Tasting the Home Made Zinfandel

As you may have seen in a previous post of mine, my dad tried something new this year...he departed from his usual primary wine making grape, alicante, and made a batch of wine out of only the zinfandel grape.

Well last week I got the chance to taste the wine with my old man, and I have to say, I think he hit a home run with it. I've been drinking his wine for a very long time, and I think this zinfandel might be the best wine he's ever made.

Now it was only made in September, so let's not take my review of it out of context, but I thought it delivered some quality that could very well make it an everyday drinking wine. Because of it young age, it didn't pack the punch of an aged Zinfandel, but that may be what I liked about it. The color was a wonderful ruby, and the nose was sweet, with black cherry and floral hints. As for the taste, it was good...ripe fruits with a little smokiness, but again because of its age, didn't hit you like most Zinfandels do. This wine was very easy to drink...perhaps too easy if you judge by the throbbing in my head the next morning.


Overall I give the wine a rating of 7 corks, which is very good. Congrats to my dad for trying something new and creating something I think most people would enjoy.

Home Brew...Mmm Mmm Good!

I know many of you have heard me talk about how my family makes wine each year. In fact, several of you have even expressed some interest in traveling out to Long Island (which is where the wine is made at my parents’ house) to help out and watch the process in person. Unfortunately, we’ve never been able to line that up, so I’ve done the next best thing…captured it all on film, er well, memory card anyway.

I thought it might be fun for you folks to see some of these pictures of my dad while he was in the act of making his wine. I wasn’t able to join them this time, but I will next fall.

I should point out that the grapes that you see in these pictures were pressed into the barrels about 9 days before these pictures were taken, and have already gone through the primary fermentation process. This means that yeast has already converted much of the sugar in the grape juice to ethanol (alcohol). So what you will see here are the next steps, post crush and primary fermentation. I will do my best to give you some context or play by play of each photo. I really hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I do…and you can certainly see my dad is having a good ol’ time while my mom mans the camera.

As part of my play by play, I’ve lined the photos up in the order in which they occur chronologically. I should point out that this year’s grapes were Zinfandel and Cabernet, a bit of a change from the usual Alicante varietal we usually use. Anyway, here we go...

Here you see dad draining the wine for the barrel in which the grapes went through primary fermentation. He will take this wine and transfer it to another barrel which is where the wine will undergo secondary fermentation where the remaining sugars will.






Here dad takes the wine he just drained from the primary fermentation barrel and puts it in a clean barrel where it will undergo secondary fermentation.




Here he take the grape skins, or pomace, and puts it into a presser where he will squeeze the remaining juice out.










Dad cranking the presser, and you’ll notice the flow of remaining juice draining into the bucket.


He removes the pomace after squeezing every last drop out.

Proud papa stands next to his babies, which he will likely begin consuming in about 3-4 months.

Want to start your own winery? All you need is a laptop.

So I came across a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that had me absolutely fascinated...particularly because I have long wanted to make my own wine. It was about the combination of technology and oenology, thanks to a company called Crushpad (http://www.crushpadwine.com/). Now I've heard of Crushpad, but didn't realize the extent of their capabilities. This company allows people to make their own wine. Yeah, I know, big deal...I can do that in my garage. However, it goes beyond making your own wine. We're not talking about making some home brewed shwag.

This place lets you decide what kind of wine you want to make, how much you want to make, and how involved you want to be in the process. That's right...I could sit here in Jersey while they make the wine. But it doesn't stop there. Winery staff keep their virtual vintners up to date with e-mails and Web postings. When the fruit comes in, Web cams show the crush, complete with live chat so viewers can question the workers, who respond to computers equipped with voice-recognition software. Basically, the grapes and crush process are real, but your experience can be as virtual as you want it to be. Further along in the process, members can participate in blending and bottling decisions and design their own labels.

Can you imagine creating your own wine label and winery for $5,000-10,000? Well now you can, and it's much cheaper than spending millions on real estate and equipment. And, you control your level of involvement. If you want to be their for crush and bottling, just take some time off of work and head west. It's your winery, you run it the way you want.

So, what do you think of this new process? Is it something you'd consider doing? Have you already made your own wine?

New Wine Making Reality Show to air on PBS

Go ahead an ask anybody who knows me, and they will tell you that I absolutely despise reality TV...especially the crap that airs on MTV and VH1. And don't even get me started on the "Real Housewives of Orange County" or "Laguna Beach." But, leave it to PBS to come up with an idea that may very well make me a big fan of reality-TV. Following in the tradition of hit series such as NBC’s “The Apprentice”, PBS’s “Frontier House” and Bravo’s “Top Chef," PBS has announced that it will air a show called "The Wine Makers."

The premier season of The Wine Makers joins twelve men and women from all walks of life, as they compete for a chance to create and launch their very own wine label. The Wine Makers began principal shooting in October 2006 and is slated to air nationwide on PBS in Fall 2007.

In six one-hour episodes The Wine Makers takes viewers behind the scenes of the most storied beverage on earth. The stakes are high as this diverse group of men and women are plunged head first into one of the world’s most uniquely challenging yet rewarding professions. The 12 contestants, chosen from an initial pool of over 600 applicants, will experience every aspect of the wine industry from viticulture and enology to sales and marketing — but only one will be chosen to create and launch a their own wine label.

Now I don't know about you, but this seems like a pretty good idea to me. Top Chef is perhaps the only reality-show I'm a fan of, so something following in that mold which focuses on the art of wine making will be quite interesting to me. Clearly, because it's airing on PBS it will likely not draw huge viewership, but I think it should be an interesting hour spent in front of the TV.

Let me know if you think this is a good idea...will you watch it?

A Love Affair Begins

It all began when I was six years old. My family and I had just moved to a new house on eastern Long Island, NY. My parents, both immigrants from Portugal, finally had the space and cellar to continue what had been an annual September tradition when they grew up.

The tradition, you guessed right, was making wine. Now, this was my very first experience with what for me would also become an annual tradition. I remember it vividly...in late August my dad called me outside to help him with something. That something was adjusting the hoops of the barrel to tighten the staves. While I didn't know what the heck we were doing, it was fun helping him with the bilge and quarter hoops, etc, as he tried his best to explain the process to me. Anyway I'll get on with it.

Two weeks later, a big flatbed truck pulled into the driveway one Saturday morning loaded with wooden boxes bursting with red and white grapes. Not having any idea then that wine came from grapes, I admit they had piqued my interest. So me, my mom and dad unloaded the truck and put all the boxes in the underground cellar. This is where the process got fun...

Now, you have to remember that this was in 1981, well before today's modern wine making technology. I wish I could say it was as entertaining as the famed I Love Lucy episode, but it wasn't. We lifted the heavy, manual crank wine press on top of the barrel and I started cranking as my dad dumped the grapes in. The squashing and slushy sounds were pretty funny, as were the random juice squirts like rockets. After what seemed like hours turning the crank, I thought my arm was going to fall off...so me and dad switched spots. And that was the moment that hooked me. Seeing the grapes inside the press, churning and spouting juice.

I thought that was the end of it..thought they were ready to start drinking. That when my dad tried to explain the fermentation process to me. Needless to say, I didn't get it. Anyway, after several days, it was time to continue with the process. So we drain the the juice that is now wine from the barrels, and pull out the remaining grape skins/stems that remained and put them in a different kind of wine press. Like the first press, this thing was old school - we had to literally walk around in circles pushing two levers that made the top depress and squeeze the rest of the juice out of the fruit. After all the juice was squeezed out, it went back into the barrels, and was left there to age. Now this wine was for immediate consumption, so there wasn't a 9 or 12 or 18 month aging process. This wine was pulled several weeks after pressing.

And, for all my hard work, my reward was a little tiny sampling of the wine. It was delicious. To this day, my dad's wine is some of my favorite...of course it doesn't compare to a fine Bordeaux or Burgundy, but to me it's home. I don't need an expert rating to tell me that.

Anyway, until next time, remember to swirl, sniff and swig. Cheers.