I love to lead a wine tasting, particularly when I get an opportunity to share my wines.  It is always interesting to me both at wine tasting events and when I am leading wine tastings at the wineryhow many people won’t try certain wines, or are convinced before they even start that they don’t like certain kinds of wine.  “I only drink reds”, or, “I don’t like sweet wines”, or even, “I can’t stand dry wines”.  I don’t doubt that those sentiments are not true.  I believe there are those that when they are drinking for pleasure will only drink certain kinds of wines.  There is nothing wrong with that.  There are people who don’t like chicken, or fish, or vegetables in their daily diet, and so tend to avoid those foods.

A wine tasting should be something different.  You are not sitting down to enjoy a full glass of some wine you know you like.  A wine tasting is a chance to stretch your boundaries, to try something new, or at least something different.  I get people all the time that say they only drink sweet wines.  I probably get the same number of people that say they only drink dry.  I try to remind both groups that if they only try wines of one style or variety that they are missing out on an entire world of good wine.  There are bad sweet wines, no doubt, but there are bad dry wines too.  The opposite is also true.  There are really, really good dry wines out there, and just as many really, really good sweet wines, and if you don’t try them, you are missing out on a lot of very good wine. 

So when you have the opportunity to taste, try and put aside your preconceptions about style, color, and dryness, step outside your comfort zone, and give something different a try.  The worse thing that could happen is you end up pouring out an ounce of wine.  The best thing that could happen is that you find something new you really like.

There are some that like it that way.  The companies that make money from being in between wineries and breweries (distributors) don’t want us to sell directly to the consumer.  When that happens they don’t get their cut.  Now, everyone has to make a living, and distributers have their place in the chain.  The problem is that they also have lots of money, big lobbies, and are working to make it even harder to ship wine directly to you, the consumer.

If you have a chance, check out the Free the Grapes website at  http://www.freethegrapes.org/index.php?q=content/media_updates.  There is a law in review at the federal level that could make it harder to ship wine, and it has the backing of some deep pockets.  It is going to take a grass roots effort to help keep that from happening, and Free the Grapes is making it pretty easy.  Read the facts, and if you are so inclined go to the place on the website that will allow you to e-mail your representative to let them know you are against the legislation.

Thanks!

See you at the winery!

The UCLA Wine Consumer Research Team is doing a survey.  If you are interested in joining in go to http://www.uclawine.org/.

Our Mission: 

Wyandotte Winery is passionate about producing exceptional, handcrafted wines of the highest quality. We offer a fun and inviting atmosphere for our guests to learn about and enjoy our outstanding wines.

Now, you certainly may be asking yourself, “So what?”  Let me try and tell you why we think this is important.

First, it spells out what is important to us.  We want to be a place where people can have fun, a place where they can come and learn about wine without feeling intimidated.  Valerie and I are committed to this idea.  No matter how big we get, no matter what decisions we make for the business, this will always be the way we shape the winery.  We often say people come in customers and leave as friends, and it is our goal to always be that way.

Second, we are passionate about making exceptional wines, but only in the context of what our customers can and will enjoy.  Not only are we focused on making good wine, but on making a wide variety of wines so that everyone that comes in the door can find something they like.  Quality wines are only a good thing if there are people who can enjoy them.  It is like composing a great symphony, but never having it heard.  If you make the best wine in the world, but noone wants to drink it, what good is it?  Grape wines, fruit wines, dry wines, sweet wines.  All made with the same attention to quality, and none are considered less important than another.

Our mission statement will be our guide over the next several years as we make decisions about the direction of the winery.  We want you to check us on it.  If we do something that you believe is not consistent with our mission, let us know.  Ultimately it is our customers and friends who decide if we are doing the right things at Wyandotte.

In the past 30 days we have purchased nearly 4000 gallons of juice.  We are trying very hard to buy as much as we can from Ohio sources, so we have been working with various vineyards in Northern and Southern Ohio to obtain varieties like Riesling, Vidal Blanc, Niagara, Catawba, and Foch.  Some of our juice is coming in from the west coast, California Syrah and Oregon Gewürztraminer for example.  We have not found any good sources for fruit (non-grape) juices in Ohio yet, so we are still working with a vendor in upstate New York for cranberry and raspberry, and plum.  We will keep looking in Ohio, and if anyone has any good sources please let us know!  The notable exception is that we are getting our apple juice from Apple Hill Orchards near Mansfield, Ohio.  They did such a good job for us last year, and our Apple Hill Wine was so well enjoyed, that we are sticking with them for another season.  As an aside, a trip to Apple Hill Orchard is a great day trip, and well worth the drive. 

When all is said and done, by the end of November we will have purchased about 4700 gallons of juice.  The winery is full of the smells of grapes and fermentation as we get it all started, and so far everything shows a lot of promise!  We will keep you up to date as the wines progress, and you should start to see new releases in the late spring/early summer 2010.  There will be some new wines released before year end from juice we have been working since late last year, so keep your eye on our website, e-mail newsletter, and Facebook for those announcements.

For a big winery 4700 gallons is nothing.  For us, that number represents significant growth in production over last year, and brings our total production for the year well above what we had planned.  Valerie and I are blessed to have the best customers and friends in the business, and we thank you very much!

Well, back to the winery!  I sure have a lot to do!

Robin Coolidge – Winemaker

You can easily see the "legs" of wine in the shadow of this glass.

If you swirl some wines in the glass and then hold the glass up to the light the liquid will appear to run down the insides at different speeds and form rivulets.  These are called the “legs”.  You will also sometimes hear them called the “tears of wine” or “church windows”.  Some wines have much longer, more easily seen legs than others.  I have heard people say that the more legs a wine has the richer or more full-bodied the wine is, or maybe the higher quality the wine is.  Do legs really indicated body or quality?  What is the scientific answer?

The effect was first explained by a physicist named James Thompson in 1855.  What he found is today called the Marangoni Effect, and has to do with the flow of a liquid being affected by surface tension.

Wine is basically a mixture of water, alcohol, and all the other good stuff that makes wine so tasty.  The important things in this context are the water and the alcohol.  Alcohol has a lower surface tension that water does, and where there is a lower concentration of alcohol the water’s surface tension will pull the surrounding liquid more strongly than a region with a higher alcohol concentration.  This can be seen really easily if you take a surface that is wet and place a drop of water in the middle of the wet area.  Alcohol also evaporates much more quickly than water which means that when the alcohol evaporates the water takes its place and flows into that space.

So, when you swirl the wine in the glass the edges of the glass get coated in wine.  The alcohol does not evaporate at the same rate in all areas of the glass which causes surface tension to vary across the surface.  Where more alcohol evaporates the surface tension of the water increases which pushes the legs up the glass until gravity finally wins and pulls the liquid back down.  Don’t believe it?  Here is an experiment for you.  Find a wine that looks like it has really good legs.  Cover the glass with your hand, or put a piece of plastic wrap over the top of the glass, and swirl the wine again.  It may not happen the first time, but after several attempts you should see that the legs no longer appear.  That is because when the glass is covered the alcohol does not evaporate as readily which means the surface tension does not vary around the glass and the wine sheets down the surface evenly.

So what do legs really indicate?  Well, the higher the alcohol in the wine, the more likely the wine will have legs.  Alcohol content does affect the body of the wine in the mouth, so to some extent legs can indicate something about the body of the wine.  But other factors like the temperature of the glass or drafts in the room can also effect how quickly the alcohol evaporates, and those factors really have nothing to do with the wine itself.  Legs are definately not an indicator of wine quality.  A wine that shows no legs may be just as good as one that has great legs.

Next time someone says, “Man, this wine really has great legs!” you will be able to explain what that really means.

As always, drink what you like!

Many of you may also know that Valerie and I just finished a seven day trip to Oregon and Southern Washington.  A good portion of that trip was dedicated to wine tasting at the many wineries and vineyards in the area. It was a very interesting trip full of great scenery and wines that ranged from just OK to very, very good.

Our trip took us to wineries in and around the Portland area, eastward into the Columbia River Gorge, (Hood River, The Dalles, and on to Biggs Junction), and south/southwest into the Dundee Hills area of the Willamette Valley. The northern wineries in the gorge area make a variety of wines.  The Willamette Valley is famous for their Pinot Noir. Every winery has at least one, and most more than one, Pinot Noir wine. There is also quite a bit of Pinot Gris and Chardonnay grown here, and while for the most part these are very good wines, neither of those varieties is one that I like to drink very much, so I spent a lot of time concentrating on the Pinot.

Believe me, the variety of wine made from Pinot Noir is enough to keep you busy. I can see Pinot being a very hard wine to appreciate, and not at all easy to taste. There is just so much diversity and complexity in the wines and the grape is so versatile and sensitive that there is very little consistency across vineyards and vintages. As Valerie and I tasted our way through the Dundee Hills and the surrounding areas I began to notice some similarities that allowed me to categorize the styles in my mind. I would like to share, and if you like, get some comments on, the categories of Pinot Noir wines I have developed for myself. These are very general categories, and probably do not do justice to the variety of Pinot Noir wines available, but they have helped me to deal with the many different wines that I tasted.

The fist style that stood out to me was the very light Pinot Noir wines. I don’t mean rosé style Pinots, (there were quite a few of those), but wines sold as true Pinot Noir that were made in a very light style. These light style Pinots are very lightly colored, soft wines, usually with a fruity, floral nose and taste that reminded me of red fruits like strawberries. Some of them are just too light, and to my taste without much body. I suspect some are a product of trying to grow Pinot Noir in an area where the grapes just don’t thrive and so don’t mature enough to give a very dark, full bodied wine. You might like these as a summer wine and if you don’t really enjoy more heavy reds. For me they were just too light, and if I really wanted Pinot that light I would drink a rosé style. Most of these very light wines came from the northern Oregon and southern Washington areas.

The next style, and one I like a lot more, is the full bodied Pinot Noir wines. These darker, ruby colored wines usually have a big complex nose full of smoke, pepper, plums and sometimes hints of leather and vanilla. The palate is a mouth full of darker fruits like plum, current, cherry, usually with relatively hefty tannins and a spicy finish. Interestingly, to my palate the acidity was all over the board ranging from crisp and bright to darker and less evident. This style is a lot more complex than the light styles, and I need to spend more time with these wines to learn to appreciate their subtleties. Most of the wines we tasted around the Dundee Hills fell into this category.

The final category, and in my mind the most rare, are what I term the “velvety” Pinots. These are by far my favorite, and, of course, usually the most expensive. The velvety Pinots I had were usually garnet or on the darker side of ruby red color, sometimes almost purple. The nose is not as spicy, but still smoky and usually featured dark fruit aromas mixed with chocolate, vanilla, and sometimes liquorish. They are smooth and luxurious on the palate with a mouth feel that reminds of the way velvet feels on my skin. The taste is an earthy, complex mix of dark berries, plum, chocolate, clove and other dark spices, and the tannins while present, are soft and melt away into the finish. You know when you drink one of these you have something special, and I love them.

As you might expect Valerie and I brought quite a few wines home with us, and I am looking forward to tasting them again to see how my perceptions the second time agree with my initial feelings. I am also looking forward to experiencing more Pinot Noir wines, and to learn more about the Burgundy wines that are mostly shaped by this complex grape.

Someone told me that the two things you need to become a real wine expert are good senses and a good memory.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  To be a real expert you have to be able to sense, through smell and taste, the subtle differences in the wines you are sampling.  You also have to be able to put into words what you are sensing so that others can understand it and try to sense the same things.  Memory is important because you have to remember what certain wines are supposed to be like, and the differences between the wine you are tasting today and the wine you tasted three weeks ago.  For instance, the Merlot you tasted three weeks ago may have had characteristics of blackcurrants and cherries.  Is that right for a Merlot?  How does that wine compare to the one you are tasting today?  What else do you taste that was not in the 75 others you have tasted?  Are those subtleties the same as the last Merlot you tasted from the same region?  How does it differ from other regions?  Being able to sense those small differences, and remember over time what you sensed, is really important to being an expert.

Now, that said, as in most things, most of us are not lucky enough to have been blessed those refined senses or great memories.  That not a problem because for the majority of us wine tasting does not have to be that refined, and it can be, for the most part, pretty simple, and a lot of fun.  When I make wine, I rely on my senses to understand how the wine is progressing and to make choices about what steps I want to take to make it better.  While I consider my senses to be pretty good, I certainly do not claim to have the refined senses that some experts have, and I certainly do not have the memory to catalog all that I have tasted.  Most of us have good enough senses of taste and smell to at least get a good idea of the aroma and tastes of the wine, and to learn over time what certain varieties are supposed to taste and smell like.  We may not get all the subtleties, but we can get the main smell and taste components.  Over time we may even get good at sensing some of the more subtle nuances that make wine tasting so special, but that takes practice amd experiance.  How cool is it that the only way to get better is to drink more wine!

There are many resources on the Internet that can help you learn how to taste wines, so I won’t try and do that here.  WikiHow has a great article at http://www.wikihow.com/Taste-Wine, and another good article is at YourLoveOfWine.com http://www.yourloveofwine.com/howtotastewine.php.

Do your own search and you will find many good resources.  Then start tasting!  We would love to have you visit us at the winery for some show and tell.  When people visit the winery and are interested in learning, Valerie and I always try to take away some of the mystique associated with wine tasting and make it as simple as possible.  We will make the process simple, entertaining, and not at all intimidating, and a lot of fun.  We promise!

The other important thing to remember is that you do not have to be formal all the time.  There is always room for just enjoying your wine in a casual way without the formalities associated with a structured wine tasting.  I find that the more educated I get on wine, the more I can enjoy it because I recognize things that I never thought to look for before.  I am also careful, however, to take time to just relax and enjoy the wine I am drinking.  In the long run that is what it is for anyway!

And, as always, my motto remains the same:  Drink What You Like!

There is no doubt red wine can give some people headaches.  Sometimes it can happen very quickly, and can really hurt.  I have done a little research on the subject and here is what I found.

People tend to start by blaming sulfites.  Sulfite is usually added in very small amounts to wine during winemaking to prevent oxidation and spoilage from bacteria.  There are several reasons that I doubt the theory that sulfites cause wine headaches.  Most people get headaches from red wine only, not white.  Sulfites are not specific to red wines.  They are in all wines, even white wines.  The fermentation process creates sulfites at a low level, so every wine has some sulfite even if the winery does not add it (and most do).  If sulfites were the cause, all wine would cause headaches, not just reds.  Some people also think that it is a sulfite allergy that causes the headaches.  It is true that some people are sensitive to sulfites, but it is less than 1% of the population.  Besides sulfite sensitivity usually is associated with breathing problems, not headaches.

The next suspect in red wine headaches is usually tannins.  Tannins are flavonoids that cause that dry mouth feeling after you swallow a wine, and are usually associated with red wines, not white.  That fits with only red wines causing the headaches, but there are other foods like tea, soy, and chocolate that contain tannins, so why don’t those cause headaches?  That would indicate that tannins are really not the problem.

The next school of thought is that histamines cause headaches.  It is true that there are usually more histamines in red wine than in white, and some people are sensitive to them.  There are several scientific studies that have been done that show no real connection between histamine content in wine and wine headaches.

Unfortunately it seems for every theory for what causes red wine headaches there is some study or reason that disproves it.  So what the heck is a wine lover to do?

Some people suggest taking an antihistamine like Claritin or Sudafed to help avoid a headache caused by histamines in wine.  That seems to work for some people.  Take the antihistamine and then drink a half a glass of red and see if you are OK.  If so, then you may have found your solution.

If taking an antihistamine does not work, than there is some indication that it is not ALL red wines that cause a headache.  Sometimes red wine from California may cause a problem, but wine from France is fine, or vise-versa.  Sometimes certain grapes will cause a problem, others will not.  If you really want to be able to drink red wines, try a half glass of a type or brand of wine and see what happens.  If you don’t have a headache after ½ hour or so, drink a couple of glasses and see if you are still OK.  Keep a journal so you can keep track of what happens.  You may find that there are some red wines that are OK and some that are not.

If none of that works, or it is just not that important to you, than you may just have to stick with the white and fruit wine family.  That is not too much of a sacrifice, there are plenty of those wines available that are really good. 

If you end up experimenting and trying different reds to see the effect let me know how it goes.  I will be interested in the results.