Barrel Tasting

Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

Saturday afternoon, May 9th, I once again headed into the Litchfield Hills, this time for the Sunset Meadow Vineyards (SMV) 2009 Barrel Tasting.  This was the winery’s first barrel tasting, and they hosted a marvelous event, complete with catered hors d’oeuvres, live music and tours of the winery and barrel rooms starting roughly every 30 minutes.

SMV is very much a family operation; co-owners Judy and George Motel were both on hand, greeting everyone, asking questions and making everyone feel welcomed and comfortable.  George, who has an enological degree from University of California, Davis, and is Sunset Meadows’ winemaker, and their son, George, Jr. conducted all the barrel tastings and winery tours.  They run the winery and the vineyards themselves with a staff of about 10.

When the Motels bought the property about 15 years ago, it was a working farm, complete with cattle and lots of hay.  They farmed the property for the first five years, and about 10 years ago began planting their first vines, choosing Cayuga and St. Croix to begin with because of their hardiness.  The vines did so well that they continued to expand, and now grow Chardonnay and Merlot in addition to the original Cayuyga and St. Croix.  They have about 7,000 vines on 40 acres, and they grow almost all their own grapes on site through sustainable agricultural practices.  All of the vines are hand-pruned and the grapes hand-picked.  They’ve been producing wine for a number of years, but 2008 was the first year for winery sales.

The winery buildings are housed in several 19th-century barns; the Tasting Room is the most “authentic” with most of the original wood and beams left intact during the renovation.  The storage room was originally a 19th-century cattle barn, complete with hay-loft, but the Motels gutted and retrofitted it so it better house the tanks and barrels.  But the essential structure of the barn remains and has been worked into the winery design:  the large doors at the back of the barn which would have opened onto a large fenced-in area to help herd the cattle into the barn each evening, has been transformed into a large outdoor patio where the grapes are brought for destemming after harvesting.  From there, the grapes are brought into the storage room to begin fermentation and pressing.

As George related the history of the winery and the process they follow to make their wines, we worked our way through the barrel tastings:

• The 2008 Cayuga White, which will be bottled in June – light, crisp and refreshing.
• The 2008 Chardonnay, also scheduled to be bottled in June – this wine is aged in Oak for about 3-4 months giving it a bit more character and body than the Cayuga White.  It also undergoes a second fermentation process, which helps give it more of a buttery flavor.
• The 2008 St. Croix scheduled to be bottled in April 2010- an interesting wine, still very young it doesn’t yet have the strong fruit notes that are characteristic of a St. Croix, but there’s a smoky mellowness to it that’s really nice.  We contrasted that with the 
• 2007 St. Croix, which will be bottled this June – the fruitiness and character of the St. Croix are much more prominent in the “older” vintage.
• The 2008 Red Dawn – a brand new wine, a blend of Merlot and St. Croix, this is scheduled for bottling in April 2010.  A very nice blend, the wine is still young and the additional aging should really bring out the wine’s character.  Definitely one I will be coming back for in Spring 2010.
• The 2008 Merlot, which will be bottled in April 2010 – a really nice Merlot, smooth, mellow, still very young, but showing a lot of promise.  Another wine I’m making a note to return for in 2010.
• And last, but not least, a new dessert wine being bottled this summer, the Candy Apple Red – a port-style wine, this wine has a rich sweetness and mellowness that I really liked.

We ended up back outside on the patio, where we helped ourselves to more wine and hors d’oeuvres and settled in to enjoy the weather, the company and the music.  All in all, a great event, and something I hope SMV will make an annual event.

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

A few weeks ago, on what was finally a beautiful, sunny, Spring afternoon, I headed back into the Western Connecticut Highlands for the Haight-Brown Annual Spring Barrel Tasting.  The sun was shining, the skies were a gorgeous deep blue, and while the trees weren’t quite yet blooming, you could see shoots of spring flowers in front of houses and along the roadsides.  The temperature was also cooperating, being a very mild mid-60s, and I rolled down the windows, cranked up the IPod and enjoyed the drive as much as I did the event.

The tasting was held in the winery’s barrel-aging room, a large room on the ground level.  Haight-Brown ferments only in stainless steel, and there were five large tanks in the main room, and a few others in a smaller back room.   One of the first questions asked by participants, was why HB ferments in stainless steel rather than oak.  The easy answer is because oak is very expensive and you can’t reuse oak barrels indefinitely, meaning you have to invest in new barrels on a fairly regular basis.  But it’s more than the cost – fermenting in stainless steel allows the winemaker to better control the oak in the wine through the introduction of oak chips.  It also allows the winemaker the choice of oaking or not depending on the wine and the effect he (she) is going for.  As I looked around, I also realized that the stainless steel tanks are MUCH larger than oak barrels and can stand vertically, therefore they take much less storage space; something not to be sneezed at, particularly for smaller wineries.

As we settled into our seats, we were greeted by our hosts for the afternoon, Courtney and Tina.   Copies of the afternoon’s tasting menu were passed out, along with large spit buckets, jugs of water, and wine crackers for cleansing our palates.  On the menu for the afternoon were 11 wines: six served from the tank and five served from bottled inventory.  The menu was designed to highlight comparisons between the wines from the tank and their finished product from the bottled inventory.  It was a really interesting contrast…

The wines served from the tank are, obviously, young wines, and all had that “tangy bite” that you often find at the end of young wines, but in several cases I found the wines from the tank more interesting than their bottled “finished” counterparts.  My favorites included:

• The first wines of the day: the Chardonnay and then the Seyval Blanc directly from the tank.  Both were a pale yellow color, almost a light straw.  Both were crisp and had discernible acidity.  The nose on the Chardonnay was a bit sharp and somewhat tart, while the Seyval Blanc was more grassy.  The Chardonnay had been oaked, the Seyval Blanc remained unoaked, and as a result there were stronger notes of fruit, primarily grapefruit, in the Seyval Blanc.  

A tasting of HB’s Covertside White, a Chardonnay-Seyval Blanc blend, immediately followed.  The Covertside White is back-sweetened prior to the bottling process and has 1% added sugar.  Tasting the wine immediately after the unsweetened direct-from-the-tank Chardonnay and Seyval Blanc was a fascinating experience.  The bottled wine was a smoother wine, less acidic and the tartness is gone, eliminated by the back-sweetening and the blending of the two grapes.  There are stronger fruit notes, particularly of grapefruit and melon, than are noticeable in either of the tank wines.

• At roughly the half-way point, we moved on to the Reds, beginning with a tasting of the Marechal Foch from the tank.  Marechal Foch is generally a tarter grape and can become quite acidic in the grape, with acidity levels sometimes matching sugar levels.  As a result, winemakers will often choose to pick Marechal Foch early and back-sweeten it, rather than letting it sweeten on the vine.  Because of it’s tartness and acidity, Marechal Foch is often used a blending wine, rather than bottled in its own right.

Anticipating a very acidic, very tart, wine, I was quite surprised with the tank sample.  With strong cherry notes in the nose and mouth, the wine had an interesting depth and character that I wasn’t expecting.  Yes, it was tart, but the tartness did not detract from the wine, rather it just simply felt young.  Quite a few of us present mentioned that were pleasantly surprised and quite intrigued by this wine.

Courtney, our host, then went on to say that the winemaker had the same experience.  This year, the winemaker decided to experiment with the Marechal Foch, leaving the skins on overnight during fermentation in an attempt to produce something similar to a light Beaujolais.  They liked the result better than previous vintages and are in the process of bottling the wine under the name Nouveau Foch.  

While not yet ready for sale, we were allowed to sample the Nouveau Foch from the bottle.  A light bodied wine, with a lovely medium garnet color, this was one of my two favorites of the afternoon.  The nose still has strong notes of cherry, but the minerality of the tank wine has been smoothed out.  It’s a nice crisp wine, and not something I would ever have expected from a Marechal Foch.  Courtney advised that we let this one breathe, as it really opens up the longer it’s exposed to air.

This section of the tasting concluded with samples of HB’s Picnic Red and Morning Harvest.  Both wines are the same blend: 90% Marechal Foch/10% De Chaunac, but the Picnic Red is a lighter-bodied off-dry wine and the Morning Harvest a medium-bodied fully dry wine.  Both are also quite different than the Nouveau Foch, providing a very interesting contrast between the four samples.

• The tasting concluded a short-time later with a sample of Muscat from the tank juxtaposed with HB’s Apricot Moon a fortified muscat dessert wine.  Apricot Moon is one of my favorites among the HB inventory, and I’ve written about it at length in a previous post, so I was looking forward to finishing on such a great note.  But as with the Marechal Foch, it was the Muscat that was the star of the pairing – the wine has a lovely nose of apricot, pear and some light floral notes.  In the mouth, it’s soft and sweet, with notes again of both apricot and pear.  The Apricot Moon, which is fortified and was served, post-mixing, directly from the tank, has stronger notes of apricot and the pear and floral notes have largely disappeared.  It’s still a beautiful wine, but most of us present that day felt that HB could very easily bottle the Muscat on its own and have another excellent dessert wine.

As the tasting concluded, we were invited to take a short tour of the vineyards and finish our day in the Tasting Room where we could relax with a glass of wine and hors d’oeuvres.

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Marguerite Barrett
Contributing Writer

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to some friends that I was looking forward to the Spring barrel tastings at the local wineries.  More than one person asked me what was the point of barrel tastings, how did they work, and why would one want to do a barrel tasting as opposed to just stopping by the winery for a regular tasting.

So, before I embark on my barrel tasting adventures, I thought it worth taking a few moments and try my hand at “Barrel Tasting 101″ for those unfamiliar with the term, or who, like me, are only just beginning your barrel tasting adventures.

At its most literal, a barrel tasting is exactly what the name implies – a tasting of wine directly from the barrel.  These wines are usually young, and while potable will often require additional aging and/or back-sweetening before they are ready for bottling  Depending on the wine and the winery, the product may be months, and sometimes even years, away from being ready for bottling.

With a barrel tasting you get straight to the essence of the grape – at its heart, what is the wine really all about?  What are the characteristics, flavors, and aromas at the center of the wine?  In some instances the wine may be much less interesting when tasted directly from the barrel before the the wine is “finished.”  In other cases, a barrel-tasting may reveal a more complex wine than originally anticipated.  Winemakers will, by necessity, taste their wines throughout the aging process so they can track the wine’s character and progress and make adjustments as necessary.

For the rest of us, wineries hold special Barrel Tasting events which they open to the public.  Most wineries hold their barrel tastings in the Spring, although some of the larger wineries, particularly in California, will offer special barrel tastings to their wine club members several times a year.  

For the wineries, Barrel Tastings present an opportunity for them to showcase their wines and wineries in a new way and introduce new vintages and wines both to serious collectors and wine afficianados as well as the general public.   The event is usually hosted in the  barrel-aging room, and most also include a tour of the facilities and vineyards.  A special tasting menu is created, which sometimes will include back-to-back tastings of the barrel-wine and the bottled-wine so participants can explore the difference, and food and cheeses are often served to accompany the wines.  

You don’t need to be a wine connoisseur to enjoy a barrel tasting, and in fact, it can be a great way to develop your palate and learn about wines.  You also don’t have to spend a lot of money or plan a trip to California.  Barrel Tasting events usually run about $20 per person, and wineries abound all across America ~ a quick Google search for “barrel tastings” yielded 110,000 results from all over the country – the first five hits included Sonoma County, California; Fredericksburg, VA; and Long Island Wine Country, New York.  A Connecticut winery even made the first 10 results on my search!  If you’re in the Northeast and interested in Connecticut wineries and barrel tastings, check out the Connecticut region page on Snooth.com; I maintain a calendar of barrel tastings and other local winery events there.

Finally, Barrel Tastings can be a great excuse to get out on the road on a weekend afternoon and discover some great wines and wineries right in your own backyard.

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