"Madcap" millenials...? Long Live Queen Victoria!

On Saturday last (3/21/09), Peg Melnick of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat wrote an article which was featured high on the front page, just below the name of the paper (dear God - it must be important!) which seemed to imply that many of the recent tourists & wine aficionados were put-off by the large number of miscreant youths who partied through the wineries with apparent abandon. To the credit of the editors of the paper (or perhaps Peg herself), the term "madcap millenials" didn't appear in the print edition of her story - only in the blogged version.

Now, with all due respect to Peg , I don't think anyone in the past 50 years has used the term "madcap"...unless you count the British comedy troupe Monty Python back in the mid 70's when they described themselves as "zany, madcap humor..." (Historically, I believe that was also the last recorded usage of the term "zany" as well...)
Drunken antics of a few aside, this is all -simply put- Victorian Prudishness, and the old guard needs to get over themselves. We read of the "average Midwest Joes", who were offended by this travesty:

Dear GOD! ...have they NO SENSE OF DIGNITY!?
The sheer hubris of dressing up for St.Patrick's Day, and going to a winery instead of a brewery!
OH! The irritation! Why I'm chaffing at the mere thought of having to share a tasting room with these...these......young fashion-challenged-miscreants....?!
Wait a minute....just what is the Ohio definition of "misbehaving"?

BTW, it IS and always HAS BEEN the responsibility of the participating wineries NOT TO SERVE PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY DRUNK - regardless of whether their inebriation occurs from beer, wine or liquor, and regardless of whether they become inebriated on their property or show up in that condition. This responsibility also encompasses the right to refuse service to individuals who are acting inappropriately on their property...
Again from the article:

I believe the correct term is "(they) Tweet" not "twitter" when speaking in the plural. And again, it sounds like this is just the crowd the industry needs to appeal to - think how far your marketing dollars go when the crowd gathers at your winery and HAS A GOOD TIME and then spreads the word via their own circle of friends electronically!

In a recap of her reporting, Peg has an online blog which posed a few questions to people who had experience at the recent Wine Road Barrel Tasting, asking if they, too, had some unfortunate or unpleasant experiences with the "younger generation of wine drinkers" (my quotes on that last phrase, Peg didn't use it). And this is where the generational warfare tone continues from the main article, to wit:

"Who are these brash drinkers? A suspect element within the Millennials, the offspring of the Baby Boomers who range in age from 22 to 31. And these so-called "madcap Millennials" are roaming through Wine Country with some regularity..."

Come on now! With phrases like that it sounds like we're talking about packs of feral dogs attacking pastoral herds of sheep, or the hoards of mindless zombies from Night of the Living Dead showing up on your front porch!!

There is an element of concern when people show up at your establishment and proceed to get "hammered" or "plastered"...or if they show up at your place already in that state...
But lets all address THAT issue, not one where we separate people out because they dress differently, or age, or if they - God Forbid! - are actually having FUN...
Afterall, FUN, respectfully enjoyed, IS what everyone should be seeking...

Anniversary of the 1906 Earthquake

Here we are 102 years after the 1906 San Andreas earthquake which shattered San Francisco.

I hear some of you saying..."so what does that have to do with wine?"

Plenty!

But first- attached are a few stereo-optic photos taken right after the 1906 earthquake: notice how everything is pretty much gone (fires consumed most of the wood the quake spared), how the people are living in the streets, and how the then destroyed Fairmont Hotel was reported to have cost JUST $4,000,000 to construct in the first place! These days you can't even look at a lot the hotel occupies in SF for that much cash.
(Thanks to Stuart for sending these photos in...
Click on the photos to see a bigger version, and look at the center of the photo and cross your eyes slightly...and the photo should magically pop out at you...)

...and isn't it nice how the Keystone-esque cops are guarding the safes from the banks?...
And still more damage & people living in makeshift shacks and tents, with no water and no sanitation...(please note how the shack has a horseshoe which is placed the wrong way up for luck...)...
Again, how does this tie into wine?
One of the most common questions when I see people tour wineries is "what happens when there's an earthquake?"
It's usually asked as people are shown around barrel rooms - especially rooms which have the barrels stacked high above the tourists heads...and by people from back east, or at least people whom haven't experienced an earthquake or two.

Well, here's a video of what's possible when you take a stack of barrels 6-racks high and place it on a shaker table for a simulated quake. I should note that in my book, wineries really worried about this possibility use 4-barrel racks for stacking as they're much more stable than the 2-barrel variety are in earthquakes...notice how they fail in the front-back (linear) direction and not to the sides (laterally). (I didn't get any sound on the video...)

As you watch the video and look at the photos, think to yourself of how much it would cost to repair the damages from a quake in these current gloomy-economy times...I mean even the smallest mom & pop winery is worth $10~20MIL.
And even the cheapest house in Napa or Sonoma counties is a half-million dollars each....

Inventory losses for winery case goods alone could reach the $500MIL mark, as they're also stacked high and might be damaged in a quake. Tack on all the costs from damaged buildings, losses to equipment and lost time working the wines, as well as possible losses to life, and the place is pretty much a shambles. Transportation chains broken due to injured workers, damaged highways, overpasses and bridges, etc...
In fact, just a few spots of Silverado trail, highways 29, 12/121, and highway 101 being damaged would cripple the ability for National Guard relief to get through.
If there was also damage to the local airports, we'd be pretty much screwed for a week or two.

What is there for you to do to prepare?
Definitely put together an earthquake kit with all the food & water you'll need for 4~7 days, but also slip a few bottles of your favorite wines in as well...after all, you can't be sure when your favorite wine shop will reopen (if ever), and the comfort you'll get from having something as simple as a good bottle of wine will be priceless in a major event like that (you could also barter it for something else, should the need arise!).
[check out the ABAG website for additional preparedness info]

Shat would the total monetary damages be? The final number would vary greatly depending on the type of scenario that plays out, but it could easily be in the billions.
It might even approach the total from, say, a Katrina-type disaster, though the area affected would be much smaller in scope. But still the possible consequences of a strong quake scenario in the North bay area are drastic.

Savor Sonoma, cheers & jeers

This past weekend was the Savor Sonoma wine tasting event, and after inviting several friends to this barrel tasting event for the umpteenth time, I thought it'd be a good post if I had everybody gather all their impressions at each winery and put it all together. Here's a run-down of what the group found to be the best (& worst) of the weekend.....tasting staff and volunteers were all very helpful, except where noted otherwise...

Cheers:

Mayo Family and Collier (at Family Winemakers in Kenwood) tied for the best overall performances, and the 2-for-1 special at Collier was fantastic (bought a case of the '04, got a case of the '03 FREE!....now THAT's marketing!), and the winemaker at Collier was a hoot!
Mayo was very good overall, with very drinkable sangiovese, chard, and viognier. The petite sirah was a tad aggressive, but would do well with a bit of age on it, and the cab franc was classically (read as "old world") less-ripe than most of the other cab francs produced these days in California, so a nice change on that varietal. The Meritage and Cab were both put together very well, and could use a few years to pick up some bottle bouquet. The port was excellent, and was "futures" worthy.

Eric Ross Winery had a very nice "light style" pinot, which was also worthy of buying futures, but the rest of their wines were not all that exciting. I'm still surprised Gallo hasn't tried to sue them for having a black rooster on their label...perhaps they're waiting to see if the Chianti Classico organization in Italy will take care of that for them...

Valley of the Moon had the best food pairing, with a tomato-bread soup that paired perfectly with the wine. The recipes were available on postcards for everyone to pick up if they wanted...another nice touch. The syrah they were sampling wasn't all that great, otherwise they were good.

Muscardini had some nice wines, the Unti Syrah was good, as was the sangiovese and the "Tesoro" blend, which we grabbed a few bottles of for dinner that night.

VJB...in a tent outside the tasting room right on HWY 12 in Kenwood, we felt a little like we were going to be hit by a car careening off the road at any time, but the wines were good: both their primitivo and the Dante blend were very good to excellent.

Jeers:
Ledson......has been much better in the past, not very impressive this time around. Also, the "kid" who was pouring behind the bar was, well... the best phrase is "somewhat lit". And as he poured us all a Brett ridden petite sirah, proclaiming how "...most wines need quite a bit of time before they're ready, but this wine's ready to drink right now. Really just an excellent barrel of wine..."
Right. It was poured out directly into the spittoon, and I even opted for a fresh glass, but was disappointed by receiving another Brett wine, this time a Cab.
(So, if you're going to have a wine event, make sure your employees aren't drinking more than your guests, and make sure they know the difference between Brett and complexity from aging!)

Benziger. How could I NOT stop by the Sonoma bastion of all things biodynamic?
Ok, to be fair, they had a very nice Sauv Blanc barrel being sampled, which was paired extremely well - most of us felt perfectly- with a slightly spicy asian noodle salad. I also hold their stated desire to farm as responsibly as possible in high regard. But the rest of the wines were average to disappointing, with both the BD wines being Brett tainted. Not a great advertisement for the potential for BD which they preach so loudly...

As we made for the exit, I recognized one of the gals behind the bar as the one who'd helped some guests and myself a few years back...and for a moment I panicked that she recognized me also, as my friends stopped to taste what she had to offer behind the bar.

This I should explain: on that particular occasion years ago we had gone to their tasting room for my guests' introduction to what BD was, and how the resulting wines turned out. We had tasted thru the wines available at the bar, and had opted for the "premium" reserve tasting. We paid our money and shuffled into an adjacent room where this gal got into the whole BD is the best-thing-since-sliced-bread was invented, and how the wines we were about to imbibe were fantastic, low-yield vineyards, and how no better example of what quality wines BD could produce. Long story short, we tasted thru the first wines with not much comment, happy to let her go on-and-on with the winery's spiel...until she poured what she assured us was the finest of their offerings: a BD cab sauv from McDowell (?) vineyard. I was the lucky schmuck who got the first pour, and before she had gotten the glass poured for the person next to me, I was pouring mine into the spittoon. It never made it closer than arm's length from my face - it never was tasted.
At this point she stops pouring, aghast & with a unique mixed expression of disbelief and utter shock, said "That's our best wine...".
My reply was "No. Thanks, but I can smell band-aids and barnyards as soon as you started pouring. That wine's contaminated with Brettanomyces yeast."
She haughtily countered with "It's a style...." (as if I was an idiot she could pull that crap on.).
Flatly I replied, "No it's not...it's a contaminant yeast which is producing those aromas. There's no fruit to be found in here...what's next to pour today?"
The pissed off look on her face spoke volumes.
Needless to say, our tasting ended soon afterwards...and we broke for the parking lot...

How this all ties in: This same lady just this past weekend, while pouring a BD wine for one of my guests which was Brett ridden, started waxing about how great a wine it was, and about the exquisite fruit it came from. My pal, quick to get the strong band-aid odor wafting from his glass baited her by asking "what is it that you smell in this?"
Her reply - "All that makes this vineyard special, the terroir of the site."
My pal persisted "It smells quite strong..." to which the gal replied "That's the soil you're smelling..."
He poured it out & took her to task by saying "No. That's Brett making that band-aid smell, NOT the soil!".
(I felt quite happy with myself, as though I'd just completed some magna opus, hearing my pal stand up for himself to this snotty lady...)

Here it was several years later, and I found my party walking out of the tasting room - again - and this particular pour staff gal still hasn't improved either her demeanor or her knowledge base.
If indeed she DOES know what Brett is, then she needs to improve her delivery to people so she's not continually talking down to them. It was just insulting.

I think she's had enough of the company Kool-aid, boys...
PS - it's time to change your staff out when they can't offer anything but a scowl to your patrons...I don't recall her smiling once the entire time we were there. Frankly she looked like she'd just swallowed a live scorpion.

Better luck next year...I hope....

Brett-barrel revisit

It's been a bit since I posted, and for good reason.
With the nights being as cold as they have been, it was perfect weather to shut down the vines, and therefore a perfect time to get out and prune all the vines before the start of the wet weather. Having just finished with that -actually I got lucky and finished on Sunday morning, as the rain was just starting- I can now relax (just a little) and get back to blogging, amongst other things around the cellar...

The weather is turning, and we should see around 2 inches of rain this week, and I'm glad not to be in a rush to get back in the vineyard for a few weeks.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand: Brett and barrels.

One of the points in my previous post was to point out that new barrels coming in from a cooper are probably not the source of Brett entry into the winery because of the high temperatures and the length of time that they are held at those temperatures. I still think that makes quite a bit of sense. But after talking with a friend of mine, I found he has examples of staves and barrels which have large cracks where Brett most certainly find refuge when the barrel was cleaned!

In the photo below, the areas circled in red are longitudinal cracks on the interior of the barrel from when the barrel was made (the whitish-pink deposits on the staves are tartrate crystals). The stave in the middle is intact, from the same barrel as the others, but doesn't have these flaws....
You might ask "so just how bad is this?"....
In a word, "unacceptable"...in fact this barrel should have been rejected and sent back to the cooper, never to be filled with wine. The flaw on the lower stave is about 7" long, and 1/2"deep.

Sawing the stave in half reveals what really is the problem: debris, lees, tartrate crystals, etc...
In other words, the perfect reservoir for molds and brett to hang about and reinfect any other wine ever put into it. Even with ozone, it's doubtful that this area ever was cleaned properly.

Cracking off the overhanging wood, you can look directly at the scum residing underneath it:
This is a problem when inspecting all barrels when they are coming into your cellar: looking through the bunghole, you only ever see half the barrel. And it's really not practical to take a head off of each barrel to inspect the interior before they're used.

Brett spores may have found their way 8mm into the staves in some instances, but the idea that there are barrels in your cellar which will be repositories for brett regardless of what you do to clean your cooperage is just damned scary.

For what it's worth, my friend said that this particular barrel was French oak from a French cooper, and had never contributed to any brett lot that he could remember. What a miracle that seems like when looking at what they were dealing with! Sure, every barrel is somewhat unique as they're made from wood, which by its nature is of variable density, grain, etc....
But this barrel never should have left the cooper to start with.

Perhaps Matt Thompson is onto something after all when he states that it isn't in the coopers interests to be looking for brett...or perhaps to overlook many things that they might think will go unnoticed upon arrival. Like cracked staves...