say is that if you’ve liked what we’ve done so far, you ain’t seen nothing yet!  We’re nearly bursting at the seams with excitement over what’s coming from the 2009 vintage and everything we’ve got lined up for the 2010 harvest.

Until then, we are humbled by all of your support to date and can’t wait to share the next steps in this adventure with you.

“Mooch” – derived from French “muchier,” to hide, lurk

If you can’t pad your bra, ladies, then pad your wine cellar.  As we slog though this relentless tide of economic misfortune, I have perfected an irrefutable strategy to enhance the quality of the wine you drink without costing you a single penny.  Would you like to upgrade from box wine to Bordeaux?  How about swap out anything with an animal label for one etched with a chateau?  Then listen closely friends, as I disclose the secret to getting the most exclusive wines at no additional cost to you.  No, I am not proposing you erect some sloppy, ad hock wine blog in return for “reviewing” freebies.  What I’ve got trumps that has-been scheme any day.  I am talking about recalibrating your wine ethics, just resetting your moral compass a little further south, when we’re talking about wine that is.  Now I understand that the Good Book explicitly dictates “Do Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Wine Cellar.”  But I am here to tell you to covet until you are craven.  In fact stake out your neighbor’s house with night vision goggles.  How else are you going to know what they drink with dinner and if it’s better than what you’ve already got?  Engage in some low risk reconnaissance with UPS to discover what wines are being delivered to their doorstep.  Better yet, track any comings and goings from the yellow DHL van – a sign they’re paying out for the good European stuff.  Really organized people may choose to rank their neighbors on a spreadsheet, based on presumed cellar contents and estimated value.  Considering that data,  you can better plan your grocery shopping and intended food/wine pairings.  Step #2: after the stake-out comes the most critical step: the thinly-veiled mooch.

As a good and compassionate friend, you certainly don’t want your neighbor’s cellar contents to go to waste.  You must help them consume their finest selections lest they spoil before the expiration date issued by Wine Spectator.  This is where graciousness guides your fate.  Invite them to dinner and propose they bring their favorite wine to share.  Here is the clincher – tell them to be prepared to explain why their wine is special and why they chose that particular selection.  Since wine is a joyous, communal beverage best shared among friends, this tactic provides ample cover from being labeled a gluttonous, parsimonious, freeloading bastard too miserly to buy her own s^*t.  I assure you; you will be overjoyed and moved by your friends’ generosity and goodwill.  You may even regret acting like a miserly Philistine – that is until you get a sip of that grand cru Burgundy that costs more your minivan lease payments.

I don’t mean to sound crass.  This endeavor started with the most honest and forthright intentions – a spring lamb dinner.  I asked a number of my wine loving pals to each contribute a bottle or two and express why their choice was meaningful to them.  In fact, I figured I was doing everyone a favor by containing costs with a special, diminished corkage fee.  Then the e-mails started to roll in.  Woe is the shameful, despicable woman who cowers in the blazing glory of her friends’ unselfish largesse.  Only a coarse and pitiful wretch would try to leverage such kindness for her own loathsome pleasure.  (Are you looking at me?).  As I mentally ticked off their proposed wine selections, I quivered a little bit inside.  Big-hearted and absurdly generous would be an understatement.  Lest some established wine writer point a finger and call me a “douche”, I will refrain from disclosing the details of each exquisite wine we tasted.  Suffice to say, my spring lamb bounty of wonder included obscenely awesome white Burgundy, cult California pinot noir, gorgeous and smooth aged Napa cab (from someone you’d know), chewy, monumental Zins that made the lamb sing (yes, those are actual angels and harps that you hear in the background), and an epiphany of a dessert wine from a special place in France that starts with “S” and rhymes with blow-terne.  Wow right?!!?  Not only were these wines mind blowing but also their attached stories were beautiful.  My dining companions recounted everything from marriage proposals and 10-year wedding anniversaries to memories of carefree French vacations.  I was touched to witness my buddies participate so fully.  So what did we contribute, you query?  Since full disclosure is our policy, I sheepishly admit we provided a magnum of Bruliam pinot noir.  However that was not our original intention; our (very kind and ferociously supportive) friends requested it.  When you can’t afford better wine, find better friends.            

Thank you, thank you to all involved in my personal palate expansion that evening.