What's Up in Lodi?

Satori mining Gold, Silver and ... Platinum?

Wine Competition. The 7th Annual Consumer Wine Awards were held March 17 and 18 in Lodi (the land of Old Vine Zin) ... and Satori had entered two Zins and a Syrah.

A New Wrinkle. But this is no traditional wine competition. The judges are not professional wine tasters; they are just wine lovers who enjoy drinking wine. For the fifth year in a row, a panel of approximately 60 consumers, monitored by six wine experts, collaborated to evaluate more than 600 wines from many of California's largest and most popular wineries in a blind taste test.

Oh, Lord, Sipping in Lodi again.  "What's unique about this competition is that the winners represent the opinions of actual wine consumers, not 'experts' whose palates, experience and focus may not agree with the consumer at all," says Harvey Posert, spokesperson for the Consumer Wine Awards competition. 

According to Tim Hanni, one of the industry leaders in sensory sciences, "Trained wine experts brains are scrambled. They are wired to recognize and evaluate certain characteristics of a wine, and sometimes forget to determine if it simply tastes good." 

Another New Wrinkle. The competition actually divides the tasters -- after they have taken a rigorous preferences survey -- into four categories of wine drinkers. The idea is that every person has unique physiological and sensory differences that profoundly affect their wine and food preferences. The Lodi tasters who evaluate the wines in each category are the very consumers who are most inclined to buy and enjoy the wines of that category.

So how did we do in The Land of Old Vine Zin? Our 2009 Estate Zen-Zin (100% Primitivo) won the highest medal at the competition -- Platinum (94 points)! The 2009 Estate Oh-So Zin, Gambit's Blend (a blend of 4 different zinfandel clones) won a Silver medal. And the 2009 Estate Ta-Da Syrah (the first time T. has ever entered a Satori syrah into a competition) took home a Gold medal. Not bad for a humble winery from the Santa Clara Valley ("Oh, Lord, stuck in Gilroy again"). 

Today Lodi ... tomorrow the World.

satori

satori

Waiter ... There are Magic Crystals in my Wine!

Oh So Sorry ... How tartaric of us.

Have you ever observed these crystals in your glass?

Or attached to your cork? 

Do you know they are one sign 

of a very good wine?

"But how can that be, monsieur?"

you are perhaps asking.

And you thought it was just a Grape? A typical bottle of red wine is composed of Water (70-85%), Alcohol (11-16%), and "other components" (15-19%) -- magical acids and tannins and pigments -- which are what really make wine taste like wine and not alcoholic water.

This is the Culprit! Two of the magical "other components" in wine are tartaric acid and potassium -- both found naturally in grapes -- but under the proper cold conditions (like storing a bottle of wine properly around 55 degrees), they can come together to form a  white (pigments in red wine turn it red) crystal called ... potassium bitartrate! Or, more simply ...

Cream of Tartar? Yes, potassium bitartrate is the same stuff you've had up in your spice rack for 12 years without a clue as to what to do with it. What is this stuff anyway?

Satori Swirls? Well, apparently bakers use it

to put a little more oomph

in their cream pies and meringues. 

It's kind of like Viagra for egg whites. 

Back to Our Story. A quality red wine is more likely to have these tartrates because the winery wants to maintain all the flavor from all the natural elements in the grapes ... instead of removing essential flavor ingredients that may or may not (it's very unpredictable!) crystallize after the wine is bottled.

Freeze, baby, Freeze. Many wineries, however, chill new wines to just above the freezing point; the crystals form and settle to the bottom of the tank. The wine is then racked or filtered while still cold to remove every bit of cream of tartar crystal. This process -- called cold stabilization -- is fine for white wines since it does not affect their taste. But for red wines, chilling may cause pigments, tannins, and other magical components of wine structure or "body" or flavor to drop out with the C of T. That's why T. says Satori chooses to not cold stabilize or super-micro-filter its wines. It's a "baby out with the bathwater" kind of thing.

Don't Worry. If you drink lesser-quality wines, 

tartrates are never an issue ... 

there's not enough good acids in plonk

to precipitate into

"flavor savers," as T. calls them.

Does it Hurt? Nope. 

Odorless, tasteless, harmless. Just a bit gritty. 

As noted author, Hugh Johnson, puts it in "Wine."

“It is remarkably hard to convince people (especially in the U.S.) that sediment in wine is harmless and natural and untampered with.  If wine has been pasteurized, put through very fine filters or otherwise denatured, IT IS POSSIBLE TO AVOID SEDIMENT. 

But it is no longer natural wine: 

it seems too high a price to pay to avoid 

the chance of a speck (on the cork) or

 in the bottom of the bottle.” 

Decant, baby, Decant. But if you like good wine ... 

and suspect the presence of magic crystals therein ... 

and prefer to leave them in the bottle ... 

and not in your glass or mouth ... 

just put the bottle upright for a few hours 

so the crystals can settle ...

then pour the wine carefully

into decanter or glass

leaving the red diamonds

in the last few drops.

(Or you can use them in your next red meringues.)

satori

.  

What's Up Today?

The Wind & Sun (but the Winery is absolutely malolactic)

Dancing Tablecloths. Wind is Up today ... nothing up to recent Midwest standards, of course, but steady at 15 mph with gusts up to 25. These just-washed tablecloths from the winetasting this weekend (repurposed sarongs, actually) dance in the breeze ...

... and go crazy on the gusts.

Solar Flares Anyone? And the Sun is up, of course, to many things ... including this X-class solar flare from Sunday night from the huge sunspot AR1429 (aimed at Mercury and Venus) ... and a solar weather forecast for today (here) with a 30% chance of another X-flare eruption ... which, among many things, means lots of solar winds and beautiful Auroras on Earth where you don't usually get to see them.

Meanwhile ... inside The Winery. Things are a bit more quiet and  peaceful. These oak barrels hold the 2010 vintage (grapes harvested in the fall of 2010) and the wine is just lazing around becoming more mature and balanced and flavorful by the month. (It will be bottled in August.)  T. just "topped off" these barrels which means he replaced the wine that evaporated through the pores of the wood during the past month. (The barrels can lose up to 10% of their wine in a year through evaporation.) If you don't replace this missing wine, the oxygen in the remaining air pocket will age the wine fast, and in the end will kill it. Too much air and the wine becomes "oxidized," tasting stale and flat.  But wine, especially red wine, cannot mature completely without oxygen, either; it's needed to neutralize certain off-smelling chemical compounds (rotten eggs anyone?). The solution? A vessel with a controlled oxygen supply ... like an oak barrel ... that you "top off" every month until the wine is ready to bottle.

Satori Sweet. See the half-barrel (30 gallons) in the foreground? It (as well as one full barrel in the stacks behind) contains Satori's first "sweet" wine -- Adorah's December Harvest Zinfandel. The grapes were picked on 12-1-2010 and fermented in such a way as to leave a little residual sugar in the wine. It will be bottled this month ... maybe this week ... and available in April or May. As we say on the just-designed label: 

Roses on the nose. 

A hint of sweetness,

 chocolate and plum. 

Yum.

Meanwhile on the other end of The Winery. The 2011 vintage is bigger than the 2010 (unlike many vintners last year, we had a very bountiful harvest) ... and it is still quite active. After all, it has only been out of primary fermentation (the changing of the sugars in the grapes to alcohol after harvest) for a few months. All red wines undergo a second fermentation called malolactic fermentation after malum, the Latin word for "apple." Some winemakers attempt these dual fermentations simultaneously, but for Satori wines, T. chooses to complete the primary fermentation in open-air containers and then transfer the young "dry" (containing no residual sugar) wine to oak barrels for the second, malolactic fermentation or MLF, as it is called.

That's Mr. Malic to You. In the young wine, there is an acid -- malic acid -- that tastes astringent, like an unripe, green apple. That may good for white wines, especially young white wines, which need every gram of acid to give them life, freshness and finesse. But raw, astringent acid in fermented  red wine ... not so good.

This, not That. At some point, malic acid is often attacked by bacteria (good bacteria! good bacteria!) that transform it into lactic acid, which is milder. The acid content of the wine drops a bit, and it tastes softer, fuller.

Where is our confounded lactic acid bacteria? MLF is a natural occurrence in some wine growing regions, but in California, South Africa and Australia, lactic acid bacteria are not present in sufficient numbers to start the process ... so the young wine is inoculated with  selected, cultivated strains of bacteria that eliminates the malic acid. If you don't, there is a danger that it will ferment in the bottle. (Definitely not so good.) 

Eavesdropping on Maturing Wine. Unidentified winemaker actively listening to his wine aging ... or he has fallen asleep on the bung hole (that's what the side hole in a barrel is called and the stopper to plug it is called a bung). T. raises the temperature in the winery to 68 degrees and the lactic acid bacteria starts to eat up the malic acid. Depending upon all sorts of variables, the process can take a couple of weeks or a couple of months. So, periodically, you listen to, and taste, the wine. First, it gives off a very fine spray, then bubbles (carbon dioxide) ... certain signs that "it's alive!"

Meanwhile, back at the Sun. Well, we waited to send "today's" post and, sure enough, Old Helios let rip an X-Flare early this morning, Wednesday. According to Spaceweather www.spaceweather.com, "This one is the strongest yet, an X5-class eruption ... that appears direct enough to deliver a glancing blow to our planet's magnetic field on March 8-9." What a way to celebrate International Women's Day, the 8th. Enjoy the Show.

satori

What's Up in the Labyrinth & Greenhouse?

Cutting & Rooting

Sunset in the Labyrinth. Our labyrinth, adjacent to the Tasting Cabana, is most beautiful at Sunrise and Sunset.

Walking It Out (or In). Happy customer, Rainbow Body Chardonnay in hand, walks the winding circles, 1/4 mile in to the center, 1/4 mile out, as questions are answered, burdens stripped away. (That's the idea anyway.) 

Replanting the Labyrinth. AuRoRa taking cuttings from the lavender plants in half wine barrels (more than 60 form the outer ring of the labyrinth). Why? Because all the water on the new, east vineyard flows down to the lowest part of the property ... which is the labyrinth. Last winter (2010-2011) there was so much rain that half the lab was underwater for months. It drowned much of the rosemary that forms the inner circles of the lab ... and many lavender plants as well. So this Spring (meteorological Spring starts March 1 in North America), we're taking cuttings from both plants, starting new plants in the greenhouse, and in a month or two we'll come back out and remove and re-plant the damaged plants to fill out the circles and barrels.

What's with the Hat? We have a terrific little greenhouse T. and Adorah built years ago that gets quite busy in Spring when we're rooting cuttings and creating vegetable starts for our organic garden a few steps away. AquariUS is preparing the lavender cuttings. (He's wearing purple so the lavender feels more comfortable with the process  ... just kidding ... or maybe not.) 

Rosemary Starts. T. took cuttings of rosemary (which is in full beautiful light-blue flowering bloom now in the labyrinth) several weeks ago and they are now busily creating new roots for transplant.

New Grapevine Starts. And T. walked around the vineyard after the first pruning, picked up smaller canes from last year that did not make it into the bonfire, put a piece of blue tape marked "Z" for Zinfandel or "CS" for Cabernet around the canes, and stuck them into a pale of water. Grapes (like figs and other Mediterranean vines and trees) have a ridiculous desire to grow. Stick them in the ground or water and they will grow new roots quickly. When these guys root in a month or so, we'll use them to replace any dead vines in the vineyard ... and maybe just plant a few for show.

Step 1. Make a fresh, angular cut at the bottom of the cutting, and pull off a few leaves at the base of of the cutting.

Step 2. Dip the cuttings in some rooting compound.

Step 3. Plant them in some planting mix. Sand and peat moss works well ... but we didn't have sand at the moment ... so this is coconut husk (a more eco-friendly version of peat moss) and vermiculite with a little soil. Just add water and, voila, in about six weeks we'll have plantable lavender plants for the labyrinth ... and to put into small pots for tabletops and bartop at the winery. They'll start blooming in May.

Meanwhile. We can all come out, walk the labyrinth, and enjoy the last of the beautiful rosemary blooms. If you want to make some cuttings of your own, bring your clippers. If you want some for your potatoes or pasta, bring your clippers. Happy Meteorological Spring!

satori

What's up in the Vineyard?

200,000 Canes

Rafael. Cutting canes in early spring is only the first part of the pruning process ... and by far the most "enjoyable."

Suspended in Mid-Air. After you cut a cane, it doesn't fall neatly to the ground like leaves from a tree. Thick, strong tendrils hold the cut canes tightly onto support wires and each other. So you have to go through the entire vineyard again and pull the canes free from the tangle. Tough going.

Tendril is My Heart. Old tendrils clinging to support wires in the Satori's first vineyard planted in 2001 along Buena Vista Avenue (merlot, zin, cab and petite sirah).

Fagots. (Check your dictionary, people!) After the pulling, the piling.

Moving the Pile. After piling, pick up the piles, and pile 'em high into truck and trailer.

Let's Do the Math. To put this pruning play into perspective, we have about 9,200 vines in our 15 acres of estate vineyards. About 3,200 have a quadrilateral support system, which means each vine has 4 cordons, about 5 spurs per cordon, and 2 shoots per spur ...  so that generates about 40 canes per plant ... or about 130,000 canes a year. 

Raising Canes.  The oldest vineyard at Satori, planted in 2001 along Buena Vista Avenue, features a bi-lateral support system ...   1,500 vines with 2 cordons each, 6 spurs per cordon, and 2 shoots per spur ... which that generates another 36,000 canes.

To the Bonfire. Finally, the newest, "head-pruned" (no support wires, no cordons -- more about this in a later post) vineyard, along New Avenue, features 4,276 Zinfandel vines, planted in 2007. Each of these has, say, 7 spurs each along a vertical trunk (they are still being trained so there is not yet a fixed number of spurs per trunk), with 2 shoots per spur, so that adds roughly 60,000 more canes. Add it all up and we have, on the low side, about 200,000 canes that must be pruned, pulled, piled, packed and ... burned each spring.

Burn Day? You can start ag fires like this one only on "Burn Days." Santa Clara County officials measure moisture, wind, weather and air quality every day and then make the Burn, No Burn decision. No smoke after Sunset. 

Slow Starter. Because canes are mostly hollow (enabling water to wick up from the roots through the vines to the leaves and grapes), there is very little actual wood to burn. The fire is hard to start and it will die out fast if T. doesn't hop on the tractor and keep piling more canes onto the flames.

California Gothic. Cane fires put up lots of smoke ... a lot of it a drab olive green ... which T. opines might be chlorophyll.

Not Much to Show For It. How can 200,000+ vines burn down into a couple of 5-gallon buckets of ash. Hardly seems possible. (Note the "Orbs" flitting around the super-hot fire at Sunset -- "Orb backscatter has been broadly interpreted as a highly variable range of paranormal phenomenon without verifiable causation — including invisible spirits, auras, angels, ghosts, energy fields, psycho-energetic artifacts, energy balls, etc." -- Wikipedia)

Bucket of Canes. Of course, grape canes can become beautiful and useful in the right hands in the form of wreathes and sculpture and BBQ fodder.

Grape Balls.  Our friend, Patrick, pioneered these sticky, hanging Orbs. He soaks the stiff canes in water for a day or two, then wrestles them into a sphere, and ties them in place with fishing line. Our friend, AhNanDa, inserts a short line of battery-powered LED lights into her Balls and hangs them from her porch ceiling. Grape Balls of Fire.

That's All Folks.  The canes are all gone for This Year. Except for the ones T. put into a bucket of water in the greenhouse to sprout (more on that magic later).

satori