Bordeaux Red Blending

Tonight we discussed wine blending and described the different Bordeaux blends. In the tasting, we tasted three Bordeaux varietals, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot separately, then as blends. Everyone enjoyed the wines and saw the variation and power of blending. This starts a series on blended wines. Next we taste Rhone style red blends. Hope to see you there!

2009 UNR Whites

Tonight in class we went out to the vineyard to see the frost damage from last weekend. Fortunately, few buds that were pushing were leafed out and therefore they survived the frost. The few leaves exposed were all killed. We tasted 6 different white wines tonight: Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Gewurztraminer, Semillon, and Riesling. The Gewurztraminer was the hit of the night, it had classic litchi aromas, good balance and a nice finish. The second favorite was the Pinot Gris. This wine was very well balanced with some honeysuckle notes, very good body and a velvety texture. Both of these wines were excellent. None of the wines had been oaked or had any secondary fermentations. This was the first time that we put all of the wines in a direct competition in one tasting. The low scoring wine (although not a bad wine) was the Chardonnay. The rest of the wines were nice middle of the road wines.

Chardonnay Oak Tasting

Tonight we discussed the principles of pruning and optimizing crop yield and quality. After that we did a unique tasting of 7 bottles of Chardonnay with different oak varieties and toast levels (American, Hungarian and French) (Medium and Medium plus). Everyone agreed that the non-oaked wine was had nice fruit aroma and slight acidity. When the wines were oaked, the oak aromas and slight acidity disappeared. The wines had a long-finish and each of the oaks had a different character. The French oaks could be characterized with a certain sweetness, the American oak with some extra roughness and the Hungarian oak somewhere in between. Except for the American oak, the medium plus toast was slightly softer and finer than the medium toast.

Blind matiching

Tonight we demonstrated how to prune the vines. We went out into the vineyard and observed bud break and bud swell. After that we did a tasting of 3 red wines from UNR. They were all tasted blind. There were three duplicates. I am glad to say that almost everybody was able to detect and match the duplicate wine. We tasted the 2009 Pinot Meunier, Lemberger and Cabernet Franc. All wines were good and the Pinot Meunier was the favorite. It was outstanding in the 2009 vintage.

Hybrids and vinifera

Last night we started our class on a description of pruning procedures. This will probably be a series of 3 or more lectures before we completely cover pruning. Next week, we will go out to the vineyard for a demonstration of pruning. Our aroma tasting continued with some improvements in testing. We compared some locally grown hybrid wines with our UNR vineyard vinifera wines. Bill Coplin was kind enough to bring two of his own hybrid wines, 2009 Frontenac and 2009 St. Croix and a Frontenac from Tahoe Ridge. We tasted the 2009 Well-Watered and Drought-Stressed Lembergers (both oaked) and a 2009 Merlot (not oaked). The vinifera grapes were more popular than the hybrids. Both the Merlot and the Drought-Stressed Lemberger were considered the favorites.

UNR Drought-Stressed Whites

Tonight we went out to vineyard and checked on the plants and how they survived the winter. We also checked some vines that had some of their canes buried to see how they compared. There was noticeable dieback with pale green phloem tissue in the canes above ground. The canes below ground were healthy with no dieback and plenty of dark green phloem. It appears the above ground vines were suffering from the cold and wind this Spring. Overall, it looks like most of the vines in the South vineyard are doing fairly well. We should know better over the next month as bud break begins to occur. In the wine tasting class we discovered that our aroma analyses are showing some signs of improvement after 5 weeks of practice. We compared our 2009 Drought Stressed White wines from UNR. Most everybody was pleased with these wines. Some people were very pleased! The 2009 drought-stressed Gewurztraminer was the winner for the night. Hope to see you next week.
Grant

UNR Drought-Stressed Reds

Last night we continued with our class with a lecture on grapevine anatomy, grapevine development and varietal selection. We also started a video edition that will hopefully be part of an on-line course in the near future. Thank you Robert Moore for putting this together! We tasted drought-stressed red wines from UNR. There was a strong consensus for two wines especially, the 2009 Lemberger and the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, lots of dark color and firm tannins, with good fruit and complex aromas! The week before, we tasted our UNR whites and Gewurztraminer was a clear winner. We continued with the aroma training and testing. We had five people get all six aromas correct last night (including moi!). So there are definitely signs of improvement. Hurray!