Into a Winery

Chances are that if you've been to Grimes Mill Winery's Tasting Room, you've been taken back into the winery by Phil, the owner, or me, if you're lucky.  Unlike the tasting room, the winery has the aesthetic appeal of a garden shed.  Until now!

After a successful season (regardless of the difficulties with frost and drought), we now have barrels resting on top of barrels!  Our winery is starting to look like the winery we've always imagined.

What once was:

Secret: the fourth barrel is turned the wrong way... and empty.

Is now:

And they're all full (and turned the right way).

One day, maybe the wall of barrels will reach the ceiling.  One can only hope.  What did we fill the new barrels with?  5 different blends of red wine, where every single grapes was grown right here in Lexington!

We also harvested a bunch of Cabernet Franc this year that tasted great.  However, we didn't quite produce enough of it to fill an entire 60-gallon barrel by itself.  (We wanted to keep it at least 75% Cab Franc so that we can legally put the varietal on the label.)

So, what are we doing with it?  We're currently experimenting with a more cost-effective way of imparting French Oak flavor into a red wine (lovingly referred to around the winery as "poor man's French Oak").  We have a bunch of segments of new French Oak barrels (that likely didn't make the cut at the cooperage), and we're just floating them directly in our wine.  Instead of wine in a barrel, it's barrel in a wine.  Here's what it looks like:

Yes, there are many pros and cons to thoroughly consider when attempting this.  The good news for you is:  you may be able to get your hands on our first-ever Cab Franc by this summer!  We'll need several months to play with it, but we have high hopes that we can make something great out of it.

The better news affects you even more.  A French Oak barrel can cost upwards of $600 to $1000.  An American Oak barrel costs somewhere between $300 and $600.  The opportunity to remove these from the price of the bottle (not that the segments were cheap) allows us the opportunity to provide you with a local, hand-crafted, high-quality wine at a reasonable price.

Who could ask for more?,
The Winemaker's Apprentice

Slow Season & Catch-up

Jan-Feb is always the slowest season at the winery.  If you want to feel like you're getting personal attention, there's no better time to show up at the tasting room than now.  Be careful though, almost all of the wineries in the area cut back their hours during the cold, dark, snowy months, so give them a call before you drive there.  (I believe we are Sat-Sun 12-5pm only right now.)

I appreciate the lull in the activity, though, because it has felt non-stop since the last time I posted.  Well, after the drought, watching the grapes was like watching grass grow.  I literally mowed my yard a handful of times before having to deal with the grapes at all.  We just let them grow and develop the best they could with the little water we were able to provide them.

As Autumn was peeking her head around the corner, we started harvesting.  This year, all but one varietal on our property (all except Pinot Grigio planted in 2011) were old enough and mature enough to be harvested.  In general the crop may  have been a little light due to the lack of water, but the quality of most of our fruit was spectacular.  Lack of water slightly dehydrates the grapes so that they're not big and watered down.  Instead they're smaller and full of flavor.  However, it's a fine line between slight dehydration and killing the vine, a line that we walked way too closely this past summer.

Harvest 2012.  That's me in the maize shirt.

We picked through sun and rain and storm and cold, starting with Moscato and ending with our very unique Petit Manseng varietal.  We weighed, crushed, fermented, pressed, racked, and even bottled some of the wines.  I'll try and take some time over the slow season to catch you up on the interesting things that have happened to the winery (and to me) over my busy 6-month blog absence.

Happy New Year,
The Winemaker's Apprentice

Water

We're currently in a drought in the Bluegrass.  As someone who just moved here, I never expected a drought.  I assumed that being known for luscious grass meant that there would be more than enough water for everything.  Maybe there will be in the future, but the past few weeks have been really dry.  Too dry for our vines.  Lack of water creates all kinds of problems in a vineyard, as well as all kinds of colors.

This past week, we decided to take matters into our own hands.  We're not large enough to have any sort of industrial watering system.  I'm not even sure we have water pressure for anything like that, even if we could rent one.  So, instead, we built something that we could fill with water, pull behind one of our tractors, and distribute some water to our plants.  Here's what that ended up looking like.

Our tank holds roughly 300 gallons of water.  Unfortunately, we couldn't come up with a contraption small enough to fit through all of our rows.  So, we had to skip approximately 16 of the rows.  Hopefully it will rain soon to help those rows, in particular.  We made sure to concentrate our efforts on new/young plants, since they seem to be struggling the most.  It takes almost an hour to fill this tank with water.  So, The Wizard had the idea of driving it to a nearby water utility service and filling it up for about a dollar in what seemed like seconds.  Here's what he looked like alongside Old Richmond Road in his trek back to the vineyard.

 

He'll be comin' 'round the mountain...

I swear to you, I thought he was going to get pulled over for dragging that rickety, old trailer full of water down the highway. As he was leaving, he told me to get on the back and ride with. No thank you. I opted to time him, instead. He pulled off the whole trip in 20 minutes. I think we decided that it wasn't worth paying to save 30 minutes of time, when we could take the time between full tanks to do things around the winery.

So, if you're an advocate of Kentucky Wine.  Do a little rain dance for us!
The Winemaker's Apprentice

Phylloxera

Phylloxera - the closest thing to a dirty word that can be spoken in a vineyard.

If you are any sort of wine history enthusiast, the word Phylloxera will send shivers down your spine.  Root phylloxera (it is important to emphasize root as opposed to leaf phylloxera) devastated French winemaking in the 1850s and '60s.

So, you can begin to understand the initial panic when we found an outbreak of leaf phylloxera on one of our plants, smack-dab in the middle of our rows of Moscato.  Here's what some of the leaves on that single plant looked like:

If you turn either of those leaves over, each white spot corresponds to a small, fuzzy, wart-like "gall".  (Remember crown gall?)  These galls do little damage, other than make the vines ugly.  However, since the thought of having any form of phylloxera around is nerve-racking, we decided to strip all of the leaves off of this vine and quickly remove them from the vineyard.

Grape phylloxera is a microscopic, aphid-like insect native to eastern North America, so it's not uncommon to come across it in Kentucky.  The French wine disaster of the 19th century pioneered an entire field of root grafting in order to fight off these small pests.  Since native American vines grew resistant to root phylloxera, French grapevines were grafted to North American rootstocks.  This has been the best defense against the little buggers, and grafted vines are used throughout phylloxera-known regions to this day, but it hasn't been perfect.  In the 1980s, California discovered that one of their most common rootstocks, AXR1, was no longer resistant to phylloxera and had to replant over 60% of the vines in Napa and Sonoma Valleys over 2 decades.

I first learned about phylloxera back in 2007 when I was regularly listening to the Napa Valley Wine Radio podcast.  Nancy Hawks-Miller, the wine educator at Goosecross Cellars in Yountville, CA, at the time, was responsible for most of my wine education up until 2010 or so when I decided to start studying on my own.  You can listen to the 5-year-old podcast about phylloxera here.

After spending a whole post telling you how awful phylloxera is, I just wanted to reiterate that our vineyard is in no real danger.  We have root phylloxera-resistant rootstocks, and we have a close eye on any developments from their leaf phylloxera cousins.

I had no clue that a wine podcast I listened to during my first year of engineering grad school would matter to me at all later in life,
The Winemaker's Apprentice

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

Social Media

In my opinion, there is an under-utilization of the internet in these parts.  That's unfortunate, because there are so many free things that help notify people about the services you provide.  There are so many ways to still feel connected in a world of global media & giant grocers & mega-discount stores.  Here at Grimes Mill Winery, we have a small annual production of hand-crafted wines.  We're Lexington's newest boutique winery, and we have always relied heavily on word-of-mouth to spread the quality of our wine and the quality of our staff.

That is, until now.  Though I'm new to winemaking, I'm a veteran in social media.  I initiated the co-owners, Dr. Philip & Lois DeSimone, with this blog, but I am attempting to take it so much further.  Hopefully all of it will be successful in spreading the gospel of our local Kentucky wine a little further.  If not, it will still be fun.  Check out all the ways you can interact with us here at Grimes Mill Winery on a daily basis.

Start off with the Grimes Mill Winery website.  Here you can read all about our history and our current wines & events, as well as email us.

We also have a Facebook page.  Your 'Like' means the world to us.

We've recently hopped on foursquare.  You'll see a window cling at the entrance to the Tasting Room reminding you to check-in and challenge our regular customers for the top spot of Grimes Mill Winery's Mayor.  Unfamiliar with foursquare?  Just ask.  Or you can check it out here.

I've been posting all of the blog posts on our Google+ page.  We'd love to be part of your circle.

I, personally, have been tweeting quick notes from the vineyard on Twitter.  This is probably the quickest way to see what I'm doing on a regular basis.

Finally, we'd love to see what you think about us on yelp.

Overwhelming?  Maybe a little, but I truly believe that you'll enjoy your experience at Grimes Mill Winery (and businesses, in general) if you allow social media to help you interact with your friends to get recommendations or to meet up.  If you ever wonder about some step of the wine process, you could always just ask via one of these media.  We love to educate.  I'm learning these things along the way, too.

And, in the end, we're hoping that you'll come visit us in the winery to interact with us the ol' fashion way, face-to-face.  Until then...

In Vino Veritas,
The Winemaker's Apprentice