The Oregon Trial

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.

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

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.  

2010 Tierce Assemblage: the First Run-Through

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.

What's In The Bottle: 2006 Reserve Riesling

We’ve been discussing this wine quite a lot recently, because we’re tasting our 2010 Rieslings, and are wondering if Riesling 6 will merit our Reserve designation.  

Unanimously at Fox Run, we agree that in order to be called “reserve”, a particular wine or blend has to be more than unique and of particularly high quality; it has to say something about Fox Run.  That is, our reserve wines are incarnations of our wine fantasies—they are the epitomization of our ideal Fox Run Vineyards’ wines.

In the case of Riesling, we are talking about aroma complexity, the coexistence of intensity and delicacy, silky mouthfeel, and most importantly:  balance.  We’re not talking about garden-variety balance here.  Simple harmony is not enough—we want a racy undercurrent which doesn’t compete with the rest of the wine, but manages to support it, and to lend an edge without compromising deliciousness.

Is it a tall order?  You betcha.  But we’re talking about fantasy, remember?  And so while Fox Run has produced beautiful Rieslings year after year, we’ve only called three of them “reserve”.  

Our first reserve Riesling declared itself in 2005.  It was extremely dry and gossamer.  Ethereal lime was softened by wisps of nectarine and mango.  It was a mineral-driven beauty in what is unofficially dubbed the “Finger Lakes Style”.

Rieslings in that Finger Lakes dry, flinty, austere and yes, Johannes, “elegant” style have captured the attention and admiration of serious wine lovers from all parts of the world.  

In 2006, we had to answer a difficult question:  can a reserve Riesling from the Finger Lakes be made in a semi-dry style?

The question was posed by the wine, really.

As is our custom, during vintage, at least one of us tasted every Riesling every day.  Riesling is a transparent wine—low quality grapes or inept winemaking will be painfully evident in the finished product, so we monitor Riesling fermentation health with helicopter-parent vigilance.    

During our daily Riesling reviews, we get to know the character of our various tanks of wine, lovingly referred to as “Riesling 1”, “Riesling 2”, “Riesling 3”, etc.  These aren’t quality designations, but references to time.  

Our vineyard spans approximately 58 acres, and is divided into patchwork blocks.  Each block is planted to several grape varieties, sometimes determined by the suitability of the site, sometimes determined by the need for more of a particular variety as the vineyard expanded to its current size.  

At harvest, each variety is picked at its appropriate time, one block at a time.  The grapes from each block are processed individually, and the resulting wines are kept separate until we are sure we know where the wine belongs:  is it semi-dry material?  Dry?  Reserve?   Our reds remain distinct wines until the following winter when we at last get them out of barrels.

The first block of any variety processed is called variety 1, and, not surprisingly, we go up from there.  

Despite the clinical names, we become intimately connected with these wines during vintage.   This is especially true of our Rieslings.  

The transformation these wines undergo as they mature from brand new baby to gawky teenager is really quite something.  We learn what flavors should cause concern—stalling fermentation?  Act immediately.  A hint of something Vaseline-like?  Well, that’ll turn into rock and smoke—gorgeous.  

When the fermentations have completed, we slow our monitoring.  We still taste all of the Rieslings, but on weekly or twice-weekly schedule.  At this stage, we’re assuring that the predictions we made during vintage are borne out.  And we’re looking for superstars.  

It was about this time in 2007 that I received an early-morning phone call from Peter.  He said, “I think I have found our Reserve, but I want to know what you think.”  I couldn’t wait to get to the winery.

When he showed me the wine, it was instantly clear:  this wine was extraordinary.  But, it was semi-dry.  We wondered if consumers would be confused by the switch from a dry to a semi-dry Reserve.  We wondered if a semi-dry Riesling would be an appropriate choice for a reserve Riesling from the Finger Lakes.  

We asked ourselves if the wine was delicious (yes), and complex (yes) and serious (yes).  Above all, it was a perfect semi-dry Riesling from Fox Run.  That made the decision easy. 

We reaffirmed that we weren’t making reserve wines for critics, but as a personal offering of our vision, rendering the question of appropriateness unimportant.  We couldn’t imagine a more brilliantly balanced, more delicious semi-dry wine.  

And we trusted consumers to understand the reason for the difference in styles from year to year, and to be excited about the expression of vintage in the various wines.  They did not disappoint us.  

Furthermore, the critics loved the wine as well, raving about its explosive flavors and poise, and proving that we alone are at risk of defining our Great Wine with narrow parameters.  

When the wine was bottled in the spring of 2007, it displayed a stunning mélange of apricot, mango and lime with a huge dose of juicy tangerine—a departure from Fox Run’s more typical range of flavors.  Our Rieslings tend to feature lime (juice or zest) and minerals with fleshier, tropical notes tucked in the background.  The rich orange notes here begged for a touch of sweetness and a supple mouthfeel, which were provided by the little bit of residual sugar we left in the wine.  Acid streaked through the lushness, enlivening the rich flavors and imparting true electricity.  It was stunning—that poise, that balance.   What a wine.  

So, tonight, I sit with a bottle before me, curious about the changes wrought within.  I’m pouring a glass, and will share my notes with you.

Nose:  lemongrass, peach, lime juice, bit of orange zest—vivid orange is no longer the dominant aroma.  Rich and golden with a touch of something green and fresh—clover and bay leaf—first signs of petrol?  River rock underneath it all.  Some aged Riesling character showing.  The fruit aromas no longer appear parade-style, one after the other—beautifully integrated and slightly muted.  Developing layers of vanilla nougat and toasted hazelnut and almond.  Entrancing.

Mouth:  Wow!  Acid still prominent.  Very fresh.  Mouthfeel is soft, but not the least bit flabby.  Ah, there’s that tangerine--burst of juicy orange and lime, plus some raspberry notes.  Age is more apparent on the nose than in the mouth.  Some hazelnut creeping in, plus some creaminess towards the finish.  Acid does not persist as long into the finish as I remember, but the flavors linger after the perception of acid fades.

Lucky me, that’s what’s In The Bottle tonight.  

I think I have some rice noodles, scallions, soy sauce, ginger, lime, bok choy and chicken in the kitchen, and I am predicting there’s a delicious food/wine pairing in my very near future.  The slight sweetness in the Riesling acts as a countermeasure to spicy heat, so I may brave a dash of sriracha—yum.

If you bought some of our 2006 Reserve Riesling, thanks, and I hope you held on to some—this baby’s aging beautifully.

We’ll keep our eye on Riesling 6; it’s got a tough act to follow, and we won’t compromise our vision.  As spring waxes, we’ll let you know if 6 will be a delicious component of our semi-dry Riesling, or if it’s destined to be a Superstar.  

By: Tricia Renshaw, Assistant Winemaker

Music of the Day:

• Cee-Lo Green - The Lady Killer; "No One's Gonna Love You":

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Summertime, and the Riesling Is Ready

The end of last summer seems remarkably close in my memory compared to the months it has been; mostly due to vintage beginning with the dawn of September and swallowing up the following two and a half months... which then disappeared into the holidays.  Now that I can think about those halcyon days, I was recently feeling nostalgic for a fun visit from a good college friend back around Labor Day.  There is no doubt that I took a great deal of joy in showing him around our lovely Finger Lakes, and it was as eye opening for him as it was refreshing for me to visit the world class wineries they are populated with.

My friend had just come up from the wonderful wine bar Terroir in New York City, where he had conveniently been inundated and successfully brainwashed by their "Summer of Riesling" celebrations.  Coming from the West Coast, it did take him a few sips to recalibrate his palate to the acid-driven structure of our rieslings, but he was soon very impressed with what he was tasting.  

After the two of us had tasted at a few wineries he made the comment that he was glad to have visited Terroir beforehand because they had put him on the path to realizing "that Riesling is a great summer wine."  This comment was meant earnestly and honestly, and I took it in that spirit without saying another word.  Nevertheless, it is a sentiment that has obviously lodged itself in my brain for several months in the limbo between thought provoking and unintentional, backhanded compliment.  What exactly does that mean?  And what should it mean for those of us who fancy, and fancy ourselves, riesling producers?

As far as riesling is concerned, I hope that the answer is not that riesling is a pleasant, bracing wine for warm weather and sun.  No doubt dry rieslings are spectacularly refreshing and one of the wine world's best and only pairings with refreshing summer foods and salads.  Just because it is a white wine, however, does not mean it isn't a serious or powerful wine for the colder months as well.  In fact, the most logical pairings for riesling in my mind are distinctly cold weather meals linked to the traditional foods consumed in regions that have taken the grape to such great heights; Germany and Alsace with pork and roast birds. 

In the end, I think my friend's comment is merely another step in America's flirtation with Riesling wines.  Even in our most erudite circles, white wines are thought of in terms of femininity and lacking seriousness compared to our Anglo-historical fascination with claret.  Admitting that rieslings are actually quite interesting and fantastic for summer may just be the next step in our romancing of the riesling grape.  Perhaps as American consumers discover that rieslings with sugar can be serious wines (not to mention some of the most stunning wines in the world), they will simultaneously discover the place of riesling at the dinner table that isn't on the patio.

So are Americans romancing the riesling?  As a riesling lover and producer, I think it is probably the other way around!

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

• The Beach Boys - Pet Sounds; "God Only Knows" (In the same vein of 'what is appropriate when,' I am more and more drawn to the warm and springy sounds of The Beach Boys as a break during the depths of winter):

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But I Digress

The need to write a blog post every week or so has inspired me to troll through my haphazard collection of older books on wine, looking for amusing little sources of inspiration. These are mostly books written for the amateur wine enthusiast, which I was at one time, before I plunged into wine as a profession.

One title, published about 30 years ago, includes a very creditable section on what winemaking actually entails, in pictorial form. Titled “The Winegrower’s Year”, or something along those lines, it depicts an older mustachioed gentleman in a series of twelve hand-illustrated panels going thorough the putative cycle of his production year. The guy was certainly a polymath: not only did he make the wine, but he also appeared to do most of the vineyard work, as well as peddle his finished product to appreciative consumers and retailers.

Anyway, January’s picture showed him taking a well deserved break from his travails at a ski resort, presumably in the French or Swiss Alps, his long hand-knit scarf trailing him as he sped down the hill.

A more recent book, the fifth edition of The World Atlas of Wine, has a similar section, but the pictures have been updated, and now the jobs are divided among a number of different people, including women. No ski vacation either: January’s picture shows a warmly dressed fellow out in the vineyard pruning his dormant grapevines, while his counterpart in the winery is described as busily attending to her malolactic fermentations.

Here at Fox Run there continues to be plenty to do, though our tanks and barrels are asking very little of us in terms of intervention. Fermentations are long since finished. Winery staff do well to remember to wear warmer clothing these days, not because we’re outside pruning, but because the heat is turned way down in order to facilitate a process called cold stabilization. Tricia has promised to do an exposé on that subject in a future post, so I won’t talk more about it here (in fact, she tells me that it’s going to be a shocking exposé, so stay tuned).

This is also a fine time of year to pay visits to our fellow winemakers throughout the Finger Lakes, partly as a social gesture, but more importantly to taste their wines and see how they compare to our own. Recalibration of our sensory apparatus is a motivational factor too. Let me tell you: there are some stunning reds and whites out there from the 2010 vintage, led as usual by the illustrious and precocious Riesling.

You didn’t think I could get through an entire blog post without mentioning Riesling, did you? Even if I were composing a treatise on Current Trends in Shoe Polish, I would somehow find a way to work that grape into my narrative. And you must know by now that a near-religious worship of Riesling is not confined to our small band of fanatical winemakers either. Here’s a fragment from an article in a journal called The Riesling Report:

“What are your favorite grape varieties?” someone asked noted English wine critic Jancis Robinson during an on-line chat session a little over a year ago.

“Riesling”, she replied without hesitation.

“And your favorite blends of grapes?” added the persistent interviewer.

“Riesling and Riesling”, she shot back, as quick as a flash. “Riesling blended with Riesling would be pretty good.”

Jancis Robinson is someone whom I would call The Doyenne of Intelligent Wine Writing if I wanted to sound pretentious. (Pretentious? Moi?) She enjoys so much admiration among the winemaking staff here that we call her by her first name only, as if we were close friends:

“According to Jancis…”

“Let’s look it up in Jancis.”

“WWJS?”

Jancis knows the difference between ‘variety’ and ‘varietal’ as well as the true meanings of the words macroclimate, mesoclimate and microclimate. And she’s not afraid to insist with a gentle imperiousness that these words are not interchangeable. When the time comes for us to get on our soapbox about those terms, you will be hearing from her again.

By Peter Bell, Winemaker

Music of the Day:

• Gordon Lightfoot - The United Artists Collection; "Song For A Winter's Night":
• Click to Stream Song

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Nature's Air Conditioning

After writing about the vineyard selection riesling last week, it is almost as if the ears of our small drum of pied de cuve fermentation were burning! That fermentation had been slowly winding its way from a massive amount of sugar towards our target mark of somewhere around 63 grams per liter. Against all expectations and signals to the contrary, however, it decided to hit that mark well ahead of schedule last Thursday.

Following the initial burst of fermentation when we first inoculated the juice in October, we only checked in on the progress of the fermentation periodically to see that everything was continuing without major problems. Compared to entire tanks that we inoculated normally this would seem like a stunning lack of oversight. Our standard fermentations normally wrap-up in one to two weeks and thus require near-daily checks on how far the fermentation has progressed so we can stop it in time for the style of wine being made.

The small drum of the riesling we decided to ferment in this manner, however, was only dropping around 3-5 grams per liter of sugar per week.  Carefully monitoring the fermentation on a day-to-day level was therefore not entire helpful and rendered useless; the changes over any 24 hour period were too small to be reliably measured.

Never having experimented with this style of fermentation before, we were under the impression that the rate of fermentation would brake even further to a near standstill over the dead of winter.  Peter and Tricia became concerned last week that the fermentation had entirely halted and the drum needed to be moved to a warmer place from our winery into our warehouse.  Nevertheless, over the previous few weeks the rate of fermentation - at least in terms of how quickly sugar was being metabolized - had held steady and perhaps even increased to 6 grams per liter per week.

On my last day of work last week I decided to check on the riesling as well, both in taste and numerically, given Peter and Tricia's concerns that the fermentation may have finally halted.  To my surprise (and Peter's as well, when I called to confirm the course of action with him), the fermentation had actually sped up in the last week and we were dead-on the sugar level we hoped to stop the wine at. As opposed to the tanks of wine back during harvest that require artificial cooling via glycol jackets to halt a fermentation, the timing of this riesling could not have been much better.

At the end of the day, I simply rolled the drum outside onto our crush pad and am letting the icy temperatures we are (sometimes) fortunate to have here in the Finger Lakes do their work.  Frankly, the only question was what to write down in our record-keeping book.  Normally we write in "Cooling On" for a tank that we are chilling; this time I just wrote down "Moved Outside."  I think it speaks for itself.

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team


Music of the Day:

• Giacomo Puccini - Turandot; "Nessun Dorma" (after the version in Tricia's last post, this one comes from Aretha Franklin who performed it at the same pitch, without any rehearsal, and with 15 minutes advance notice when her friend Luciano Pavarotti was receiving an award and found himself too ill to perform):

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Wine Description: Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself

The following are two verbatim wine reviews from separate publications:

First Wine:

“A full, warm and seductive wine with flavors of sweet berries, damp earth and chocolate. Another wine with loads of honest flavor.”

Second Wine:

“Color: ruby. Nose: Black cherry aromas with unattractive medicinal/rubbery overtones. Palate: better than nose – ripe though not intense fruit – minty/medicinal flavor – tannins are on the harsh side – hard to see it improving.”

Reading these descriptions, it would be easy to discern which is the better wine. Or would it? It turns out that both reviewers were tasting the exact same wine, an inexpensive Australian red, at about the same time. Notice that there is almost no overlap in the two reviews. The wildly diverging descriptions are a reflection of differences in the tasters’ perception, something that cannot be standardized from one taster to another no matter how much experience or training they have. The same wine elicited a favorable response in one taster, and a very unfavorable one in another.

Here’s another example, in this case the same sparkling wine, written up in two different wine magazines: 

“This well-integrated, perfectly aged brut is still crisp and showing hints of fresh apple, along with beeswax, citrus and gooseberry. It shows off with a gorgeous mousse, and persistent flavors that linger without cracking up.” 

“Has mature aromas and flavors and enough freshness to carry the day. Offers toast, pear and white pepper flavors that grow nicely in the mouth. Finishes with persistence.” 

Here we see that the two reviewers had some commonality in their experience with this wine: both rather liked it, and both noted its ‘developed’ character (perfectly aged/mature) and its length (persistent flavors that linger/Finishes with persistence). [Fellow linguistic pedants, please ignore the blatant tautology contained in the phrase ‘persistent flavors that linger’.]

But what’s notable is the lack of any overlap in the ‘smells like/tastes like’ terminology the two tasters used, those descriptors I’ve put in boldface. Is one taster nailing the description, while the other is just grasping at straws? Are they both just making stuff up? I would say neither is the case. Each taster ably described what he or she perceived to be the attributes of the wine, but they happened to come up with completely different words.  

We run into this phenomenon so often in the wine community that it no longer has any capacity to surprise or perturb. 

“I’m getting smoke, plum and dried herbs”, says one taster. 

“I’m getting woolly-mammoth notes,” counters another fellow, who happens to be a visiting caveman. 

The first taster could take the obnoxious route, with a response along the lines of,  “Well, if only you’d taken xyz wine course/visited the region/met the owner, you’d agree with me,” or he could just say, “Huh. Isn’t that interesting,” and leave it at that.

“Wine writing is … a series of elaborately plausible compliments paid to wines,” writes Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. “The real question is not whether…wine writers are big phonies but whether they are any bigger phonies than, say, book reviewers or art critics. For with those things, too, context effects are overwhelming. All description is impressionistic, and all impressions are interpretive.” 

This, by the way, encapsulates one of the three great challenges in coming up with back label text: by definition, the terms we use to describe the wine inside the bottle are wrought from the personal sensory experience of one or two people. Expecting customers to experience the wine in the same way is asking a lot, though we do it anyway. (The other two challenges: condensing a lot of thoughts into a few well-chosen, cliché-free sentences, and avoiding terms that most people won’t understand.)

This week, Tricia and I engaged in one of our regular reviews of the 2010 Rieslings in tanks (Kelby is away for a few days). Each of us smelled and tasted independently and made notes. I reproduce those notes here to show that two very qualified individuals, who also happen to have actually made the wines they are tasting, will still describe them in different ways. I also thought it would be fun to commit the notes to this blog, and then do it again in a few months’ time, to demonstrate how these suckers can evolve in the tank.

Please note that what you are about to read was not meant to be anything more than internal-memo-style jottings. Writing for an audience is an altogether different exercise. The // slash marks are our shorthand way of separating aroma notes from flavor and mouthfeel notes.

There are seven individual tanks of Riesling in the winery, whose volumes range from 55 gallons to 2500 gallons. Rieslings 3,4,5,7 and 8 have been subsumed into larger blends, so you won’t see them listed here. Here we go:

Riesling 1 

Tricia: Smoke, camphor, lime, sandalwood // Lemon, toasted marshmallow, smoke. Finish is very tropical: mango, guava, passionfruit. Mouthfeel very plush but acid keeps it lively.

Peter: A little reduced. With aeration, faint fruit cocktail and marigolds. Not opening up yet // Much better in mouth. Perhaps balanced a little too dry for this style [semi-dry]. Some phenolics.

Riesling 2 

Tricia: Lemon curd, bay leaf, roasted fennel, banana, papaya // Creamy, banana, lemon, vanilla. A little broad. Love the lime fruit. Needs a touch of acid.

Peter: Forward tree fruits, apricot, mandarin orange. Clean // Bigger mouthfeel than normal for a dry style. Very clean. Balance almost perfect. No phenolics. Long. Wants some minerality.

Riesling 6 

Tricia: Pineapple, lime, tangerine, juniper // Juicy mango and lime. Some electricity here. Mouthfeel lush. Acid nice through midpalate. A touch heavy in finish? Try touching up acid. Long tangerine finish.

Peter: Still quite yeasty. Fennel, mint, smoke. Almost no fruit yet // Tight, slatey, lime peel, archetypal Fox Run dry style. Flavors explode midpalate. 

Riesling 9

Tricia: Apricot, banana, pear // Oily shale, salt air, banana and lemon zest.

Peter: Raspberry starting to show // Very lean, tense; acid dominates and wraps around other flavors. The most austere. A little too much wood smoke.

Riesling 10

Tricia: SO₂, lemon, peach // Peach and lemon, tea. Lemon ice persists. Very long and clean.

Peter: SO₂. Very clean tree fruit – apricot and peach // Flavors build. Very soft, but acid’s almost perfect. Long. These tree fruit flavors are not typical of a dry style.

Riesling 11
Tricia: Brioche, peach, mango // Burst of tangerine, mango, raspberry. Electricity happening here – rich but also intense; bright spine of acid. Long finish of mango, lime and honey.

Peter: Germanic. Cantaloupe rind, honeydew melon, some funk // That German smell, juicy, lots of fermentation flavors. Still progressing.

Riesling 12

Tricia: Lemon, apple, ginger // Peach, honey and jasmine. Also Golden Delicious – finishes golden apple, lemon, vanilla, tea and blackberry.

Peter: Apple skin, spice, mango, papaya, a little marmalade // Apple skin, cinnamon, marmalade. Acid’s high but meets the sugar.

Kelby was not able to participate in this tasting, but you may have read his descriptions of three of these wines in Monday’s post. If you’re up to the task of cross-referencing, the wines he writes about are our numbers 12, 11 and 10 respectively. Guess what? His descriptions are different again.

- by Peter Bell, Winemaker

Music of the Day:

• Sly and the Family Stone - Greatest Hits; "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)":

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Late(r) Harvest Riesling Update

For those who remember Tricia's post on the late(r) harvest, block selected, riesling that we are making this year, I wanted to give a quick update on the progress of the wine.  This wine is a bit of a challenge to analyze given that we have never before made one in a low alcohol, higher sugar style, and thus do not have memory guideposts for how what we are sensing now will evolve down the road.  With that as forewarning, however, we hope others will share in the discovery of this wine with us as we explore how it goes in the Finger Lakes.  Here's where things stand as of last week:

• Low Alcohol, High Sugar, Standard Fermentation:  This riesling finished fermenting to the point we desired quite awhile ago, at which point we put it in a small tank outside and threw on the chilling to arrest the fermentation.  When we had hit a certain level of sugar fermented in the wine, we began regularly checking the percent alcohol to make sure we hit a provisional target somewhere between 8% and 8.5% ABV.  Our belief is that we would have somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 grams per liter of sugar left in the wine left at those alcohol levels, which would hopefully be balanced out by the wine's natural acidity.  After halting the fermentation (back in early November) and then hitting the wine with sulfur to kill the yeast, we tested the sugar content and determined that our final amount in the wine was right at 63 grams per liter.  This wine is phenomenally exciting to us all at the moment; it has stayed pristine and clean, but the aromas and flavors are out of this world.  Crushed pineapple, blood orange, hyacinth, sandalwood, bergamot, and a whole range of other descriptors come to mind when we taste this to see how it is progressing.  Given the low alcohol and high sugar content of the wine, it naturally still tastes very much like juice at this stage - a reality we were expecting and prepared for.  The question will be what this becomes as the wine ages and the juiciness recedes!
• Low Alcohol, High Sugar, Pied de Cuve Fermentation: Same fruit as for the wine above, but a small amount in a stainless steel container that we decided to ferment in a decidedly more Old World style.  Rather than inoculating the juice with a substantial amount of commercial yeast and then providing the yeast with nutrients to keep it fermenting happily away, this wine was inoculating with a much smaller amount of active yeast cells by transferring several gallons of an active riesling fermentation into the juice.  The result is a fermentation that takes much longer and that we intentionally chose not to feed; resulting in a different aroma profile and mouthfeel.  Believe it or not, this wine is still fermenting and is likely a week or so away from the target sugar/alcohol level we are aiming for (given the weather this time of year, however, it means that we will simply have to take the drum outside and let it sit for the temperature to fall low enough to halt the fermentation)!  In comparing it side-by-side to the wine above, it is certainly clear to us that the fruit for the two wines was the same.  Having said that, this wine is distinct and has complex aromas that we are still unsure about.  Are they a good sign?  A bad sign?  Simply a new sign due to an unfamiliar fermentation practice for us?  That remains to be seen, but it is certainly different.  
• Dry Riesling:  From the same block of very special fruit, we decided to let a portion of the fermenting juice from the standard fermentation go all the way to dryness to see how the fruit lent itself to this style.  There is no way to get around the fact that the riesling was spectacular and, frankly, is not going to look bad in any style of wine.  Nevertheless, this dry version of the wine (which finished fermenting in mid-November, a week or so after the first wine mentioned above) is a fascinating comparison and could very likely become the Fox Run component of Tierce 2010.  The spice notes are still there, as are some of the orange fruits, but the crackling acidity and citrus profile of this dry riesling style simultaneously remind us of what we look for in Finger Lakes dry rieslings and remind us of flavors we have never associated with that style.  There is a breadth and weightiness to the fruit flavors that goes against the mineral driven and fleet style of what we usually consider a Finger Lakes dry riesling, but not in an unpleasant way.

The three wines coming from this small block of fruit that we were fortunate to be able to let hang this past autumn are distinct from one another, distinct from most anything else we have ever had in the Finger Lakes, and have only passing resemblance to riesling styles from elsewhere in winemaking world.  How will the low alcohol style progress as it ages from the beautiful, yet young/juicy, stage it is at now?  Will the pied de cuve fermentation be interesting or too interesting?  Is the dry riesling style a success or clumsy?  We were excited about starting this riesling project back during vintage, but the fact that it is spawning more questions than answers at this point makes us even more excited.

By:  Kelby Russell, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

• Ella Fitzgerald - Ella Wishes You A Swinging Christmas; "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (featuring the original, and far better, lyric of "Through the years we all will be together/if the fates allow/until then we'll have to muddle through somehow."  How the "hang  your shining star upon the highest bow" version gained popularity boggles the imagination, it is almost a non sequitur in the context of that verse and takes away from the emotional punch!):

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Ruminating on Food and Wine

In the absence of Tricia today (she's been swamped with obligations at home and the winery this week; end-of-month bulk-inventory reports are surprisingly complicated), a wanted to add to some of the ideas that Peter brought up on Wednesday.  Bringing up food, wine, and especially the pairing thereof is always a way to get us talking and brainstorming.  With that in mind, here are a few interesting guidelines to wine and food pairings we've discovered at a Fox Run Tasting or on our own:

• Port with Savory Foods.  Unless I am mistaken, we haven't taken the opportunity to really write about our port program here at Fox Run and the deep pride and enjoyment we take in crafting this fortified wine.  For better and for worse, many people instantly associate port with chocolate, desserts, blue cheese, and cigars.  With the exception of the last item in that list, I can certainly vouch that port has a unique place in pairing with each of those items.  Yet whether you're drinking the more jam-like Ruby Port style (younger and bottle aged) or the brown sugar and caramel Tawny Port style (aged in neutral oak for many years), don't overlook these wines when it comes to non-sweet foods!  Never will you want a big heaping glass of a wine this intense, but it can pair beautifully with hearty, earthy, or rich meats and stews.
• Riesling with Pork.  Riesling is one of the best wines to pair with food out there; it's like the Mickey Mantle of the wine world.  To wit, we've been very excited to read about the ever-increasing number of restaurants in New York City and elsewhere catching onto this fact and propelling riesling forward.  You can pair it with non-cream based seafood preparations and watch the wine and food build each other up, or with roast poultry and enjoy its refreshing aspects.  As a foolproof pairing, however, I can think of few pork dishes that would not be fantastic with Riesling.  Maybe I am just a sucker for the historical linkage of riesling and hearty pork dishes with Germany; but everything from pork roast to grilled pork chops to pulled pork and BBQ (seriously!) seems to only get better when Riesling is matched with it.  The only question you need to settle is whether you want a dry, semi-dry, or semi-sweet style to meld or contrast the natural richness of the pork.
• Barrel Aged (Reserve) Chardonnay with Seafood.  Especially if the preparation of the seafood involves cream or butter.  Peter pointed out one instance where this pairing did not work out for us, but the fact it was worth singling out also underscores what a spectacular (and easy) pairing this normally is.  One of the most memorable wine pairings I've ever had at home involved making up some lobster ravioli (from Rochester's fantastic Ravioli Shop) in a simple butter sauce and then opening up our Reserve Chardonnay.  It was only supposed to be an easy, yet festive, meal on Christmas Eve as we were rushing around - but the pairing with that wine turned simple into transcendent.  Butter richness, lemon curd, vanilla, and a whole host of other wonderful aromas and flavors came out to complement the food and vice-versa.

This is a huge subject to tackle, and hopefully we will return to it  again if anyone is interested in more general guidelines for Finger Lakes Wines.  Just remember that there is always an element of surprise to having food and wine together; the point is to have fun.  And if you are pairing your food with a wine from the Finger Lakes, you can be assured that you have a great chance of it pairing nicely.  The style of red and white wine we make around these Lakes is some of the most food-friendly and refreshing that exists, and it is right in your backyard!

By: Kelby Russell, Winemaking Staff

Music of the Day:

• Paul Simon; "Getting Ready For Christmas Day" (new single from an upcoming album):

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What to be Thankful For

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, my family and I discovered and thoroughly investigated what I consider to be the greatest piece of software ever invented...Pandora. As I understand it, if you have a wireless internet connection you can set it up. We have wireless speakers and a little thing that looks and feels like a PDA and you can basically go around your house and choose and play any music, any radio station (that is streamed), any song that is downloaded into your computer. Or maybe play a CD in one room and other music in another room with one fingertip touch. My life is changed. It is unbelievable. Your favorite music all the time.

So last night we sat at the table after a delicious meal (except for my sweet potato biscuits - those were a flop - note to self: don't try new recipes on Thankgiving) and created playlists from the artists that my Mother used to make us listen to when we were growing up. The favorite of the night...Shirley Bassey radio!!! Santana, The Fifth Dimension, Jackson 5. What a riot. Each time you choose an artist Pandora will save that "station" and it will choose songs similar to that artist. It is magical.

What if there was a Pandora for wine?? If you loved, for instance, a flowery, mango-ish, perfectly balanced semi-dry riesling from Fox Run Vineyards a little voice would pop up and say, "well if you loved that wine, then you will love........" what a great viral selling tool for Finger Lakes wines. And the little voice would only suggest Finger Lakes rieslings because this is the only place that such wine is available. We are so lucky to be living and working here in this beautiful place.

What if there was a Pandora for winemaking teams?? That would be a complete failure. I can tell you for sure that there is no other team like the 3 amigos up there. Peter Bell is my hero. First of all, a man who speaks six languages makes me swoon. I am consistently amazed at the quality of every wine that shows up in the tasting room. One of the first times I met Peter he came down to the Cafe for a wine & food pairing and as we were tasting the 2006 Gewurztraminer I blurted out that he was a genius and he gave me a big hug. The talented Ms. Tricia Renshaw is quite a find with her uncanny olfactory memory and fantastic descriptors. When I first came to Fox Run I spent most of the night at an event with Tricia and the next day called up to the winery to announce to Peter that I was madly in love with her. Then there is Kelby J. Russell who started as an intern. He sent letters to lots of Finger Lakes wineries and I think Peter was one of only two people to respond...we are so lucky he did. Kelby graduated from Harvard, and basically has been traveling around the world in order to execute what I think is a very calculating strategy to find the perfect life. A brilliant, cool, winemaker-marketing expert-tech head-music fan-foodie. He is mainly responsible for this blog and keeping it alive.

As I sit here finishing this post I am listening to Nina Simone radio on Pandora which leads us to Charlie Spivak, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald, Big Mama Thorton, Rosemary Clooney, Diana Krall, Nat King Cole, etc!!!!! I am so thankful.

Here is my shameless Fox Run plug...sorry Kelby J. Russell: Today only!! Come to the winery and buy our delicious 2007 Meritage and get a bottle of our even more delicious 2007 Pinot noir FREE.

By: Leslie Kroeger, Marketing & Jack-of-all-trades


Music of the Day:

• Stanton Moore - Take It To The Street; "Who Took The Happiness Out?"
• Ed. Note: Leslie wins the award for being the first person to select a song I couldn't find a video for on Youtube to plug.  The selection is fantastic, however, and can be heard for free via the Amazon link above.  Check it out!

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Autumn Repose

I hear it may snow tonight.  I’m not really surprised—despite last week’s balmy weather, we are in the middle of November.  We’ve lost our yellows and reds; the trees are skeletal, and everything is green or brown.  The lake and sky are steely, and it is so still.  It feels like snow.  

At the winery, we’ve moved inside, and are tending to those homey things that get put off during the frenzy of vintage.  

Kelby spent the morning scrubbing tanks.  It turns out that Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are wonderful for shining stainless steel.  Peter did some laboratory analysis, started a filtration, and answered e-mails.  I vacuumed the warehouse- and winery-floors.   None of it’s glamorous, but it’s essential.  

Kelby’s roommate from his Harvard days, Dave, came to the winery today.  He’s very friendly and has an easy smile.  He fit right in here, and kept busy at the computer while Kelby finished his work.  We all waited for a visit from our friends from Anthony Road.  

Around 11:00, Johannes Reinhardt (winemaker) and Peter Becraft (assistant winemaker) came to review our wines with us.  We gathered samples of all of our Rieslings, as well as our Pinot gris and Gewurztraminer.  

We tasted and talked.  We compared harvest figures (°Brix, pH, and titratable acidity) with those from Anthony Road.  We made predictions about how our wines might develop: How will this Riesling taste when it’s reached dryness?  Will the acid profile be just right when we blend these two Rieslings?  After we filter this Riesling, will it show the clarity we’re after?  Should Riesling 6 be released as a Reserve?  We discussed flavors, and textures, and palate-weight.  Johannes gave us his highest praise.  “Elegant,” he quietly declared, as he sipped and nodded.

When we tasted our low-alcohol style Riesling, Johannes excused himself to fetch some samples from his winery, which is just down the road.  

He returned with two fascinating bottles: one contained their low-alcohol Riesling.  The other held a Riesling that they had allowed to spontaneously ferment (that’s to say, they did not add any yeast).  They were made last year, and will not be released for a few years yet.  These styles need time to develop into the beautiful and complex wines they will surely become.  

Our small laboratory seemed a bright and cheery island in nature’s gray.  It was warm, not only from all the bodies in our little space, but from the outpouring of enthusiasm and friendship.  

It’s one o’clock, now.  Johannes and Peter Becraft just slid away to attend to other tasks.  Kelby and Dave packed into Kelby’s car; they’re off to visit old haunts in Boston.  Peter is finishing up his filtration, and I, of course, am writing to you.  

It occurs to me how the winery at this time of year is so much like many of our homes in late autumn.  There is a lot of cleaning to be done, but it’s not all drudgery.  The dreary days are often brightened by visits from friends we haven’t seen in a while.  And it’s always nice to be puttering inside when it’s blustery outside.  

Ask me in February how I feel about being indoors while gales are blowing, but for today, as geese are silhouetted against arctic clouds in a chrome sky, as pale-gold barren cornstalks wave about, as friends enjoy with us the bounty of our harvest, I am extraordinarily happy.  

By: Tricia Renshaw, Assistant Winemaker

Music of the Day:

• Pink Martini - Sympathique;  Sympathique:

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Socratic Dialogue Yields Quick Results

Last year, a good friend of ours, Evan Dawson, challenged the Finger Lakes wine community with a question: Why don’t we make a low-alcohol style Riesling like Germany does?

Our responding question at the time seemed straightforward and air-tight: given that our Rieslings are beautifully balanced at around 11-12% alcohol; given that our cool climate blesses us with Rieslings which are nuanced and crisp; given their vibrant flavors that range from lime zest to mango purée to pineapple to tangerine; given that sometimes there are notes of fennel or bay leaf, and always some alluring river rock (who else can boast of river rocks?)…

Why would we want to copy a wine style from another part of the world, when our own Rieslings are so beguiling?

Fast-forward to last July, and you’d find Peter, Kelby and me at the Riesling Rendezvous in Seattle, Washington, a winemaker-heavy think tank devoted to this most singular grape variety. We, along with several other winemakers from the Finger Lakes, had the opportunity to taste hundreds of Rieslings from around the world.  Over the course of three days, we participated in a slew of blind tastings and seminars, and came to some interesting conclusions.  

First of all, you’ll be proud to know how well our local Rieslings showed among those from long-established Rock Star producers.  Without knowing what they were tasting, the crowd -- comprised of Riesling producers from Alsace, Germany, Austria, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the US (both coasts as well as Michigan) -- extolled the enchanting flavors, beautiful acidity, purity and length of the Finger Lakes examples. 

We weren’t at all surprised to rediscover how delicious our Rieslings are, but it was certainly nice to have our firmly-held beliefs reaffirmed in an international forum. 

We were also not the least bit surprised to find some delicious, and different, expressions of Riesling being made around the world.

You might be surprised to learn that one of those styles was, yes, a low-alcohol sweet Riesling from Germany.  What we admired in those examples was the balance achieved in a wine which should, by rights, taste like sugary juice.  These wines had a lot, and I mean a lot, of sugar: around 60 to 70 grams per liter (or 6-7 percent, if that’s a more comfortable measurement for you).  Their alcohol content ranged from 8-10 percent, and they achieved some delicacy, despite their fruit intensity.  We were inspired.

We never want to stop making Rieslings in the styles Peter Bell has helped make internationally famous—very dry to semi-dry, with luscious flavors and clarity; perfectly balanced and with a moderate alcohol content (11-11.5 %).  These wines are exquisitely poised as they go into the bottle in their youth, and they have consistently proven that they become even more delicious as they age.  However, that doesn’t mean we don’t want to play with our boundaries.

At that conference, we surmised that our Finger Lakes fruit, given the right growing conditions, could produce a stunning wine in the low-alcohol style.  As if by design, this summer provided what had to be ideal conditions.  Lots of heat and sunlight produced grapes with a range of intense flavors—loads of lime and tangerine.  We also had a good quantity of Botrytis, which presented as Noble Rot, concentrating the sugars and producing lovely marmalade aromas.  We had high sugar accumulation, which meant we could ferment until we reached around 8% alcohol while still retaining quite a large quantity of sugar. 

Of course, we had to take the plunge, albeit on a very small scale. 

This past Friday, we stopped the fermentation on a few hundred gallons of low-alcohol Riesling by lowering its temperature below the comfort zone of yeasts.  Boy, is it tasty!  How it manages to taste like wine, despite having so little alcohol, is confounding but thrilling.  It’s at once rich and delicate.  It’s a Cool River of orange-fleshed aromas—papaya and mango and clementine -- with a lovely lashing of lime, which keeps the wine lively.  Wait until you try it.

It won’t be a dead-ringer for German Riesling, but that’s a good thing.  We always want our Rieslings to express their Finger Lakes character.  The industry here is long past the point where we need to think of copying another region: our Rieslings have a sui generis standing that is acknowledged world-wide.

A few other wineries in the Finger Lakes are tinkering with this particular manifestation of old-world style winemaking, as well.  Watch for these lower-alcohol wines, and let us know if you try any of them.  We’d love to hear from you.

By: Tricia, Assistant Winemaker


Music of the Day:

• Kate and Anna McGarrigle - The McGarrigle Hour; Cool River (also featuring Lily Lanken and Martha Wainwright):

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Reviewing Vintage 2010 (No Grades, New York Times Style)

2010 will go down as an unique growing season and vintage in the Finger Lakes.  While our colleagues in California were dealing with difficulty ripening grapes (!), I remember calling my parents in early April as I was working in New Zealand - only to be told the temperatures were in the 80s.  From a frighteningly early bud-break, given the threat of frost, to extremely warm and wet conditions throughout the summer, I do not think anyone has a clear idea of what this vintage will look like a few years from now.

Despite that, we have finished pressing out all our grapes now and I love to prognosticate.  Based on what we are tasting and hearing from others around the lakes, here is a first stab at deciphering vintage 2010 now that we have enough information to try:

• Hybrid and Native Grape Wines (Cayuga, Concord, Niagara): This is a huge category to try and lump together, but the fact of the matter is that these grapes tend to ripen early and in the same timeframe.  This vintage that meant we heard of people harvesting these grapes in early and mid-August at entirely normal sugar levels.  Considering they came in so early, before the rain and storms that proved troublesome come September/October, it is a safe bet that 2010 wines made of these grapes will be just fine.  Certainly the fruit was ripe, the only question that may vary from producer to producer is whether there was enough acid to back up the wine.

• Chardonnay and Pinot Noir:  Both came in for most around Seneca Lake in early to mid-September, in that nice balmy stretch that finished out our summer.  Dry skies and warm temperatures means that the harvest conditions were ideal, the warmth during the growing season resulted in some jaw-dropping sugar measurements on these two grapes.  Never will the Finger Lakes turn into a producer of the bland, jammy, international style of red wine that some other New World pinot noir regions have traded on; but certainly this is a year for some of the richest fruit aromas and flavors we could hope for.  Chardonnay were also rich and dense, so it looks like a great year across the region for wines made from either grape.

• Pinot Gris/Grigio and Gewürztraminer:  Hard to summarize for these two Alsatian grapes, folks pulled them in at markedly different times across the region.  At Fox Run we kept ours hanging for three weeks more than many down in the Seneca Lake Banana Belt were, but in the end I think everyone is happy with the ripeness of the grapes both in sugar and flavor.  You’ve already heard Tricia’s take on our Gewürz, but I think the thing we were most amazed by was the fact that Pinot Gris grapes actually had distinct flavors.  As popular a wine as it is, Pinot Gris grapes are not usually so striking in their aromatics and flavors.  All in all, these were generally the last grapes to make it in before the series of rain events hit the Finger Lakes harvest and consistent high quality for 2010 seem likely.

• Riesling:  There is never a bad year for riesling in the Finger Lakes, as Fox Run’s owner/president Scott Osborn often points out.  2010 is no exception, and has the potential to be a truly great year for the right growers and producers.  By consensus, 2006 was one of the best years in recent memory for riesling in the Finger Lakes due to a nice balance of sugar with a clean acidity that did not disappear.  The concern with 2010 is that the warmth and accumulated sugar levels would come at the expense of acid levels in the grapes and, subsequently, the grapes.  So far that doesn’t appear to be a problem, and instead we are left with fantastically ripe fruit with tropical flavors we rarely attain.  The bigger concern for 2010 riesling in the Finger Lakes will be variability due to harvest conditions.  Riesling did not start being harvested until the brunt of the rain started to hit (as well as reports of ladybug outbreaks), leading to extreme disease pressure for growers that were not ready for the poor weather.  Dreams of noble rot and late-harvest wines were shot by the reality of sour rot and disintegrating grape-skins forcing the hand of some growers to harvest everything and quickly.  Having not had a chance to taste much, all we can say is a huge THANK YOU to John Kaiser and our vineyard team.  Despite the rain, at Fox Run we had the luxury to pick our riesling when we felt they were ready - even leaving one special block hanging to pick up noble rot.  John kept our fruit clean of disease and we are ecstatic with the 12 tanks of riesling now in our cellar.

• Bordeaux Reds (Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot):  It is no secret that Finger Lakes reds can have a difficult time achieving ripeness levels we would consider ideal.  Regardless of that, we can say something in general about the bordeaux reds of 2010 that would normally sound delusional; quality is likely as variable as with riesling.  Great ripeness levels were almost a given this year for these grapes; high Brix levels, great flavor ripeness, even the seeds tasted densely chocolaty and nutty without a hint of bitterness.  Unfortunately, due to how long they take to ripen, they had to survive the battering of cooler weather, rain, and wind that threatened later rieslings in October.  We have high hopes for quite a few of our blocks, especially those we put into our Ruby Port and Tawny Port programs, but nothing firm will be known for another year when they start to come out of barrels.

2010 is not even fully in the books yet - and won’t be for quite some time if a winery is doing a late harvest or icewine - but there is a first attempt at summing up what we think we’re seeing.  For the earlier ripening grapes 2010 looks to be fantastic across the Finger Lakes, for the later ripening grapes it comes down to knowing your producer.  There will be nothing bad out there and the potential for greatness absolutely exists if a winery was able to seize it.

By: Kelby, Winemaking Team

Music of the Day:

• Thomas Tallis; Spem in Alium (as performed by the Tallis Scholars on The Tallis Scholars Sing Thomas Tallis):

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