City Winery - proud new parents of 200 infant wines!

We recently completed a comprehensive tasting of every barrel from each of the 2008 lots in our cellar. This was our first chance to thoroughly asses the wines post-alcoholic fermentation.

Once in barrel wine takes some time to calm down but within a couple of weeks each lot begins to reveal its unique personality and we can project the wine's trajectory over its life in our cellar. Our tasting also afforded us the chance to evaluate our cooperage; like wines, each barrel has its own character which slowly emerges. Two identical barrels filled on the same day with the same wine will slowly deviate as both the wood and wine evolve and blossom. Wine is alive. It grows, evolves and matures whether in a fermentation tank, in a barrel or in a bottle. This is the charm of wine but herein also lies the work of the wine maker.

Our complete cellar tasting may sound enticing but honestly, tasting wine critically is serious work. We scrutinize the wines for any flaws or indications that trouble might lay ahead. While often quite pleasant, our wines are still in an "unfinished" state. They've really just been born. In the next few weeks the red wines will start through a secondary malo-lactic fermentation which converts malic acid (think green apple) to the creamier lactic acid (as found in milk). The white wines are still very gassy and cloudy with suspended yeast. Much of the carbon dioxide created during the first fermentation remains in solution so these young wines are often spritzy. This carbon dioxide will dissipate as the wine ages. Lees (expired yeast) and sediment in suspension will slowly fall to the bottom of the barrel (or tank) so that when we rack the wines after aging they are brilliant and clear.

Wines at this early stage are not unlike young children; one day they might be adorable, the next quite disagreeable. But of course we love them even on the worst days. Part of our job here in the winery is to look past these natural fluctuations and focus on the big picture. How will these wines be when the grow up and how can we nudge them in the right direction? We can rack the wines(to "rack" is to gently remove wine from a vessel leaving behind the settled solids, change our balance of new and old barrels, remove or augment the lees, run blending trials, etc. All manner of tools and techniques are at our disposal. Ideally, we just stand back and monitor the wines as they mature but in a cellar of our size there are always a few barrels which need a helping hand.

I thought it would be interesting to give you a peek at our tasting notes so over the next few weeks we will cover all the wines in our cellar. The first, Chapter 1 - a Tale of Two Vineyards, is available now with more to come.

David Lecomte / Robert Kowal