I got to accompany winemaker John Levenberg in the One Woman winery as he tested, tasted and planned his blends for the 2008 pinot noir grown by Russ McCall in Cutchogue.

We started with five samples from different clones and different barrels/tanks, tasted each separately, evaluated their strengths and weaknesses and then decided which would bring the best to a blend.

John, ever the modern winemaker, basically makes wine with his laptop filled with spreadsheets of tiny numbers and an indecipherable short hand — easily explained if you have a patience for numbers. One lot came from vines close to the wood line where the deer have done a lot of damage. Another, clone 115, went through cold maceration, which highlights aromatics; it had a honey, raspbery fruity nose with grainy tannins. The clone 667 spent time in 33 percent of new wood and smelled like it. It was tannic, thanks to the wood and had more of a mid palate with the same grainy tannis. It went through a hot extended maceration, which John says adds to the finish, aside from extracting color and tannins. The  clone 777 had 29 percent wood with a nice finish, honey aromas and medium tannins but nothing up front. The final sample is called the reserve; it spent its time in 100 percent new oak and was a 50/50 mix of the 667 and the 115. It had a real bacony nose.

We made two blends: #1- 50 percent reserve, 38 percent 115 and 12 percent 777. #2 43 percent 115, and 29 percent of each the 667 and the reserve.

I liked the honey nose of the 115 and suggested the #2 blend. I think it boils down to a preference for oak, which John admits he loves. Me, not so much. The #1 blend was interesting because it seemed to have more heat than any of the components; it was still bacony with the honey, fuller on the palate and the tannins were softened.

Of course I like #2 best (it was mine), because it preserved the honey  and got the added heft of the oak and the mid palate from the 667.

What was interesting, but I guess not too surprising, was that winemakers explicitly make different components to achieve a complete finished products. Also entering into the mix and making it a science, aside from the art, is working with what you have, not only the quality but the quantity. No wine should go to waste, so you have to work with what the vintage gave you. And you have to satisfy the boss, while thinking about how you can sell it.

I also tasted from the tank the 2008 sauvignon blanc from the One Woman vineyard. It was delicious and clean, fruity and easy to drink. John hadn’t decided what to do with it yet — blend with other varietals or bottle it on its own. I thought it was delicious on its own, but there really wasn’t enought of it to warrant selling it at the price an unoaked newly released sauvignon blanc would fetch. It would be great by the glass, but can they make money on it?

One of my first introductions to wine was when I work at An American Place restaurant, a good 20 years ago. (Yee god.) The place was one of the first to focus on local food, in a macro sense. It only served ingredients and wine from American. The only exception was the fancy sugar cubes imported from France.

The wine list contained all the usual suspects of American brands, including one staff favorite, Lolonis, distinguished by the lady bug on the label advertising the winery’s organic bona fides.

I think it’s been that long since I tasted their wine, and this week I had the opportunity to drink the 1999 Private Reserve Merlot from Redwood Valley. Initially I was dismayed because the cork crumbled when I tried to open it and had to settle for pushing the remainder down into the bottle. But the wine was bright ruby, the color of a much younger wine and it was packed with fruit, gentle tannins, good acidity and a long beautiful finish. None of the green merlot flavors that I’m afraid are typical on Long Island merlot. I might not have picked this out blind as merlot, as it wasn’t typical, but rich. It was also very clean and evident that it has many years ahead of it.The Redwood Valley is in Mendocin, north west of Napa. From the Lolonis website:

The area’s climate can vary widely over the course of the day, with mid-day temperatures reaching the mid- to upper 90s and dropping to the mid-40s by the days’ end. The effect of this is that the grape acidity stays constant while the phenolic content remaints relatively high. This, combined with the unusual Redvine Series Soil enable the growth of both the sturdy reds and complex whites that we have been growing for over half a century.

So what’s Redvine Series Soil? Info from a USDA website:

The Redvine series consists of deep, well drained soils formed in old alluvial material weathered from sedimentary rock. Redvine soils are on dissected terraces and have slopes of 2 to 30 percent. The mean annual precipitation is 37 inches and the mean annual temperature is 57 degrees F.

This is good information. And evidently it’s a good place to grow organic/biodynamic wines as the winery Mendocino Farms can attest.

Last Monday I had the chance to taste some wine at the offices of David Bowler Wine with Southern Rhone great Phillipe Cambie, importer Peter Weygandt and Vincent Maurel of Clos St. Jean of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

We tasted 10 wines and it was pretty great because there were only a few of us sitting around a table. I had just come from a Vias tasting, which also presented a select group of wine — in this case all red. I find this a much better environment than the football-field sized tasting like those held at the Marriot Marquis. Mostly because I’m a lightweight and get drunk. I don’t know how others do it.

The wines were all rich and delicious.With M. Maurel, we tasted two white Chateauneuf du Papes from the same site and from the same blend: roussane, clairette and white grenache with 50 percent from old barriques and 50 percent from tank. They were, however, extremely different, and M. Maurel didn’t really have an answer why. There could have been a bit of a language barrier, but the reason he gave was very French–in the order of “It’s like that.”

The 2006 was rich and clearly best for food. The 2007 was more aromatic with a tangy acidity. Perhaps better as an aperitif.

According to these experts, the 2006 vintage was a great elegant vintage producing wines that will take longer to develop.

Also on the table were two Cotes du Rhone by Aphillantes, the 2005 “Galets” and the 2006 Trois Cepages. Both are the Rhone trio of GSM, grenache, syrah and mouvedre, which has been adopted in Australia. Both are rich and balanced, with the Galet having a beautiful nose, floral and powdery. All the wines were high in alcohol but balanced by rich fruit and complex flavors. The third wine drom Aphillantes was the 2005 Cairanne (the name of the village “L’Ancestral du Puits” made from 100-year-old vines. Bright red fruit with black strap, floral, some black spice and leather with high tannins and a long finish. More info about Aphillantes from a Dutch enthusiast here.

Finally was the famous  Clos St. Jean Chateauneuf du Pape Deus Ex Machina from the sold out 2004 vintage. Almost black with prune and a hint of oxidation on the nose. It’s rich with an almost greasy long finish with more prune and pine on the palate. 60 percent grenache from 100-year-old vines and  40 percent mouvedre from 45-year-old vines.

Last week I attended a seminar at the International Wine Center that focused on the wine of southern France.

Make that the South of France, the new marketing push from Sopexa, the biggest food/wine marketer in France. The seminar was more than a commercial and contained information valuable to anyone studying wine, as well as a tasting with some impressive sommeliers. There was André Compeyre, who worked for Alain Ducasse and is now a consultant for the Les Halles restaurant group (where I had a realy good steak frites on Monday, but that’s another story) and the ubitiqutous Jean-Luc le Dû, former sommelier for Daniel and now the owner of his own shop in Manhattan.

First the info: the trade groups for the wine of the Langeudoc, Vin de Pays d’Oc and the wine from Roussillon joined forces in June 2006 to create one umbrella brand South of France in order to promote their wines.This accomplished a few things for them. A couple being getting rid of the words Languedoc and Roussillon from the marketing world.

Personal aside. I did a brief exchange program in high school in Montpellier, which is in the Languedoc region of France, kind of central southern border. And I learned that its called that because there they spoke the language of the west: langue=tongue; oc, like occidental,=west.

Anywho, the region has a few image problems to overcome. In the wake of oidium, a rot, in 1870 and phylloxera in 1895, the region’s vineyards were devastated and expediancy dictated the planting of fast growing and high yielding vines, like carignan. Result: excess production and low market prices. (A lot of this information comes from the 43-page printout of a power point provided by Sopexa.)

Another interesting bad PR image to overcome is the recent activity of CRAV, Comité d’Action Regionale Viticole, a violent radical union that stages dramatic protests and strikes to protest government policies regarding wine from the southern region. I came across CRAV during my reasearch for my last paper for the diploma on cooperatives. Truly a wacky group.

In the ’80s the region started restructuring vineyards by planting higher quality varieties more suited to the climate and in 1987 Vin de Pays d’Oc was created by Robert Skalli and Jacques Gravegeal. I found this interesting because I have bought some Skalli wine, a pinot noir from Corsica, for the restaurant. An explanation of VdP:

French expression meaning ‘country wine’ which was adopted for an intermediate category of wines created in France in 1973, and formalized in 1979, to recognize and encourage the production of wines that are distinctly superior to basic vin de table, and which, in theory at least, offer some stamp of regional identity.

This is the opening sentence of a long entry in the Oxford Companion to Wine, edited by Jancis Robinson, the first woman to achieve Master of Wine.

See, this is what get wine geeks so excited. Not only is it about wine, a beverage, it’s about history and business and geography and agriculture — how we feed ourselves– and pleasure.

More on the 10 wines we tasted in the next post. For me this is invaluable because I did Unit 3 of my diploma home study and missed the input of other wine lovers during tasting. It’s easy to get what wine makers call “cellar palate”.

I went to the dentist today for a check up and the dental hygenist told me that wine tasting can be bad for your teeth, and not just in the turn-them-black way. The acid in the wine, or the acid in anything, eats away tooth enamel especially at the gum line. She suggested carrying a little bottle of floride rinse to use after tasting wine.

Good idea! This is one of the advantages of going to a dentist in a wine region.

The question of kosher. At the Israeli wine tasting on Tuesday Mark Squires addressed the the stigma of kosher wine and most Americans’ feeling that it isn’t very good. As he pointed out, there are 200 wineries in Israel and 150 of them are not kosher. But most of the output is. The non-kosher wineries are mostly boutique wineries with low production. He added that Hebrew National and Coca-Cola are kosher, but no one is bother by that.

The confusion, he believes, stems from mevushal wine, which has been flashed pasteurized — not boiled — in accordance with Jewish law. I’m no expert in Jewish law. Here’s the wiki link.

Here’s the take home message. All Israeli wine is not kosher. Not all kosher wine has been boiled, only mevushal. Coke is kosher.

The wine hiatus is over and tasting season in New York City is in full swing. The 2004 Brunellos are in and Michael Skurnik had a tasting two weeks ago heralding their arrival. It was mobbed.

But on Tuesday I went to something much more interesting: the first wine tasting of exclusively Israeli wines in the U.S. Held at the Prince George Ballroom in 27th Street. The tasting featured 20 producers who brought with them two to seven wines.

The event was kicked off by a talk from Mark Squires, above, of The Wine Advocate, who discussed the state of selling Israeli wine, as quality has been improving. He did a very good job, and kept it interesting while one of the Capsuto Freres kept interrupting him.The thing about Israeli wine is that is it almost indistinguishable from California wine. OK, that’s not fair, but the main grapes are cabernet and merlot, which as Squires pointed out, are the main ingredients in a wine that comes from a climate far removed from Isreal’s contant hot climate. As many of the winemakers told me, vintage variation is minimal and the greatest impact on quality during the growing season is the possiblity of rain or hail in the spring, which can comprimise fruit set and then affect yields. Otherwise it’s kind of ideal to grow wine, except for the fact that Israelis are purported to drink about one liter of wine per year. If you can hear it, Victor Schoenfeld, winemaker at Golan Heights Winery, talks about the weather.

Christian Wolffer, owner of Wolffer Estate Vineyards in Sagaponack, was killed New Year’s Eve while swimming on vacation in South America. He was 70 years old.

The accident was reported in the New York Post.

The fate of the winery is unknown. Employees are meeting today to learn of any plans already in place.

Made a quick visit to Roanoke Vineyards Monday, and for sale in the tasting room were wreaths made from the discarded canes from different varieties. You could get a cab franc/merlot blend wreath for $5, or go for the straight cab franc. The woman in the tasting room said they were selling briskly, and the running joke was it was the most money they’ve yet made off their vines. Cute.

Gov. David Paterson’s budget for the 2009 fiscal year not only calls for selling wine in grocery stores, it is also proposes to cut all state  funding — $2.8 million worth — for the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, as reported by Rochester’s The Democrat and Chronicle. In addition, his budget calls for upping the state excise tax on wine from 18.9 cents to 51 cents.

This would shut the NYWGF down, as president Jim Trezise states in the article.

[Image via state.ny.us]This comes on the heels of the Dec. 10 release of the New York Wine Grape Task Force’s report, which lists among its conclusions:

The marketing of New York State as a socially responsible producer of high quality wines will be accomplished by a concerted public relations campaign that brings together state agencies, such as Empire State Development (I Love NY), New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, and industry (including New York Wine & Grape Foundation, regional wine trails and promotional groups), coordinates existing efforts and institutes new measures.

Emphasis mine.

The task force was instituted by Patrick Hooker, commissioner of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, in November 2007, while Eliot Spitzer was still in office. It was staffed by representatives of the New York state wine industry and headed by Kareem Massoud of Paumanok Vineyards in Aquebogue, here on the North Fork.

According to the report, the task force met five times over the year and had several conference calls before issuing its 14-page statement.

The governor’s budget will have to be approved by the state Legislature with a deadline of April 1, a date lawmakers have rarely met. This year Paterson advanced the release of his budget by one month in order to expedite approval with the inevitable dealmaking that preceeds it.

NYWGF was created as a nonprofit by the legislature in 1985 to

fulfill the public purpose of providing for an effective and continuous program of research, promotion and education to strengthen the New York wine and grape industry’s position in the marketplace including the maintenance and expansion of domestic and foreign markets and uses for grapes grown and processed within the state.