Harvest 2011 notes
This year the California harvest season was about 2-3 week later than usu. and we have had a some concerns about grapes getting ripe enough to pick. A couple weeks ago many CA wineries yanked fruit off the vine early to prevent rain damage. We didn’t but we have closely monitored our Tempranillo for signs of rot. Interestingly, Spain has had its earliest season ever. Here is a synopsis of their experience thus far this year:
http://catavino.net/harvest-20
Heading into harvest season
Hi Folks, it’s that time of year again. Crush ’11 is coming up in just a couple months. This year Sunfire will be making 2 kinds of wine: Cabernet Sauvignon and Tempranillo. We grow most of our own fruit but since we are growing faster than I had planned for (which is why my wife says I need to write a business plan) we need to source some addition fruit from other vineyards around the state. I have been looking seriously at a couple of Paso Robles cabernet vineyards that look very promising. Tempranillo will be much more challenging since there is so little acreage planted to it. Odds are I am going to have to have more of it planted next year. There is however a tiny site (about 2-3 acres) with Tempranillo from some Rioja cuttings grown by a gentleman farmer just way up in the hills at an elevation of about 2200 feet. He even has one of the rows planted to Mensia, the grandfather of modern Cabernet Franc!
Since this is a brand new vineyard (3’rd year vines) I’ll be spending a significant amount of time discussing and observing viticultural techniques with the owner. The soil is sand and granite with excellent drainage. With close attention to quality and low yields, this may very well end up being one of the top sites for high elevation Spanish varietals in the state.
As many of you know, my vineyard site’s well ran dry a few years ago. We didn’t know at the time how that would affect the vineyard or if there would still even be a vineyard. There has been a learning curve in ways to handle the water issue. We built cistern to collect runoff and rain water. We upgraded to fanjet drip emitters to reduce water waste and where once we got 3-4 total yield per acre which we now grow in the 2 ton range. Ultimately we may change over to sub-surface drip irrigation to conserve even more water. I can say now that the vineyard is, if not actually thriving, it is at least healthy.
This year, in part due to the uncharacteristically cool weather, the yield will be cut back (a process called cluster thinning) by roughly half– partly to accelerate ripening and to assure that I’ll still get the quality that I’m hoping to attain. We are looking at it from the point of view of long term vineyard sustainability.
Right now the clusters are still uniformly green. That means that veraison has not yet begun. The term refers to two processes in the final stages of grape development. First, at least in red wines, the green berries get their color (turning red) and second, the berries (both red and white) soften. After veraison the grapes rapidly increase in sweetness. Generally one can figure that harvest will occur about 6-7 weeks after the color change. One of the cool things this year is that we can now electronically monitor soil water density right at root depth (called the rootzone) at approximately 30-36 inches. This is exciting because it allows us to precisely quantify the amount of irrigation necessary to stress the vine to improve flavor development and concentration in the berries while making sure that the vine has enough water to remain healthy. Until these were installed we could only make educated guesses. Sometimes with less than desirable results…
Stew “That vine looks kinda spindly”
Dave “Maybe we should’ve put more water on it”
Stew “Oops”
Anyway, not that bad really but you get the point.
Sunfire’s winemaker on live radio
Yesterday, out of the blue, I got a call from the host of the Fresno Cooks morning show on KJWL radio. Apparently they had read about Sunfire’s awards at the SF Chronicle wine competiotion and wanted me to come in this morning for a live interview. I was stunned– Of course I said YES! I had a blast.
Here I am LIVE on KJWL radio (right click and open in new window or tab)
Simply delicious desserts that are simple to make
During the last couple of weeks there has not been much happening in the cellar. Whenever I could extract myself from a rather overwhelming backlog of paperwork and accounting I would retreat to my kitchen to play. So one day, maybe about a week ago, we had a couple friends come by and stupidly I forgot to pick up dessert at Whole Foods. The oversight wound up turning into an evening of happy desserts. Here are the recipies for the winners of the night:
Fried Goat Cheese with Honey
1/4 pound of a creamy goat cheese
1 small red onion, finely sliced
1 egg, beaten
flour
1 tsp sugar
Spanish olive oil
Honey
Fry the onion over medium heat until it is really soft then drain off the oil, add the sugar and carmelize. As soon as thats done, chill it. Next, form the goat cheese into 4 equal size balls. Dip cheese balls in egg and then lightly cover in flour. Fry in a shallow pan of olive oil until golden brown. Put the carmelized onion in the center of a plate and arrange the cheese balls evenly around it. Drizzle the cheese with honey. Serve with Sherry if you have it!
Crostini with Chorizo and Bittersweet Chocolate Drizzle
Spicy dry cured Spanish Chorizo, cut to 1/4 inch slices.
3 oz bittersweet dark chocolate (Guitard wafers are great for this)
A baguette
Olive oil
Preheat the oven to 375. While waiting for the oven to heat up, add a couple tablespoons of olive oil to a frying pan and briefly sear both sides of the chorizo. Set aside the chorizo and brush the chorizo infused olive oil onto the crostini slices– one side only. Place the crostini onto a baking sheet and cook for about 10 minutes. Melt the chocoalte wafers or chips over a low heat. When the crostini is done put a slice of chorizo on top and drizzle it with the melted chocolate. Serve with a full bodied Tempranillo.
Inventory update
As of this morning we are completely sold out of our 2006 Tempranillo and now have only 2 cases of our 2003 Sunfire One left in our library. One of them is going home with me. So 12 bottles remain for our club members. The B-82 SBR reserve tempranillo is down to 6 cases.
We hope to have the 2007 Tempranillo ready to release by the first week of February. Also in February we plan to blend and bottle the next Cabernet which has been residing in several gorgeous Vicard Distinction barrels. I’m a bit of a geek about barrels…
Another day, another rioja
Last night a couple pals brought over a bottle of “cheap” rioja to have with dinner. In a departure from my usual Spanish menu, since it was a nice warm evening, I fired up the grill and cooked up a lamb/beef combo burger called Lulu (an Armenian dish) and so was pleasantly surprised when they pulled out the wine. The earthy – dustiness and light red berry notes paired well with the food and was surprisingly tasty wine. The 2006 Campo Viejo for $10 is a killer buy. Get it here or here.
Tasting the 2003 Pujanza Rioja
Last Thursday we had the first Tempranillo and tapas night at my house. Several pals dropped by (mostly for the novelty of watching me cook) and tasted a bottle of rioja I’d recently picked up in our local wine emporium. Our rating system is pretty straight forward: the scale is 1-5 stars with one being horridly vile plonk (I’ve judged a few in competitions, though thankfully its rare) and 5 stars which is a wine you should run, not walk, to buy.
The 2003 Pujanza Rioja is a blend of 90% Tempranillo and 10% Graciano. Our consensus is that it has medium bodied aromas of cherry, raspberry and white peppercorn. The predominant flavor is of raw cocoa powder and light red cherry. The wine was served with two Spanish dishes: Plate 1: A mild chorizo baked in a moderately spiced variation of patatas gravas. The wine went very well with this dish. Plate 2: A chicken and spicy chorizo pealla.
The wine as a stand alone and with Plate 1 got a consensus rating of 3.5 stars but with Plate 2 it did not fare as well; the wine simply lacks the body to stand up to the richer flavors in the paella. So for this pairing the wine gets 3 stars.
Overall the 2003 Pujanza Rioja is a decent but unexciting 3.5 star value at $25 so long as its paired with mild dishes.
Another day, another restaurant
This time I found a killer tapas joint in Manhattan. Sala One Nine. Creative dishes such as dates stuffed with almonds and wrapped with bacon are simple and delicious. The wine list is rather limited, though they do have a Mensia which is the grandfather of cab franc, but the food is simply scrumptious. If in NYC this place is definitely worth a visit.
Great find in NYC
This evening I went out with a couple friends to try a new Sri Lankan restaurant in the East Village and stumbled upon an amazing find just two doors down- a wine shop solely dedicated to Spanish wines!
Rioja, Ribera, Bierzo, Priorat… this place has ‘em all. And the lady who owns it is friendly and knowledgable too. Check them out. Tinto Fino at the corner of 5th Street and 1st Avenue.
Tempranillo Tuesdays (or maybe Thursdays)
Thanksgiving is over and it’s back to the grind for most folks, yours truly included, to the daily ritual which for this particular blogger is to amble out to the winery, toy with Cabernet and Tempranillo blends (which I should do more of) and this week at least get my act in gear re: Tempranillo Tuesdays or Thursdays. I need to choose two Spanish tapas dishes to pair with the first night’s wine, come up with some sort of scoring system that’s not utterly confusing (I mean really, what is the difference between a 91 and a 92 point wine… tell me please!) so I’m thinking about a star system (i.e. 1 star sucks and 5 stars means get the hell out of my way while I run to the store to wipe out my hard earned cash). I want this little experiment to include folks from within and without the industry so in any given week there will be winemakers, restaurateurs, sommeliers, serious and not so serious wine tasters and whoever else happens to show up. When I met my fiancé, I stupidly assumed that she knew what I was talking about when we were drinking wine. Now ya gotta understand, she’s a foodie, but she was completely perplexed when I started going on and on about white pepper and boysenberry fusion in wine and it finally clicked that most folks, probably some of my readers too, are equally intimidated or perplexed by wine-speak and inaccessible scoring systems and would just like someone whose not a pompous snob to tell them what they think of a wine in somewhat clearer terms. That’s why I feel its so important to include in these weekly tastings inexperienced wine tasters– inexperienced incidentally does not mean disinterested, a common misconception in my trade. Most wine professionals were just as confused by wine-speak at one time. Twenty years ago, I knew there were two types of wine (well, three types since my parents drank Châteauneuf-du-Pape) red and white. When I read wine notes like ” it has aromas of warm wet gravel” my reaction was something akin to: “as opposed to what? cold pond gravel….” So here we are twenty or so years later and I still don’t know what warm wet gravel tastes like, do you? I think not … I can just see it now, telling my friends:
Me: ”Hey guys, this wine has aromas of lychee nut and warm wet
gravel”
Them: “Sure Stew, whatyever you say.”
Me: “I swear I’m serious and Ill prove it to you– just give me a
moment to heat up some water and get some gravel out of
the goldfish bowl…”
All kidding aside, I’m looking forward to getting this weekly tasting program under way. I hope you are too.
Please, not another boring Thanksgiving wine…
Lately I’ve been hearing alot of talk about what wines go best with Thanksgiving dinner and I gotta say that for most folks Tempranillo is not the first wine that comes to mind, but it should be. I mean, yeah, you could go out and get a Pinot which works most of the time especially if its a fruity style or even a Syrah in some cases. Heck, lots of people think Chardonnay goes great with turkey (though I think they’re insane- lets get real, Chardonnay with stuffing and cranberries… YUK!). Tempranillo on the other hand is a match made in heaven. Roast turkey and Tempranillo were made for each other. Think about it, cranberries were paired with turkies for a reason- they bring out the richness of the meat. Tempranillo has berries, mostly red berries and lots of them. It also has good acidity which is very important to cut through the rich oily textures of roasted meats and gravy. Remember, the wine is supposed to elevate the flavors of each bite and a good pairing also brings out the juiciness of the wine. If all a wine does is wash down the food, well… that’s what water is for, which is cheaper and you should have it at the table anyway.
Where is TryTempranillo going…
Now that Crush 2009 is finally over and I can finally move my arm again, albeit very slowly due to shoulder surgery (and thus can type), I can get back to posting on this site. Over the last couple of weeks whilst stuck in the house recuperating, I’ve had the chance to figure out a little bit on where I want to go with this blog. Most folks at wine tastings that I attend both as a pouring winemaker and those in which I am a casual participant are unfamiliar with Spanish varietal wines…
Taster: “What kind of wine is that?”
Me: “It’s a Tempranillo.”
Taster: “Is that a grape?”
Anyway you get the picture. So I’ve decide that TryTempranillo needs to start off with a tasting and food pairing focus. Beginning this December I will be conducting a weekly Tempranillo wine tasting at my home and pairing the wines to a couple Tapas dishes (Spanish small plates to share among diners) that I’ll be making. There will be a panel of tasters each week- generally about 6-8 of us- and we’ll blog about the experience. You see, different people have different tastes so I want this blog to reflect that. If everybody at the tasting agrees that the wine of the night is awesome, then great; but if it sucks we’ll say so too.
For the record. I’ll be buying the wines and the food. I won’t be pouring Sunfire’s wines. Since Tempranillo is relatively new to wine lovers in this country, my intent is to offer you, my readers, the chance to become more familiar with this amazing grape and to get some sense of where you can fit this wine into your lifestyle. This is meant to be a conversation so I also hope that you will try some of these wines yourself and post your own tasting notes and comments on this blog. I’ll probably twitter about the tastings too- if I can figure out how to. I’m a pretty good taster and winemaker but technology befuddles me 
End of harvest 2009
Hi Folks,
It look like our grape crush will be over today. The great weather we’ve been having for the last week has really paid off with the rest of our Tempranillo and Cabernet ripening with rich flavors and good acidity. .. a real relief after the uncertainty cause by the rainstorm earlier this month. The first batch of wine was pressed Wednesday and will racked to barrels in about a week or two after the gross lees settle out. I’ve been tasting the Tempranillo samples here in the lab and I’m stoked about how much blackberry and minerality notes have been picked up by the fruit this year… its gonna make a hell of a wine!
Still harvesting…
Hiya folks, it been an eventful week plus since my last update so here goes… Right after the storm of october 13 the first batch of Tempranillo ambled into the winery (we got it off the vines before it got wet but it sat a day under a pole barn while I searched for a trucking company who could haul on short notice). Although a little less ripe than I had hoped for the grape flavor leaned heavily to red berry/raspberry the fruit was clean and chemistry in balance. We did a 4 day cold soak (yay!) and innoculated the wine with D254 yeast which is great for maximizing mid palate fruit expression. A coulple days ago it was at 4 brix. Looks like fermentation will be done just in time for the next batch to arrive probably on Wednesday or Thursday. I looked at the vineyard and the fruit on the vines has matured and the pH is up where it should be so I have high hopes for Vintage 2009. The Cabernet is currently (as of Monday) at 23.5 brix with a pH of 3.4 so it will be coming off the vines I expect Friday morning. Since the clone 337 cab tends torward granite and cherry notes I picked up a couple beautiful barrels from Tonnellierie d’Aquitaine which will really help frame in that fruit.
On another note, beginning in December, when Crush 2009 is over, I will getting back to the real purpose of this blog and that is to TryTempranillo. So I will be purchasing and tasting a new bottle of Tempranillo each week and posting tasting notes as well as where you can find the wines. The wine could come from Spain, Australia, Chile, here in the U.S. or anywhere else Tempranillo is made.
Looks like harvest 2009 is here…
10/14/09
Hiya folks, its time to find the tylenol, TUMS, and valium- aka, winemakers’ best friends during harvest. Crush ’09 started yesterday kinda urgently– Ya see, last Friday I went out to our see how our tempranillo vineyard was doing with an eye to choosing a harvest date. The fruit was at about 24-25 brix and already displaying lots of darker berry characteristics and
about a week off from harvest. Unfortunately there was only a few days to get it off the vine since there was a big storm coming in that was projected to drop several inches of rain. So in order to deal with the rain my grower and I decided to harvest roughly half the Tempranillo fruit yesterday. We are going to let the soil dry for a week or so then take the rest with, hopefully a tad more sugar. The couple tons that have come in will be cold soaked for 3-4 days then I’ll start pulling samples to get “the numbers” i.e. pH, TA, and actual brix. With any luck, by the time fermentation is done, my barrel order will have arrived.
On an entirely unrelated note, while pouring last week at the Monterey wine festival, the folks next to me were serving samples of a gorgeous sangiovese. Rich fruit, huge spice and just plain yummy… undoubtedly the finest example of the grape I’ve tried from California. The wine is made by the legendary Chuck Ortman and his son. Check out Ortman Family Vineyards 2007 Sangiovese at roughly $25 its well worth the price of admission.
Try Tempranillo!
Hello and welcome to TryTempranillo!, the Sunfire Winery blog. I’m Stew Epstein, the winemaker at Sunfire.
I’ll be posting here updates about Sunfire Winery’s harvest, crush, bottling and production notes, but mostly this is a blog about my favorite grape: Tempranillo. Sometimes I will be sharing my personal ruminations on the subject and sometimes I’ll be talking about wines I’ve been tasting, a bit about where Tempranillo comes from and the kinds of food you can pair it with. Sometimes, there will even be guest bloggers. I’ll also try to answer any questions that you send my way.
Why Tempranillo in the land of Cabernet? For one thing it just plain tastes great and you really don’t need to know a thing about wine tasting to enjoy it… since very few folks know what it is, its hard to be intimidated by it. In fact, if you bring Tempranillo to a party or pour it for friends at dinner, you’ll probably know more about it than they do- especially if you read this blog. It’s unusual in this county and that’s a pity since it makes a wine that’s very easy to pair with an enormous variety of foods and it frequently is approachable to drink whether just bottled or well aged. Oh yeah, let’s not forget that since it lacks the popularity and “prestige” of Cabernet, there are a ton of killer wines available for great prices.
So what does Tempranillo taste like? Well, at its best think of Pinot on steroids but with more earth and more intense berries. In a lighter style its often bright cherries with a touch of dusty tannin. Easy to drink with whatever happens to be on your dinner plate right now. Tempranillo is originally from Spain where it goes by the name Rioja; it has only recently received any attention in the U.S. What that means for you, the consumer, is that there are plenty of opportunities to try traditional Spanish styles wines and that there will soon be more wineries in California bringing new styles to this classic grape. I’ve been making Tempranillo for Sunfire Winery since 2003 and though I can certainly appreciate tradition, this is California, so I gave our Tempranillo a uniquely CA twist… more fruit + more fun = a more interesting wine.
On another note, I’ll be pouring the 2006 Sunfire Cabernet and 2006 Sunfire Tempranillo this week at the Monterey Wine Festival on October 1-2. Stop by to say hi and try the wines. I’m looking forward to meeting you.
See ya next week.
