Generous! I'm in Sacramento, and working that day. What time? I could make it by early afternoon and would love that. Will send PM.
Cab Franc Off
- Thread starter NorCal
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Generous! I'm in Sacramento, and working that day. What time? I could make it by early afternoon and would love that. Will send PM.
balatonwine
The Verecund Vigneron
That is fine. But not exactly what I said. In fact, it was the opposite. That is, and rather, if 4score said your wine was better than his.... do you claim you would not be even a little proud of that compliment? It would be almost inhuman to not be..... (at least a little). Nothing wrong with taking a bit of pride in work well done and praised by others (aka: ego points).
Drew, looking forward to meeting you. Anyone else in the Placer County area on July 13th?
Prepped and ready to go this afternoon!
I hope @4score will chime in with his own notes and conclusions, but here is mine. 3 of the wines were made from grapes from my community’s vineyard, 1 from a nearby, pretty neglected home vineyard.
This was completely blind. We were tasting and comparing the wine at the same time, but neither knew which of the 4 wines we were tasting. We compared, contrasted and then ranked the wines in the order we liked them and then tried to decipher which wine was which, based on the look, smell and taste.
My wine, as previously discussed had 7% Petite Sirah blended in it and I picked this out immediately due to the strong tannins. This ended up being the only wine I got correct and my third most favorite wine.
My favorite wine ended up being made by the grapes from the neglected vineyard. It’s aromatics we’re crazy good and had layers of flavors, smooth as could be and frankly could be drunk now. Put it in a bottle for a few years and it will be crazy good.
My takeaways:
- The PS added tannin structure and mid palate flavor, but will drive the need for additional time in the bottle for it to be the best wine it can be, but will be very nice when it does.
- The aromatics were driven by the grape (different clone?) versus anything else.
- The two wines with the Prelude yeast tended to have a longer finish, but could be what they describe as improved mouthfeel.
- I did not pick out any strong differences due to the oak treatments.
- I took out my stash of Petit Verdot and added 2 ml to my glass of my wine and it improved the finish on it a lot. I saved a gallon of the PV that will be going into my CF, before I bottle it.
This was completely blind. We were tasting and comparing the wine at the same time, but neither knew which of the 4 wines we were tasting. We compared, contrasted and then ranked the wines in the order we liked them and then tried to decipher which wine was which, based on the look, smell and taste.
My wine, as previously discussed had 7% Petite Sirah blended in it and I picked this out immediately due to the strong tannins. This ended up being the only wine I got correct and my third most favorite wine.
My favorite wine ended up being made by the grapes from the neglected vineyard. It’s aromatics we’re crazy good and had layers of flavors, smooth as could be and frankly could be drunk now. Put it in a bottle for a few years and it will be crazy good.
My takeaways:
- The PS added tannin structure and mid palate flavor, but will drive the need for additional time in the bottle for it to be the best wine it can be, but will be very nice when it does.
- The aromatics were driven by the grape (different clone?) versus anything else.
- The two wines with the Prelude yeast tended to have a longer finish, but could be what they describe as improved mouthfeel.
- I did not pick out any strong differences due to the oak treatments.
- I took out my stash of Petit Verdot and added 2 ml to my glass of my wine and it improved the finish on it a lot. I saved a gallon of the PV that will be going into my CF, before I bottle it.
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Any of the four wines have any herbaceous notes (green bell pepper) to them?
None. The one thing that we can assured of in our AVA is ripeness. Acidity not so much, but full phenolic ripeness is almost always guaranteed.
The one (and only) time I have even gotten cab franc grapes was 2011 from Lodi. Coldest growing season on record for the entire west coast. Lots of rain during harvest to boot. Ended up with 6 gallons of green bell pepper flavored cab franc. Tried every trick in the books to get rid of it. Some post AF bentonite fining helped a little but in the end I blended it away in small amounts that could not be tasted. Would love to make one again some day but after that experience its kind of hard to think about.
Mike, as you may know, my terroir tastes (if not my budget) are similar to yours, i.e., give me eastern WA all day long and I will be happy. However, I spent 5+ years on Long Island. (I bet you can guess why!) Pyrazines in the Cab Franc from the North Fork are almost a given; some are worse than others, but there is generally at least a hint. Funny thing is, you come to appreciate a little of it. I guess it is like cellar palate! In small quantities, I just think it adds a little complexity, and, dare I say it, freshness.
4score
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It was a fun event!
Thanks @NorCal for hosting the tasting and the super prep job. My first take-away was that, on the nose, three (of the four) wines were related. There was a distinct nose on the three and something quite different on the other. I preferred the aroma of the single different one. It turned out that I was right - the three wines were all from @NorCal's neighborhood vineyard and the other one was from a friend's vineyard in another area (on a hill top). There was more fruit on the nose and I think I liked it more because it "didn't" have that smell I was getting on the other three (I characterized it as a young-fruit smell).
That same wine was collectively our best tasting wine too. It had great expression and complexity. I have to say, all four wines tasted great. Often, I look for faults and eliminate wines from my choice but there were no tasting-related faults. I did observe one wine to have more tannin than the others. It was the blend with Petite Syrah. I liked that big bold tannin and it was my favorite due to that.
I really wanted to see what the Prelude non-sacc yeast was doing compared to the wine used without Prelude. Quite simply it came down to the Prelude having a longer finish, a complexity that the other did not have. Both were good, but one just hung on the palate longer (mouthfeel?). Also, the Prelude seemed to turn this normal black-fruit wine to elements of candy red fruit and some spice. I really appreciated what the Prelude yeast brought. Subtle, but distinct.
With these results, I plan to keep Prelude in the mix. This year, I am planning to not only use Prelude, but I'm going to go "deeper" with it. By deeper, I mean I'm going to go further than the 3.5 Brix. Maybe I'll go 6-7 Brix if it will survive that far. I was originally careful because fermentation with non-sacc yeasts is supposed to make less alcohol (per brix), but I had it tested and the difference was not significant.
Also, the other take-away is the tannin the Petite Syrah brings. I have a barrel of PS waitingto use so there will be some interesting bench trials upcoming before bottling all this Cab Franc.
It was an interesting event. This is a fun hobby! Cheers.
Thanks @NorCal for hosting the tasting and the super prep job. My first take-away was that, on the nose, three (of the four) wines were related. There was a distinct nose on the three and something quite different on the other. I preferred the aroma of the single different one. It turned out that I was right - the three wines were all from @NorCal's neighborhood vineyard and the other one was from a friend's vineyard in another area (on a hill top). There was more fruit on the nose and I think I liked it more because it "didn't" have that smell I was getting on the other three (I characterized it as a young-fruit smell).
That same wine was collectively our best tasting wine too. It had great expression and complexity. I have to say, all four wines tasted great. Often, I look for faults and eliminate wines from my choice but there were no tasting-related faults. I did observe one wine to have more tannin than the others. It was the blend with Petite Syrah. I liked that big bold tannin and it was my favorite due to that.
I really wanted to see what the Prelude non-sacc yeast was doing compared to the wine used without Prelude. Quite simply it came down to the Prelude having a longer finish, a complexity that the other did not have. Both were good, but one just hung on the palate longer (mouthfeel?). Also, the Prelude seemed to turn this normal black-fruit wine to elements of candy red fruit and some spice. I really appreciated what the Prelude yeast brought. Subtle, but distinct.
With these results, I plan to keep Prelude in the mix. This year, I am planning to not only use Prelude, but I'm going to go "deeper" with it. By deeper, I mean I'm going to go further than the 3.5 Brix. Maybe I'll go 6-7 Brix if it will survive that far. I was originally careful because fermentation with non-sacc yeasts is supposed to make less alcohol (per brix), but I had it tested and the difference was not significant.
Also, the other take-away is the tannin the Petite Syrah brings. I have a barrel of PS waitingto use so there will be some interesting bench trials upcoming before bottling all this Cab Franc.
It was an interesting event. This is a fun hobby! Cheers.
What a wonderful, fun experiment! Nice job, all.
Since the big Chenin Blanc crush/press is at @4score 's place, I poked him this morning that it would be fun to revisit these wines, now 3 months later. My Cab Franc is in the bottle and I added 1 gallon of Petit Verdot. All of 4Score's are still in the barrel. Does it matter that we will be crushing at 8:00am?
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Absolutely doesn't matter that it's at 8AM. When wine is consumed in the interest of science time does not enter into the equation.
Boatboy24
No longer a newbie, but still clueless.
Drinking wine in the morning doesn't mean you're an alcoholic. It's means you're a winemaker.
