Cellar Craft Red Mountain Cabernet -- juice from ???

[wctisue]

I just bottled my first red mountain cabernet after 7 months in the carboy and have read several posts about this being a terrific wine. I made this wine becauseit won so many medals at last year's Winemaker Magazine wine competition. I didn't know what the "red mountain" meant till I saw a post alluding to the viticultural area in Washington. I guess I assumed the juice was sourced the there but my notes from the box say the juice was from Chile and USA. Other information on the box was Reo# 140288 and Lot # E07912 SA.


So are we getting juice from one viticultural region or is this a blend?


Wayne

 

[admiral]

This is a good question. I assumed the same thing. I am looking forward to a reply.

 

[ibglowin]

Just looked at my notes from my kit. I see the sticker saying both US and Chile. The labels that came with my kit specifically says Sunset Ridge Vineyard, Red Mountain, Washington.

I am guessing the grape pack may contain parts from Chile'.

 

[Dean]

I might be a little off on the ratios, but label law requires that between 75 and 85% of the juice must come from the named region, while the rest can come anywhere. So in this case, USA would mean Red Mountain Appellation and up to 15% can come from Chilean sources.

However, in kits, you will never know more than that because formulations are kept very secret. Most kits will not even name the appellation and just call it by varietal name, or a proprietary kit name instead.

 

[wine_wizard]

An interesting thought is that while there is a "label law" re: ratios contained in WINE, they are actually selling grape juice (albeit with the intended purpose of making it into WINE later. So is there a "label law" for grape juice ? ( or is the industry just going along with the wine labelling ? or not ...)

 

[JimCook]

Lindseyd,


You're correct - the labelling laws for wine and for grape juice are not one in the same.


George told me that Nino, president of Mosti Mondiale, states that a full 75% of the AllJuice kit is varietal grape juice and that is considered very high. You can bet that concentrate kit varietal juice levels are less than that. A Vinifera Noble kit comes with a label for the United States that puts sugar above the varietal grape juice. After dilution, you're looking at around 25% varietal grape juice there.


As Dean noted, the wine kit manufacturers are likely going to play their 'formula' cards close to their chest. Their ratios and suppliers could essentially be considered trade secrets.


No matter what the label is saying (Mosti's Outback Shiraz has juice from America, if I'm not mistaken), it's all about how you like the wine you make in the end. There have been quite a few people noting that the Red Mountain Cab kit from Cellar Craft is quite dandy.


- Jim

 

[RJMehr]

As Dean noted, the wine kit manufacturers are likely going to play their 'formula' cards close to their chest. Their ratios and suppliers could essentially be considered trade secrets.

One thing to remember is that the wine kit manufacturers need to produce a constant product from year to year.

As we all know the quality of commercial wines varies from year to year depending upon weather and soil conditions. One year, a Napa Valley cab maybe a 90+ point wine and the next year it drops to 84 points, all due to how much rain fell.

So to produce wine kits that do not vary from year to year, I would guess that the ratio of grape juices may vary depending upon just how good or bad the harvest was in a certain year.

Robert

 

[JimCook]

Robert,


An excellent point - until we start seeing wine kits with vintage dates listed, the wine kit manufacturers are attempting to keep their kits as similar as possible. The use of generic wine concentrates and other tweaking of the natural grape juice would help this to happen pre-fermentation as opposed to wineries like Quintessa which stirve for this using post-fermentation blending. While both business are in business to sell wine/raw materials, it does make me wonder how much wine kit manufacturers depend on repeat business of staple products for their financial bread and butter.


- Jim