Portland Portland Winemakers Club Winemakers Club August 2016 Monthly Rant Scheduled Meetings January 9, 2016 Annual Gala – Archer Winery; 4-9 PM January 20, 2016 Crush Talk / Planning February 17, 2016 Bordeaux Tasting March 16, 2016 At a recent ETS seminar I went to along with Ken Stinger, the speaker talked Speaker: Curtis Patience about a study they had just completed on so-called native yeasts in the on distilling Brandy & Grappa. winemaking process. 6 wineries participated in a multi-year study: Ken Wright Cellars, Beaux Frères, Bethel Heights Vineyard, Cristom Vineyards, Penner April 20, 2016 Barrel / Carboy Sample Ash Wine Cellars and NW Wine Co. They experimented with allowing native Tasting yeast (those present in the vineyard) to run the fermentation on their own fruit as well as fruit from other vineyards in the study, and also ran the same with April 23, 2016 Tour: Patricia Green inoculations of commercial cultured yeasts as controls. They results were Cellars quite a surprise to everyone involved. In most cases, in the non-inoculated May 18, 2016 batches the native yeast was only barely present in the must at the end of Faults & Flaws primary, and even if it had started out as the dominant strain its population June 15, 2016 dropped off steeply by mid-fermentation, presumably contributing only Speaker: Tom Feller, marginally to the resulting wine’s character. In many cases the commercial winemaker from Artisanal yeast inoculations became the dominant and final strains, but curiously not Wine Cellars. always. The real shocker was that a large number of the musts showed the June 26, 2016 dominant yeast present to be a previously used (but discontinued) Portland Winemakers commercial yeast. This means that formerly used yeast had contaminated the Club at FH Steinbarts. winery to the extent that no matter what strain was in the must initially, it still July 16, 2016 took over and was the major determinate in both the fermentation behavior Annual Picnic (no meeting) and the taste of the resulting wine. August 17, 2016 This appears to be the first time anyone has bothered to investigate this All Whites Tasting phenomenon, and the results were only discovered by doing stringent tests September 21, 2016 using careful controls followed by sophisticated DNA analysis at ETS. Other Reds Tasting Afterwards I asked the speaker if it is likely that most winemakers who boast October 19, 2016 about using native yeast are essentially unable to know what exactly is going Pinot Noir Tasting on in their tanks unless they do similar tests, hinting that all of this posturing November 2016 about the superiority of this approach, and how it makes their wines better, No Meeting could basically be a bunch of BS. His answer? A smile and a nod.---- Phil December 7, 2016 Planning, Tours, Speakers, Events, Elections Note: The next regular meeting will be Wednesday, August 17th at 7:00 Misc. Information PM at Oak Knoll Winery. • Here’s another reason to August agenda: ”All Whites Tasting”. This will be a blind tasting and love red wine. A Dutch study, “Population-level analysis of critique of member made white wines including white varietals, rose, gut microbiome variation” sparkling, fruit wines & mead and anything remotely resembling a white claims that drinking red wine wine. promotes diversified and beneficial intestinal bacteria 1.) Snacks: This will be a potluck; bring a small snack to share. and leads thus to better 2.) . Everyone needs to sign a new waiver. If you didn’t pay your dues at the Gala or overall health. picnic please remember to pay your 2016 dues at this meeting. 3.) Bring two wine glasses for the blind tasting of member wines. •Neighbors and 4.) The regular club meeting will begin at 7 pm and end by 9 pm. If you can, get there a environmentalists are furious little early to help set up. Please help put away chairs and tables at the end of the with California’s Justin meeting. Vineyards for recently cutting Website: http://portlandwinemakersclub.com/ down thousands of old oak No Meeting Minutes trees to enable an expansion of their Paso Robles HOW DO DESSERT WINES GET SO SWEET? vineyards. The act stirred up Emily Bell April 11, 2016 so much controversy that local Ever wonder how dessert wines become sweet? It’s easy to imagine a bunch of winemakers authorities were forced to halt just opening up big vats and pouring in some granulated sugar. (That is, after all, what makes the project pending an bran flakes palatable for all those prepubescent years.) And while some liquors have shown investigation. In the end, evidence of actually having sugar added, dessert wines become sweet by a variety of Justin issued a statement processes. saying they were “ashamed and sorry” for their actions They also become expensive by a variety of processes. The reason that most dessert wines and would donate the 380- come in half, or 375 mL bottles, is because the basic concept is dehydration—meaning you get acre parcel on which the felled less juice per grape, and it takes a lot more to fill a bottle. But considering what goes into most oaks once sat, while dessert wine (especially extremely careful timing of harvest), you’ll tend to find a consistency of additionally planting 5,000 quality, if also a consistency of price. And don’t let the “sweetness” factor scare you off. Highly aromatic and high acid grapes tend to go into dessert wines to create balance with the new oak trees across their properties. sweetness, not to mention concentrated complexity. And then there’s Noble Rot, which just makes everything delightfully funky. • It’s been another early start Fortification for Napa in 2016, with the first As far as sweet wines go, this is a pretty simple one to tackle. Take port. Like any other wine, grapes picked for sparkling port is fermented by allowing yeasts to feast on sugar and convert it to alcohol. However, wines in the past few days, where wines like a Cabernet do this to the point of a much dryer wine, the fermentation of port said Napa Valley Vintners. is actually stopped—like, brought to a screeching halt, by the addition of a neutral spirit. This is called fortification. (Thus, fortified wines.) Fortification has two important effects: it ups the • In Washington, winemakers alcohol content of the wine—which is why we sip port in those tiny adorable cups—and it stops crush about 9,000 tons of fermentation, meaning there will be leftover sugar. And that’s what makes port sweet. Pinot Gris a year, making it Noble Rot the No. 3 grape after Riesling Even if you haven’t had the pleasure of drinking a wine affected by Noble Rot—the fancier and Chardonnay. In Oregon, name for Botrytis cinerea—you’ve probably heard of it. It’s actually just a mold that basically it’s the top white grape by far. raisins the grapes, drying them up and concentrating their sugars. Not that it only intensifies More than three times as sweetness; by dehydrating the grapes, Noble Rot also concentrates the flavors, yielding richly much Pinot Gris is being aromatic, intense, low-yield dessert wines like Sauternes, Tokaji Azu (from Hungary), and made than Chardonnay. Spätlese Riesling. • Today, Chateau Ste. Michelle Ice Wine is the single largest producer By this point you’re seeing the pattern—it’s all about reducing the amount of water in the of Riesling in the world, harvested grape. And the ice wine process is a really cool way of doing that. Also, yes, a making more of it than any freezing one. The idea is leaving the grapes (typically high aromatic, decently acidic grapes) on other winery anywhere — the vine into the winter. By picking them at just the right time—and that’s a seriously important including Germany. decision on the vintners’ part—enough of the water is still frozen, so when you press, you get concentrated sweetness and aromatics. At 2,110 acres, more than 50 Late Harvest percent of Red Mountain is Like the ice wine process, but less extreme, this is simply when harvest (again, of a particular covered in vines. This makes and often richly flavored grape) is delayed, allowing the grape to shrivel somewhat and it the most densely planted concentrate sugars and aromatics. So basically all ice wine is technically (and super) “late AVA in the Pacific Northwest. harvest,” though not all late harvest wine is ice wine. Riesling (again, Spätlese, which actually means “late harvest) is a common late harvest wine, as are Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc. Portland Winemakers Club annual picnic The PWC held it’s annual picnic on Saturday, July 16 at Oak Knoll Winery. Member wines were better than ever and the food delicious and abundant. Thanks go out to Bridget Lopez for making sure all details were taken care of and for providing clever table center pieces and delicious grape cluster decorated cup cakes and other desert goodies. Below are some photos from the event. Treasurer Barb Thomson submitted the following report: Attendees: 26 (25 adults, 1 child) Picnic fees collected: $110.00 (fees waived for 3 adults and 1 child) Picnic expenses: $59.79 Paid out for protein: $136.24 Editor: (See Phil’s Rant on page one) PWC members Ken Stinger, Phil Bard & Jon Kahrs attended a ETS seminar in Newburg presented by Dr. Rich Decenzo of ETS Labs. He presented the results of VTNR, DNA analysis of yeast species present in the must of both non-inoculated & inoculated ferments. Fermentations from six Oregon wineries & six Oregon vineyards were tested.