Cream of Tartar

Did you know that angel food cakes & souffles exist partly because of wine?

Those lucky individuals who have been given tours of our winery might already know this.  It usually depends on if you happen to be visiting during one of our white wine 'cold stabilization' periods or not.

One of the key ingredients to baking powder, and an egg white stabilizer by itself, is Cream of Tartar, or tartaric acid.  I happened to pull out the Cream of Tartar from my spice pantry today, and I read the side of it:

"Cream of Tartar is a pure, natural ingredient that's created as grape juice turns to wine."

I was looking at my jar of Spice Islands Cream of Tartar, so I investigated their website.  They took the description even further.

"Tartaric acid, or cream of tartar, is the natural byproduct of fermented grapes, collected from the wall of the casks used to age fine wines.  Naturally reddish-brown in color, it's carefully refined until it achieves its signature white color, earning it the name "cream" of tartar.  Cream of Tartar is a key ingredient in baking powder and adds a fluffiness and stability to egg white dishes such as meringues."

We come across crystallized tartaric acid when we chill our white wines down to 29 degrees Fahrenheit.  We do this at the end of our white wine-making process, just before filtering and bottling, so that these "wine diamonds" don't eventually precipitate out into our bottled wines.  The crystals form all the way around our cooled tanks, and I guess we could collect them and crush them down to Cream of Tartar if we really wanted to.  Instead, we spend hours scrubbing them off the inner walls of the tanks and disposing of them.

These crystals could occur in our wine bottles if we didn't go through the extra cold-stabilization process.  These are examples of what "wine diamonds" look like, though not in our wine bottles:

So this summer when you're eating a delicious lemon meringue pie, give a silent nod to wine for making it possible.

We happen to be cold-stabilizing some white wine right now,
The Winemaker's Apprentice

Frost Bite

Once Bitten, Twice Shy.

The weather was weird this year, or so I'm told.  It got warm so early that the buds on the vines broke almost 2 months earlier than they typically do.  Though it meant that it might be a long growing season, which allows for amazing wine, it left the door open for damage from frost.  From what I remember, there were at least 3 frost advisories this year after we had full-scale budbreak in the white varietals and Cabernet Franc.

Two of those frost advisories didn't drop the temperatures low enough in our vineyard.  As you're driving along Old Richmond Road, you'll notice that our vineyard is at the top of a small hill.  That's great for keeping air moving through the vineyard and not letting the cold temperatures settle.  It also allows for some great sunshine throughout the entire vineyard.

Finally, on the 27th of March, after two days of frost advisories, the cold enemy rolled in and damaged some of our plants.  At first, parts of the leaves were stained white like someone ran around the vineyard with a small paintbrush.  After a while, those leaves shriveled and died, and we were left with noticeable sections throughout the vineyard with dead, brown, frost damage.  It took a few weeks to be able to see and tally all of the damage, which is why it is easier to discuss it now.

It seems like our 1-year-old white grape vines took the most damage.  You can barely see the vines in the following pictures, because the leaves are brown and shriveled.  1-year-old plants aren't very big yet.  Since their buds and leaves are closest to the ground, where the cold air settles, it's no big surprise that they were the most damaged.

The good news is that the frost did fairly little damage overall.  It was seen on about 10% of our plants, and for those plants that were at least 2-years-old, its damage was sporadic instead of total.  Months later, you have to really look for the remnants of frost damage, since everything is growing so quickly and so full.

Next time you're out at the tasting room, ask us if it's alright to take a walk in the vines.  We'll let you know if there's anything to look out for, and you can discover this all for yourself.

In Vino Veritas,
The Winemaker's Apprentice