Sampling Gewürz

Last Friday, winemaker, Markus Niggli, and I (Jon Bjork, the Lodi Wine Guy embedded at Borra during crush), hit the field to check on some Gewürztraminer at Mokelumne Glen Vineyards.



Located between Lodi’s Mokelumne River and Bokisch Vineyards at the end of Cherry Road in Victor, these vines may supply an extra layer of complexity to the up-coming 2010 White Fusion.



Bob Koth, owner of Mokelumne Glen Vineyards, is an extremely passionate grower, as demonstrated by his almost crazy desire to grow German winegrape varieties in Lodi.



We tasted through a row of Gewürz and also wandered off into some Kerner and Dreirebe. The Dreirebe is traditionally made into a dessert wine harvested later in the season, however the berries were already packed with explosive amazing terpenoid flavors that were a favorite of my kids that afternoon.



Our verdict on taste was that the Gewürz needed more time to build more distinct flavors. That was confirmed by a sugar reading on about 10 squished bunches that showed 21.8˚ Brix.



Markus also stepped into his field office on the tailgate of the white pickup to check the water pressure in a single Gewürztraminer leaf. Based on a reading of just over 5 bar, there is no need to irrigate this row.



We’re looking for at least another week of warm days – if that’s possible this oddball cool season – before sampling again.

The Next Generation

Our La Dolce Vita club members have been privy to some insider information that was included with their last wine shipment.



Now it’s time to let the rest of the wine drinking world in on what’s going on. Here’s the scoop from our club postcard:

“For awhile now I’ve had the pleasure of making wine with one of the most detail-oriented and determined cellar hands around. My right-hand man, Markus Niggli, has been a sponge, soaking up what I’ve spouted off from my years of hits and misses. Knowledge has also seeped into his head from a bunch of other up-and-coming winemakers/growers.”

“His excitement for winemaking is infectious. Makes me feel like I’m looking at a mirror when I first fell under the influence of “the wine bug.” You just want to crush every grape you taste to see if it makes a good wine or not.”

“I’m therefore happy to promote Markus to winemaker, responsible for the next generation of Borra wines you’ll be drinking from here on out.”

“As for me, I still get to hop on the tractor and work the vines, stick my nose in some barrels, give my two bits of feedback whenever I want, and - the best part! - twist caps off our latest Zin and Petite for plenty of ‘quality control.’ Salute!”

- Steve Borra

So next time you see Markus, give him a congratulatory pat on the back before you ask him to pour you his latest creation.

Sampling Crushed Grapes

On Thursday, we sent Manuel out to our Gill Creek Ranch Vineyard in Clements Hills, located along Elliot Road, hugging the north bank of the Mokelumne River.

Manuel’s mission was to pick about 10 bunches or so of winegrapes from each of our vineyard blocks and squish them into 5 gallon buckets to be driven back to the winery on Armstrong Road.

After the grapes have mixed and marinated for an hour or so, Markus blows the dust off our handy Atago refractometer to check, “where the sugars are.”

“Zin looks to be 21.1˚ Brix. That’s OK, and means we are looking at the last week in September to pick,” says Markus, “based on about 1.5˚ Brix rise per week.”

“The Merlot has shattered and light small berries less than 22˚ to 23˚ Brix,” he said, which translates into potentially very nice wine, but less than usual. We take about 10 tons for our wines, but sell the rest of the vineyard to other wineries.

“The Viognier is 20.7˚ Brix – pretty low, but we would like to pick in September. The Chard is still tasting green and very much behind even though it is 23.5˚ Brix. We really want the flavors. Might be 3rd or 4th week of September.”

After Labor Day is when sampling will begin in earnest. This was just a preview.

So with harvest perhaps two weeks behind average, Markus has time to get all the crush equipment ready and organize the winery before spending 4 days a week in the ripening vineyards.

Liberating Barrels

What’s the best way to free up barrels you’ll need for crush?

Bottle!


Today we bottled more than 910 cases of a number of Borra wines, yielding 36 barrels for re-filling.

Most Lodi wineries are done bottling by mid-August, but Borra sees an advantage with waiting until the last-minute.

“This way my barrels don’t stay empty for a long period of time, which can mean more chance for contamination,” says Markus Niggli. “Ideally I would bottle today and put new wine in tomorrow.”

Empty barrels are ozone-washed to kill off any living things left inside, gassed with sulfur dioxide, then bunged and stacked, waiting for wine to be pressed into them.

As for the process of getting wine into bottles, with the cost of a small automated bottling line heading easily into six figures, most small wineries work with equipment shoe-horned ingeniously into semi trucks and rented by the day.

We tend to use Mobile Wine Line of Galt, run by trusty head honcho and truck captain, Harry Hakala, along with a couple of life-long friends.



As of 9 a.m. this morning, the truck’s team, aided by a crew of about 7 from the neighboring Lodi Irrigation staff, had boxed up 111 cases of 2007 Old Vine Barbera, and a bunch of 2008 vintage wines, including 118 cases of Merlot, 58 of Members Reserve Intenso, 73 of Members Reserve Syrah. The photos show the team working on 550 cases of Red Fusion.


Empty bottles were constantly loaded into the back of the truck, filled with Nitrogen, then wine, screw-capped, labeled, and finally placed back into the same boxes for cold storage.

The process can be back-breaking, but is always very satisfying, knowing that the winemaking is absolutely finished.



“The cycle has closed,” says Markus.



While the team was hard at work, Markus and Steve Borra were busy with quality control: making sure the right labels were going onto the bottles; helping with wedging finished pallets of cases into a cramped storage room; tasting new bottles; and ensuring that everyone was to get their Dante’s Philly Cheesesteaks done up the way they wanted for lunch.



It will be a busy week, with this bottling, followed by over a hundred La Dolce Vita club shipments tomorrow, and the start of grape sampling for sugars on Thursday.

If all goes well, we could be picking our first Chardonnay of 2010 within two weeks.

15 Minutes of Fame

Our Markus Niggli was just handed his 15 minutes of fame, appearing in two newspaper articles in Saturday’s Lodi News-Sentinel.

Here’s an excerpt from the first, entitled “Yellow Cab submits application to come to Lodi,” with several quotes from Markus:

The biggest competition for a taxi company serving wineries during the day is limousine service, he said, because the limos can be rented out for a long period, and there is no waiting for it to show up.

“Limo services are not too expensive,” Niggli said. “It is also probably better looking to come up in a stretch limo than in a cab.”

But he could see the cabs being used at night when the wineries have events.

“People might leave behind their cars, take the safe route and take a cab home,” Niggli said.

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The second story, “Lyrics of the vine,” describes what Lodi wineries are doing to offer evening entertainment, along with excellent wines.

Here’s the full quote:

Borra Vineyards started combining wine and music four years ago with their Fusion Friday events, named after their Fusion wines.

Relaxation, entertainment and good wine was their motivation for the monthly summertime event.

“Music and wine are the two things that help you relax after a long, hard week of work,” Markus Niggli, Borra Vineyards winemaker said.

Niggli says there were about 40 or 50 people who would attend. Now, the even that combines food, wine and music brings in at least 150 people on the first Friday of the month during summer.

“You pull up in a winery site and it takes you away from daily life. For just a couple of hours, you can be yourself and enjoy the moment off,” Niggli said.

At Fusion Friday, guests sit at tables surrounding a Bocce ball field. In the beginning, many get comfortable at their tables with a full glass of wine or dinner prepared by a local caterer. But as the music plays and wine glasses get a little emptier, groups starts dancing and joining in games of Bocce ball.

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Meanwhile, I touched base with Markus today as he was munching on a mouthwatering peach.

“The fruit this season looks great. Maturity is very nice. Normally we’d see sugars climbing. This year we have nice even sugars in grapes that are holding on to their acid,” he said.

Regarding current sugar levels, “The Viognier and reds are all under 20˚ Brix and we’ll start sampling late next week after our last bottling of the year. With this cool weather, we won’t be picking anything until the second or third week of September.”

Topping Up

Every few weeks, Markus hooks up a canister of Nitrogen to a keg of extra Syrah and goes to work topping up each of our 220 barrels of aging Borra wines. A long hose equipped with a special nozzle make the job much easier than the old “watering cans.”



If we were to leave a barrel completely alone, eventually enough wine would evaporate through the microscopic pores in the barrel walls to create a pocket of air under the bung. Air leads to the growth of the bacteria that like to make vinegar, and we’re not currently in that business.

An automatic humidifier sprays a mist of water into the barrel room every few minutes or so to maintain just the right amount of moisture. Too much humidity leads to mold growth and greater loss of alcohol, whereas too little humidity results in water loss from wine, rather than alcohol.

In any case, it’s always amazing how much wine we lose to the “angels.”

We’ve got both the 2008 and 2009 vintages of red wines in the barrel room, with some to be bottled at the end of this month. Markus can have them all topped and the barrels polished with a sulfur solution in only a couple of hours.



The whites are almost always bottled fresh from the vintage in March of each year. So we don’t have a problem turning white wines a blush color via a topping boo boo.

Wine & Food Guinea Pig

What's fun about having your own winery is getting to take a bottle (or three!) home and see what tastes the best with it.

This time we took a new 2008 Borra Members Reserve Petite Sirah that will be in our summer club shipment and tried to see if it would go with chicken.

I know any wine Nazi’s out there will be jumping off the walls at this potentially ridiculous combination of the most intense, dark varietal you can find with a lite white meat, but what’s life without a bit of experimentation?

In fact, the only reason for even attempting this fearful pairing was the spicy, molasses-laden Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce that was slathered all over legs and thighs. (Plus, we just couldn’t wait to see how the Petite was coming along.)

And the verdict…

The Petite on its own was lush and expectedly huge with great concentration and a muscular backbone of rounded tannins. We got flavors almost like those succulent juice that flows from the bottom of foil in which was resting a slow-roasted tri-tip. The finish was like someone shook a black cherry tree and filled oodles of baskets.

So the wine – the most important part of this experiment – was exciting and hard to stop drinking.

The pairing, on the other hand, got – as expected – a big fat “D.” Only the sauce gave this pairing a passing grade. Surprisingly, a quiver of asparagus spears were also on our plates, slightly blacked by the BBQ, which turned out to be a decent pairing. Nice to see that something actually works half decently with this wine-killer vegetable.