The Wine Cyclist

My roommate Ian has been working in the winemaking biz for a few years now. I just helped bottle up some pretty awesome pinot gris, and then got him to go on video and talk about the wine and the process of making it.

It is not enough these days to simply question authority; you got to speak with it too.

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

Yesterday, I and several of my fellow Portland-area wine bloggers had the opportunity to sit down for lunch with Tom Mackey, the Director of Winemaking at St Fancis Winery & Vineyards in Sonoma. We met up at Urban Farmer in downtown Portland, and the blogging crew consisted of me, Tamara at Sip With Me!, Bernard & Eva at PortlandOregonWine.com, and Mary of Vindulge (who took the photo of Tom and me that you see here).

Throughout lunch, we sampled many delicious and nicely priced wines from St. Francis — more on that in a second — and chatted with Tom about winemaking and the wines of St. Francis. Now, there’s no doubt that Tom is incredibly knowledgeable about wines and making them; you don’t stay in the business as long as he has without becoming quite the expert. Tom’s been making wines at St. Francis for about as long as I’ve been alive (and wines at other locations before that). It’s hard for me to wrap my head around that at times.

One of the more interesting things that I learned was that sugar to alcohol conversion rates are a bit higher than I thought. It used to be that you get a conversion rate of about 55%. That means that if your grape must (also known as unfermented wine) starts out at 26% sugar (or 26 Brix), it would ferment to be about 14.3% alcohol. I thought the conversion rate was still 55%. Apparently, with the cultured yeasts in use these days, the conversion rate is closer to 62-65%. So that same 26% sugar must would ferment into a 16.5% wine. This is all assuming that you’re fermenting the wine to complete dryness, but that’s another conversation. Perhaps this is part of the reason we’re seeing so many high alcohol wines these days.

Another discussion that fascinated me was his review of the process he uses to determine when the grapes are ready to harvest. It used to be that you just measured the sugar content, and when that was high enough, the grapes were ready to go. Now, there are several factors that are examined in determining the harvest schedule (taste, of course, but not just of the grape, taste of the skin, taste of the seed, etc. and also various levels of other chemicals in the grape). All these taste factors need to be lined-up with various practical factors as well (e.g., the weather, ability of the winery to process grapes at a certain rate). It’s ever more complicated as time goes on and the art advances.

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You can tell I’m really getting settled in Portland as I’ve started fermenting things again.

While I was in Arizona in November, I picked up about 17.5 pounds of mesquite honey. On it’s own, it’s delicious. Fermented into an alcoholic beverage, however, I’m told it’s fantastic. I set two batches a-brewin’ as you see in the picture. A larger five gallon batch (12.5# of honey) started off with a Lalvin EC-1118 yeast strain (vigourous ferment, should have no trouble completing) is on the left. A two gallon batch (5# of honey) using a Lalvin D47 yeast strain (more fruit and aroma development, and with any luck, the yeast will kick out when there’s just a touch of residual sugar left) is on the right.

My plan is as follows: once fermentation is done, I will rack the five gallon batch into two separate 2.5-gallon carboys. I’ll add some oak to one of those carboys and leave the other alone. The two gallon batch will be racked into two 1-gallon carboys. I’ll add some chili peppers to one and leave the other as is. When it’s all said and done, I may try to blend some of these back together, or just bottle them all separately. We shall see…

The close of 2009 brings also to an end my travels far and wide, and though I still have some recapping to do and pictures to post, that will all come in good time. Before we end the first month of this new year, I wanted to tell you all where I am and what I’ll be getting myself up to in the year ahead.

It’s official. I’m now a resident of the great state of Oregon and the fine city of Portland therein. With a Honda Accord full of as much stuff as I could haul, I drove across the northern states, following to a certain extent my bicycling route of the summer, but this time in the dead of winter, to my new home in the Pacific Northwest. And though most of my stuff is still in fairly disorganized piles on the floor, I couldn’t be happier about my new home.

What does being a Portlander now entail for me? Well, at the moment, it means tolerating annoyingly short days, being just over a month past the winter solstice and a hair north of the 45th parallel. I have retrieved my bicycle from it’s super secret stashing place here in Portland, a spot I left her in back at the end of August, and she is in fine riding shape, but alas the days are too short. But I do not let that get my spirits down! There may not be any riding of great distance in my immediate future, but I have many new neighborhoods to check out that are within a few miles ride. And this is good, as there is much I want to explore locally before I expand out to the rest of the region.

With the spring will come nicer weather, more hours of sunlight, and doubtless the exploration of many a Pacific Northwest wine region by bicycle. The Willamette Valley, naturally, offers many great weekend destinations for me at a fairly reasonable cycling distance. And when the opportunities arise, I hope to also spend some time in the southern parts of Oregon and in the various AVAs of Washington. Perhaps the summer will even bring some trips down into California and the myriad of wineries there.

In the meantime, having a base of operations will be nice again, as it means I get to spend some time working on musical projects, something I’ve sorely missed during 2009. It’s hard to say what shape those projects will take just yet; things are still ramping back up in that department. In the past I’ve gotten very involved in house and techno. More recently, I’ve been rediscovering my passion for jazz. The future likely lies somewhere in between. Should be an interesting year…