Fox Run Gallery and Happenings

2011-09-14T10:34:00.000-04:00

Please enjoy our archival material!

If Your Refrigerator Could Talk

2011-07-28T11:01:00.002-04:00

by Ben Peacock, President, Tousey Winery

Dieticians would say that you can tell a lot about a person from a peek inside their fridge. I would argue you can tell just as much from what's on the outside. For reasons unknown to me, people seem desperate to reveal and express themselves via the white and chrome vastness of this kitchen utility's outer surfaces. All of which are ready to be scanned and analyzed by covert fridge scanners like me. There's the snotty nose kid on a bicycle, the reminder of a dentist appointment and more often than not, a green takeout menu.

But forget the bills and the grandchidren's latest masterpiece. I'm perpetually on the lookout for fridge magnets, and more specifically, fridge magnet quotes. Rarely, in fact never, do I come across the wit of Churchill or a magical poem from Kipling. In the real world fridge magnets tend to range from the mildly amusing ('Jesus is coming....look busy'), to a variation on the cliche, 'It's not the destination that counts, it's the journey'. I saw the latter at some friends' dinner party the other night (now they know I scan their fridge!) and it got me thinking about my own situation and how it reflects that of the Finger Lakes wine community.

This Is a Fridge of Love

Or pure chaos. It's a 50/50.

Let me give you some context. I am from a small start-up winery down in the Hudson Valley. Like every winery, we want to be known for quality and consistency. And because we are brand new, we wanted to get a good start. After a number of enquiries, all roads led to Peter Bell at Fox Run who agreed to give us some support and guidance as we build our business. Now, with hindsight, neither of us knew what we letting ourselves in for. But turning up on Peter's doorstep showing notes of greenness with a crisp, dry ignorance, I had a clear destination in mind - to make top quality wine. Little did I know the journey to achieve such a goal would be most enlightening and rewarding. (Did I mention humbling?)

Why so enlightening and rewarding? Easy answer - the people. The collaborative, friendly, we're-all-in-this-together spirit of the Finger Lakes wine community has often been spoken and written about. I have been lucky enough to witness it first hand. But before I get to the wider community, let me first focus on Fox Run.

Let's be clear: Fox Run doesn't have to help an unknown winery four hours' drive away. But they do, and with gusto. Peter Bell is selfless when it comes to giving help and sharing his knowledge. This could be anything from winemaking, cork selection to sun protection in the vineyard. I should show my gratitude by picking up the varying subjects at a much quicker pace. But I don't: I labor along trying to cling on to the vast subject in front of me - he doesn't say a word, and if he does, it's words of encouragement.

Tricia Renshaw is of a similar vein, always happy to help and make time even though she doesn't have any herself. And when I make a fool of myself in the lab (which is often) - I should be able to carry out simple calculations but to no avail - Kelby Russell doesn't mock me (to which I fully deserve, I might add). He just directs me, professionally and with the utmost respect, to the next task in the cellar.

It doesn't stop there. We have Scott Osborn at the ready with knowledge and advice from the business end. John Kaiser, bending over backwards to answer any vineyard questions I have. And then there's Pete Howe....if they allow me back on this blog, I will elaborate on him more fully in a later post. This may seem like a glorification, but all this is a run-of-the-mill scene here at Fox Run.

But the more time I spend in the Finger Lakes, the more I see examples of support and a collaborative spirit at other wineries. Fox Run isn't the exception, it's the rule. From a full spectrum of subjects spanning vineyard contacts to cooperage (barrel and tank) advice, everybody seems to want to help and share their best practices. And it's all done in a way that helps to bring people up, not keep them down.

Being invited to the blending sessions of last year's Tierce Riesling (an earlier bottling of which Dan Berger, the west coast wine critic, called the best American Riesling ever made) is a case in point. This is an important wine, a collaboration of three of the best winemakers in the northeast with a philosophy to adhere to. Not only was I invited to this elite event, but they actively sought out my opinion. I was amazed - I'm relatively new on the scene and an outsider, yet that doesn't matter. It's the overall message that does: we're striving for the same goal, the same destination, and let's help each other get there. This leaves room for everybody, no matter what stage of the journey they may be at. To feel, at first hand, the sheer weight and depth of this spirit, this collaborative nature, feels special. And as a consequence, special wines will continue to emerge from the Spirit of the Finger Lakes.

Now, be careful what you put on your fridge; it may spark another blog post.

Music of the Day:

The Stone Roses - Second Coming; "Love Spreads":

Support Artists, buy the music you like!

The Key to Life?

2011-07-11T16:25:00.001-04:00

by Dr. Steven Hickman, Intern Emeritus

“Has anyone seen the key?”

Especially in the fall and summer, this refrain can be heard echoing off the stainless steel tanks and concrete floors of the Fox Run cellar. The key is not the one that unlocks the cellar door, which is a rather mundane looking item. Winery hardware is more complicated than that: we're looking for the elusive but necessary key that will allow us to sample the wines in our tanks.

"Is this the key?"

Almost all of the tanks at Fox Run are equipped with sample valves, spigots that allow easy removal of small quantities of wine for evaluation (as well as the odd bottle filled by winery staff on their way out the door). A few of the tanks lack such valves, and retrieving wine from these tanks must be accomplished through one of the two main valves, which are 1.5 inches in diameter. Even for experienced staff, this can be a very wet operation – for new staff, success is declared when more wine ends up in the pitcher than on the floor or employee.

Most tanks, though, have sample valves. The most desirable valves, from the view of a cellar hand, are those that have simple knobs at the end, as easy to operate as a standard faucet.

No Key Required

About a dozen of the tanks are equipped with a “Vance Special” – a valve that can only be operated with a special triangular shaped wrench. This is “the key”, and owing to the unique design of this pseudo-socket wrench, they are not available at your standard hardware store. The internet tells me that this type of fitting is used most commonly on electrical panel covers in explosive environments.

In the numerous wineries I have ~~tried to steal wine from~~ visited in my travels, I have not seen a similarly designed sample valve. Indeed, the only copy of the key possessed by the winery was custom-fabricated, through the painstaking process of pounding down a circular metal tube until it fit the valve socket.

“Get T’s and B’s from tanks 8, 10, 23, and 25”. A common request during harvest, to retrieve about 250 mL from each of the listed tanks to measure the temperature and degrees Brix – two measures of the “health” of a fermenting wine. Tank 8 is easy, with a simple knob-style sample valve. Tank 10 has no sample valve, but can be conquered with luck and a pitcher. Tanks 22 and 24 require finding the key.

The first step is to interrogate the other staff, to determine who had the key last, or if they remember seeing it. This is usually a futile line of inquiry (especially if it turns out that you were the last to use the key). At best, it leads to vague answers such as “around tank 15, unless we moved it when we racked that tank, or maybe Kelby has it. Oh, and I think I saw Max chewing on it this morning.”

Somewhere in the vicinity of Max, the winery dog -- that's often best place to look. In an attempt to make the key easier to find, it's been attached to an easy-to-spot colored lanyard. Max, though, loves to stroll about with a lanyard in his mouth, and often makes off with the key, dropping it on his bed (sometimes) or in some dark recess of the winery (more often) when he is finished with it.

"I'm not a chewer, but I do need something important to do at all times. Guardian of the Key will do just fine."

Assuming Max hasn't gone out of his way to sabotage our operations, the final step is a tank-by-tank search. Our key is often left hanging on the last tank it was used with; as only twelve tanks have this type of sample valve, this should be a pretty fast search. However, both the key and the tanks are made of the silvery metal, and thus the key is well camouflaged when hanging on a tank. Further, if the key is hanging on a tank that needs to be filled or drained, it will often have been parked on a nearby tank, which may or may not be one of the tanks that use that sample valve. So the searcher can, at times, find himself disintegrating into a semi-random wandering around all the tanks, hoping to find a glimpse of color from the lanyard.

Then Peter remembers that he’s had the key in his pocket the entire time.

The author, holding the key to wine happiness

A Winery Owner's Screed

2011-07-08T14:23:00.004-04:00

by Scott Osborn, President

The big question I hear in the tasting room these days is, “Why don’t New York restaurants carry a selection of New York wines?” This is a one of those hot-button questions that can get a winery owner seething with frustration. I define 'local' as anything made in my state, or better yet, within 100 miles or so of where it's being sold. We see advertisements every day from restaurants boasting that they use only local ingredients. This practice, called Locavorism, is a big selling point at the moment.

But too often you go out to support a good restaurant and the local farmers who they are sourcing from, and the first thing you notice is that the wine list is heavy on west coast and imported products. Often there are no local wines at all, or a token one just for show. How can they reconcile these two practices, one wonders? These folks have a double standard that is not even remotely defensible.

Here are some statistics.
The multiplier effect is pretty powerful when you buy anything that is locally produced, but it’s staggering when you buy wines which are grown and produced within 200 miles of the winery. For every dollar you spend on a local wine, $10.05 is returned to your community. When you buy one of those imported wines you return 67 cents. When a local restaurant won’t put my wines on the wine list or feature them with the local produce, perhaps you can understand why I get frustrated and annoyed!

Why do they resist the idea of pouring Finger Lakes wine? It can’t be a quality issue. Fox Run was named one of the top 100 wineries in the world in 2008, and recently a number of my neighbors were also so named. Fox Run and many of the wineries in the Finger Lakes have won Best of Show, Gold Medals, Best of Variety and many other accolades all over the world with our wines. Most of us have distributors, so delivery and ease of ordering is taken care of. So again, why can’t they carry local wines?

Are our wines more expensive than wines from other regions? Not really, when you compare apples to apples. For instance, mass-produced wines from other regions are pretty much priced the same as our large volume wines. When you compare the premium wines from other regions to ours, many of ours are a dollar to five dollars a bottle less expensive. So it can’t be pricing!

When I give a tasting at a local restaurant for the staff and ask if they get any requests for local wines, they usually say, “Yes, many times a day.” So why doesn’t the restaurant carry our wines, I wonder (aloud)?

If you are dining out and don’t see a comprehensive selection of local wines on the list, please make a point of asking the owner or manager what the story is. Tell them you hope to see some of your favorites the next time you come in, and if that isn’t the case, walk out and go to a restaurant that does carry local wines. Make sure you tell the owner or manager why you’re going somewhere else. A good restaurant in upstate New York should have a minimum of 30% local wines on their list, with at least one red and one white offered by the glass.

I have some fantastic employees who are incredibly dedicated to making great wines. My vineyard manager has planted every vine on the property and watched them grow, and my winemaker was trained in Australia and came to the Finger Lakes expressly to make cool climate wines. We are dedicated to producing the best wines the year will give us and will not shirk our responsibility to achieve that goal. So my request to you is make your voice heard in restaurants about which wines they need to carry. Tell the manager or owner; don’t leave it to the waiter or waitress, not because they don’t care, but because they are too busy serving on you to remember at the end of the day to pass your opinion on.

July Reckoning

2011-07-06T08:31:00.001-04:00

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team Member

There is no denying it, we are definitely into the month of July. As much as we might like to close our eyes and pretend that it is still June, Independence Day is now behind us and the dog days of summer are beckoning. Don't get me wrong, we absolutely adore the glorious sunny days that summer in the Finger Lakes means - especially as those sunny days transform into molten twilights that seem to last forever. You will notice, however, that I did not employ the normal cliché of "carefree summer days," and that is precisely the point.

Our daily calendar for the month of July is a complete mess.

There is so much pencil lead scribbled on every day it might be easier for us to notate things by erasing out the message we have in mind instead of writing it. It is a daunting task to look at the entirety of the workload for July in one glance, even going day by day is going to take a considerable amount of work. At this point, I am taking what comfort I can in knowing that everything is laid out for us in terms of the work schedule plan. What is left to us is the execution of that plan.

Why do we have so much work in July? After all, you would be correct to point out, it isn't as if grapes are being harvested at the moment. Yet the (relatively) imminent 2011 grape harvest is the reason we are putting so much pressure on ourselves this month. We've made reference before to the fact that the time leading up to the vintage is affectionately known as "bottling season" in wineries across the world. Wines from the previous year have to be bottled to make space for the new harvest and the juice it will bring with it, whether in tank or in barrels. We might not know precisely how many tons of fruit will be coming in from the vineyard in 2011 (see our previous post), but make no mistake that we will do everything in our power to avoid a situation where we are having to 'juggle tanks' in October.

Getting these wines into bottle is not as simple as running a hose from the tank or barrel to some bottles, however, and that is where our work this month comes into play. For the majority of our wines here at Fox Run, final additions, final blends, and final filtration all needs to happen before we send it through to our bottling line. All those steps take a considerable amount of time to decide upon in the lab (what additions, blends, et cetera) and then take time to follow through on in the cellar. To make sure we give an appropriate amount of time to each wine's decision and action needs, we fully scheduled out July to keep us moving forward every day.

The question remains, though, of why July instead of balancing the work through August? One part of the answer is that the tasting room side of Fox Run, where things pick up as the summer continues and starts to involve our time (especially with our Garlic Fest at the beginning of August). Another piece of the answer is that August will still be busy for us in the cellar as we wrap up loose-ends and get everything cleaned and ready for vintage.

The majority of our reasoning, however, is Peter's professed desire to be able to "kick up his feet" come August. Frankly, none of us can imagine Peter (or ourselves, for that matter) sitting around idle that long without going stir-crazy. If we can be that relaxed, however, our crazy July will have been worth it.

Music of the Day:

Yuck - Yuck; "Rubber" (an appropriate song for long, hot days of work):

Support Artists, buy the music you like!

Update from the Vineyard

2011-07-04T07:28:00.002-04:00

With the July sun warming us through here on Seneca Lake, it's time for a quick update on how the growing season is treating our vineyards thus far. Peter in particular would note that he is a bit cynical about the whole process of trying to forecast the quality of a vintage based on a few weeks of weather; you may remember that he is even hesitant to discuss the quality and direction of a vintage the following May. It must be said that this certainly represents a very practical way of assessing the grapes and resulting wines: wines take time to come into their own and, even in a brilliant growing season, grape quality can be ruined in an instant after a single tantrum by Mother Nature.

His cynicism on forecasting the upcoming vintage when we are just into July is also the result of being pestered too many times by earnest reporters looking for a quick story in May or June about how great the coming harvest is going to be. If you or I knew what the weather was going to be like from now through October, I guarantee we would be in a more lucrative industry than grape growing and winemaking. Having said all that, however, the issue need not be black and white. Without trying to become Nostradamus, here is a look at what has happened so far and how the vines have responded.

As of July 2, the Finger Lakes had accumulated, during the growing season (that is, starting when the buds emerge from dormancy) 969 growing degree days. That's about a week ahead of the long term average -- in a 'typical' year, that figure would not be reached until July 9. But a visual examination of the vines indicates that we are closer to average than that: the key phenological event of early summer, bloom, occurred right on schedule.

Disease pressure is almost always on the high side in a cool and wet growing region such as ours, but despite lots of early season rain and cold, the vines this year are looking very healthy throughout the Finger Lakes. (Our thanks goes to Dr. Hans Walter-Peterson of Cornell University for his help here.)

We may be able to get a broad-brush feeling for the size of this year's crop in the next few weeks, though carrying out a successful crop estimation (one that is close to the actual figures we get at harvest time) is notoriously difficult, and can seem, at times, to be based more on sorcery than science. There's even a story out there, most certainly not fictional, that one prominent vineyard manager has better results using a pair of dice to estimate the crop levels in his various blocks than anything like counting clusters!

And let's remember: crop size and wine quality are not particularly closely correlated, despite what amateurs can read in books on wine. For now, and for the next months, it's best to stay busy with vineyard and winery tasks and not fuss too much about divinations.

Oops, gotta go: a reporter is on the phone wanting to know how the wines are shaping up for this year.

The Coolest of Cool Climates

2011-06-22T13:35:00.001-04:00

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team Member returned from afar

Having spent the previous four months in Tasmania, returning to the Finger Lakes a few days ago has truly been a joy. From catching up with family to catching up with friends old and new, the only thing as rewarding has been the sudden change from winter weather to summer weather (and daylight hours) for the first time in nearly ten months. I may grumble about the increase in temperature and the adjustment to trying to sleep in a room at 70 degrees rather than 40 degrees, but that would be the definition of missing the forest for the trees.

Despite the winter weather that took hold of Tasmania in the past month, however, my time working a vintage there has filled me with many big-picture questions that also reflect on the Finger Lakes as a wine region. Chief amongst them is something surprisingly simple:

What do we mean when we call a wine region "cool climate?"

It seems like such an easy question. Everyone from winemakers to wine writers to consumers throw around the term glibly and with the presumption that anyone who hears "cool climate wine region" is automatically on the same page. Maybe everyone is on the same page and I am out on a limb here, but it seems to me that calling a region "cool climate" probably tells us little more than saying a wine is simply white or red.

My guess is that when most people refer to a wine region as "cool" they are likely, a) an aging Gen-Xer desperately trying to sound hip, b) someone making a terrible pun [guilty as charged], or c) speaking to the growing conditions that the vineyard and winery have to work with. In the case of c) I have always thought of "cool climate" as meaning a wine region where cool conditions throughout the growing season, or in its length, result in difficulty achieving ripeness in the grapes. This may mean flavor ripeness (basically, the grapes tasting slightly green) or physiological ripeness (acid levels being high, tannins being sharp, seeds still green, etc.), but in either case we are talking about a sub-standard amount of optimal weather for ripening.

As an example, the Finger Lakes is decidedly a cool climate wine region. While we may justifiably celebrate the importance and beauty of acidity in our rieslings and the delicate nature of our other grapes, the challenge nearly every year is simply to deliver them to the winery ripe. We are no stranger with the sugar man in the Finger Lakes in cold years, nor are we ever afraid of means to reduce the amount of acid in our juices right from the get go. I always think of the classic description of winemaking in the very cool Saar region in Germany: one out of ten years resulted in a useable crop, truly winemaking on the edge. Whether you believe in global warming or not, the Saar is now up to a successful vintage about 40% of the time, but the sentiment is the same for the Finger Lakes - this is winemaking on the edge of a knife. When it is successful, it is precise and beautiful in a way almost unfathomable elsewhere.

Tasmania is also considered a cool climate wine region, indeed that reputation was one of the very reasons I sought out a producer on an island that otherwise only produces 1% of Australia's total wine. When I arrived to discover that it had been one of the coolest summers in many decades and that the autumn had been wet and no better for temperature, I assumed that my Finger Lakes experience would be crucial. "Need to add sugar or tamp down acid, Mr. Tasmanian Winemaker? No problem!" Not so. Despite the coldest ripening season imaginable, one that many called a disaster, I found myself adding acid to juices by the bag. The sugar levels came in totally fine although, full disclosure, grape juice concentrate was added to juices to bring up their sugar levels to meet the Australian consumer's (apparently very high) alcohol-by-volume assumptions for wine.

So far as I am concerned, my definition above is probably what "cool climate" should mean. In its application, however, I wonder if it isn't becoming more of a relative term rather than a firm or absolute description. Compared to the mainland of Australia, of course Tasmania is a cool climate - it isn't baking hot and dry! In reality, however, Tasmania is a moderate and maritime climate. Frost or any other threat to under-ripening are hardly concerns; acid is added to nearly all the juices as reflexively there as it would be on the mainland or California in order to control the pH and structure - if in slightly smaller quantities (forgive me the broad-brush generalizations, I know there are many spectacular exceptions).

In the end, I am not so sure I am a fan of this use of "cool climate." Wine consumers and non-consumers alike often profess frustration with how unclear and abstract the terms used to describe wine, wineries, and regions are. A cool climate wine region should mean something that consumers can depend on being the same for nearly all vintages, from what it means for the varieties of grapes planted, the work in the vineyard, the challenges facing the winery, and the type of wine that naturally results. Putting Tasmania and the Finger Lakes in the same category may seem useful, but the circle has to be drawn so big for them to fit in together that it is probably useful to neither. Both are exciting and fantastic wine regions that deserve more honest and more respect.

As always, send along any thoughts you have on the issue - even if that is only to say that it isn't actually an issue at all!

Music of the Day:

The Strokes - Is This It; "Someday" (in honor of it being summer and being back in the glorious summers of New York):

Support Artists, buy the music you like!

The Oregon Trial

2011-06-20T10:43:00.010-04:00

by Peter Bell, Winemaker

You could tell from the previous couple of blog posts. People in the wine business tend to be among the world’s most eager practitioners of what the British call a Busman’s Holiday. When we take a break from our wine-related tasks, whatever they may be, what do we have a burning desire to do? Taste wine, meet winemakers, visit other regions, or at the very least, seek out and consume a wine style that is new to us.

I wonder if vacationing bankers are similarly motivated to stop in at Fort Knox, or if sanitation workers profess an urgent desire to make a pilgrimage to Mount Trashmore? I bet not.

On a recent vacation to Oregon with my wife, I managed to slip in a little low key wine activity. I had arranged to give an informal tasting of some Finger Lakes products at a restaurant where my son works, wines that Oregonians would be unlikely to taste too often. It wasn’t really a sales pitch, which is a good thing: I’m about as good at sales as a statue is at strolling through the park.

The very first person to approach my table took one look at my lineup (you should have no trouble guessing what I was pouring) and turned away. No big deal – perhaps she wasn’t a wine drinker. But I was really revved up here, having tasted through my wine selection minutes earlier, and didn’t want to adopt a purely passive approach, so I lobbed a gentle lure her way:

“Hi! Would you care to taste some great Finger Lakes Rieslings?”

“No thanks. I don’t like sweet wines.”

“Then you’re in luck. These are all dry.”

“I thought you said they were Rieslings!”

The task of convincing the wine-drinking public that there is such a thing as dry and off-dry Riesling, and then helping them learn that it is actually the greatest white wine out there, seems Sisyphean at times. We’re so lucky here in the Finger Lakes to have a general audience who has moved to a more advanced stage of knowledge – that is something I can see by how quickly our dry Riesling sells out each year.

There’s a certain coals-to-Newcastle feeling that comes over me when I’m pouring Finger Lakes wines in another famous wine region, and it came on there in Oregon, so I tried to offset it by making a point of ordering local Pinots with my meals. I have been to Oregon many times, and tasted lots of beautiful, expressive wines there.

It would be extremely untactful of me to make any direct derogatory remarks about another place’s most famous varietal, so let me just say that it appears that wines in the $20 range might not represent the best Oregon has to offer. Perhaps real quality starts appearing at $40? And here we are selling world-class Rieslings in the Finger Lakes for around $15 a bottle…

After my tasting was over, I gathered up the bottles, each holding a few glasses’ worth of wine, and took them over to an empty table. What the heck: free tasting for someone. Oregonians are WAY more laid back about wine and beer consumption than are New Yorkers, so I was confident that I wasn't contravening some Draconian law, or even bylaw.

A somewhat weary-looking threesome, consisting of a fellow my age, his wife and their twenty-something daughter, sat down at that table for their meal. I was sitting at an adjacent table, within eavesdropping distance. It was easy enough to pick out the guy’s comment:

“What the hell are these?”

He wasn’t one to speak in hushed tones.

That’s when I, inveterate smooth-talker that I am (not), leaned over and told him that they were a collection of high end Rieslings from New York, and he was welcome to have at them. Glasses were procured, and I left them alone while we ate our pizza.

Barely a minute had passed before he yelled, “Oh my God! These are fantastic!”

It turned out that he was a physician from Colorado. His worn-out look was on account of his having driven almost a thousand miles that day, in a battered Camry no less. And he was a serious collector of wine. Moira, Greek goddess of Fate, I owe you one: it could have been Joe Six-pack who sat down there.

Once we had introduced ourselves, he commenced to recite to me, almost bottle by bottle, what was in his cellar back home; and though my eyes started to glaze over, I noticed that aside from a lot of red Burgundies, he was the owner of an astonishing collection of German Rieslings.

“But I have never tasted a Finger Lakes Riesling!” he told me and the rest of the restaurant patrons. “Heard about them, yes! How is it that I have to go to Oregon to taste them?” he asked rhetorically.

I had found a confluence here of a guy who knows wine plus a fine collection of Finger Lakes Rieslings, so the impromptu post-tasting tasting went off extremely well. It didn’t hurt that his effusive personality caused a bunch of other diners to take note and wander over for their share of the spoils.

In Praise of Rose

2011-06-08T11:34:00.003-04:00

by Scott Osborn, Fox Run Vineyards President

There’s nothing like a good vacation, where cell phone signals and the internet are intermittent, to let a person relax and reflect. My wife Ruth, her sister and brother-in law and I recently took a much-needed trip to St. Maarten in the Caribbean. It was a first visit for all of us. It was also a chance to get away from one of the snowiest winters on record and one of the rainiest springs.

St. Maarten/St. Martin is an island split in two, with one side French and one side Dutch. It is 57 square miles and has an astonishing number of restaurants: around 3,000. It seems as if there is an eatery of some sort in every other storefront or house all around the island, with every cuisine imaginable, including Lebanese, Indian, Thai, French, and of course Caribbean.

I got into the wine business because I love to eat good food and drink good wine, and I’ll gladly do that with just about anyone. On St. Maarten we were able have this experience twice a day. At our first dinner on Saturday in a little Caribbean restaurant named Alexander’s, it was hot and we needed something cool, crisp and refreshing before dinner. So I ordered a French Rosé, knowing it would be dry and hopefully lively. It was lovely and hit the spot. We all ordered fish so I asked for a white Burgundy. It went perfectly with the food, but was not as enjoyable as the Rosé had been. The food was great, by the way, and I highly recommend Alexander’s if you are ever in St. Maarten.

Like a lot of middle-aged men, I am not good at recalling peoples’ names, and even worse when it comes to remembering the names of wines, so don't count on me to tell you the specific labels. Besides, I was on vacation!

The next day for lunch we drank another Rosé, and then came my epiphany. We’d decided to drive around the whole island, and stopped in at a little restaurant on the French side named Layla’s. The only way you can tell you are on the French side is that everyone speaks French – the signs and billboards are all in English.

Layla’s is tucked among a grove of palm trees, and the tables are strewn around all the way down to the beach. It was right out of some novel with palms, sand, and exotic flowering plants growing all over the place. Layla’s has two menus, one stressing French Bistro food and the other Thai cuisine. Kinda weird if you think about it. I looked at the wine list and saw a bunch of Rosés along with a White Zinfandel. I asked the waitress about one of the Rosés, wanting to know if it was dry or not.

“Non,” she said in her cute French accent. “Eet ees fruity.”

Hmmmmm. “Fruity as in a great vibrant nose or fruity as in sweet like the White Zin?” I asked.

“Eet ees not dry, but fruity.”

As we sat wondering whether to take a chance on it or order a Pinot Gris, she came back and told us that the bartender said it was dry, so we decided to take a bottle. It came out and the ice bucket had condensation all over it. We poured the well-chilled, deep pink Rosé into our glasses. Shortly our glasses developed a wonderful condensation, and as we sipped this beautiful wine I realized I was having a complete wine, food, and place experience. Here I was with three wonderful friends looking through the palm trees and flowers to the beach and crystal clear blue water. This is why I got in the wine business!

Back home, on my back porch

The wine went perfectly with my Thai shrimp and was perfect with the fish and mussels that the others ordered. Two bottles later, we continued our drive around the island. After that I ordered Rosé at every meal, and each one was perfect. They all had a nice light strawberry nose, and were refreshing and delicious. This experience is what we all want to strive for when we drink wine. So my advice to all is when the weather is warm, pour some dry Rosé with your lunch or dinner and you will have a perfect wine experience. Here at home I drink our Lemberger Rose and Billsboro’s excellent version. Both are delicious and refreshing. When you drink these wines you will always enjoy the place you are.

Old World Ramblings Uncover Great Characters, Tasty Wines

2011-06-02T08:45:00.001-04:00

By Dan Mitchell, Regional Sales Manager

From time to time we experience something that causes to us revisit our understanding of the time-space continuum. Hollywood would have us believe that time moves much more slowly when we go through the daily routine of running away from an exploding vehicle. You and I know that time moves more slowly when standing in line behind someone at the grocery store writing a check. I recently experienced an extreme example, where time actually moved at HALF its normal rate: a seven hour flight across the Atlantic with screaming toddlers on three sides.

Beer So Potent it Makes Your Hair Fall Out

My father and I had decided to travel to Germany, so he could re-visit places that he loved to visit when he was stationed there from 1964-65. It was my first time in Europe, and though the trip itself was exciting enough, spending time with him tracking down old haunts, drinking beer, and playing cards through Bavaria was the true intention of our venture. My sisters need not worry -- we didn't discuss the vast family inheritance.

Only Experienced Tractor Drivers Need Apply: Vines Rows Running Straight Up the Hill!

With Bavaria behind us, we switched from Dunkel to Auxerrois and made our way toward Alsace. We rented a car in Stuttgart (I voted Porsche, while my wallet voted Volkswagen) and before we left town we visited the nearby winery Karl Haidle. Apparently at one point the Stuttgart region was one of the leading wine producing regions of the Roman Empire, and the vines that grow on the 70-degree (!) slopes of the surrounding hills are a constant reminder of Stuttgart's rich history. We talked with founder Karl's grandson, Moritz Haidle, a young man who is currently in school studying Enology. He was very eager to chat with us, show us his beautiful wines, and discuss the similarities and differences between his vineyards and ours. He was familiar with the Finger Lakes, thanks most likely to our best ambassador (Riesling), and I discussed the possibility of a US internship with him. I reassured him that if he wanted an area offering similarities to his, the Finger Lakes was the place to go. I bought a bottle of their premium Riesling offering (I'm looking to put a few years on it) and he even gave me a bottle of Spatburgunder (Pinot Noir to the rest of the world) from his father's cellar.

In Alsace the welcoming nature of our hosts continued. At Ostergag-Hurlimann we made our way around the language barrier with a lot of pointing and a few scant words of French. I spent a lot of time admiring their collection of antique wine barrel tools on the wall. (Barrels are a special interest of mine that I will write about in the future.) They had four styles of Gewurztraminer that showed the grape's character and diversity well.

After Three Glasses, I was a Faller Too

By far the most interesting conversations we had that day were with Luc from Luc Faller Vigneron. As soon as we stepped up to the bar in his tasting room I could tell that he spent very little time as a host there. His hands looked like oven mitts stuffed with sausages. While not a particularly big man, his hands were cut, coarse and dirty from spending the previous six days in his 100-plus hectare (250-acre) vineyard. He spoke with passion about his wines and had a great deal of practical wisdom as well. He uses a lot of practices we would call sustainable, and even produces some of his twenty-some wines under an organic label. However he has no interest in going organic for his full production. He is well aware that there are some wines he can produce using a limited number of added sulfites without sacrificing the integrity of the wine, and some that he simply cannot. So he refuses to compromise those wines. Very practical. All of his practices fall within the guidelines of organic except for additional sulfite use. Admittedly, he shakes his head knowing some of his wines are selling just because of the Organic designation. We had an excellent tasting and I tried the most unique Pinot Noir I had ever tasted, as well as a Gewurztraminer dessert wine that was bursting with cinnamon flavors. They were all absolutely delicious, and I look forward to getting into my imported stash a few years from now.

In The Post Riesling Hour Haze...

2011-05-27T13:03:00.003-04:00

by Evan Dawson - Author of Summer in a Glass: The Coming of Age of Winemaking in the Finger Lakes

I have the pleasure of standing in for Peter Bell this week - or sitting in, or writing in, if you like - and I'd like to spill a little news about Riesling. It comes from Peter, and I don't know what he'd think about me writing it here, which is all the more reason to post it now and hope he's cool with it later. After all, a colleague in the news business taught me years ago: Don't ask for permission; ask for forgiveness.

Here's the news: The 2010 vintage is going to take longer than usual to assess for Riesling. Think that's not a big deal? I think it's significant, because right around now is when a pile of 2010 Finger Lakes Rieslings will hit the market, and it's difficult to figure out how they're evolving. On top of that, there is a tremendous amount of (generally well founded) hype surrounding the 2010 growing season. But does that hype promise too much for Riesling?

Tasting with Peter a few weeks back, he explained that by around April or May, winemakers have a pretty clear handle on how the previous year's Riesling will show and evolve. Some years, like 2009, feature a spine of acidity and a depth of fruit to provide for long-term cellaring as well as short-term enjoyment. Other years, like 2007, portend a wine that should be consumed in short order, lest it begin to fade with a few years distance. Some years the fruit steps forward; other vintages see that classic Finger Lakes steeliness and precision taking over.

And yet here we are, with May rolling into June, and Rieslings from 2010 are still maturing. Yes, 2010 was just about the longest, warmest growing season in recent recorded history. And no, it was not a drought year like 2007, which means varieties like Riesling weren't scorched and potentially fat. So what is 2010, exactly?

Peter says he's going to reassess this summer. That patience is wise. Having tasted dozens of tank samples from producers across the region, here's my take: Peter is wise to wait, but there is a very high bar of quality about to be unveiled. Plenty of growers and winemakers decided to pick when the fruit was ripe but the acids were intact, a kind of marriage on the vine that only happens once in a while. Some had to make acid adjustments, but others found the wines nicely balanced without much help.

If the acids are integrated, expect 2010 to be a special Riesling vintage, albeit very different than the cooler 2009. If the acids are jarring, then make plans to consume the wines at a younger age than most, like 2007. But I expect most wines to offer a kind of harmony and aging potential that true Riesling lovers will celebrate.

And don't tell Peter, but the wines that he and his team have made are giving hints of something outstanding. I don't say this because I'm camping out on his blog. I'm no cheerleader. There will be disjointed Rieslings from 2010. And Peter can handle tough criticism from writers like myself. I simply have tasted enough 2010 Rieslings to know that I'm an optimist, and a buyer.

Music of the Day:

Newton Faulkner - Hand Built By Robots

Support Artists, buy the music you like.

Update From The Deep South: Harvest is Over!

2011-05-24T08:05:00.002-04:00

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team Member from afar

Greetings once again from the Down Under's Down Under, Tasmania! Home of wallabies, platypuses (platypi?), freakishly large moths, and birds that only sound quaint in name until their screeching calls awaken you before sunrise. If kookaburras do congregate around 'the old gum tree,' as the sing-song rhyme would benignly have us believe, then I would seriously consider supporting the otherwise destructive logging industry here.

As hard as it may be to believe in the cool and rainy spring the Finger Lakes have been having, on the other side of the world the fall harvest is now wrapping up and winter's approach is undeniable. By no stretch of the imagination does it get "Finger Lakes cold" here in Tasmania, the climate is moderated far too much by proximity to the ocean for that to be a concern. As a matter of fact, I have yet to break out any of the cold weather clothes I brought with me other than for early morning runs. There are often frosts in the morning, but the afternoons still get too "warm" (mid-50s) to justify wearing my thermals even when all the locals are bundled up as if a blizzard were on the horizon.

With the moderate climate Tasmania is blessed with, most wineries that I have visited are very much outdoor operations. In the summer there is little worry that temperatures will soar beyond what the tank coolant systems can handle, and in the winter the average temperature is nearly perfect for wine storage and tolerable for cellar staff to be working outside in. It is for the same climatic reasons that I imagine many homes here do not have insulation, an utterly regrettable decision regardless of cost savings: Will you freeze if your house gets into the 40s at night? No. Will you be miserable? Absolutely.

The two times having the wines outside does become problematic, however, both occur during the late fall and early winter. The first is that, even if the temperature is moderate, winter rain and wind are cold and slick to work in while undertaking important cellar tasks. The second, more concerning, problem with having the winery outside is that those cold temperatures, wind, and rain can wreak havoc during the most crucial phases of post-harvest winemaking.

To wit, at the winery I work at, we have several rotary fermenters that hold nearly 25 tons of fruit three stories overhead for fermentation and easy color extraction. As frightening as the machines are, it is undeniably true that - when handled appropriately - it is far easier to mix the fruit in the equivalent of a cement mixer than to plunge it all by hand. Since the fermentation of the fruit also occurs in the vessels, maintaining the appropriate temperature for the fermentation is also an issue... a rather large issue when ambient temperatures never even reach the starting temperature range the yeast would like. Also rather worrisome are the 30 degree nights with cold rain and wind lashing the fermenters as the yeast inside would prefer to be left alone to finish their business at a balmy 80 degrees. The solution here is to use mobile heating units to keep the ferments happy and healthy, but it is certainly quite a bit of monkeying around.

It goes without saying that the idea of having the majority of a winery outdoors in the Finger Lakes is ridiculous, even if we do keep a few tanks outside to allow mother nature to cold stabilize our wine on the cheap. While it might not be quite as absurd a proposition here in Tasmania to have your winery outside, I wouldn't criticize anyone here for looking into putting a roof overhead (or insulation in their walls!).

Music of the Day:

Cut Copy - Zonoscope; "Need You Now" (It's an Australia/Finger Lakes mash-up! Australian band, but a great song for the start of summer):

Support Artists, buy the music you like!

Getting Wine Into the Barrel

2011-05-21T07:48:00.002-04:00

In this post, former Fox Run employee Dr. Steven Hickman elaborates on one of his favorite activities: filling barrels. During his time at Fox Run, he emptied and filled hundreds of them. A generous and enthusiastic soul, he also donated to the winery the following:

an expensive camera
a high-end mountain bike
a microwave oven
cases of wine to taste and evaluate
plenty of his time
a gas regulator
a car, and
a little multi-articulated flashlight, which was so useful that it came to be known as The Hickman Apparatus

How many of us can say that we have a device named after us? Never mind that it was just a scientific-conference freebie: it serves as the ne plus ultra illumination device for barrel filling. Read on...

The wine barrel – a romantic wooden icon of winemaking. A staple of tasting room signs and wine shop displays. Also, a royal pain to work with. But in this post, I’m going to pass over the difficulties in making, transporting, prepping, emptying, cleaning, moving, and storing barrels, and look at the challenge of filling them.

A wine barrel is constructed from numerous wooden planks, or staves, all cut in a curvalinear shape that would drive most woodworkers made with frustration. When first made, the barrel is completely sealed. A 2 1/2-inch hole is then drilled in the side of the barrel, serving as the only port of access. This is the “bunghole” (pause for snickers). This single hole must trebly serve as a conduit for the hose supplying and removing the wine, an egress for the air the entering wine displaces, and a view-port to assess the height of wine in the barrel.

At Fox Run, 1-1/2 inch-diameter hose is used to move wine around the cellar. For barrel work, a one-inch diameter metal pipe (photo) is fitted to the end of the hose. This metal pipe has two slits at the bottom, and is of a length so that it is just long enough to reach the bottom of the barrel. This is designed to allow the barrel to be filled from the bottom, minimizing the amount of air that comes into contact with wine.

So in principle, filling a barrel is quite simple – attach the stainless steel filling pipe to a hose, stick pipe into empty barrel, connect other end of hose to a pump, connect pump to tank, and pump until the barrel is full.

A few factors complicate this process – the small bung hole allows little light into the barrel and ruins depth perception; the rate of which the wine level in a barrel changes increases dramatically as the barrel nears full; and the pumps do not stop immediately, but take a second or two to slow down.

It is considered poor form to overfill a barrel – depending on how far off the mark you are, this can result in a trickle of fluid running down the side of the barrel (not so bad) to a geyser of wine erupting into the face of the unfortunate cellar hand (this is why we don’t wear whites, even before Labor Day).

To avoid a fountain, you must anticipate when the barrel will reach full, and turn off the pump just before – somewhat like trying to hit exactly $20 at the gas pump, but rather than looking at a price meter, you are staring down a tiny hole, with a dim flashlight clamped in your teeth, trying to fathom the distance away of a dark liquid while lacking depth perception. Also, if you happen to be working with Port, there is the extra challenge of overcoming the ethanol fumes that stream out the bung hole at the same rate as the wine enters.

There are some devices that aid in this process. Larger wineries use automated pumps that have liquid level sensors on the filling heads, telling the pump precisely when to slow down, and when to stop. Truly push-button operation, and vital if you have thousands of barrels to work with, but also truly expensive.

At Fox Run, the technology consists of a sterile rubber band around the filling pipe, and the “Hickman Apparatus”. The rubber band marks the point at which the pump should be shut off for a perfect fill – its placement is usually determined experimentally with the first few barrels of the day. The Hickman Apparatus is a repurposed booklight, picked up at an American Vacuum Society conference several years ago, which perches on the edge of the barrel, and extends over the bung hole to allow hands-free illumination of the inside of the barrel. It also, fortunately, is moderately tolerant of wine soakings.

It almost seems custom made for barrel work.

With practice, it takes only a few minutes to fill each barrel, with a minimum of wine spilled. For the novice, though, an overabundance of caution can lead to a very slow filling rate, and thus many minutes per barrel – a challenge when one to two dozen barrels need to be filled before the day is over. A reckless abandon, while decreasing the filling time, will increase the time spent cleaning the cellar floor as well as you face and clothes.

Fortunately, barrels only need to be filled once or twice a year. And with time, many winemakers develop a deep nostalgia for barrel work, a process which gives one a very intimate and hands-on experience with the wine. Me, I’m hankering for one of those automated filler systems.

When Viticulture and Ornithology Collide

2011-05-13T20:13:00.005-04:00

By John Kaiser, Vineyard Manager

First and foremost, I would like to clear up my current Avifauna issue. Is it Kildare, or Killdeer? And why am I concerned with this situation? The answer is simple: it doesn’t matter with whom I discuss this matter; no one is certain what this bird's true name is.

To put an end to it all, Kildare is a county in Leinster Province, Eastern Ireland. Killdeer, named for its cry, is a North American bird of the plover family, with a high, piercing cry and a habit of faking a broken wing to distract predators from its nest. The killdeers' arrival at Fox Run Vineyards typically means that I have two to three weeks to tie and prune all of the vines prior to bud-break.

This guy's one of my favorites. I call him Bruce.

It is now four weeks since the Killdeers' arrival, and indeed the buds have broken. Rainfall is three inches higher than normal, and while I have finished pruning, tying will not be completed until Friday the thirteenth at the earliest. Hopefully the remainder of the trellis work will be finished before the killdeer decide to depart. Trellis work, for those of you that do not know the term, is the process of repairing broken posts and wire that were damaged during the last growing season.

It has been my observation that the killdeer leave shortly before bloom begins, and at times I wish I could follow their flight patterns. In my experience, there never seems to be enough time to accomplish the tasks the vineyard demands of the vineyard crew.

To wrap this up, and make sense of it all: as quickly and predictably as the killdeer leave, they return; and harvest, in turn, is imminent.

Tawny Time, Part II: It Was NOT Like Giving Birth

2011-05-09T11:08:00.014-04:00

By Peter Bell, Winemaker

As I write this, I’m looking back on the last month or so of work, during which we assembled and bottled our latest Tawny fortified wine. Every time we complete a difficult blending task, there descends on the lab a palpable sense of accomplishment: that almost goes without saying. How to describe that feeling is the hard part.

I could invoke Samuel Morse’s famous first telegraph message, “What Hath God Wrought?”, but that would be far too pompous and presumptuous. Anyway, the deity that Mr. Morse invoked is probably way too busy these days guiding the hands of, say, iPhone engineers to want to fuss over a small quantity of wine. It’s just wine, after all - a product that seems to have virtually made itself during Biblical times - not some brand new communication device that is poised to change the world.

I could also come up with some trite comment about it being like giving birth. Never having been pregnant, much less brought a baby to term, I can only guess what the experience is like, though I can well imagine the final hours being a unique mix of excruciating pain and (eventually) a flush of joy and ecstasy. Plus lots of amniotic fluid – that I can vouch for, having been present at the birth of both my boys. But in any case, equating the birthing of a special blend with having a baby is more than a bit of a stretch, and I’m not thinking of the delicate tissues of the birth canal here.

Okay, so in the absence of anything good to use as a metaphor for all the gestation we went through, what bons mots can I invoke to describe this process?

This is where the brutally honest reader will say out loud, “How about you just talk about making the blend?” Touché. So let me just tell the story straight.

Early in April, we took samples of each of the 17 barrels of our various tawny components and let them cool to room temperature. A quick smell and taste of most the younger ones confirmed that they were still far too undeveloped to merit further consideration. (Their time will come, probably mid-decade.)

Tricia took detailed notes on the five that remained, and then made up a series of blends using some or all of them in varying proportions, which we designated A through F. Here are some of the comments that were made as we tasted through them:

Blend A:

Tricia: “What I’m smelling here most strongly is that toasty wood aroma which I bet will go away. When I swirl this I’m getting dates. Figs and dates. Vanilla, nutmeg, cocoa.”

Peter: “My problem with this one is that it’s more like fresher wine with whisky lactones on top. But I like the pruney flavors.”

Neither of us felt that this approached what we were looking for in a Fox Run Tawny.

Blend B:

Tricia: “Hmm…figs and milk chocolate, coconut and orange rind, and I love the toasted almonds, but it needs a little sweetening. I like the evolution.”

This was way better. It seemed as if we might be getting somewhere.

Tawny Blends A through F

Blend C:

Tricia: “This one smells like butterscotch, which you know I like. A lot of chocolate and coffee too. It reminds me of candied orange peel, then toasted almonds. I like that. Mmmm…there’s the finish I like. But it’s almost too powerful.”

Peter: “I see that density as a symptom of too many things trying to compete with each other. Let’s see if a dilution with white wine would untangle it.”

Tricia: “Yeah, if we can just lighten the intensity here and pull in some suppleness there, we’ve got something really attractive.”

So that is what we did: took some of the same wine and added a few percent of a barrel-fermented Chardonnay. That blend was called C+.

No go. Even a small amount of the younger white wine caused the flavors and texture to crash.

Blend D:

Tricia: “I’m just trying to settle my brain down and really think about what I’m smelling. Something like salted nuts.”

Peter: “This sounds crazy, but I wrote ‘blood or carcass.’”

Tricia: “You can’t say that in the blog!”

This one had us stumped. It was a fascinating wine, but we just didn’t know what to make of it. We decided to revisit it a few hours later. Onward…

Blend E

Tricia: “Oh yeah. That’s voluptuous chocolate, making its way to orange. What length. Cocoa, not milk or dark chocolate. This tastes like dessert, which makes me happy. How long can this one go on?”

Peter: “Where’s that glass again?”

Tricia: “Just follow your nose across the room.”

Peter: “I love the chocolate. Hazelnuts and chocolate and certainly some rancio too.”

Blend E was a keeper.

Blend F:

Tricia: “Hoo hoo! Orange and toffee and salt. I wonder where that salt came from? You can’t smell salt. Salt air maybe. Lightning storm freshness…ozone?”

Peter: “This has gotta be our blend. All that orange peel that shows up at the end?”

Tricia: “Plushness. Brazil nuts, macadamias. I like it. Long. Raisins and apricots. Soft.”

Peter: “Pretty good in the mouth, but is it too dense?”

Tricia: “Now I’m getting almond and orange and toffee. But yeah, it’s pretty assertive.”

Peter: “Let’s try it with a few percent of Special Dry White.”

Can wine be too intensely flavored? Yes, certainly. And what exactly is Special Dry White, you ask? It’s a term I picked up in Australia, and it’s nothing but a euphemism for good old water. In very warm climates, it’s often necessary to add water to a must, juice or wine to keep the final alcohol content at a reasonable (non-mouth-searing) level. At some point, someone decided to call it something more sexy than ‘water.’ (We can also assume it served to throw government inspectors off the trail.)

“I'll try anything once…twice if I like it…three times to make sure.” Mae West said that. Her words might as well be posted on the wall in the lab, to remind us that we should all be little Mae Wests when it comes to trial blends. There’s nothing to lose, since a blend on this scale comprises only a few tastes’ worth of wine.

In went a few percent of S.D.W., and we called that blend F+. Here’s what we found:

Tricia: “The butterscotch and dates are showing up, and some really nice crème brulee.”

Peter: “Yeah, exactly. Vanilla custard, nutmeg.”

Tricia: “That’s yummy. I love that. I love that.”

But after we spent a half hour tasting back and forth between F and F+, while also referencing a bottle of last year’s Tawny that we’d fetched from the library, our comments were not as effusive. F+ waned a bit in our estimation, and so we abandoned that little side experiment. The decision was to not shy away from full-frontal flavors.

A week passed, during which time we were busy with other projects. Then we made up new samples of our favorite blends: D, E, and F.

Peter: “Okay, let’s find the All-Star here.”

We knew that one of these blends was going to be our Tawny. The problem was that each blend, if fully assembled, would represent a vastly different quantity. We work within the confines of what our Tawny program can give us at any given time, not what the marketing department asks for. The twain shall meet sooner or later, once we have a larger stock of older wines, but for now, there’s no pushing quantity at the expense of adherence to our model.

Blend D comprised 95 cases’ worth of wine. Blend E, 38 cases. Blend F, 63 cases.

This time we tasted, repeatedly, the three wines over a period of four hours. As is my wont, I did a lot of pacing back and forth. (I also used this occasion to reminisce about the many times I’ve been asked, “Are you the taste tester?” – a question that is invariably followed by, “That must be the greatest job in the world!” This is why it’s crucial to have a place to conduct our sensory evaluation that's removed from the public eye.)

Evaluating these last Tawny blends was an exercise in reining in the temptation to hyperbole, as in, “These are ALL fantastic!” Eventually one blend must be declared the winner so that we can go ahead and make it up in real life, and get it into the bottle.

Having three glasses on the lab bench, and tasting them over and over, can become futile pretty quickly. One time-honored trick we employ, when we can’t make up our minds, is to look at the glass we’ve taken the most tastes from, and call it our favorite. But this time the glasses all had about the same quantity of wine left in them.

So out came the blindfold. I have a drawer full of these things left over from plane trips, and we use them to aid in making final blending decisions. The person wearing one (Tricia in this picture) not only can’t see anything, but has what I call ‘acquired helplessness’ – each glass has to be put in her outstretched hand, and she can’t use any external cues as a guide to what it smells and tastes like. Needless to say, the serving order is mixed up.

Acquired Helplessness Really Makes You Focus

This is a great way to focus only on the things that matter, and the S and M specialist who did the blindfolding has an obligation to take careful notes of what is said. And this is what was said, sequentially, by both of us: “I like that one.” That one, in both cases, turned out to be the illustrious Blend E.

A few Sundays later, while waiting for some journalists to show up, I put the blend together. The 60 gallons it comprised didn’t even come up to the bottom door of the tank, but this tiny amount of wine should be enough to keep Marketing off our backs for a few months at least.

Why I Love My Job

2011-05-05T09:50:00.005-04:00

by Kyle Anne Pallischeck, Tasting Room Manager

Community:

1. A group of people living together in one place, esp. one practicing common ownership.

If you travel around to any of the numerous wineries in the Finger Lakes, you'll surely hear someone behind the tasting bar recommending a wine from a winery... other than the one they're working at. Some people find this surprising, as the expectation seems to be that we are all competitors. In reality I think it's a true representation of the community that has developed in the wine industry of the Finger Lakes Region.

2. A group of people having a religion, race, profession, or other particular characteristic in common.

In my scant two months at Fox Run Vineyards I've met countless people involved in the industry - from winery owners to other tasting room managers and staff, local hospitality business owners to vineyard workers and winemakers. Everyone I meet endeavors to attain the same goal: the success of the tourism and wine industry in this beautiful region we've chosen to call home. It may be a cliche, but the old adage "It takes a village to raise a child" seems to fit this area quite well. The community has reared its "child", the Finger Lakes Wine Country, into a mature and delightful "grown-up".

3. A feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

It's a team effort almost all the way around. There have been countless winemakers learning through the tutelage of others in the region who have then gone on to start their own production facilities and labels. Staff can be found floating between different wineries, helping out in almost any way possible. For some people it's a pastime, for others it's a lifestyle. But pull it all together and it creates one large community.

4. A group of interdependent organisms of different species growing or living together in a specified habitat.

Pay close attention, because in the coming years the development and success of this region will not rest solely on the product and output of one or two places alone - the phenomenon of the Finger Lakes Wine Region will be a product of the community and all those involved in it.

(Definitions were provided by Dictionary on MacBook.)

You don't have to be deeply immersed in the wine industry to get a sense of what I'm talking about here. Evan Dawson's book Summer in a Glass provides interwoven stories of members of the community, and the Tierce Riesling and red blend stories are tangible examples, being a collaborative effort of the talented winemakers from Red Newt, Anthony Road and Fox Run.

But for me, attending the Riesling Rumpus last night, kindly hosted by Red Newt Cellars and Bistro, really set the my feet in concrete with this, well, family. Being among old friends from the trade excited to see each other and share stories with newbies inspired me to no end, and has helped clarify that it's not only the wine that will make this region world renowned, it's also the very organic 4th definition of community. Read that definition again, please, and see if you agree.

Music of the Day:

Audra Mae - Sons of Anarchy: "Forever Young"

Support Artists: Buy the Music You Like.

How Everyone Should Learn About Wine

2011-05-02T16:19:00.001-04:00

by Alyson Galipeau

I thought I didn't like wine until my first visit to Seneca Lake, two years ago. A wine-loving friend, originally from Rochester, directed me there, saying that if I wanted to learn about wine, Seneca Lake was the place to visit.

The following year, she accompanied me on my second visit to the region. Through her I discovered Fox Run Vineyards, a favorite winery of hers whose Meritage she especially praised.

Well, I tried the Meritage and found it a bit on the harsh side for my palate. Still, I felt it deserved another shot. So when Spring finally showed its face this year, I figured a solo road trip was in order, and drove seven hours west from New Hampshire back to Seneca Lake.

On a gray, blustery morning, hardly Spring-like as it turned out, I marched up the hill to the wine production facility at Fox Run Vineyards. I had shown up unannounced, but was nevertheless hoping to get a chance to meet the winemaking staff. After two years as a wine newbie, I was ready to really learn something solid about my passion. Wine was no longer going to be one big secret, full of conflicting information dispensed by older persons in khaki shorts and sandals.

A set of narrow metal stairs led up to a hidden room: the wine lab. Inside, I met winemaker Peter Bell, his assistant Tricia Renshaw, and a friendly black dog named Max. The room was filled with beakers of all shapes and sizes, and the counters boasted mysterious, faded purple stains. Jars of pale liquids, a container of sugar, and a digital scale completed the look. Tricia handed me a wine glass of blend she’d just put together. It was something new, they said, something that hadn’t been tried before.

Max is renowned for his ferocious attacks on visitors.

I sipped from the glass, trying to remember all the odd bits of information on how to taste wine, and what to get out of it. But everything I knew was overshadowed by the actual taste of this secret blend!

“You guys!” was all I could say. It was delicious.

Recognizing an educational opportunity, Peter took me downstairs into a large room filled with wooden barrels and stainless steel tanks. Each was marked with a code, and its contents were accessible by using either a triangular key or a metal tube known as a thief.

Once the sample valve key had allowed us to bring forth our first sample, a Chardonnay, Peter politely asked me to wipe off my lip gloss. At last, I was about to learn my first wine secret! I thought about the reasons for this odd request, as I wiped the coppery glitter from my mouth. Perhaps the propylene carbonate in the gloss interfered with tasting the true flavors of the wine? Well, no wonder I knew so little about wine: my lip gloss had been the problem all along!

“That stuff’s really hard to clean off the glass,” Peter said.

Oh.

This is me, losing my sample valve virginity.

The next wine secret revealed was how to hold the glass. It was then I realized that all those models shown partying in wine brochures were actually doing it all wrong. Wine glasses should be held by the stem, not by the bowl. And if you’re really good, or want to emulate a winemaker, you can hold it by the base—the flat part that sits on the table.

Secret number three: how to swirl your wine. I had seen people doing this in some wineries, but never knew why. Now I did. Each wine has a distinct aroma profile, and swirling the wine in a glass unfurls it. But you have to really swirl the wine, almost until it appears to be in a centrifuge. That’s how you coax the aromas into what’s called the headspace. My first couple of tries at swirling only resulted in the Chardonnay slopping over the edges of the glass. I quickly learned that it’s much easier if you swirl the glass on a flat surface.

The next step, requiring some immediacy, is to inhale. Put your nose right into the glass and breathe deeply. That’s how you smell a wine’s essence, whether it be fruit, spice, or any of the hundreds of other descriptors that professional wine tasters evoke.

What’s great about wine is that sometimes, what you pick up from smelling a glass is not what you end up tasting. And even among the same wine types, each one has a different overtone. Each Chardonnay, each Riesling boasted a different personality, a different sparkle. Some take on the form of pears, some of apples, cherries, or even mangos. It’s all part of the magical soil and climate combination of the Finger Lakes.

From the Chardonnays and a series of beautiful Rieslings, we moved onto various red wines. I learned the secret of tannins and their role in mouthfeel and body. The earthiness of all those Cabernet Sauvignons I’d had that lingered in my mouth? The lingering dryness? That was from the tannins.

For our last exercise, we revisited the Chardonnays. After tasting the reds, those very wines now tasted completely different from how they did previously. They seemed less fruity and more bland. This was an important part of the last secret Peter imparted upon me: you can learn a lot about wines by how they contrast with other wines.

That Merlot that seems so smooth on first taste might come to taste harsh next to a lighter Pinot Noir. The Riesling that came off as dry at first might later taste sweet after sampling a Pinot Grigio or a Sauvignon Blanc.

There is only one way to learn and appreciate all a wine is capable of, and that is to taste them. Then, all the wines’ secrets will be revealed.

It's Tawny Time Again

2011-04-29T07:58:00.009-04:00

by Peter Bell, Winemaker

It’s been quite some time since our last bottle of Fine Old Tawny was sold. This is one wine that can’t be made fast enough to meet the demand, and the 40 or so cases per year that we put out tend to get snapped up quickly. So this is what it must feel like to have your wines on allocation!

There are currently 17 barrels of Port wine in what we call the Tawny Program. They range in age from less than one to 14 years old. All but one reside in a custom-built room that has its own hot and dry mini-climate. Three times a year or so, we fetch samples from each barrel, let them cool to room temperature, and then subject them to a few hours of intense sensory scrutiny. A given barrel will change appreciably in the space of four months, as the fresh berries and jam flavors of a younger Port give way to more complex ones. It's important to track their development, because each barrel will eventually become part of a blend.

What do we want out of our Tawny? Well, I have to say that I'm the only one here who has spent any time consuming the wine that is my model, since it is seldom seen outside of Australia. Australian Tawny Ports -- they actually call them aged fortified dessert wines -- are denser than the Portuguese versions, and a little sweeter; altogether more assertive.

Here's how a Tawny style differs from the more common Ruby style:

A deep reddish-brown color. Alcoholic drinks (I exclude beer here) that have a brown or brownish color are that way for one of three reasons: 1) They are oak-aged spirits such as brandy or whisky, or are meant to give that impression by the addition of caramel coloring (think inexpensive rum); 2) They are table wines that have spent too much time in the bottle and have become oxidized; or 3) they are fortified wines that have been subjected to a deliberate, slow and controlled oxidation process. Tawny Port is a number three. Our Tawny Room -- you can come and visit it sometime if you cozy up to the right individuals here -- is a well-insulated box, just big enough to hold 16 barrels, that is kept at a steady 90 F (32 C) in order to accelerate the process we call ‘tawnification’ [neologism alert].

Our Little Slice of Australia: the Tawny Room

Aromas and flavors of dried fruits, especially dates, raisins and figs. All of our Port-style wines start off smelling of fresh and lightly cooked fruits, namely berries and jam. The extended, warm period of aging we subject our Tawny barrels to causes those flavors to be transformed into dried-fruit analogs.

Subordinate aromas of chocolate, coffee, butterscotch, toffee, wood-aged spirits, and rancio. No, we don’t add flavorings to the wine! I wouldn’t bother to even point that out but for the fact that it’s a common question. The long aging that these wines undergo allows them to develop aromas that remind us of brown foods and drinks. Not surprisingly, the responsible aroma compounds are, in many cases, the same ones that are in the foodstuffs we reference. And, in case you’re wondering:

RANCIO, imprecise tasting term used in many languages for a distinctive style of wine…achieved by deliberately maderizing the wine by exposing it to oxygen and/or heat. The wine may be stored in barrels in hot storehouses (as for some of Australia’s Liqueur Muscats or Liqueur Tokays)…the word rancio has the same root as ‘rancid’ and the wines which result have an additional and powerful smell reminiscent of nuts and melted, or even rancid, butter.

(excerpted from Jancis Robinson’s Oxford Companion to Wine)

As I have written in an earlier post, Australian fortifieds and I go way back. I love what comes out of Portugal, but my model here has always been what’s made in Australia. It’s a bit cheeky to try and pull off something in that style here in the cool Finger Lakes, and I wasn’t really sure I was managing it until I had a visit from Aussie viticulturist Peter Dry. After we'd tasted through a bunch of table wines, I proffered a barrel sample of my tawny without any preamble other than “Here”. Peter smelled it, gave me a sly grin, and said, “You bastard! This is an Australian style Tawny!” Bingo. (This happened in the days before “WTF?” became the go-to expression of astonishment.)

4. Mouthfilling, luscious flavors. In many, many of our winemaking endeavors, we actually reward wines that are delicate and full of suggestions of flavors rather being than full-on assaults to our senses. For example, oak in wine is fine, but in-your-face oak is offensive to most people. But with our Tawny, we’re not really afraid of full-frontal flavors. ‘Lusciousness’ is not scientifically definable, but it’s something we understand intuitively; and the pursuit of lusciousness defines our Tawny winemaking. This process is helped immeasurably by the evaporation that goes on as the wine ages: we lose about 20 gallons of (mostly) water from a 60 gallon barrel as it basks in the heat of the tawny room.

5. Plenty of sweetness, but a ‘dry’ finish. Our fortifieds clock in at about 12% sugar, making them by far the sweetest wines in the portfolio. Aside from a possible tiny touch-up of sugar right before bottling, all that sweetness derives from the grapes themselves, and it is captured way back in the earliest moments of the wine’s inception, when we arrest the fermentation with lashings of fortifying spirit. How do we keep the finish from being cloying, which is a definite no-no? The aging process takes care of that: concentration, modification and extraction of flavor compounds, and plenty of tannins, have the effect of offsetting the perception of sweetness after the wine is swallowed.

6. Heat from the alcohol that makes it clear to the taster that this is a fortified wine. Ethanol, the particular alcohol that’s in fermented beverages, in interesting in terms of its sensory effects. In broad terms, it has a three-fold contribution: it gives a slight but discernable sweetness to wine; it adds body, known as viscosity; and, especially at higher concentration, it has an irritating effect on the oral mucosa. This irritation effect, which we refer to here as ‘heat’, is key to the overall pleasant flavor of fortified wines. Yet a tolerance for it, followed by an actual fondness for it, is an acquired taste. Remember your first taste of something alcoholic? I'll wager you were deeply put off by the near-pain from the alcohol itself.

So, is all that too much to ask of our Tawny? Not really, but making this wine is one of the taller orders we bestow upon ourselves. I am extraordinarily fortunate to have a boss who doesn’t mind tying up a big chunk of capital in a product that demands a six- or eight-year span between the making and the marketing. And also to have here the illustrious Tricia Renshaw, who appears to have been born with a tawny-infused silver spoon in her mouth. It’s no wonder that I ask her to make all our key blending decisions. More on how she recently did that in my next post, but for the full story on her talents please get hold of a copy of this book.

Update from the Southern Hemisphere: College Is In Session?

2011-04-25T05:06:00.002-04:00

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team Member from afar

Vintages are a rite of passage in the wine industry; each one survived is another notch on the belt of the winemaker. Most of the time these notches are accumulated one at a time as each fall approaches, but for those entering the industry it is now common to "chase" the vintage from hemisphere to hemisphere to get in two per calendar year. Chasing vintages is certainly far easier than the hobby of those who can be found chasing tornados any evening on cable TV, but it often feels just as wild and tiring by the end of it.

Writing from the middle of our vintage in Tasmania, I'm surprised that what strikes me most is not the seasonal difference between where I currently reside and where my body feels like it should be (living through fall-winter fall-winter is counterintuitive to say the least). Rather, the most interesting thing is the fact that chasing the vintage bears a close resemblance to only one other thing in life: starting at college. Sound far-fetched? I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking as much, but the parallels are hard to dismiss once you've gone through both.

I remember leaving for college and all the apprehension and activities surrounding it. The anxiety of leaving home, a fair bit of travel, unfamiliar terrain and shops, meeting an entirely new group of people, having to settle in for a long haul of work (or not, I suppose, depending on the college experience you choose), not knowing what was next, etc. Was I excited for whatever would come next? Absolutely. But the learning and life skills were just as unknown as anything else.

Leaving for a vintage is not all that different. You have to leave home, whether that be a wine region or where you live in the interim. By definition of having to switch from one hemisphere to another, the travel component is certainly there in an extreme iteration. When you arrive you invariably have to fill out mountains of paperwork for everyone from the winery to visa services to establishing a bank account - just walk through any college town when the freshmen are moving in and the similar urgency to set up banking is apparent. Depending on far you traveled from home, there may be local-knowledge barriers that you have no way of knowing in advance. Last year in New Zealand I spent a week going to every large store I could think of to purchase contact lens solution without luck, until someone directed me to the only places you could purchase it in New Zealand - pharmacies.

Beyond all the nuts-and-bolts similarities (I would list accents/language as well, but I had a harder time understanding the Boston accent than I ever have hearing the Australian 'twang'), the way that vintage most closely mirrors beginning college has everything to do with the people. You are instantly thrown into a group of people from all over who you don't know, yet are close to you in age and motivation - and you are expected to move in together. I've heard many people debate whether living together or traveling together is more difficult for a relationship; imagine having to do both with people you've never met while simultaneously working with them.

When you start working, the beginning-of-college feel is once again driven home. The first two weeks tend to include a very basic training program and an extremely light workload before the vintage starts, so everyone hangs out in flip-flops and tosses frisbees or takes trips to the beach. You might think that the only thing missing are frat houses and toga parties, but I've seen and heard of vintage parties far crazier and more akin to frats than you might ever guess (wineries can be crazy places, especially when a bunch of 20-30 year olds show up). There is even a distinct phenomenon known as "vintage love," the haphazard and chance combinations of people who just happened to end up at the same place at the same time. We may not technically be moving into dorms and signing up for meal plans, but if we had to do that as well it wouldn't feel out of place.

Despite all this (or perhaps because of it) there is an unspoken knowledge that all this fun and relaxation are very definitely the calm before the storm of vintage wipes outs all vestiges of relaxation, short workdays, weekends, and anything resembling a sleep schedule. Where I am this year, we have a vintage crew of seven people from around the globe, and everyone has prior vintage experience. This is a blessing. Not only does it mean we all know how to get around a winery very well, it also means we know what to expect in terms of the strain of vintage. Does that mean we have been immune to the above? Hardly. But at least it means we haven't had to worry about anyone cracking under the first time work and personal stress of a vintage.

Those who start meeting folks in the wine industry, especially the viticulture or winemaking sides, often comment on how unique all the people are that they meet. It seems like everyone has a fascinating backstory of how they got to the wine industry or what they did beforehand. I used to think this was because the path to the wine industry was still so hidden in post-Prohibition America that it required an interesting path just to find it. When I think about what those of us entering the industry willingly put ourselves through and eagerly anticipate twice a year, however, I now think that it might simply be that those of us who make it and enjoy it must be a bit cracked to start with.

There's nothing wrong with that, so far as I'm concerned. Especially when the diploma is a bottle of wine.

Music of the Day:

The Middle East - I Want That You Are Always Happy; "Land of the Bloody Unknown" (Hooray Australian music, not enough of which makes it our way!):

Support Artists: buy the music you like!

How I Nourish My Soul

2011-04-22T12:28:00.001-04:00

By Sharon Winslow, Fox Run Outside Events and Donations Coordinator

When I was in my mid thirties, my husband gave me a set of golf clubs for Christmas. I was very surprised to say the least. He said he thought that if I would give it a try, golf might become something that we could do as we grow older together. And he was right: it worked.

That was thirty years ago, and I'm still at it. We baby boomers just keep on going! My first female golf partner was my good friend Deb Manahan. It just so happens that aside from being a great friend, she was the golf coach at the high school, club champion at our local country club, and a great golfer. So I lucked out having her as a partner and mentor. She helped me with my game and the all important etiquette of the game. I have played in local leagues and tournaments and before retiring, with customers, both men and women. I currently play in a mixed league at Lakeside Country Club in Penn Yan, NY, sometimes with guys and sometimes with gals. Lakeside is a great 18 hole course overlooking our beautiful Keuka Lake. I also enjoy Seneca Lake Golf Club, another 18 hole course overlooking another of our treasures, Seneca Lake.

We are fortunate to live in the heart of the Finger Lakes, and to have several courses with spectacular views overlooking these glorious lakes. I have played a couple of times at Turning Stone Casino's course, Shenandoah, and they were rounds to behold at a most amazing course in a spectacular natural setting. Another noteable course is Reservoir Creek,located in Naples, NY. It was built into the natural terrain of our Naples Valley and is a great combination of wooded and links style holes.

On our local courses we are surrounded by vineyards, woods and water. Playing golf for me is good for the heart and good for the soul, and it has enhanced my life beyond measure. All of our children play golf, and a couple of grandchildren also play, which is awesome. Being out there in the midst of natural surroundings, taking a minute to breathe it all in and savor the moments, makes me realize that ah yes, life is good.

The only way it gets better is by following a round of golf with a glass of Fox Run wine: now that is heaven.

What Can Modernist Cuisine Teach us About Wine?

2011-04-18T07:50:00.001-04:00

By Peter Bell, Winemaker

If you’re serious about cutting-edge food and drink and happen to have $625 to spare, you might consider picking up a copy of “Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking”, just out in hardcover. I opted to save my money and read John Lanchester’s review in The New Yorker instead, since most of the food that the authors advance is best sampled in restaurants equipped with a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of specialized cooking gizmos. Mind you, your meal at one of those places is likely to cost about the same as the book does, per person.

One of the tenets of this kind of food preparation is the assumption that many classic techniques are just plain wrong. Cooking a juicy steak? Don’t place it on a hot grill and leave it there undisturbed, as we’ve all been taught; for optimal flavor you should flip it every fifteen seconds. The reviewer goes on,

[The authors] also claim to have a way of improving wine by ‘hyperdecanting’ it via sixty seconds in a blender—the idea being that it will benefit from the oxygenation and outgassing effects. My solemn, taking-one-for-the-team experiments with red wine have partly confirmed this for Schwarzeneggarian young reds.

I haven’t mustered up the enthusiasm yet to try this myself, though my blender looks eager enough to have a go at it, as it does with all food and drink tasks that involve noise and violence. In any case, my hunch is that Finger Lakes reds, being svelte and ectomorphic rather than Arnold-esque, don’t need to be pulverized to be approachable. (Any readers who do want to give hyperdecanting a ‘spin’ are welcome to report their experiences in the comments section.)

One of the central techniques of modernist cuisine involves cooking meats slowly and at low temperatures, often in a liquid that is the same temperature (say, 149 F) as the final ‘done’ temperature of the food itself. The downside, apparently, is that the food sometimes tastes too much like a perfect version of itself (for example, sous vide chicken is too chickeny) and not enough of the flavors we’re used to (roasty, caramel-like, and with a moisture gradient between the surface and the interior).

Lanchester continues:

The lesson was that no taste was inherently better than another: within certain physiological constraints, tastes are not innate but learned, and the acquisition of tastes is a kind of dance between the person at the stove and the person at the table.

Tricia and I talk about these kinds of things in relation to wine all the time, as part of our ongoing attempts to try and understand how to define quality. We could easily rephrase that statement as follows:

No taste is inherently better than another: within certain physiological constraints, tastes are not innate but learned, and the acquisition of tastes is a kind of dance between the winemaker and the person drinking the wine.

We’re not talking about the basic flavors that can be detected by the human tongue (sweet, salty, sour, etc.) but the complex flavors – they’re really smells – that make one wine distinguishable from another, and perhaps make one ‘better’ than another.

The particular cluster of aromas that accompanies the presence of a yeast called Brettanomyces provides a perfect example. I’ll have more to say about our friend Brett in a later post, since it is such a huge topic. But let’s just say that some tasters, be they winemakers, wine writers, or wine consumers, have an appreciation for the smell and taste of Brett metabolites, while others find them disgusting. People in the latter category are usually unwilling to concede that Brett-flavored wine is acceptable wine, but the fact is, the wines of many highly esteemed French wine regions simply wouldn’t taste the way they do without that microorganism having run rampant in the wine.

One illustrious Rhone producer, whose seriously expensive and celebrated reds smelled of Brett and little else, finally managed to eradicate it from his wines, only to find that his customers started complaining bitterly that something had changed – for the worse. In that instance, the whole tango vibe went awry: an attempt at the deacquisition of a taste ended up as an unsuccessful dance between the winemaker and the people drinking the wine. One or the other party had two left feet, perhaps. I’m not sure how this problem was resolved, but it does point up the difficulties in trying to advance wine from a primitive to a modern style.

Our good friend Dave Whiting of Red Newt Wine Cellars and Bistro recalls that 16 or so years ago, as his wife Deb entered the late stages of her pregnancy, she announced that she wanted to call the baby ‘Brett’ should it be a boy. Dave took a deep breath, and tactfully pointed out that while Brett was a fine and upstanding name, it happened to have some very negative connotations for winemakers. (I remember thinking at the time, Hmm…wouldn’t that be like a gynecologist naming her daughter Candida?) They settled on ‘Brenton.’

What’s in the Bottle – Shards of Glass?

2011-04-15T07:38:00.000-04:00

By Steven Hickman Ph.D., Staff Scientist, Harvard University and Fox Run Winery Intern emeritus

The story, as told by Peter Bell, goes as follows: a woman calls the Fox Run tasting room one afternoon, in a state of some distress. She had removed a bottle of Fox Run wine from her fridge, and as she was preparing to open and serve said bottle, noticed shards of glass suspended in the wine. She was rather upset at the winery, accusing it of at best gross incompetence on the bottling line, and at worst an attempt on her life. What had caused this strange circumstance?

The culprit was not a malicious staffer nor a malfunctioning bottler, but rather the combination of a common wine component, a clear bottle, and an abnormally cold fridge. The small, clear crystals floating in the wine were not glass, but rather precipitated potassium bitartarate.

Tartaric acid is one of the three principal acids found in wine – the others being malic and (sometimes) lactic. The first three are found in the wine grapes, while lactic acid is produced during the transformation known as malolactic fermentation.

The author, before he was lured away by Harvard University

In both the grape juice and the post-fermentation wine, the amount of tartaric acid is often at or near the saturation point – that is, the concentration of dissolved tartaric is about as high as it can go. This is a concern to winemakers, as the solubility of a solid, in a liquid, decreases as the temperature decreases. Interestingly, this is the opposite of a gas – the solubility of a gas in a liquid increases as the temperature decreases. This is why sparkling wine bottles can be opened and re-corked during disgorging, and only a small amount of carbon dioxide is lost.

But with a solid, a decrease in temperature will cause a decrease in solubility, and if the amount of solid dissolved is already at the saturation point, then that cooling effect will cause some of the solid to precipitate. In the case of the saturated tartaric acid, this causes two changes to the wine – one visible, and one sensory. The visible change is the formation of crystals of the potassium salt of tartaric acid, often called tartrates. Cream of tartar, a component of baking powder, is made up of this very salt.

The second change is a decrease in the acidity of the wine, which in turn can affect the taste of the wine. This may be a problem, because if the winemaker has carefully balanced the acidity of the wine before it is chilled, it will likely be out of balance after the wine is cooled and the acidity changes.

To prevent this, most winemakers perform a process called cold stabilization. In this process, the wine is chilled to just above freezing – usually by circulating a refrigerant around the outside of the wine tanks (these cooling jackets are the dimpled jackets seen on most wine tanks, and when they are in action, a layer of ice can build up).

The band in the middle of this tank, just below the fox run logo,

is the cooling jacket.

A cooling jacket in action, coated with a layer of ice. The black foam rubber around the outside of the tank is a “blanket” to confine the cold air to the area around the tank.

In this process, the excess tartaric acid precipitates in the tanks at the winery, rather than in bottles in your fridge. Most of the precipitated tartrates adhere to the sides or settle to the bottom of the tank, and any remaining solids are removed in the filtration process.

Looking up the inside of an empty tank after the cold stabilization process on a white wine. The yellow specks on the side are precipitated tartrate crystals.

After the cold stabilization process, the wine is allowed to warm to cellar temperature. Through sensory and chemical analysis, any necessary adjustments to the acidity, to account for the loss of some of the tartaric acid, are made. This ensures that when the consumer chills the bottle at home, it will remain “stable” in taste and content.

Because detrimental changes can occur to the wine if it starts to freeze, cold stabilization is usually not done to below the freezing point of wine. So, in all likelihood, the bottle at the start of this story had been in a sub-freezing portion of the woman’s fridge, and had reached a temperature below which the wine was cold-stabilized in the winery. The problem was compounded by the clear glass bottle, which made it much easier to see the precipitated tartrates (this is one reason, albeit minor, that wines rarely come in clear glass bottles – the major reason being to protect the wine from degradation by light).

So the next time you encounter a few beautiful crystals floating around in your white wine, please don't panic. You can even amaze your friends by chewing on a few of them, to experience their mildly acidic crunch; or if you're really ambitious, you can use them to stabilize your next batch of meringue.

The Mad Scientist's New Intern

2011-04-13T07:08:00.000-04:00

By Bradley Ross

The fictional character of Igor has been portrayed in many examples of "Peonism" (see the Bordeax Baritone's guide to his Fox Run internship, currently an internal monologue in progress). He has been personified as both dramatic and comedic characters in many forms of modern media, most recently as a likeable hero in a big-budget animated feature-film. In every example of the role, he has always been the devoted lab assistant, the lowly peon of lore, robbing graves or throwing the power switch to some ungodly machine that produces who-knows-what. Fortunately for me, my chance at the role of Igor was much more pleasant, without the Master's whip or shocking electrical devices.

Picture a decent sort of fellow, 6'1" and a lean-and-mean 185 pounds (no humpback in sight; ruggedly handsome sometimes...). Fresh out of wine school but in possession of 4 years of wine biz experience both in retail and wholesale markets, I have a well trained palate that's able to tell the difference between Merlot (pronounced low) and Pinot noir (pronounced nwah), and I love wine. I have never made wine, nor worked the vineyards. This is your Igor.

Oops, wrong Igor.

So now enter the gifted Mad Scientist, a.k.a. Peter Bell, head winemaker at our beloved Fox Run. I kneel humbly at his feet and ask for winemaking enlightenment, so that I may sing my experience to the masses with my wine entertaining alter ego, the Bordeaux Baritone. Peter accepts his new Igor, albeit for only a few weeks, so that he may pass on the gift of wine making knowledge.

He immediately begins, and we dive headfirst into Modern Winemaking 101. He teaches plate and frame filtration, stainless steel tank cleaning, and wine transfer. Yes, Master! Valves, gaskets, citric acid and TSP. Of course, Master! The list goes on and on and this is just the first day. Correction: the first hour. Igor likes!

And thus begins my indoctrination.

For the next two weeks, Peter takes me through everything he can, including wine blending and taste trials with many different wine makers from the region. This is good stuff. The Igor of legend was never allowed try the fruits of his master's labor (pun fully intended). Just "Igor do this, Igor do that". Peter the Mad Scientist is clearly cut from a different cloth than that of his fictional namesakes, as he encourages questions and hands-on application of his enological instruction. Peter also lets our Igor work with the vines as well, learning pruning and brush clearing from John (the Vineyard Manager), Jim, and Pete. Thanks, fellas!

My two weeks end very quickly, unfortunately. I believe I have done my role great justice, as I have learned much in a short amount of time and earned the metaphorical 'Igor's hump' in wine knowledge rather than in physical deformation, thankfully. At last I must let go of my internship and depart to my endeavors of bringing the cultures of wine and song together in a unique wine show experience to all who are willing to learn. Igor is now armed with experiences and a new perspective of the modern wine culture.

Thank you, Peter, as well as the whole team at Fox Run!

Cheers!

What I Learn From My Customers

2011-04-11T11:42:00.000-04:00

By Dan Mitchell, Regional Sales Manager

I have been known during my time here at Fox Run to collect and archive some of the unusual comments and questions that come from visitors to our winery. These can come fast and furious when the tasting bar is five people deep. My responses are often of little help.

Customer: "Chardonnay? Where did you get that name?"

Me: "It's the name of our owner's dog."

Over time I hear a lot of the same questions repeatedly, and sometimes during the same tasting. Last week I was conducting a ‘dry’ tasting at a large out-of-state retailer. (Due to a goofy state law, I couldn't actually pour them any wine, so they had to take my word on how it tasted. It’s times like these that it's a good thing Fox Run keeps eye candy like me around.) During my tasting there, fully four individuals asked me, "Have you ever tried this wine?" (Worse yet, one was a staff member.)

This struck me as odd, if not outright disturbing. Who has been selling these people wine, and can they be trusted? Would you buy your tenderloin from a vegetarian? Your car from a buggy-driving Amish farmer?

Long ago I got in the habit of starting my tastings with the question, "What type of wine do you typically enjoy?" This helps me to narrow the focus, prevents broad tastings of all the wines available, and better helps me find a wine the customer is likely to buy.

This recent experience has prompted me to ask a different question. "What's important to you in the wines you choose?" Price? Region? Practices? Quality? I’m always curious to find out what governs the purchases of wine drinkers.

Sometimes I almost feel that the worst thing for a winery to have is a marketing department. While marketing is vital to the operation of a commercial winery, large producers often use it to detract from the art of winemaking, create overly romantic illusions of wine, and smear the otherwise good reputation of adorable animals such as kangaroos.

The bottom line is that the wine is food, it is there for your enjoyment, and you should seek out the wines that you enjoy the taste of most. I will put together a post on another day to help cut through some of the language on wine labels and dispel a few myths.

And if you want to get the best service and selection from your retailer, make sure that the people who work there actually drink wine. It's literally the least they can do.

Support the local guys. They do the local good.

Music of the Day:

David Wax Museum - Everything is Saved: "Born With a Broken Heart"

Support Artists: Buy the Music You Like.

The Very Basics

2011-04-06T14:27:00.000-04:00

By Kyle Pallischeck, Tasting Room Manager

What do you do with the wine in your glass?

Drink it, obviously.

But if you're at a winery you only get a little sample. Clearly, what you choose to do with that wee nip can greatly affect your impression of the wine. If you follow these steps consistently when tasting, over time you'll begin to get more from each experience than just a pleasant buzz.

So here are the very basics of wine tasting: the six steps of wine appreciation bliss: staring, swirling, sniffing, sipping, swishing/slurping and spiting/swallowing. Ignore my alliteration at your own risk. And if you think you'll feel silly doing this at a winery, quit your worrying... but maybe have a friend over and "practice" at home first (especially if you plan to participate in the "spit" part. Trust me on that. We'll get to those details later.)

Start with a clean and clear wine glass with a stem and base. Please, nothing painted or colored or plastic (gag). If you want to get fancy, check out Riedel. Their wine glasses are considered the best, but they can be expensive. Save your 'pretty' glasses for serving water at a dinner party (because from here on you will only serve wine in clear glass) and stow the plastic vessels on your boat so you can help bail out water if you're sinking. You wouldn't want to dump out the delicious wine in your glass glass to help rescue the ship.

Ok. You've got your glass. Now, pour your wine into it, but only about 2 fingers' worth (ie. not a lot, because otherwise you will spill it on yourself).

And we get to step one: stare! This can be the one bit many people feel silly about, and you probably won't get much out of it right at the start, but just spend a moment and gaze into the depths of your glass. If you tip it to the side (not so far that you dump it out, please) and hold a piece of white paper behind it, you'll get a clearer view of the wine. For starters, just observe. Is it red or white? (Hey, did I not say basics?) Is it transparent and easy to see through? Or more opaque? (If it's downright cloudy, might I suggest a different wine?) Is it the beautiful pale red of a Pinot noir? Or maybe the rich gold of a late harvest Riesling?

Step two: hold the glass (by the bowl or stem or base, whatever you're comfortable with) and give the wine a swirl. Some people do this and then dump it straight down their gullet. I have a friend who says that's doing nothing more than taking your wine for a ride, and he's right. The basic point of the swirl is to aerate (mix air and oxygen into the wine) and help release aromas. There are things you can do at this point that make you look fancier, like checking out the wine streaming down the sides of the glass (inside the glass = good... outside the glass = not so good... or you poured too much. I warned you...) those are called the 'legs'... but your legs can get a bit scraggly if your glass isn't pristinely clean and if we really talk about what the legs mean then we're going too far into alcohol and sugar and things'n'stuff in the wine that take us so far beyond the BASICS that we're shooting for here that we'll get off topic and really confuse the issue at hand which is...

(Deep breath. Literally.)

Sniff! Step three! Tip the glass up towards your face and tuck it in under your nose and inhale! (Yet another point where you'll be happy if you didn't over pour because I'm confident wine-in-nostrils is not an effective wine-experiencing technique.) Your nose will tell you a couple things about the wine- you may pick up sweetness or a higher alcohol content, and you might even start to catch aromas of fruit or flowers or oak or any of the many things that you've seen on either the back side of bottles or on tasting sheets at wineries that winemakers have written to romance their products. These blurbs are great as guides and suggestions, but don't worry if you don't smell the subtle spice or leathery undertones or seaweed (I kid) because at the beginning? - you're looking for what your nose tells you. That's all.

Which brings us to sipping, step four. Go ahead and take a small swig (i.e. if you've poured a decent amount and not spilled it all over yourself at this point we're talking maybe half a mouthful) and hold it in your mouth for a moment. These next few steps come in pretty quick succession, but pay attention to what you taste at each point.

On to step five, and here's where things may start getting sloppy. For your first time, just try and roll the wine around in your mouth. Maybe not as vigorously as you might with mouthwash, but get the wine around to all areas of your mouth. because you sense different tastes at different parts. If you're feeling saucy, try opening your mouth slightly and slurping in some air, which will aerate the wine a little more and hopefully open up more flavors. Keep thinking about everything you taste.

And our trickiest step is six. Spit or swallow? (Ladies, quit snickering! Wine is serious!) How many wines do you plan to taste today? Do you care to know as much about the last wine you'll taste as you do about the first? If the answer is no, then swallow. But spitting is a well respected practice, and if you plan to taste many wines (and drive) then it's a good idea. You may want to rehearse a little at home before doing it out in public though: think like spitting when you finish brushing your teeth, or if something tastes bad and you need to get it out of your mouth as quickly as possible, or pretend you're in the wild west and spit like a cowboy aiming for the spittoon in the corner by the tavern door or (although spitting at a distance is probably not practiced- and no one that works at a winery will appreciate it if you start aiming for the potted plant in the corner... because, let's face it, you're not going to hit it and it won't be fun to watch. Or clean up.). All tasting bars will have spit/dump bucket. (DO NOT dare or pay your friends to drink from it. That was just a movie stunt.) Just pick it up and spit your wine into it.

Expectoration in action, courtesy of Kyle

But wait - there's more! You need to repeat steps four through six. This is why you only took a small sip on your first go-round: you'll always want to go for a second one. Typically your second taste will be a truer taste, and give you another chance to check out the flavors. And during both tastes, are you finding fruit flavors? Or maybe butter? Chocolate? Start to see what flavors you find, and some other time we'll talk about what flavors are commonly associated with different grape varieties.

One little side note when sampling many wines: you'll typically go from drier wines to sweeter, white to red, finishing with dessert or fortified wines. If you do jump around, have a saltine cracker and a sip of water, but don't rinse your glass with water. All you'll get is watered-down wine. If you need to rinse, just pour a very small amount of the next wine you plan to taste into your glass, swirl it around, and discard it into the spit/dump bucket.

Congrats! You are now equipped with the very simple steps to wine tasting and should never feel uncomfortable about going to a winery and checking out the bounty they offer. If you really want to get serious, consider keeping notes -- whether in a simple notebook or a special wine journal -- because that way you can begin to compare different vintages and regions and all that fun wine stuff.

The goal of tasting is not only to allow you to experience different wines and educate your palate, but to help you find good wines to purchase and drink at home (rather than just buying them blind off the shelf because the label is pretty or it comes in a bottle in the shape of a cat). And how do you know if it's a good wine? Well that's simple. It's a good wine if you like it.

I Blame My Parents

2011-04-04T10:06:00.000-04:00

by Stacy B. Brody, Rutgers Student and Enthusiastic Intern

You all know about Fox Run Vineyards, but you don’t know much about me. So I think I should fill you in a bit. I don’t have a complex or anything, I’m not going to go from my birth, day by day, hour by hour (though this is quite interesting and we really should discuss this), but I’ll give you a brief bio about me.

I’m a junior at Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, NJ. I have not seen “Jersey Shore,” I don’t like diners or malls and I’m not all too fond of the beach. I think I am from the wrong state. Perhaps I was switched at birth.

But such is life. My parents are winos, according to my grandmother, and I think I would have to agree. My parents go to wine festivals and wineries and tastings. I have been on more vineyard tours than I can remember. No wonder I am interested in the wine industry.

I study plant science and agriculture at Rutgers. We have no viticulture and enology program (even though the wine industry in NJ is growing fairly rapidly and must soon advance beyond the common blueberry, cranberry and apple wines), and I am very jealous of all the students at Cornell who are so lucky to have such a program. I currently intern at Unionville Vineyards in Ringoes, NJ.

I visited Fox Run on April Fools’ Day – no joke! I have been to many Finger Lakes wineries, as my dad went to Cornell and my mother has family near Ithaca, but I had never gone to Fox Run. I was up in Ithaca for a conference and wanted to also visit some of the wineries in the region. My boss at Unionville recommended visiting Peter Bell at Fox Run. A great recommendation. No joke.

When I arrived, we briefly discussed the use of sulfites in wine. As part of my internship, I have to write an essay. Is it not enough that I clean lees out of the tanks but I must also write an essay? My professor assigned the topic: sulfite use and possible alternatives. There is a lot of information out there on sulfites. And there is even more misinformation. There is no clear evidence for adverse effects from oral ingestion of sulfites in wine. Yes, inhalation of large doses of sulfur dioxide – not so good. But the sulfites in wine do not cause any major health effects. And the alternatives that researchers have come up with seem totally impractical: they may work in the lab, but they probably won’t work in the winery. I don’t see any winemakers going out to buy devices to pass electric currents through their wines. There are a number of other methods, all equally unlikely. Sulfites, used responsibly, protect the wine, control fermentation and aging, and extend storage life. Peter Bell, like all good winemakers, uses them responsibly to produce a stable product.

Stacy and her Pink Boots

We tasted a few wines: rieslings, pinot noir, cabernet franc, and cabernet sauvignon. It still amazes me that there is so much diversity, not only among different grape varieties, but even among different wines from the same variety! I learned about the characteristic aromas and flavors in the different wines and some of the chemicals responsible. For instance, pinot noirs are lighter in color and are typically fruity and spicy. Apparently, I am a pretty skilled spitter. (Umm…is that a compliment? And can I put it on my resume?)

After that, I was put to work. Not complaining. The tank needed cleaning. There were lees and tartrate crystals lining the inside of the tank. I peeked my head inside and got lees in my hair. (Badge of honor?) Bordeaux Baritone could not clean this alone! Bordeaux Baritone is a high-energy former opera singer. I am still a bit unsure about his new business venture, but he plans to combine wine tasting and education with opera. Well, the best of luck to him.

Bordeaux Baritone

Anyhoo, back to business. The tank needed to be cleaned. I got my PINK rubber boots on and set to work. Bordeaux Baritone and I cleaned out all the gunk (that’s what the assistant winemaker at Unionville likes to call it) and rinsed off all the equipment. He and Peter also taught me how to throw things. Apparently this is a necessary skill for winemakers.

It makes sense. If your coworker asks you to throw something up to him or her when he or she is on top of a tank, you should be able to get it there on the first try (or at least the second). My throwing skills (unlike my spitting skills) are not up to par. See, my parents never put me in sports. My older sister hated tee-ball, so my parents were not about to force me into sports. I always dreaded phys. ed. in school. When I throw something, it doesn’t go very far at all, nor does it go in the intended direction. Definitely something to work on. So Peter and Bordeaux Baritone coached me a bit today at the winery using bungs as the projectile of choice. I got progressively better and impressed myself when I threw one over the catwalk to Peter. Gold star, Stacy!

After the tank and equipment were all clean, Bordeaux Baritone left for the day. Again, best of luck. Peter and I tasted barrel samples of various ports – different years and different grapes. I learned to distinguish between tawny and ruby ports. Whereas the first undergoes (controlled) oxidation and tastes more like dried fruits and butterscotch and caramel and toffee, the latter tastes strongly of jam. And the coloration is obviously different.

I had a great experience at Fox Run and am so grateful to Peter for taking the time to teach me about everything from sulfur chemistry to mouthfeel to ports. It was definitely worth the “hard work.”

Video of the Day:

"Walk This Way" - performed by Steven Tyler & Carrie Underwood

Support Artists: buy the music you like.

What's in the Bottle: 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon

2011-03-30T11:51:00.000-04:00

by Peter Bell, winemaker

After a whirlwind couple of weeks helping to wrap up the Tierce Riesling blend, serving with Scott and Tricia as a judge at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition, and giving a couple of lectures at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I finally found time last night to open and enjoy a bottle of our 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon that I'd found in my cellar.

Older bottles are often a crapshoot, given that even with optimal cellaring conditions – this one didn’t even have that – a long storage interval means there’s an increased likelihood that the wine will be oxidized or compromised in some other way.

What’s an oxidized red wine smell like? As I said in a previous post, it’s never or almost never vinegar. That’s a bit of an urban myth. Instead, the gradual ingress of oxygen into the wine will cause it to smell vaguely of Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, or bruised apples. Its color might have become tinged with brown, a result of oxygen having had its way with the anthocyanin pigments in the wine.

I wouldn’t even be writing about this 2001 Cabernet if it had been suffering from any of that; but nevertheless, things didn’t start off too promising. The cork was dry and crumbly, and broke in half when I tried to pull it out. The remaining half had almost glued itself onto the inside of the bottle neck, and would not respond to any polite requests to give it up. That’s rarely a good sign, but it was way too late to return my bottle to the manufacturer (oops, that’s me).

The best recourse in cases like this is to push the remnants of the cork into the bottle, so I put the it in the sink, found a wooden spoon, and used its non-business end to do just that, as gently and slowly as I could manage. (Wrapping the whole thing in a dish towel is a safer way to accomplish this trick, given the strong likelihood of creating a red wine fountain if the cork yields too suddenly.)

You live long enough, and simple acts like trying to open a bottle of wine in a non-conventional way start triggering little Proustian events. Standing at the kitchen sink, I was suddenly brought back to the summer of 1974. A bunch us of were camping in the Georgian Bay area of Ontario. I’d brought along a 1-liter bottle of Szekszárdi Bikavér, the cheap Hungarian red we liked to knock back at the time, but had somehow managed to leave my Swiss Army knife at home…

As the Dutch Oven bubbled away on the camp fire and the sun started to set, we stood there staring at this, our only bottle of wine. Without a corkscrew, we were left without a clear idea of how to gain access to the liquid inside.

Finally my friend Chris said, “Okay. You hold the bottle flat on a rock, and I’ll take a shovel and bring the blade down on the neck.”

“Are you crazy? That’ll never work!” I answered.

“Don’t be so negative all the time!” my sister Rebecca scolded. “It’ll just snap the neck off, and then we can pour the wine out from the top of the bottle. Everyone, have your cups ready.”

I held the bottle tight, the blade came down, and the entire bottle was instantly reduced to shards. Chris's vision of a clean French-revolution-style guillotine manoeuvre had been sorely misplaced.

Wiping the glass fragments and wine off my hands, I ventured,“I’m trying hard not to say ‘I told you so.' But more importantly, what are we gonna do for something to drink?”

We managed to find a couple of bottles of warm beer in the trunk of the car, but they were consumed without pleasure.

End of reminiscence. Many years passed before I realized that if only we’d found a Bic pen, we could have used the blunt end to push the cork in, much as I did last night using a wooden spoon handle. Oh well...then I guess I wouldn’t have had much of a story to tell here.

Chris and I are still in touch from time to time, and we have enough of a shared history that this episode is just one of many that we could get together and laugh about. Only I imagine he’d say, “No, that was YOU who thought we could open it with a shovel!”

Memories are always selective, and subject to intense revisionism.

Back to last night. I had a reasonably handsome bottle of decade-old wine to have a taste of. I found my fine-mesh stainless steel tea strainer to snatch the bits of cork that were floating in the wine, and the liquid that came spilling down into my glass was an admirably deep red drink with no overt signs of creeping decrepitude. Nice! It always helps to have a backup bottle in these cases, and of course I did; but there was no need to open it.

Older red wines are not to everyone’s taste, and I confess to having trouble enjoying really old ones, no matter how profound their provenance. They often smell and taste of leather, tea, mushrooms and other things that are more easily enjoyed in another context, like maybe a leather armchair, a cup of tea and some nice mushroom soup. Their fruit flavors have long since disappeared, which always strikes me as a shame, since winemakers go to great extremes to get – what? – into our wine? Fruit flavors!

Fruit was still resolutely in charge of this 2001 Cabernet – plum, blackberry jam and cassis – and I was also getting scents of fresh-turned earth, cola and a bit of marjoram. It didn’t go particularly well with my thrown-together weeknight meal of wilted spinach, goat cheese and toasted pecans on linguine, but we got through it.

If You Can't Laugh at Yourself....

2011-03-28T14:13:00.000-04:00

by Dan Mitchell, regional sales manager

Wine is intimidating without a doubt. For years I have hosted people in the tasting room and given them a snapshot of cool climate Finger Lakes wines. I never speak about wines from other regions; I know enough to say "I don't know." After I've given visitors a tour and extended tasting, they often ask, "How long have you been working here?" My answer is always the same: "Today's my first day, but I drink a lot of wine." And if I'm feeling corny I'll tell them I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Anyway, people seem to have this ingrained notion that's it's imperative to be educated about wine. If someone asks me if I know anything about wine, I say "I know a little." There's a lot to be said for being humble on the subject of wine. One of my favorite times is when Peter acknowledges, after years of winemaking, that he's learned something new this vintage he didn't expect. How exciting. World class winemaker gets thrown a curve ball. That alone is enough to keep me coming back to my job.

When people sample wines at the tasting bar, they're often less inclined to just say whether or not they like the wine, and more inclined to try and describe what they taste. Fair enough, but most people can't always explain what they taste. Take me, for example! My two favorite Finger Lakes wines are Pinot noir and dry Riesling, yet I seem to have less, rather than more, to say about them than other wines. I guess sometimes you just know when you're in love, and have to be content to leave it at that.

For someone whose job entails a lot of tasting room time, the most challenging dialogue is something along the lines of this:

"I get this mwahhh."

"What's mwahhh?"

"It's on my tongue and it's just mwahhh. It's like, you know -- mwahhh."

Casual eavesdroppers on a conversation among wine pros might be forgiven for finding much of their language impenetrable and cipher-like. I never thought I would get the term barnyard until I was given an excellent example of a barnyard-y wine. Yep. Barnyard. Petrol is equally baffling, and I am glad it was explained to me, because it's now my favorite descriptor for an aged Riesling. Something from the petrochemical industry can be positively beautiful once you're inured to it.

People often feel compelled to use too many descriptors. Even worse, those pretending to be enophiles can come off sounding absurd. At Fox Run, one of our self-appointed tasks is to make wine accessible and unintimidating to our customers, and step one is to avoid terms that reek of insiderness. I tell all my tasting room staff to use terms that are easy to understand, and which make sense to beginners and experts alike.

This whole topic put my rabble-rousing brain to work, and I thought, "What if I used completely ridiculous descriptors just to see who would call me out?"

I'll attempt to illustrate this à la Cyrano de Bergerac (or in the modern context, à la Steve Martin in Roxanne):

Automotive - This Syrah has a little too much torque for me. I'm really not sure what I would pair with it.

Hockey - I thought I knew what to expect from this Chardonnay, but then it went all 5 hole on me and caught me off guard.

Cosmological - Don't you think Pinot noir is so Saturnine compared to other reds?

Psychoanalytical - A year ago this Cabernet was nice, but now it's just regressive.

Gridiron - I'm loving the lime in this Riesling, and the honey runs interference on my taste buds.

Judgmental - Sally told me I would love the Malbec but it's just too snide for my taste.

Disney - The Cab franc is the bashful wine of this group.

Baseball - Gewurztraminer is so pesky in the vineyard we don't even want to maintain it.

Mathematical - There's fruit up front and good tannins, but this Lemberger just isn't sequential enough to pair with steak.

Edgy - The 'Rock 'n Roll' line of wines is a good value, but seriously vicious in the glass.

Golf - The tannins here should have driven this wine home, but it seems to have layed up on the finish.

Long story short: if you like it, just say so. Drink what you like. Above all, support the local guys: they do the local good.

Music of the Day:

Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend; "Girlfriend"

Support Artists: buy the music you like.

There's No Telling Who You're Going to Meet in New Jersey

2011-03-25T07:29:00.000-04:00

by Lauren Brunhofer, PR intern

In college, there are two words that are very sacred to the average student: “Spring Break”. This week-long vacation is more than just a few days off from classes and academic responsibility. It is an opportunity to regain a sense of sanity after the seemingly endless duration of midterms. While some of us were lucky enough to venture off to a tropical oasis, I spent my Spring Break at home in everyone’s favorite state… New Jersey. Although I was unable to sip fruity drinks while sinking my toes into the sand, the weather was steadily above 50 degrees, which was paradise in comparison to the tundra of Geneva, NY.

As any other work-driven college student would say, sleep is the ultimate luxury. So of course I spent a minimum of fifteen hours hibernating after countless all-nighters. Finally feeling somewhat rejuvenated towards the end of the week, St. Patrick’s Day seemed to be a good excuse to get together with my friends who were also home for break. Caught up in the festivities that are St. Patty’s Day, we found ourselves at a local pub. With staple Irish drinks being served -- Guinness, Jameson, and of course green beer -- this was not exactly an ideal pastime for an aspiring wine connoisseur.

More proof that men can't smile on cue

But as the night progressed, I found myself in a conversation with a fellow fan of wine. As I began to explain my internship at a winery in the Finger Lakes region, he immediately interrupted to ask if it was Fox Run. Overwhelmed with excitement, I was proud to say yes! The conversation continued about his wonderful tasting at the winery. “Everyone was so knowledgeable about each wine. They explained to me how each company’s wine is different because of their location on the lake. It was truly a great experience,” he stated. As the PR intern at Fox Run Vineyards, I made sure to ask how he had heard about us. It was then when he declared he is originally from Europe and heard about our award winning Riesling during his time in Germany.

Astonished and impressed, I knew this encounter would make for a great blog post on our website. The last thing I had expected to occur during my Spring Break in New Jersey was to meet a European who has been to Fox Run Vineyards and is a fan of our Riesling! I had never been more proud to be a part of our marketing team here at the vineyards. It was truly inspiring to learn that Fox Run has fans all around the world!

Dispatch from the South. The Deep South. The REALLY Deep South.

2011-03-23T07:48:00.000-04:00

by Kelby Russell, winemaking team member from afar

Greetings from Tasmania! (No, no... not Tanzania. Look further east and to the south. Nope, that's New Zealand. Great place, had a blast making wine there last year, but look back to the west a bit. It's part of Australia. No, not quite - down a bit. The huge island south of the main continent. Bingo! That's me waving from the north-central part of the heart. Can you see me? Excellent.) Welcome to a land with a tiny yet hugely friendly population, the highest valued grapes in Australia, and simply unfathomable amounts of road kill -which I say full and well knowing what November in Western New York looks like.

Oysters and Scallops

Did I mention seafood? There is a lot of great seafood here.

We've Been Working Hard, I Swear

Listen, at least the place is called Wineglass Bay.
That counts as work, right?

It's been a few weeks since I have had the opportunity to post on this blog, although I have been happy for every opportunity to catch up on what is happening back home at Fox Run. In the coming weeks, as the harvest begins in earnest down here, I hope to be able to send in some more posts about what is happening down here, where I am, and what the experience of hopping hemispheres is like every few months to chase the harvest. For this first post from the Down Under's down under, however, I have been compiling a mental list of the things from the Finger Lakes I miss now that I'm away. In no particular order:

Normal Bread: Not normal as in standard, average, or regular; but Normal as in the fantastic bakery in Geneva run by Dustin Cutler of the same name. While at home I could live off his world class baguettes (just try to find one that crisp yet so flavorful in France), not to mention the seasonal breads and rich cookies. Coming someplace with few artisan bakeries is a shock to the system, which I am only partially filling with the fool-proof No Knead Bread recipe from Jim Lahey. If you are a fan of spectacular bread, make sure to check out Normal if you are in the area or try that recipe otherwise.
Opus Espresso: We have a gorgeous tasting room and cafe where I am in Tasmania, with wonderful espresso drinks at only $1.50 each for staff. What we don't have is the fantastic food, house-roasted coffee beans, and especially the warm smiles of Heather and Chelsea at Opus in Geneva. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I don't drink much caffeine, usually only a small size drink once a day, but stopping at Opus every morning was more beneficial for my mental health than coffee ever could be.
Dinosaur BBQ: How can you miss bbq in a land stereotypically known for "throwing a shrimp on the barbie"? Because that is a grill. I miss the American treasure that is southern BBQ, something I will not taste again until I get home and can eat ribs and pulled pork at Dinosaur BBQ until I catch up on all I've missed.
Buffalo Wings and Pizza: There is nothing complicated about a buffalo wing, certainly nothing highbrow, but being able to get a really well prepared dozen is a simple and pure pleasure. While they simply don't exist here in Tasmania, pizza is an entirely different situation. There is plenty of pizza in Tasmania, it just happens to all be truly terrible. Half of them are topped with a tomato sauce that is nearer in sweetness and taste to a thick BBQ sauce, the other half are topped with BBQ sauce that somehow puts even that to shame. Pile on top of that any number of processed cheeses and at least five mismatched toppings before throwing it into a lukewarm toaster oven. The fact that the crust is insipid in texture and taste is totally drowned out by the cacophony happening over it. Pizza is a fantastic and democratic dish, but that doesn't mean every single bar with a microwave should have one.
Spring: Going fall-winter, fall-winter, brief slice of summer, fall-winter, fall-winter is tougher than you might imagine. Yes you get to skip out on the end of winter, but that 'rebirth' phase is really lacking when you keep jumping to the other end of the season spectrum.
Finger Lakes Wine: Tasmania specializes in sparkling wines, pinot noir, and Alsatian aromatic white grapes (riesling, gewürztraminer, pinot gris). You would think that this would make me feel right at home here. And while they do make some fascinating and beautiful wines from those grapes here in Tasmania, and while I certainly appreciate the opportunity to learn about their fruit and winemaking methods to expand my palate, I miss the clarity and structure of the Finger Lakes rieslings that I've come to love. I have a case of them I carted with me all the way here to give out as gifts and examples, but it is taking a huge act of self-control to keep them in the box.
The People: Family first and foremost, both my own and the family at Fox Run that is so caring and closely knit. Yet in a larger sense, what I immediately notice and miss the most whenever I travel to another wine region are the people that populate the Finger Lakes wine industry. The camaraderie, earnest work, optimism, and love for our relatively unheralded region and one another. Other wine regions may have people who are in love with their slice of land, their winery/company, or themselves - but the Finger Lakes are where the people love the whole region and support one another.

In speaking with my Grandmother a few days ago, she mentioned that the first time I left home it nearly broke her heart. Now, however, she insists on shaking my hand whenever I leave and says she believes her grandson needs to travel and learn in order to keep growing into whatever I eventually can be. It is that type of love and support, from my parents, family, friends, Fox Run, and everyone I've met across the Finger Lakes that instantly become a strong friend that really stands out whenever I travel and gain a feel for a different wine region.

Yes the travel is a fantastic work and education opportunity, but the greatest lesson I've learned has nothing to do with winemaking. When I left for college I thought I was done with the Finger Lakes and would find my place in the bright lights of a big city, yet I inexplicably found myself drawn back. Now I understand. Sometimes growing and traveling is about learning what you want to return to - along with ways you want to bring back what you've learned to impact it. Grandma, I imagine that I'm going to keep traveling (wanderlust being what it is to a young winemaker, after all) - but I don't think you have to worry about my returning to the Finger Lakes anymore, about returning home.

Music of the Day:

Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus; "You Don't Know What Love Is":

Support Artists: buy the music you like!

A Little Information Is A Dangerous Thing

2011-03-21T11:45:00.000-04:00

by Dan Mitchell, Regional Sales Manager & Resident Wise Man

Wine questions can be tough to answer. For years I have harassed Peter for information and was sometimes frustrated when he would answer my question with "I can't tell you why". In retrospect he could tell me, of course he could, but what he was really saying was "the answer is so complicated you will only get confused with the answer". Agreed. I spent six years in the tasting room before making the transition to full time on the road. I answered a lot of questions myself in that time (with Peter's information) and learned a long time ago that the answer to most wine related questions is "It depends on the wine".

How long should I age wine before I drink it? It depends on the wine.

Should I chill wine or serve it at room temperature? It depends on the wine (and the room!).

Was it a good growing year? It depends in the wine.

This last question though comes up quite often. Taking a good look at, and taste of, our 2008 red wines has given me a new perspective on what to look for in a Finger Lakes growing season. Too often a growing season in many areas of the world is measured by the success of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, at least in consumers minds, and the Finger Lakes is no different. Two varieties. How strange that a region that so many discount as one that can't produce great reds receives extra criticism if the growing season is cool and wet. Cool weather in a cool climate region? Odd.

Just off the top of my shiny unburdened scalp I can think of 14 vinifera varieties that grow in the Finger Lakes. There are dozens of native grape varieties here and hybrids too numerous to count. How does one think that one growing season is going to produce great fruit across this wide spectrum? Hybrids of course do well every year, why have a hybrid that doesn't. Natives are beyond hardy. As Pete Howe puts it, the best way to prune concord is to cut it off at the base, it will be back next year. The danger of broadly rating the growing season is that casual wine consumers can make pre-judgements based on what they have been told. This conversation has happened several times over the past few years:

"Would you like to try the Dry Riesling?"
"No, I only like dry wines."
"Maybe you would like to try the Chardonnay?"
"Is it white? I only like white Chardonnays."
"You're in luck."
"Oh wait. 2006? That wasn't a good year. I'll pass."

2006 was panned as a growing season for the most part while our 2006 whites received the highest honors in recent years! The 2008 reds, or the signature vinifera reds for the Finger Lakes anyway, have been showing very well despite a year that produced Cab Sauvs and Merlots that will be too soft for what many expect from those varieties. Meanwhile the Cab Franc, Lemberger, and Pinot noir are beautiful, delicious, fruit forward glasses that rival their highly touted 2007 predecessors. The 2008 Pinot noir is delicate, subtle, suggestive, and feminine- everything a Pinot noir should be. That being said, are we more interested in having a hot dry growing season that will get attention for two varieties that Mother Nature only affords us occasionally or a cool partially wet growing season that will evenly let our whites and reds shine? The task at hand is to take the time and effort to change peoples minds and educate them on what great reds should be; not big dense jammy monsters you can lay down for 15 years (not that many do anyway) but instead soft, accessible, food friendly dinner offerings. I didn't say it would be easy.

Music of the Day:

Duffy - Rockferry; "Syrup and Honey"

Support Artists, buy the music you like.

Wine, Food, Music & Friends in the Beautiful Crescent

2011-03-18T17:15:00.000-04:00

by Leslie Kroeger, Marketing Director

Spending time in New Orleans basically consists of eating, drinking, dancing, and listening to music - the latter being just about the best thing to do. Music is everywhere. When you get off the plane at Louis Armstrong Int'l Airport, the first thing you hear is good New Orleans Jazz. And from then on all you have to do is turn the dial to the best radio station in the world - 90.7 WWOZ; Listener supported radio that plays an amazing array of music from traditional New Orleans Jazz to new and local New Orleans musicians, R&B, Cajun, standard jazz, blues...all from the DJs' own record collections. It is quite eclectic.

I'm here in New Orleans with Joe, Erika & Meghan.

The Spotted Cat music club on Frenchman St.

So that puts us right in the heart of carnival season. March 5.........we decide on a late lunch (Erika & Meghan are here from NYC). Andouille sausage, fresh pork & chive sausage (with cinnamon) from Butcher, New Zealand cheddar cheese, applewood smoked ham, cajun mustard, fresh baguette from Whole Foods. I just happen to have some FLX wines saved for their visit. Now - my friends have had plenty of Fox Run wines, which they love, so I opened a 2008 Heron Hill Chardonnay Unoaked "Ingle Vineyard" and a 2009 Billsboro Riesling. Wooaah! This food with these wines = fabulous. Both of these wines paired perfectly with the heat of the andouille and the peculiar sweet spice of the fresh sausage. They both seemed to become more round and flowery with each taste.

A delicious lunch

The celebration goes on into Sunday...one of the greatest shows ever at Snug Harbor, a Blues Review with Johnny Sansone. Amazing harmonica, accordion!, piano, guitar. Then down Frenchman Street to check out some other clubs. Monday, of course, is Lundi Gras, the day before Fat Tuesday. We had to get our dress rehearsal on and wander around the Riverside Park for yet another festival, lunch, drinks, music. The Hot 8 Brass Band was the hit of the day. Luckily we made it to a wonderful restaurant in the newly renovated Roosevelt Hotel - Domenica - one of my favorite restaurants in New Orleans.Wild mushroom pizza with fontina, bacon & yard egg, delicious romaine with mortadella and the creamiest anchovy dressing, and a heaping pile of fresh ricotta with grilled country bread and date & pecan pesto...to die for!

Erika & Meghan at Jean-Paul's

Mardi Gras is here!! The circus begins for us at 9:30am with a delicious homemade Bloody Mary. We march out to meet the St. Anthony Ramblers who begin with a blessing of the precious earth that is New Orleans and the Faubourg Marigny. The Panorama Jazz Band leads with a somber funeral song...but that doesn't last long. I felt lucky at that point to have great love in my life plus good friends, great food & wine, great music, a good Bloody Mary and no shortage of fabulous wigs.

The fun begins.......

Various stages of Mardi Gras day

2010 Tierce, Round II: That Selbstgefälling Feeling

2011-03-15T17:06:00.001-04:00

by Peter Bell, winemaker

In my previous post on this subject, our heroes the Tierce Brothers (really six guys and a gal) had taken an initial, furtive stab at trying to see what our various tanks of Riesling looked like as a group.

Peter, Johannes, Dave: the Original Tierce Brothers, in a Rare Glamor Shot

This week we reconvened, minus Kelby, lugging bottles of the components that we considered appropriate for further evaluation. Twenty wines were now narrowed down to eight. The first exercise in what was going to become a long day of tasting was to see what the individual wines looked like, six weeks on.

Here’s some of the stuff that got talked about.

“The first one was fermented with Epernay, so there’s that opulence. The second was with VIN-13, which gives it an entirely different profile.”

Tricia said that. We were looking at the two Fox Run samples, and they were different enough from each other that everyone wondered how they’d gotten that way. Most of the difference came down to yeast strain.

As it happens, Tricia is so good at picking up the particular aroma set that Epernay endows to a wine that Brandon invented the term ‘Epernay-dar’ to describe her talent. (Epernay is actually a town in Champagne, and it lent its name to a yeast strain.)

“I found these wines perfectly natural, electric, with some R.S. and a tight acid structure.”

Dave said that. We were still tasting the Fox Run wines. He gave them a thumbs up. You will see the words ‘electric’ and ‘electricity’ popping up a lot in our conversation: it is our most cherished superlative for Tierce Riesling. ‘R.S.’, of course, refers to residual sugar, and yes, there was a little more of it in the Fox Run wines.

“Boy, these have changed a lot….ooh, these are fantastic.”

Tricia said that. Last January, these very wines were a bit acne-ridden and difficult to get a lot of pleasure from, as befits very young wine. Today, it was apparent that the Clearasil had worked, and smelling the samples was much more fun.

I know: "...but someone's gotta do it."

We went on to taste the Anthony Road and Red Newt examples, then proceeded straight to the terrifyingly hard task of coming up with some interesting blends.

How to approach the task of putting together a trial blend? It starts with a bit of deep thinking. Plunging in and making up something random will almost never work. After a few minutes of jottings, each of us, working independently, put together a blend that he or she thought might have the potential to evince Tierce. There was enough of each one for us all to get about half a glass.

Fifteen minutes later, we were ready to talk.

“Well, we’ve certainly pushed these in different directions, haven’t we?”

I said that. With six of us seemingly on the same general track, it would appear likely that we’d end up with a set of pretty similar wines. Well, that did not happen.

“There’s a nice lift to this one. Nice sweet entry of fruit, but then it dried out. I think this is something we’ll have to come to grips with: what’s the role of sweetness here?”

Peter Becraft said that about our first glass. The subject of sweetness came up right away, though we weren’t seeing anything like obvious sugar. Tierce is always going to be a nearly dry wine.

“The Bergerization of Riesling?”

Brandon said that. As it happens, I had just had a long phone call with the prominent California wine critic Dan Berger about Riesling in general (his favorite wine, bar none), and Tierce in particular. Dan’s effusive, fond comments about past Tierce bottlings always make mention of their daringly dry style, one that takes some getting used to. Brandon was riffing on the term ‘Parkerization’, a reference to the controversial wine critic Robert Parker, whose fondness for alcoholic, jammy monster reds has actually changed the way reds are made throughout the world. Bergerization, if it were to happen, would actually be a good thing.

We continued through our flight.

“When I try to evaluate these in terms of palate structure, they’re all nice. I’m taking into account that flavors in the mouth are way more important than aroma at this point. I like to give basically 90% of the stress to palate structure.”

Dave said that. The acne is long gone, but the aromas of these wines are still holding back a bit. Dave took that phenomenon into account here, with the unspoken addendum that yes, sooner rather than later the aromas would catch up with mouth flavors.

“I would give more weight to aroma. Maybe 50:50 at this point. We know what we want for our style, and that incorporates aroma.”

Johannes said that, by way of minor disagreement. He’s been around Riesling all his life, and perhaps brings a clearer crystal ball into the process of tasting very young wines.

“I’m more inclined to reward mouth flavors and palate structure, seeing as it’s only March. All the real aromas have yet to reveal themselves.”

I said that. The wines did smell like something, and something very fetching, but to me it was the flavors that reached my nose via my retronasal passage, along with their connection to a time scale, that told me what I needed to know.

“Yes on structure as the main element.”

Brandon said that. Palate structure is hard to define, but easy to agree on. Subject for another blog posting.

“In most of the others I miss the tension, but this one has it. On the palate, it’s almost signature Tierce.”

Johannes said that. Along with ‘electricity’, we bow down at the altar of ‘tension’ in our Rieslings. We’ve been using that word so long that we all know what it means, even though it would be hard to define scientifically.

“That’s a pretty Selbstgefälling thing to say.”

Brandon said that, or at least tried to. Huh? Well, in a sidebar conversation, we had been talking about the tendency of certain northern Europeans to come across as a bit smug. Johannes wasn’t familiar with the word ‘smug’, so Brandon looked it up in German. Thereafter we tried to insert Selbstgefälling into our speech as often as possible without becoming too obnoxious.

“Number four’s a little too oily.”

I said that. A viscous, oily mouthfeel is fine in some wines, but any hint of it is antithetical to Tierce. We all agree on that.

“I called it juicy. I don’t find it carries through to very much back palate structure. Where’s the vibrancy?”

Dave said that, by way of agreeing with me.

“Too much phenolic thickness.”

Johannes said that. We use the word ‘phenolic’ to refer to a mass of different mouthfeel sensations.

“Yeah, it’s flabby with a little electroshock thrown in. No cohesion.”

Peter Becraft said that. Nice.

“Number five’s too sweet and too bitter.”

Tricia said that. Self-explanatory. The fact that she was talking about her own blend meant nothing – if this kind of project is to work, all egos have to be checked at the door; and anyway, she possesses nothing approaching a large ego.

“Flavors of anise. I’m not sure this one would work. It’s a little washed out. Let’s kick it out.”

Dave said that. He was describing the same wine as Tricia, but in a very different way.

“I’ll weigh in on number six. Nothing yet in the nose, but really electric.”

I said that. There I went again, rewarding mouth flavors and palate structure.

“My notes say, ‘Maybe too electric?’ ”

Peter Becraft said that. There was certainly no shortage of lively acid in that wine. Did it blow a fuse in his mouth? Only his dentist knows for sure.

“I don’t think it’s too electric.”

Dave said that.

“One of my thoughts here was to play two very disparate wines off against each other. So I went for a high proportion of the Anthony Road semi-dry and countered it with the leanest of the Red Newts.”

I said that, trying to explain how I got the electricity in the wine we were tasting.

“I don’t think this wine is quite seated happily as a dry or semi-dry. I’d like to pull it into a tighter package.”

Tricia said that. Same wine, different reaction. She had picked up on that little bit of sugar that I’d dialed in using the Anthony Road component.

“One thing we can’t forget is that in 2010 we have one of the most balanced and exciting years for reds and whites. 2010 is obviously a big fruit year. I would love to see the backbone and cut of the acid, but maybe we can expect a little more flesh than usual along with it.”

Johannes said that, without a hint of smugness. This was a really relevant comment, because we kept coming back to how to, or whether to, rein in the exuberance of all these wines. Johannes was wondering, rhetorically, if we should stop being afraid of a slightly richer version of Tierce this time around.

It was time to take our favorite three wines from this round, and perform a few tweaks on them: a couple percent increase in one of the components, for example. Meanwhile, Peter Becraft stole out and came back with a bottle of 2009 Tierce, which we haven’t released yet. Delicious wine, practically crackling with tension and electricity.

“My idea for this year’s wine has just sprung out of these glasses! I think it’s going to be like ’06.”

Dave said that. We were getting somewhere, it appeared.

What was the reference to 2006? Dave reminded us that when we were working on that blend, we found perfection almost right away, then spent the next six hours trying (unsuccessfully) to prove ourselves wrong about it.

“One of these is our wine. To me, it’s sort of, how much peach do we want, versus smoky lime?”

I said that. More thoughts on how to incorporate exuberance.

We started to focus all our energy one samples 9 and 11.

“If you just juxtapose these two wines by themselves, there’s going to be some very important information here.”

I said that. A reference to the great value in comparing one wine with another multiple times to learn more about them.

“Eleven, for example, has just the right tension, no hole. Nine has more aroma to offer, and I like the juiciness, but it lacks texture. Nine is a bit too pleasing.”

Johannes said that.

“Yeah, it’s a bit too pretty.”

Tricia said that. Wait a minute – what’s wrong with pleasing and pretty? Nothing really, but this style of wine is not meant to be in-your-face or facile. We want suggestions of things, rather than all-out flavors.

“You’ve done something original here, Dave. Talk about it.”

I said that. Dave had performed one last tweak on one of the blends.

“Well, you want a hockey puck and a stick. You want a bowling ball and a pin.”

“I don’t quite understand your metaphors.”

“Neither do I.”

Clearly it was time to wrap up.

Understanding Wine in One Quick Lesson

2011-03-09T08:44:00.000-05:00

by Peter Bell, Winemaker

Yesterday I drove over to Ithaca, New York, to teach a class at Cornell University. The lecture I gave, titled Balance in Wine, has been a regular of mine in that class for 17 years now. I often begin by telling the students (most of whom are not planning to become wine makers) that understanding this concept is probably the single most powerful tool for understanding wine.

How We Achieve Balance Around the Winery

photo: Randy Tagg

It’s a fun class to teach, because I get to watch a bunch of eager young people experience a palpable ‘aha!’ reaction right in front of my face. I never fail to point out that a little wine knowledge is way better than a lot of wine pseudo-knowledge, and that talking in mixed company about a wine’s balance is a sure way to enhance one’s charisma. After all, I say, most of you are about to graduate, and many of you will be interviewing for a job in your field shortly afterwards. You make the short list, your prospective employer takes you out to dinner, and not only do you feel confident suggesting which wine to order (thanks to some of the other things you learned in this class), but you are then able to make some impressive comment on the great balance of the wine! Fairy tale ending: you are offered the job on the spot.

It’s all very well to explain verbally and visually what the deal is with balance in wine, and that’s what I start by doing, but the real lesson comes when we taste together two flights of wine that have had their balance monkeyed with. Here’s what I tell them before we taste, in a much abbreviated form:

1. ‘Balance’ can be defined as the interaction and harmony between two or more of a wine’s components.

2. The major wine components that contribute to its balance are sugar, acid, alcohol, and tannins. Not all wines have sugar or discernable tannins, but all wines have acid and alcohol.

3. Other components that can be invoked in this discussion include oak vs. fruit, age vs. youth, and bitterness. Again, these are not relevant to all wines.

We’ve all tasted a wine, most likely a cheap white, that’s way out of balance with regard to sugar and acid. Often these wines (and there are actually fewer of them around than there were when I started drinking wine) are so sweet that they break the second of the two cardinal rules of the Peter Bell Wine Quality Maxim: all good wines are Delicious and Refreshing.

More common these days, though thank goodness never a problem in the Finger Lakes, are wines that are out of balance because their alcohol is too high. The interesting thing about wines in the 14-15% range is that some are in balance (and are thus refreshing), while many more are caricatures of good wine that are next to impossible to drink more than half a glass of. One of my favorite wine regions outside the Finger Lakes is the McLaren Vale in South Australia, where superb, exquisitely balanced Grenache wines are made that have upwards of 15% alcohol. By contrast, many high end reds from a certain state on a certain coast of this country, which I will not name, are far too many jammy and hot, and are something that fewer and fewer people want to actually drink because that alcohol sears the palate.

The best way to learn about balance in wine is to take a rather clinical approach. That’s just what we do in the Cornell class. The day before my lecture, I take some bottles of out Chardonnay, and add things to them to manipulate their balance. These can then be compared to an undoctored Control bottle. In one, I add a half a percent of sugar, just enough to be noticeable to most discerning tasters. In another I add a touch of citric acid, while in another I actually remove some acid by adding a small amount of an alkali.

The Doctoring Process

We repeat the exercise with a dry red, only this time I've added to the doctored bottles some acid, some extra ethanol, and some tannins. I urge the students to do a lot of comparing and contrasting, exactly in the way that we do here at the winery when we are deciding on a final blend for a wine or a last-minute tweak.

What we did at the Cornell class is a little too difficult to try at home, unless you have some specialized lab equipment for measuring stuff out. An alternative exercise is to open two or more bottles of similar wines – say, Finger Lakes semi-dry Rieslings – and taste them in a sort of clinical way (no food, no social distractions). Your understanding of balance will be dramatically enhanced. Then head out to that job interview! You're gonna knock 'em dead!

Lemberger Conquers the Big Apple?

2011-03-07T09:59:00.000-05:00

by Dan Mitchell, Regional Sales Manager

I spent four days last week in The City That Never Sleeps and I found an interesting yet possibly not surprising fact: I didn't sleep very well.

Over the six-plus years that I hosted wine lovers in the tasting rooms of Fox Run, I saw Metro-Gnomes from all over the Northeast; cities like NYC, Boston, Toronto and Philadelphia. There was a common complaint I heard from many of them which always struck me as very odd, "It's so quiet here I can't sleep". What an interesting phenomenon I thought. After I finished my tasting in mid-Manhattan one evening, I had an excellent meal with other Finger Lakes wine lovers, caught the late hockey game at a local pub, then walked over to Times Square. I leaned up against a post on the corner and watched the post-midnight flurry of activity. Horns were blaring, media was streaming out of buildings, cabs were being hailed, and I was the only thing within sight not moving. I looked up to the stars above and thought how they appear to be the same stars I see over our silent Finger Lakes vineyards. The same ones I sit under at night as my dogs run through the rows of grapes and I notice that they are the only things within sight that are moving. It's a funny paradox to me. The funnier paradox comes the next morning as I start my day at a red light in Manhattan behind an Aston Martin, and finish my day at a red light behind a Mennonite horse and buggy in Penn Yan. Too quiet to sleep?

On the Loose in Times Square

What Does 'Tonsorial' Mean?

That being said, I had a very successful visit. It seems that our 2008 Lemberger is becoming a powerful force in wine-by-the-glass at a number of stylish locations around New York City, locations with notable wine buyers and chefs with celebrity status such as Terroir in Tribeca, Slice in the West Village, and Seersucker in Brooklyn just to name a few. At first it seemed to be a risky choice to not lead with the world famous Finger Lakes Rieslings, opting instead for a relatively unknown dry red. Yet these savvy buyers see something I was able to put my finger on almost immediately. Not only does Lemberger present a delicious, food friendly, affordable dry red but it also may very well be the next big trend in reds. Red wine drinkers love finding new dry reds and even more importantly love being in front of the curve. I can already see this scenario at a party:

"You brought an Argentinian Malbec?!? That's SOOO 2008. I'm drinking Lemberger."

"Lemberger? Sounds like the cheese. What is it? Let me try. Wow, it's delicious! And so affordable!"

I am eagerly looking forward to my next trip to NYC for the possibility of a wine dinner and to turn more people on to the soft, food friendly wines we have to offer.

Ramblings in the Sunshine State

2011-03-02T10:23:00.000-05:00

by Peter Bell, winemaker

If you’re in the wine business, you can’t really escape wine, even while on vacation. I wouldn't even want to really, but I’m often reluctant to tell strangers what I do for fear of what almost inevitably comes next: some variation on “Let me tell you about my experiences with wine…”
I immediately realize that I'm only along for the ride.

“You’re a vintner, are you? Isn’t that what they’re called?” they intone without waiting for an answer. “I like wine. I don’t drink it that often, but…”

Being reasonably well adjusted when it comes to social skills, I have to do my best to give the impression that I’m vitally interested in what they’re saying.

“I used to make it in my basement. Now here’s what I did …”

“…it never really tasted all that good, but cheap! Was it cheap! I figured out once that if I bought the large can of concentrate and reused the bottles, it only cost me…”

On and on they would drone.

“I made a Zinfandel-Merlot blend once. My father-in-law hated it, but he’s a beer drinker…”

So it was with some trepidation that I showed up last week at Mango Bistro, a little place on the main street of Englewood, Florida. We were down to visit my cousin Greg, who lives nearby. The place is an engaging hybrid of funky and chic, and free of any of the cliché trappings of many Florida eateries.

The owners, Ricardo and Marie, make great food inspired by their Brazilian and French heritages, and also have a small but serious wine list. Occasionally, Ricardo puts out word that he is going to keep the place open on a weekday evening – it’s primarily a breakfast and lunch place – and hold an impromptu wine tasting.

Here’s how he organizes it. Whoever shows up is given a glass, and then proceeds to choose a bottle to purchase from a collection of 15 or so that are on the table. The prices are written on the bottles, and the cost of a bottle might range from ten dollars to forty dollars. That bottle is opened, and each participant has the opportunity to taste it along with any others that are there.

I liked the guy immediately, and was even more thrilled to meet the people who were there for the tasting. None of them had any home-winemaking exploits that they needed tell me about; none of them called me a vintner; and of the 15 or so individuals, fully 14 knew all about the Finger Lakes wine industry. Many were regular visitors to our area. I guess I had forgotten that most people in Florida are from somewhere else, and that ‘somewhere else’ is often the Northeast.

I complimented Ricardo on his selections – not a single bottle of Aussie critter wine or California plonk – and on his incredibly low markups. Most of his list, and there were some seriously good wines, sold for under $40. The wine I chose, a red blend from the illustrious Ridge Vineyards in California, was easily worth the $32 he charged, and I was pleased to share it with everyone else in the room.

“I don’t buy for a minute the idea that you have to make up for your losses on food by putting a 300% markup on wine,” he told me. “If you pay attention to the cost of your ingredients and to portion size, the food carries itself. I know what restaurant owners pay for wine, and I’m offended when I see a bottle that they paid $20 for selling for $95. That’s exactly what happened to me last month at another restaurant.”

Click to Enlarge!

Art from found objects - a Florida specialty

The next day we stopped in across the street at Vino Loco Wine and Tapas Bar. The owner, Joyce, talked about the challenges of trying to peddle two commodities – non-mainstream wines and tasty little bites of the best imaginable snacks – to a clientele that is used to more conventional ingestibles. Joyce also told me about some of the communication difficulties she encounters when telling people about her establishment. 'Wine and Tapas' is a foreign enough idea that they often hear it wrong.

“A wine and topless bar? Are we zoned for that?”

or,

“You serve Hawaiian tapas? Like, what – little plates of Spam and pineapple?”

Joyce expressed some interest in having me conduct a wine tasting at Vino Loco some time. “How often do you get to Florida?” she asked.

“Once every 54 years,” I had to say, for this was in fact my first-ever trip to that state. That’s going to have to change.

Music of the Day: Sorry, but I'm not gonna put up any Jimmy Buffett.

Wine Knowledge the Easy Way

2011-02-27T18:59:00.000-05:00

Today's post comes to us from Lucille Bell, Peter's 81-year-old mother.

"You're the expert, Lucille. "You choose the wine.'

We are sitting around a table in a French restaurant in Toronto, celebrating a birthday. Five old ladies, chums since dead husbands made them girls again, gossipy and giggly and happy to be out for an evening on the town.

"But I can't choose the wine until I know what we're going to eat,' I say.

"Well, I'll have the salmon," says one. "We're all supposed to have fish once a week.'

"It's beef for me," says another. "I never cook it at home."

The beef tempts me too. My other two friends are vegetarian and opt for meatless lasagna. I take the easy way out and order a bottle of Chardonnay, knowing all along that no matter what people are eating, white is the safest choice, as long as it's 'dry.'

What I really know about wine, from being the mother of a winemaker, is very spotty and thin, amounting to not very much at all. I was brought up in a teetotalling household, where drinking was considered a sin. The 'wine' drunk during communion at church was always plain grape juice. And plain grape juice, incidentally, was what we drank at home when we were sick. Perhaps the groundwork for the future grape connection began then.

I began to drink at university when sherry was often served at faculty-student get togethers. I quite liked it, and no stain of sin emerged. At home, of course, I kept the bad news to myself.

Later on I recall becoming interested in the mysteries of single malt Scotch whiskey. The much vaster universe of wine had not yet been revealed. And it was not until Peter had sailed away to Australia to learn about that universe that I made a point of learning some wine lingo.

Public television conveniently aired a series of lectures featuring Jancis Robinson touring vineyards in Europe. I wanted to be a little bit like her, with her charming confidence and huge erudition. I bought her big book, and figured out a few things about the process of making wine.

I also listened carefully when Peter talked about palates and aromas and aftertastes and likened the flavors of wines to foods and other objects, like leather. I learned that balance was important, and that aggressive tannins were good in some wines and not in others.

I was an expert! So I began to show off. Out with friends I tried to swirl my glass and then imbibe the fumes in a knowing way. No one noticed, unless I poured some of the wine down my front, which I often did.

"Lovely aftertaste," I often remarked to indifferent guests. And one time at a small dinner party I even instructed my guests to hold their glasses properly, swirl the wine and then sniff.

Gradually I became less bossy, and listened to the comments about my talents with reservation. What I had acquired after all was simply an interest in something of eminent importance to my son, and hence to me. My interest stemmed from the heart and not the mind. What did it matter what wines my friends and I drank when no one noticed or cared? We had a lovely time together even if that dry white wine was always the same.

Of course to myself, secretly and in the dark, I like to think that I am a little bit of an expert, knowing that I am always just a question away from vast resources that I can tap whenever I want.

Now I like to gloat about how lucky I am to have a son who makes his mother feel so smart.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

2011-02-25T12:45:00.000-05:00

- by Tricia Renshaw, assistant winemaker

I can’t believe we’ve let Kelby leave again. Last year, he was off to Marlborough, New Zealand. This time, he’s gone to Tasmania, the island state of Australia. We wish we could keep him here, but he has to follow the whisperings of Calliope: voyage, see, learn.

In the late summer of 2009, Peter received a polite, well-written letter of introduction from this young man who had recently graduated from Harvard. “My name is Kelby Russell,” he wrote, and he explained that while he was earning his degree in Government with a minor in Economics, he discovered his life’s passions: food, wine and music. He indulged his love of music by serving as President and General Manager of Harvard’s Glee Club. While studying in Italy, however, he realized that it was winemaking, and not a career in Arts Management which called him most profoundly. Upon graduation, he returned to his hometown, Newark, NY, and he hoped to find some guidance, or perhaps an Intern position, at Fox Run Vineyards.

Peter, of course, invited him to spend a day with us. We outfitted him with a pair of large rubber boots, and put him to work. Vintage was under way, and that work was typically chaotic, messy, sticky, and sweat-inducing.

At the end of the day, long after the sun had set, when the pumps and press were cleaned, the crushpad was swept and washed, the hoses coiled, the crusher and must-pump muscled back into their at-rest positions, Peter asked, “So, do you want to come back tomorrow?” And Kelby emphatically replied, “Oh, yes. This is what I want to do.”

And he has, with extraordinary aptitude. He’s blessed with keen sensory skills, and an artistic sensibility which guides him towards recognizing and making beautiful wines. His excellent memory recalls not only details about place—a vineyard’s soil, aspect, climate, story—but myriad aromas and textures of the wines he tasted in those places. He’s professional, and friendly, driven, and tireless. Consider the position Kelby held as Harvard’s Glee Club General Manager. Though the work was fulfilling, the job left Kelby with a meager two hours of sleep on an average night. Nevertheless, he managed all that was asked of him while maintaining excellent grades in a rigorous course of study. He has the fortitude to slog on through the longest, toughest vintage. Combine these attributes with his passion, and it’s no wonder he has impressed everyone he’s worked with. No wonder he has become indispensible here.

In fact, we have a friendly little battle with our neighbors over Kelby and his available time. He’s the prize in a tug-of-war between Fox Run and Red Tail Ridge, where Nancy and Mike benefit from Kelby’s many talents for a portion of the year. The rule is: we get first dibs. That way, the tussling stays good-natured. The offers pour in. “Soooo, Kelby”, someone starts. And Peter cuts in, “Don’t even think about it.”

Kelby’s wowed not only the winemaking community in the Finger Lakes, but in New Zealand, as well.

Last winter, his odyssey led him to Whitehaven Wine Company in Marlborough. Due to its location in the Southern Hemisphere, Marlborough’s vintage occurs during our spring. In typical Kelby fashion, after enduring a grueling ten-week vintage in New York, he rested by cleaning picking bins outdoors in sub-freezing temperatures, topping barrels, monitoring malolactic fermentations, cleaning floor drains, and helping with blending decisions. Restored, he felt he needed another go at vintage. So, he filled out applications, and contacted numerous wineries, until he found a good match.

Despite having learned crushpad operations at our 20,000-case-per-year Riesling-centric winery, Kelby easily transferred his skills to the 200,000-case-per-year Sauvignon blanc-centered winery. In short order, he was promoted from Harvest Intern to Shift Manager. No one who knows Kelby was surprised.

He came back to us in time for summer’s hectic schedule. He worked in the busy tasting room, on the bottling line, and in the winery. He was indispensible in pairing food and wine for tapas events and winemaker’s dinners. He started this blog. Then it was vintage, and you know how that went—you were there with us.

Now, he’s leaving again. It’s a bittersweet time. We’re thrilled for Kelby. He’s talented, passionate, and young. He has years to explore winemaking techniques employed throughout the world. But, we’ll miss him.

In Tasmania, he’ll be working at Pipers Brook, where they specialize in sparkling wine made from Chardonnay and Pinot noir, as well as fine table wines, including Riesling. It will be a long vintage. They begin harvest in late March when the grapes for sparkling wine will be ready. Table wine varieties are brought in through late April, the peak of their dry autumn. In early May, they tread a nervy line—rain vs. ripeness—as they bring in late-ripening varieties and finally grapes for late-harvest wines. We hope he’ll have time to write a post or two. We’d love for him to regale us with tales of his far-flung adventures. What is certain is that he’ll learn from the experience as much as any person can. Eventually, Kelby will bring his newly-gained knowledge back to the Finger Lakes, but only for a short while.

He plans to earn a second degree—this time in Oenology. The program he’s considering most seriously culminates with a vintage placement—a daunting proposition for the majority of the students. Before Kelby enters the program, he will have completed four vintages, fully hands-on, in three countries. Not too shabby.

Naturally, Peter and I continually ask, “What are we going to do without Kelby? Especially during vintage.” We can’t quite image Vintage 2011 without his enthusiasm and single-minded determination, to say nothing of his spectacular meals.

The good news for Kelby is that wherever he goes, he will be successful and his talents will be sought-after.

The good news for us is that Kelby is enamored of cool-climate wines, and although it may be long and sometimes treacherous, his quest will bring him back to the Finger Lakes he loves.

Music of the Day:

Keith Jarrett - Handel: Suites for Keyboard, "Harpsichord Suite Set I No. 4 in E Minor, HWV 429-1. Fuga"

Support Artists: buy the music you like.

It All Depends on How You Phrase Your Question

2011-02-23T06:11:00.000-05:00

- by Peter Bell, winemaker

I love looking stuff up on Google, mostly so I can learn something new, but also once in awhile for pure entertainment. Often things occur to me in the middle of the night that merit researching the next day. Two mornings ago, my burning desire was to research, of all things, the esterification of tartaric acid and the effects of that transformation on wine taste. Please don’t give up reading this blog post, because I'm not going to talk about what I learned.

Because I’m not a good typist, I really appreciate Google’s ‘Suggest’ algorithm. It’s pretty good at anticipating one’s intentions and filling the search box with helpful shortcuts.

This morning, I asked Google to direct me to sites that would give hints on today’s winery task: topping barrels. In reality, I know all I need to know about barrel topping, after 23 years of winemaking, so I opted to have a little fun instead of divining hard facts. I decided to ask my question in two manners: Lowbrow and Highbrow.

Lowbrow got to go first. I started to type, “What is up with evaporation losses?”

By the time I got the first four words typed, Google had given me the following suggestions:

What is up with the numbers on facebook

What is up with the new zodiac

What is up with the number thing on facebook

What is up with mormons and magnets

There you go – those are the four most popular questions being asked today by people whose use of the interrogative involves the phrase “What is up with…?”

When I finished typing in my whole question, I was given some sites to look at, but clearly none of them were going to guide me in my quest for barrel topping knowledge. So I decided to embark on Phase II: asking the same question in a more erudite, lofty way.

“How might one…” I typed.

Up came these top four suggestions:

How might one describe ernest hemingway

How might one treat myasthenia gravis

How might one protein differ from another

How might one treat poisoning from curare

Oh, yes! People who ask questions using a more elegant syntax are clearly not interested in zodiacs and Mormons. They have important literary, scientific and medical things on their minds!

I plowed ahead with my query:

“How might one more deeply understand the phenomenon of evaporation from wine barrels?”

Quick as a flash, Google put up the following ‘suggestion’:

GO SOMEWHERE ELSE WITH YOUR RIDICULOUS QUESTION, YOU OBNOXIOUS CREEP, YOU EFFETE PSEUDO-INTELLECTUAL POSEUR YOU!

So enough of that. Good call, Google, especially given that you're a purportedly dispassionate search engine. You are not the first to call me those things.

At this point Ben, my cellar assistant for the week, arrived, and it seemed appropriate to abandon this activity. We got right down to our task, and had all 29 of our Chardonnay barrels topped up by 10:30. Another 40 barrels of red wine soon followed. I love days like this, when we can go home with a palpable sense of accomplishment, and fall asleep anticipating the arrival in our brains of another thing to ask Google.

Music of the Day:

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - Gold: "Shop Around"

Support Artists: buy the music you like.

Spring Has Sprung?

2011-02-21T10:10:00.000-05:00

The 2010-2011 winter has been a long slog here in the Finger Lakes. Given our latitude, continental climate, and the presence of the Great Lakes (and the lake effect snow that comes with them) you might think that winters wouldn't faze us all that much and, for the most part, you would be absolutely correct.

This winter has been unique in its sustained endurance, however, and that is what has set it apart. Depending on your location in the lakes, there has been snow securely blanketing the ground since just after Thanksgiving. And even if you were in a part of the lakes that escaped snow until mid-December, that was just a matter of being out of a snow band's reach because the temperatures were certainly cold enough.

It's not snowing...

...but it's awful cold.

Truly, even more than the snow, the temperatures have been the reason this winter has seemed so much longer and more difficult than normal. In most years we can count on some sort of "January thaw" to warm things up well into the high 40s or beyond after the depths of winter have settled in. Whether this phenomenon is real or imagined, at the very least it is reasonable to expect a day or two to have temperatures above the average as a result of normal variations. Not so this winter. It has been cold and below freezing without a break for weeks on end - and the lack of any let-up is what has really made this winter memorably difficult.

So it is no surprise with what relish we welcomed the brief respite from the cold that was delivered to the Finger Lakes late last week on the heels of a furious wind storm. Even though it was in the mid-50s you would have thought it was a Caribbean Isle with how happy people were acting, some of the students at Hobart and William Smith were (predictably) walking around in shorts and sandals. As nice as the temperatures were, however, it is always the smell of melting snow and remerging earth and grass that really make me happy in a thaw.

In the winery, the clearest sign that a thaw was temporarily on was the reemergence of the winemaking staff back outside onto the crush pad. After weeks of bone chilling cold and wind, there were tasks to be completed outside that had been put off for marginally warmer days. With high temperatures in the 50s, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that I would be setting up our pressure washer with the single-barrel cleaning attachment outside over the drain. We had three stainless steel drums that had been emptied and well rinsed, but were still waiting to be blasted out with scorching hot water. Checking that item off the to-do list while standing in the stronger rays of the sun may have been the most rewarding part of the entire warm-up.

The Finger Lakes being the Finger Lakes, however, we all knew it was not going to last when it is the middle of February. Sure enough, winter struck back with vengeance on Saturday that even caught people off guard who were prepared for a return to winter. While the sharp winds brought chilly temperatures and clear skies to the rest of the East Coast, up here in the lake snow belt the sudden temperature change meant blowing and drifting snow so numbing that it felt like a moonscape or nuclear winter in the middle of the day.

Then again, this harsh return to winter is fine, so far as I am concerned. After the past 8-10 weeks, we all know that the harshest stretch of winter is behind us. Bring on the snow, for surely the spring cannot be far behind anymore!

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

Radiohead - King of Limbs; "Lotus Flower" (Nothing says winter like a dense Radiohead track):

Support Artists, buy the music you like.

Fox Run 101

2011-02-18T10:22:00.000-05:00

With this post we introduce Lauren Brunhofer, who is working for the next little while with our PR whiz Leslie Kroeger. As you will read, her first days here have brought a few surprises. Being asked to write a guest post for our blog was yet another.

No Rest for the Bloggers

Our lovely new intern, Lauren.

As a college student at Hobart & William Smith Colleges, I had originally viewed the local wineries as a source of recreational activity. Renting a bus, mapping out the best wineries (Fox Run Vineyards to be number one, of course), and enjoying the company of my friends while tasting the many varieties of wines: a day trip like that was always a welcome break from academics. Therefore, I thought accepting this internship would be a great opportunity. I would be able to put to use my previous experience in public relations while learning what goes on behind the scenes at a local vineyard.

Considering that I almost always choose wine over beer and liquor, I felt fairly comfortable arriving at the winery on my first day. I knew the difference between a Chardonnay and a Riesling, so how hard could this be? Little did I know that my wine world was about to be rocked. I saw Chardonnay, Chardonnay Reserve, Riesling Dry, Riesling Semi-Dry, Riesling Reserve, to name only a few of the white wines. What did I get myself into? I don’t know anything about wine! I am a college student on a budget. When I think of wine, I usually think of a box.

As my nerves slowly calmed, I became less intimidated and more inspired. How many college students can say that they've spent a significant amount of time in a winery learning about the wine rather than consuming it in mass quantities? I'd like to think very few. It was then that I realized, as much as I had a huge learning curve ahead of me in order to publicize Fox Run Vineyards efficiently and successfully, I truly wanted to be here.

In order to ensure that fans of Fox Run are kept informed about our wines, we have to make sure that all of our social media are constantly updated. It was my job one day to venture up to the winery to obtain some of what I thought was general information about a few of the wines. I introduced myself as the new public relations intern to our winemakers, and hoped to just jot down the statistics we needed. To my surprise, they just laughed at me. I thought to myself, "What's so funny?” But before I could even get the words out, they began to explain that it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with how much time it would actually take to report that information. Since they didn't want me to return back to the office empty handed, they kindly invited me to observe their wine tasting. My scant knowledge about wine was again put to shame when they proceeded to give me a crash course in Wine Tasting 101. Although a lot of it went over my head, I learned about how to smell the different layers in the wine and how to talk about them.

I had absolutely no idea that I could learn so much in such a short amount of time. As I continue my time here at Fox Run, I plan to expand my wine horizon as much as possible. With such a knowledgeable group of people surrounding me, I cannot imagine this task will be very hard.

Fun With Fortifieds

2011-02-16T13:10:00.000-05:00

Peter Howe, our jack-of-all-trades of long standing, is my go-to guy when I need to know about scheduling the bottling of our wine. He does a monthly inventory of our case goods, fills two or three orders a week from our wholesalers, and ships wine down to the tasting room every Friday. So when some product or other is getting low, he’ll be the one to notice.

A couple of weeks ago he was telling me about something non-wine-related, and then he tossed off a casual addendum: “Oh, and by the way, we’re almost out of Ruby Port.” Port is one of the products we are particularly proud of around here, given that the making of it’s such a challenge and that it has such a loyal and perennial following, so the need to make more of it is always met with eager anticipation. It’s our prompt to assemble samples from the many, disparate barrels of Port we have in the winery at any given time, and commence to make a blend that conforms to our house style.

First, how about let’s talk about what Ruby Port is. “Ruby” refers to the color of the wine, and like the word Port itself, is a borrowing from the Portuguese/British lexicon. (The sweet red fortified wine that is Portugal’s most famous export is actually a British invention.) Most Rubies are, in fact, a pale red color, but ours is and always has been a very dark wine.

The classic Port production process requires a brief but intense flurry of activity at a time when we are not exactly looking for stuff to do: right during vintage. Though you can make Port in the off season, using dry red wine that is back-sweetened and fortified, we find that the best quality is achieved using traditional methods. Perfectly ripe grapes from one of our more muscular varieties (read: not Pinot noir or Cabernet franc) are picked and crushed in the usual way. Yeast is added in the usual way, and we walk away for a day while the yeast culture builds up. Those with strong backs do their usual regular punch downs to incorporate skins with the juice.

That’s just standard-issue red wine making so far. But wait! Call within the next twenty minutes and we’ll throw in What Happens Next at no extra charge!

After about three percent of alcohol is fermented, things take an abrupt turn for the worse for our beloved yeast cells, but a good turn for the humans out there who like Port. It’s time to press out and fortify.

The must is conveyed into our press, and the fermenting juice is then pressed out and pumped into a tank. Meanwhile someone gets a drum of neutral fortifying spirit ready for action. Fortifying spirit, a.k.a neutral grape spirit, is ninety-six percent pure ethanol (the remaining content is water) and is a powerful liquid that must be treated with respect. The vapors are explosive, and the stuff itself must never be ingested without dilution, because it will cause no end of misery to one’s oral mucosa. Otherwise it looks like water. We buy it by the drum from a company that takes dry wine and distills it to a very high degree of purity, much as vodka is made, though vodka and other spirits are cut with water before bottling.

It’s vitally important to act fast here, because the fermentation will continue at a rapid pace if we dawdle, leaving too little sugar in the finished product. Some quick calculations – we call them ‘calcs’ just to shave a few seconds off the process – yield the volume of fortifying spirit that will bring the alcohol concentration up to about 20%. It’s usually around 18% of the total (new) volume.

Max Can Fly? Max Can Fly!

Though Max is too young to taste wine, he can help out with alcohol measurements.

Twenty percent of alcohol is enough to kill outright our yeast cells, even though they have evolved to tolerate fifteen percent or so. By dispatching these microbes, we lock in all that grape sugar, as well as those intense, juicy, fruit flavors.

The really big challenge here is stopping the fermentation at the exact right time, and fortifying with the right amount of alcohol, so that we end up with a wine that is close to being perfectly balanced. The sugar should be a central element, but not cloying; the alcohol should offset that sweetness by providing a gentle heat as well as some richness; the tannins should add some structure and dry the finish out a bit. And key to it all is a very solid core of fruit flavors: blackberries, plums, blackcurrants, what have you. *

Large producers of Port have enough individual lots of wine on hand – hundreds in fact – that even if they don’t nail the exact right fortification time for each one, they can blend their way out of any problems. That’s not the case with us, and our relatively modest production of eight or ten barrels a year. So it’s more crucial to get things right.

Ruby Port customarily spends only a year or two in barrels, as opposed to the five or more years of aging our Fine Old Tawny gets. And the barrels are always what we call ‘neutral’ – they have been used for at least five years for table wine, and virtually all of their oaky flavors are long gone. We don’t want any in this wine. The wine still benefits from the unique oxygen-exchange conditions that barrels afford, and more importantly, the small volume of a barrel means that we can keep many different wines separate during their maturation, the better to provide interesting blending options.

Come blending time, which as you might guess happens just prior to bottling, we need to get samples from all of our barrels and spend a few days evaluating any number of blends before committing to one in particular. In rare cases, the blend we come up with is ready to go, but more often we engage in a bit of last-minute tweaking, much the way chefs adjust the seasoning in a dish.

Ruby Port Samples

The first three glasses are samples from individual barrels. Note the watch glasses,
which allow the aromas in the space above the wine to be concentrated.
The last glass contains neutral grape spirit.

If a given blend needs a little more sugar or alcohol, it’s an easy enough correction to make at this point. It’s hard to remove sugar or alcohol – the only practical way would be to blend in a little dry red wine – but luckily that’s never been necessary. And no, there’s no formula for achieving perfection (x% alcohol plus y% sugar plus z% acid = a good wine). All our decisions are generated by sensory analysis, which is why you’ll see Tricia concocting a succession of ever more alluring blends, Kelby in a pose of Zen-like concentration, and me grimacing and pacing around the lab. And it’s purple teeth all around these days -- and yes, Spandex jackets, one for everyone.

*By the way – and I know I am writing for a pretty knowledgeable audience here – we do not actually add those fruits to the wine. They are just descriptive terms for the naturally occurring scents we pick up.

By: Peter Bell, Winemaker

Music of the Day:

Donald Fagan - Nightfly; "I.G.Y.":

Supports Artists, buy the music you like!

Fighting an Enemy We Cannot See

2011-02-14T10:23:00.000-05:00

So far as winemaking is concerned, our year can be broken down into two tasks. The first task is the creation and making of the wine, the incredibly intense and concentrated burst of work surrounding harvest and usually lasting until sometime around Christmas. The second task, which is no less important, might best be known "protecting" the wine. There is no mistaking that a lot of work goes into the wines to make adjustments or blend after the completion of fermentation, but there is also no denying that our role during this time of the year up until the wine is safely bottled is anything other than glorified stewardship.

Just as a shepherd must always worry about protecting their flock from the omnipresent danger of wolves, in the winery our primary concern is keeping the wine safe from a pervasive and invisible threat. This spoilage agent surrounds us, however, and in almost all other circumstances is necessary for life. I'm referring to oxygen, of course; O2, the eighth element, a molecule that makes up 20.946% of the earth's atmosphere by volume. You might think oxygen is something we would want to be on good terms with in the winery,* but the fact is that we spend nearly as much time restricting undesired oxygen contact with our wines as we do keeping things clean in the winery. That is a lot of time.

So what does this mean in terms of practical action in the winery? You are undoubtedly already familiar with one, long standing protection used in wineries and cellars: bungs in barrels. Not only does the bung prevent free contact between the wine and air, as liquid evaporates from the barrel the bung also allows for a vacuum to form in the space left behind rather than allowing oxygen to fill it in. If you come on a tour of our winery, you will similarly notice that all our tanks are topped with a barrel bung on top of the larger hatch at the top of the tank is sealed down to prevent oxygen ingress as well.

The oxygen threat is most severe when a wine from tanks or barrels is about to be racked, transferred, or filtered to a new (empty) tank in the cellar. In these cases the first task is to get the new tank entirely set-up and then find a way to get the oxygen out of it or prevent it from becoming an issue. In the US this often means connecting a gas cylinder to the bottom of the tank with a gas that is heavier than oxygen and then blasting the living daylights out of the tank for a significant amount of time. In New Zealand and Australia, the tank is often set-up and then a chunk of dry ice is tossed in to sublimate into CO2 gas while the winemaker is free to take care of other tasks rather than babysit the tank. Regardless of the method chosen, the goal is the same to blanket the tank - especially the bottom portions that the wine will begin to fill up - with an inert gas that is heavier than oxygen and therefor pushes it out of the way.

With the tank taken care of, however, there is still more work to do. What about the hoses that will be used to move the wine through the filter or pump - they are filled with ambient (20.946% oxygen) air and we don't want to have the wine come into contact with that and then pump gallons of oxygenated air into our carefully prepared tank! The hoses have to be gassed as a result, with the open end that isn't connected to the gas cylinder pointed in an elevated position so the heavier gas can best push out the ambient oxygen. Alternatively the hoses can be hooked up to the pump and the process can begin by pumping water so the hoses are entirely filled with H20 before hooking them up to the wine, but this wastes water and makes it awkward to judge when the hose has wine in it rather than water so it can be connected to the new tank.

All in all it is not necessarily a complicated threat to prepare for, but it does take a great deal of time to think through all the possibilities and sort out what is best. So long as you are keeping oxygen away from the wine, I have not heard of major reasons why one method would be better than another, so it mostly comes down to personal and winery-to-winery preference. At Fox Run we prefer to gas our tanks using CO2 rather than the more expensive Argon or Nitrogen, especially because you can 'smell' when a tank has been adequately gassed with CO2 as opposed to the other two.

After all this work to keep the wine ensconced away from oxygen, you can probably understand why winemakers treat corked bottles as such a personal affront. When we spend this much time on even the smallest aspects of protecting the wine, having it destroyed by something (a tainted cork) you have no control over - or even a chance to detect - is thoroughly disheartening. But cork taint is a story for another day....

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

*To be fair, we do try to stay friendly with oxygen during the height of vintage when the winey might be filled to dangerous/suffocating capacity with C02 from fermentations.

Music of the Day:

The Postal Service - Give Up; "Recycled Air":

Support Artists, buy the music you like!

2010 Tierce Assemblage: the First Run-Through

2011-02-11T12:33:00.000-05:00

By Peter Bell, Winemaker

Yesterday we (Anthony Road winemakers, Red Newt winemakers, and Fox Run winemakers, plus my guest Ben Peacock of Tousey Winery) met at Red Newt Bistro to taste through 20 tank samples of 2010 Riesling, with the aim of getting started on the latest manifestation of Tierce, our three-winery collaborative Riesling blend. This is something we’ve been doing since 2004, and it’s always a highlight of the year for me.

The Goal of the Tasting... Eventually

At least the cold is good for something.

Before the days of assistant winemakers it was just the three of us huddled in a room, but now our group has grown to true committee size. Good thing we all get along so well.

The Gang's All Here!

Now this is a committee you don't mind serving on.

In between tastes, I jotted down some of the remarks people were making, so as give you, gentle reader, some insight into what kind of dialogue happens when winemakers get together in the same room, and talk not about finished wines but works in progress.

“Boy. Talk about having to recalibrate our palates.”

I said that. We had just tasted through four Fox Run samples and three Anthony Road samples. Moving on to the first of two Red Newt flights, we all found that the aromas and mouth flavors were, at this juncture, exceedingly different from what we’d been tasting. They had their own beauty, but we were temporarily grasping for words to describe them.

“This one is wine like wine we expect from Fox Run.”

Dave said that. Of the four Fox Run samples, one particularly impressed him as being vividly in the Fox Run house style, which I’m afraid I’m not qualified to describe. Something about scented talc, I think.

“I put down ‘sea foam’ and ‘white pepper’ in the finish, which I like, but it might disappear in the blend.”

Kelby said that. He was talking about one of the Red Newt samples. This is one of the benefits of being widely traveled – you can accumulate aroma and flavor memories from a bigger pool of candidates. Sea foam. Landlubbers can only imagine what that tastes like!

Focused on Tasting

Strange, I don't see any sea foam in this glass...

“Very long smoky finish, and that’s fascinating, but I doubt this would work in Tierce.”

Tricia said that. The mammoth difficulty in making a Tierce blend lies in divining which flavors will meld into something unique and fascinating. Here Tricia gave the thumbs down to a wine that was a little too austere to her, post-spitting.

“This wine was one of the most bizarre fermentations I’ve ever experienced. At five or six Brix it developed a distinct candy cane aroma. It was rather disturbing. Has anyone else ever seen that?”

Dave said that. He has been making great Riesling for almost a quarter century, and this is the first time one of his charges has developed a candy cane aroma. Luckily it went away as quickly as it appeared. Five degrees Brix is about three quarters of the way through fermentation, and it’s a time when oddball aromas often pop up. And no, none of us had ever seen it.

“There’s something like cheesecake up front. But I like it.”

Johannes said that. ‘Up front’ means ‘at the moment the wine entered my mouth.’ When wine tasters taste, they pay close attention to how the flavors evolve in the mouth. Early palate (up front) flavors are very transitory, inasmuch as they give way to mid palate flavors and flavors in the finish. Johannes had detected a little burst of flavor that reminded him of something in the dairy realm, not what you normally see in Riesling; but he was not put off by it.

“Dump your 2009 Tierce or drink it. You need that extra glass.”

Brandon said that. We had started the morning’s activities by opening a bottle of 2009 Tierce, which was bottled last August and is not released yet. It was a stunner, and we were reluctant to pour out the remnants from our glasses. We did anyway, after Brandon gave us his to-the-point exhortation. Johannes then took what was left in the bottle, sauntered over to the table of a young couple who had come for lunch, and offered them a taste. They immediately ordered a bottle of the 2008 Tierce from the Bistro’s wine list. Way to go, Mr. Sales Person!

“Evan’s texting us to ask if we’re doing a Tierce Red this year.”

Brandon said that. Our friend Evan Dawson always likes to be kept in the loop when we’re up to something interesting. He’d been a guest observer in a few of our earlier blending sessions, including the one where we put together a red Tierce blend.

“All the wines in this flight are outliers. But they might make sense as a ‘spice’ element.”

Dave said that. One of our approaches has been to identify one wine from each winery that has the wherewithal to act as a ‘central’ character, plus another that is too unusual to play that part but which might add a little interest if we put in one or two percent. That’s what we call ‘spice.’

“In the context of Tierce, both these wines are too smoky.”

Peter Becraft said that. Back to that smoky theme. One of the hallmarks of a classic Finger Lakes dry Riesling is a wisp of smokiness, a flavor that nicely acts as a counterpart to the more overt tree fruit flavors we customarily get. In this case, Peter found a couple of samples that he thought were not subtle enough in this regard.

“I wrote, ‘Wow. Huge pile of papaya, kiwi and star fruit, freshened with lime, drizzled with honey. I want to eat this for lunch. In the mouth, lime, peach, nectarine and melon; brilliant evolution to strawberry, raspberry. Long nectarine/papaya finish.’ ”

Tricia said that. Why we love her.

Why We Love Her, Redux

We can only concentrate so long before we start to crack up.

“Yes.”

Those are my notes, in their entirety, for the same wine.

Four hours passed, and we had completed our first run-through of the 2010 Tierce components. We managed to whittle the contenders down to a manageable nine wines, which was really the point of the meeting. March 14, we reconvene at Anthony Road, this time with pipettes and graduated cylinders and calculators and lots of ideas for blends. (Should we sell tickets?)

A few months from now, we will have our Pretty Ballerina of a wine. She’s in there somewhere.

Music of the Day:

The Left Banke - There's Gonna Be A Storm; "Pretty Ballerina":

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What Was In The Bottle: 2009 Rosé

2011-02-09T10:21:00.000-05:00

The series that Kelby proposed as an occasional blog topic is titled ‘What’s in the Bottle’. In my case, the opportunity to declare this particular wine as still resident in its glass container came and went so quickly that I’m forced to speak in the past tense.

Ah, Rosé, that underappreciated little gem of a wine style that flies under the radar for so many of us.

It’s very counterintuitive: Rosé by its very nature is a straightforward, uncomplicated wine that declares itself on first sight as something that doesn’t need or expect to be taken seriously. You take a bite of food, then follow it with a great gulp of this beautiful, fresh liquid. Why ponder something that is so full of immediacy?

And why would winemakers, of all people, so predictably and consistently put dry Rosé on their lists of favorite wines? Don’t we, more than anyone else, reward complexity and seriousness in our wines? Well in this case, no.

Perhaps there’s a Proustian aspect to this. The sight of a cool glass of Rosé seems more powerful than other wines at evoking a flood of memories, memories that almost invariably contain some of the very elements we find central to a happy existence: summer evenings, fresh seasonal foods, people we’re fond of at their most engaging. The complete absence of any pressure to sound erudite about any topic at all, and the attendant freedom to just sit there and soak up the many sensory stimuli that are there for the taking: birds singing, people laughing, cutlery clinking on plates.

Yes, in parts of the world (I’m really thinking France here, especially the south of France), this drink really does have a seasonality. While North Americans slot pumpkin pie and turkey into autumnal rituals, the French consume millions of liters of Rosé seemingly every time they sit down to lunch during the summer. In any café or bistro in July or August, and you will see chilled carafes of Rosé being served up to most of the patrons. Along come some chewy bread and a salade niçoise, and there’s your meal. There’s your quintessential aestival experience.

Chambourcy, France, July 2009: Wish You Could Have Been There

So why am I writing about this wine in the bleak midwinter?

As my colleague Tricia has already pointed out, I am not particularly good at rituals. She's right: I do indeed go to bed at my usual time every December 31^st, way before midnight. I become acutely uncomfortable if people deign to make a big deal of my birthday. I can’t reliably tell you when Valentine’s Day is, nor can I pull something off on that day that doesn’t make me feel like an obsequious idiot.

So it is with my Rosé consumption patterns. Yes, summertime and the light refreshing foods we eat at that time of year are absolutely perfect for Rosé, but if I feel like some Rosé in February, damn it, I’m gonna open a bottle.

And that’s what I did over the weekend. This was from a small bottling of 2009 wine we offered to our Wine Club members – note the minimalist label that would never fly in the retail world. We actually made a great deal more of this wine than we bottled; the excess went into our Ruby Vixen blush wine (lucky Ruby Vixen).

What may not strike the casual drinker of Rosé is how excruciatingly difficult a wine it is to make well. There’s even an institute in France whose sole purpose is Rosé research and experimentation. At Fox Run we have been making small, home-winemaker quantities of Rosé, using many and various techniques, for some years now, just to learn what it would take to be able to ramp up the volume to a commercial scale.

All that experimentation allowed us to conclude some interesting things about what NOT to do, even though they are accepted Rosé techniques elsewhere.

No Pinot noir or Cabernet franc grapes
No bleeding of juice off the skins
No bleeding of fermenting wine off the skins
No barrel fermentation or maturation
No malolactic fermentation
No obvious residual sugar

Quite a list of prohibitions! But nothing like the ones you see at park entrances in Paris:

The graffto translates as "What CAN we do, then?"

The wine in this bottle was made from Merlot and Lemberger grapes. We crushed them in the conventional way for red wines, but instead of adding a yeast culture right away we let the juice macerate with the skins and seeds for the time it took to go home, take a shower and get some sleep, and then we pressed them out. The resulting vibrant pink juice was thence made as a white wine: the juice was racked and fermented in a stainless steel tank at a coolish temperature.

How to describe this wine? The older I get, the more trouble I have spilling out colorful descriptors, so I will retreat to the language I use to talk about all wines that are good to drink: it was delicious, and it was refreshing.

By: Peter Bell, Winemaker

Music of the Day:

John Conlee - Classics; "Rose Colored Glasses":

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Finger Lakes Wine and the Super Bowl?

2011-02-07T08:18:00.000-05:00

As I get ready to watch the Super Bowl this evening at one of the millions of small gatherings that will pop up across the country today, it certainly seems like this has become one of the biggest and best holidays in the American canon. For my money it is certainly a better holiday than New Year's: more satisfying foods and freedom to make/bring what works, small gatherings of friends as opposed to expensive parties at hotels and restaurants where you know few people, it occurs during the day, and it centers on an actual event as opposed to the arbitrary turn of a clock.

Like any successful holiday, however, the Super Bowl is a success because it provides yet another opportunity for us to get together and share food - especially food that should not be consumed regularly the rest of the year. Regardless of team affiliation or a person's feelings about football, the other uniting force is undeniably the joy we take in watching the ridiculous advertisements that surround the game, then discussing and comparing them more than the post-game analysts do the quarterbacks. Most of the advertisements are ultimately forgettable for the very reason that they tried too hard to be different and got lost in the fray. Some make a splash by being controversial and promptly disappear. The best stay with us or manage to launch an ad campaign that lasts longer than a three hour game.

This is what got me to thinking about Finger Lakes wine in the context of the Super Bowl. Wine pairing with the party food-spreads would be a joke; the food, trappings of the games, the cities involved, even the length of the festivities all beg for beer as a beverage and I wouldn't want to see it any other way. Rather, the advertisements are what pique my interest when it comes to the wine region I love so much. Namely, if the Finger Lakes Wine Region was to purchase an ad slot for the Super Bowl - how would we best capitalize on that exposure? Nevermind that the cost is prohibitive ($3 million for 30 seconds?), or that the demographics might not be ideal, given such a large and general audience how could the Finger Lakes raise their profile in 30 seconds?

I would love to see your thoughts below, because I think our best bet would be to simply introduce our region to the non-wine magazine following world. Some may desire an advertisement that tries to sell the high quality of our wines and the increasingly impressive scores and accolades we are receiving, but as admirable as that is I doubt it would be the best play to a broad audience. For better or worse, the scores speak for themselves and will do the job of selling the wine in stores whether or not we drop $3 million to help publicize them and give free advertising to their issuers. What I want is an ad that, when people are thinking about going to a wine store or enter a wine store, makes them seek out Finger Lakes wines:

Advertisement Idea 1:

[Screen opens to a short montage of video showing vines absurdly trying to grow in the chaos and cacophony of New York City; out of skyscraper windows, taxis, sewer manholes, Lincoln Center, etc.]
[Sharp cut to video of a vineyard looking up and across one of our brilliant blue and cool lakes on a bright sunny day; all green and filled with the sounds of a calm breeze, birdsong, and lazily humming insects.]
[After 10 seconds of that calm video, text and/or a voiceover overlay the vineyard video.]

"That's why there is more to New York Wines than New York City."

[Text fades to new text.]

"Finger Lakes Wine. Good For You. Great With Food."

[Text fades out, leaving behind just the vineyard video and it's calming sounds for final few seconds]

Advertisement Idea 2:

[Nearly identical to Idea 1. Difference in that the opening montage shows a single vine desperately trying to grow out of a sidewalk crack in New York City and getting stepped on, splashed with street water, and the like over the requisite sad and lonely music.]
[Unseen figure rescues the poor vine and gets it to the Finger Lakes vineyard mentioned in Idea 1, the rest of the ad continues as before.]

So there are two ideas I've had. Hopefully, you all will have some more to share and thoughts on whether the idea is a worthwhile exercise or not. We would love to hear them, our region needs it!

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes; "He Doesn't Know Why:"

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