The Traveling Winemaker

Belize - Buried Treasure

2008-02-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

Buried treasure. As a kid the idea enchanted me. In fact, I would occasionally bury this or that, wait a day or two, then begin my hunt for the “buried booty”. My imaginary world was dense jungle where dangerous animals and cannibals lurked behind every juniper bush of my southern Oregon backyard. Safe to say I nearly always recovered what I buried, though I’ve no doubt, surely more places than I can remember, buried under my signature four flat stones are a variety of treasures I will never find.

I nearly always travel with wine, and mostly wine I’ve made. My friends have learned that despite the extra weight or shear impracticality of it, I can be relied upon to produce a bottle of wine from my backpack in the most unusual or remote surroundings.

Eight years ago, those surroundings were the lush, wet-green jungles of Belize, in Central America, where the Hummingbird highway crosses the Sibun River, some 25 miles inland from the Caribbean Sea. I was visiting an old buddy for the first time, an Englishman, who had moved there many years before. One day while I was there, we hiked up the Sibun River, slowly making our way into its gorge. In my backpack amongst the GPS, Swiss Army knife, Nalgene bottle and first aid, was the ubiquitous bottle of Weisinger’s wine. The original intent had been to enjoy a little wine with lunch, but the heat and humidity were not creating the ideal environment to enjoy the Bordeaux style blend I had brought along. It was a wine I had made from 40% Cabernet Franc, 32% Merlot, 18% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Malbec. Its proprietary name was “Petite Pompadour” and was named for the small southern Oregon vineyard from which the grapes had come. So, instead of opening the bottle I decided to bury it, right there in the jungle, not a juniper in sight. Now, that may not sound like a decision most people might come to, but if you knew me, you would understand. I knew I would return to Belize someday. A place that beautiful would be difficult to come just once. I decided I would dig the bottle up then.

Just over a year ago, and 7 years after I buried that bottle, I left a winemaker job I had held for over 10 years for a self prescribed travel and winemaking journey. First, I traveled to New Zealand where I worked a harvest learning about Marlborough Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. Next, I journeyed to California and worked with Syrah, Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon in the Alexander Valley. After California, I returned to southern Oregon, my home, to consult and prepare for my next wine adventure: Western Australia. I had landed a job working harvest in a little region south of Perth called, Margaret River.

And so it is here, under a thatch roof in Belize that I find myself writing about a bottle of wine I buried 8 years ago. Eight years…it’s a long time, even for a wine. A lot can change. Maybe maturity has been reached, maybe it is passed or maybe it has not yet arrived? In any case, yesterday I decided to go find the bottle I had buried those many years before. It actually was not that hard to find. I knew the area and before long I had found the stoic reddish-brown pillar of the decaying ironwood tree. At its base, under 8 years of jungle debris were four flat stones. Underneath, was the bottle. Intact.

As I pulled the bottle free from the damp red dirt, I peeled back the tape I had put over the label to protect it. What vintage was it? I could not remember. As the tape finally came off, I looked closer. Through the dirt and the mold that had somehow worked its way under the tape was the date, “1997”. It was one of my first vintages.

Last night, I opened that bottle and with a bit of apprehension poured glasses for my two dear hosts and myself. In the glass the wine showed a slight brick halo at its edge, a tell tale characteristic of an older wine. The nose was reserved, slightly austere with a layer of leather and dried fruit. I sipped. I sipped again. The wine was good. In fact, as it began to breath it got better and better. Perhaps not something I would be rushing off to critics (“…aged 8 years, underground, in Belize…”), but very drinkable. The wine took me back to 1997, where I was, who I was and what life looked like then. I felt a connection with my past that is different from the feeling an old photo brings.

There are other bottles I have buried over the years, in different countries, on different continents and even on one island. Some I have dug up, others still wait. Where are they, you might wonder? Actually, I might wonder that myself. For the moment I have my memory and a few maps of where my treasure lay. “X” may not mark the spot, but four stones pave the way.

A Close To California

2007-12-01T20:04:00.000-08:00

The 2007 harvest in the Alexander Valley of California is coming to an end and my time here is coming to a close. I must admit, the end of harvest, or “crush” as it’s called, always surprises me. Just when I’m getting in the groove of the crushing and pressing of grapes, pitching yeast, watching and smelling the fermentations, the circus of crush comes to an end. As it is with the beginning, the end is also something I look forward to. It would come as no great surprise that, though I consider myself a morning person, setting my alarm to a time other than 4:30 a.m. every day has a certain appeal. But that is not the full reason the end of harvest arrives so welcomed. Rather, it is an occasion that comes with it, one that is literally worth raising a glass.

A couple times a week I find myself sitting down around a large, white, round table covered with glasses of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Petite Verdot. There, with the Winemaker, Assistant Winemaker and Cellar Master of Ferrari-Carano Mountain Winery, I taste wines that are now in tank and soon will go to barrel. These tastings are a way for the winemaking team to start categorizing the new wines in terms of quality. This “force ranking” will help decide what program the wine will be designated for. This in turn can dictate what type of barrel the wine will go into and how much time it may spend in that barrel. Often as many as 25 wines at one sitting will be tasted, notes taken and decisions made. For me, it is not only a chance to taste the new wines but an opportunity to get a sense of the region where I have been living and working for the last 3 months.

In a couple of days we will be finished with our tastings. The last wines will be put to barrel, tucked away in the labyrinth of caves that honeycomb the hill next to the winery. Then, crush will truly be over. And for me? What’s next? That’s a good question, and one I’ll get to soon enough. With winter on its way here I know summer is not far off else ware on our little planet and there, Fall will not be far behind. With Fall comes harvest and another opportunity to make wine. Before that, however, I think a much needed rest is in order, maybe somewhere……south?

Timing In The Alexander Valley

2007-11-01T06:54:00.000-07:00

Good winemaking is about good timing and great winemaking is about (yes, you guessed it) great timing. There is perhaps no better, or crucial, example of this than the decision of when to harvest. It is at this point that the grower’s job has come to an end and the winemaker’s is beginning. And timing is everything. Just how does one determine when the “right” time to pick is? It’s a good question and one I’ve often been asked. Of course there are measurable aspects that influence the decision of when to pick, such as sugar, pH and acidity. There is also the influence of the weather (no winemaker or grower I know likes to pick in the rain) which is both unpredictable and totally out of one’s control. Then there is something else that is a harder to describe, something that is difficult to quantify. It is almost a certain…shall we say, sense that the fruit is at its peak and more importantly that the vine, tired and worn from a season of giving, is ready to finally rest. It is not an easy decision, that of when to pick, but one that must be made and made well.

A couple of weeks ago I found myself in the midst of such a decision, walking among Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Sangiovese vines with Aaron Piotter, red wine maker for Ferrari-Carano Winery. Aaron and I have been friends for over 10 years. We met, rather timely, at a Shakespeare play in Ashland, Oregon. The theater had accidentally printed two tickets for the same seat that evening. Aaron had one and I had the other. While we waited for the theater to sort things out, we struck up conversation that eventually turned to wine. That simple conversation lead to a friendship that ten years later found us walking the hillside vineyards of Ferrari-Carano’s Anderson Ranch, tasting fruit and trying to decide…is it time? Making the decision a little more challenging was a front coming in from the northwest that might possibly bring with it the end to what had been a rather perfect growing season.

We made our way from vineyard block to vineyard block, tasting grapes as we went. The fruit was wonderfully sweet, bright and expressive. The skins had just the right amount of tannin and the seeds were beautifully brown. Varietal character, paramount to the decision to pick, was coming through in all the fruit. I could almost taste these as wines, years from now. But was it time?

That decision was up to Aaron, and after an hour or so of walking, tasting, talking and tasting some more we came to the top of the last vineyard block. We stood there for a moment looking at the view around us. To the east we could see Knights Valley and the northern end of Napa, to the south ran Chalk Hill. Off in the western distance lay the Russian River Valley, while our own valley of Alexander spread out from us to the north. “Tomorrow,” Aaron finally said, “We pick tomorrow.” And we did. The day after, a front came in from the northwest turning many valley vineyards to mud and hillside vineyards to tractor traps. At Anderson Ranch, however, only bare, resting vines remained.

Safely in tank and finishing through fermentation, the wines from Anderson are looking to be some of our best from the 2007 vintage. Tasting them with Aaron the other day, I asked him if he was happy about the timing of the pick. Knowing that the answer was already in the glasses in front of us he just smiled, purple teeth and all. .

Alexander Valley, California

2007-10-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

I use to say that harvest comes but once a year. Yes, I know, not a huge revelation, but nonetheless it gives the career of winemaking an extra sense of urgency to make the most of every opportunity. And it is this sense of urgency, this realization that every vintage is once forever, that has moved me to travel and experience winemaking at its most critical time: harvest. Only 6 months ago, I found myself under the Southern Cross in the Marlborough region of New Zealand, experiencing the harvest of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir while working for Indevin Ltd. ( www.indevin.com ), the largest contract winemaking facility in the southern hemisphere. Early this morning, as I drove to work, I crossed the Russian River, my headlights illuminating vines of Cabernet Sauvignon, Zinfandel and Sangiovese on the other side. Highway 128 at this point runs just barely east of Geyserville California, and it is here, in the Alexander Valley, that I am working my first North American harvest outside of Oregon.

“Harvest Eonologist Intern,” is what will be on my resume for the time I will spend here in the Alexander Valley at Ferrari-Carano’s Mountain Winery, ( ferrari-carano.com ). Sometimes I think “Official Sniffer and Taster” would be a more truthful description of my job, and I can’t say I mind. Every morning, before coffee, I get my nose into my business by sniffing and tasting each of the 40 or so tanks (there will be over 100 soon) that are currently in the winery, most of which are from different vineyard locations around the valley. I then record temperatures, check them against the previous day, pull samples and take them back to the lab for analysis. The process is one that will be done daily at countless other wineries all over the northern hemisphere this harvest of 2007.

Great winemaking requires many things. Some might say nearly too many, but most all who have done it, or are doing it, would agree that first among them is time. Two others would be a keen sense of observation and a good memory. Maybe that is why winemaking is an art that weaves through generations, from one to the next, their collective memories and experiences culminating in greatness that could not be achieved in just one lifetime. But one lifetime is what we have. It is what I have. That said, as I think back about my time in New Zealand just 6 short months ago and remember the aroma of freshly crushed Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, I can’t help but notice my fingers punching the keys on my computer. Stained purple from a day of pressing Alexander Valley Zinfandel, I realize that harvest no longer comes but once a year.

Marlborough, New Zealand

2007-04-13T03:05:00.000-07:00

I was well aware that the scale of wine production I would experience in New Zealand would be somewhat larger then I was use to. Nonetheless, you can imagine my surprise when, on my first day of work, I was told that if all the delivery trucks that would be delivering our fruit this harvest were to line up bumper to bumper the line would extend for 9 miles. And most of that distance would be Sauvignon Blanc. Welcome to Indevin Winery and the region of Marlborough.

Indevin Winery (www.indevin.com), where I am spending harvest, sits outside the small town of Blenheim located in the heart of Marlborough, on the northern tip of New Zealand’s south island. There along the Wairau river, which over the last few million years has been carving out a valley by the same name, sit vineyards by the square mile that grow some of the world’s best Sauvignon Blanc. And Indevin, as the southern hemispheres largest contract winemaking facility, makes a good bit of that into wine.

As a wine production facility, Indevin is set up as two separate wineries called appropriately “White Cellar” and “Red Cellar”. Those 9 miles of delivery trucks I mentioned early will be bringing in nearly 14,000 tons of fruit this harvest, 13,000 of it Sauvignon Blanc. The other 1000 ton, or so, is mostly Pinot Noir, with little bits of Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, Rieslings and Merlot sprinkled here and there. To help process all the fruit this season, Indevin hired 45 people, many of them from all over the world, one of whom is yours truly. Split into two work groups (Red Cellar and White Cellar), I have found myself working with the reds and am getting an opportunity to see first hand how many winemakers in Marlborough are creating the wine that is fast becoming Marlborough’s next great wine. More on that later though.

However, Sauvignon Blanc is still the reigning King (or Queen, depending) and at the present time it is coming off the vine in heaps. The first time I heard the phrase, “Sauvi-launch” I didn’t quite get it. Then I saw my first delivery truck back up to a 25-ton receival bin and let a whole truckload of “Sauvi” go. It was quite the sight.

Stay tuned because harvest is just now starting to kick. Grapes are ripe and ready. Winemakers are eager, and one in particular is very thankful have opportunity to play a part in the grand production of wine, again.

My best to all of you and cheers from Marlborough!

Eric Weisinger
The Traveling Winemaker

Greetings From New Zealand!

2007-03-27T10:51:00.001-07:00

I have been told that our sense of smell is our most powerful sense when it comes to memory. Whether it is a scent that takes us back to a place we knew as a child or something as regular, and unique, as the smell of crushed grapes, these aromas often stir memories and emotions in us that often are challenging to describe. I had just such an emotion last week as we crushed our first load of Pinot Noir. As I breathed in the smells I felt all myriad of emotions I have during harvest...the excitment of a new vintage, the wonderment of the begining stages of wine and the thankfulness for the opportunity to pursue something I am so passionate about.

Over the next couple of months as I work through harvest I will drop a line here and there about what's happening here in the Marlborough wine region of New Zealand, post some pictures and keep in touch with all of you.

Cheers!

Eric Weisinger

Coming Soon: "Sauvi-launch!"