The next question to deal with for our community-generated Roussanne is target and maximum alcohol. This one is somewhat linked to how ripe the grapes are when harvested and which yeast we will use to transform the juice into wine. But we can always “water back” very ripe juice to lower the alcohol if required (not my first choice).

Alcohol gives the wine body and weight on the palate but too much can produce off odors and a “hot” finish. Too low and the wine is thin and watery. The range Crushpad has is between 13-15.5+%. Shall we shoot for 14% but limit to 14.5%, or perhaps aim a bit lower?

Near the top of the Crushpad 30 White Wine Plan Companion is a simple question:

Style: Describe characters you would like to highlight or downplay in your wine.

Sounds like a simple request but one that I find difficult to put into words. Sure, I’ve had some Roussanne I really liked from both California and the Rhône but what were the specific elements that made these wines something special?

Before we get into this any further, let me back up and talk about the Roussanne grape as this might be new for some readers. Roussanne is native to the northern Rhône region of France where it is one of two white grapes, along with Marsanne, allowed in the appellations of Crozes-Hermitage, Hermitage and St. Joseph. It’s also grown in the southern Rhône where it is often blended with Grenache Blanc, Marsanne and Clairette Blanc.

An inconsistent producer, Roussanne is not grown in large quantities anywhere in the world and there are less than 250 acres planted in California today. The name Roussanne most likely comes from it’s russet-colored berries when ripe. Wine made exclusively from this grape is highly acidic, but high in aromatics, so other white grapes are often blended to balance the final wine.

The Westerly Vineyard was established in 1995 by entrepreneurs Neil and Francine Afromsky. These were the first wine grapes planted in the Happy Canyon area of Santa Barbara’s warmest wine region. They planted 85 acres of Bordeaux and Rhône varieties and developed a name for the vineyard with their Westerly Vineyards brand. Last year they sold the Westerly Vineyard to Chicago financier Jack McGinley, but retained the “Westerly Vineyards” brand and access to the grapes grown in this vineyard. Thus, the vineyard name change and it’s unclear if we can use Westerly on the label of our Roussanne this vintage.

Westerly Vineyards Roussanne is released as a blend simply called, “W Blanc” which is mostly Roussanne (75-80%) blended with Viognier. Both the Wine Spectator and Wine Advocate have favorably reviewed Westerly Vineyards W Blanc which I will excerpt below:

Wine Spectator:

The 2004 W Blanc Estate (75% and 25% respectively) exhibits a light gold color along with a gorgeous nose of honeyed flowers and tropical fruits, good underlying acidity, and bold, exuberant, intense flavors nicely buttressed by acidity and tannin. This serious, French-styled white is reminiscent of an exotic white Hermitage. Drink it over the next several years. 90 points

Wine Advocate:

The 2003 W blanc (80% Roussanne and 20% Viognier) offers up a beautiful, crisp bouquet of rose petals, apricots, and exotic tropical fruits (passion and guava). An elegant, streamlined effort, it exhibits more minerality than most California dry whites, as well as a dry, well-delineated, ravishing style. Drink it over the next 1-2 years. 90 pts.

Although this sounds almost exactly like the style of Roussanne I prefer, it seems to lack the aromatic and flavor characteristics of mandarin orange that I find so fascinating with this varietal. Perhaps this aspect will be in our grapes or we might need to trade some juice with another Crushpad Marsanne group to introduce this complexity. I will buy some bottles of Westerly Vineyards W Blanc to taste for myself and will also bring them to group barrel tastings of our wine as a benchpark.

Whatever the final decision, what do you think we should aim for style-wise with this wine?

Several weeks back I proposed a standardized wine rating scale for the wine blogosphere which generated a bit of discussion. Since then I’ve been thinking about how to implement this scale here and have decided to start rating all wines on the following scale with half-stars added for a bit more granularity:

Rating: Flawed, Not Recommended
Rating: Average
Rating: Very good, Recommended
Rating: Delicious, A Wine of Distinction
Rating: Outstanding, A Classic Wine

Note that this is an overall reflection of a wine’s quality and value as having a second scale for value seems too complicated.

It’s great to see other Wine 2.0 sites support this proposal (thanks, Philip, and great Facebook app!) and I expect others to follow. For devotees of the 100-point scale, I will also include that score in all reviews for the foreseeable future along with this 5-star rating.

I know this is somewhat of a contentious issue but I’m hoping some other wine bloggers join me by adopting the 5-star scale (I have noticed Andy begin to use this scale recently). Perhaps we might have some standardization in the wine blog world that seems to exist in the established wine press.

Now seems like the right time to put on the table how this system might work in practice. After thinking about this some and considering what Ryan wrote the other day, I humbly propose we wine bloggers adopt the following rating scales:

Overall Wine Quality

* Flawed, Not Recommended
** Average
*** Very good, Recommended
**** Delicious; A Wine of Distinction
***** Outstanding; A Classic Wine

Value/QPR

* Bad Value
** Average Value
*** Good Value
**** Great Value
***** Excellent Value

We can discuss the merits of adding half-stars to this mix once I get a read on the community’s reaction to this proposal. In the meantime, vote on what our icons should be below (aggregator/email readers might have to click back to the site to vote):

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on this modest proposal. I believe we are making some progress here.

OK, I admit it; I’m the Mr. Spock of wine bloggers.

El Jefe laid me bare in his post early this morning (insomnia?) with his poetic argument regarding scores. Let me be clear here, the score is the exclamation point on a bit of prose on the wine in question. Sure, I’m a bit clinical and detached in my reviews sometimes but I do have some passion to spare that Spock might not express. I’ll work on expressing this a bit more.

But I stil think the 5-star (or glass/bottle/cork/bung/unicorn) system is the way for us wine bloggers to go…

Discuss

I seem to have stirred up a fair amount of discussion in the blogosphere about my proposed 5-star (or whatever image you want) system for rating wines. Emboldened by the positive comments from my fellow bloggers I posted a couple of test reviews to Snooth and Winelog and then reposted here (see last 2 posts).

Umm, not good; the formatting was off and, as subscribers to my Twitter feed will attest, I had to do a bit of work to get these reviews presentable on the site. I don’t think this is due to anything in the feeds but from some issues with my current Wordpress theme, since all the tests I have done on my personal blog have worked without any modification.

So my question for other wine bloggers is what needs to change in the format of the reviews before you will join me in using the 5-star system (and these Wine 2.0 services) to post your reviews?

I read quite a bit about wine online and on crushed trees smeared with oil. On the latter format, I’ve been converting of late to the online editions of magazines like Wine Spectator as I don’t find the features too interesting and I can browse the tasting notes just as efficiently online (more so, actually) as in their print counterpart. So call this my contribution to the environment. By the way, I don’t count the Wine Advocate or International Wine Cellar as a “glossy” here; those are still best consumed in their classic, paper format.

One of my daily online sources is Decanter which publishes a fine RSS news feed which keeps me somewhat current with the thinking on wine “across the pond.” Whilst on a visit to downtown Minneapolis this weekend I noted the print version of this British wine journal on offer at a local news agent. I eagerly plunked down my £3.60 to sample the best wine magazine from the UK (eight bucks over here).

What a revelation.

As an old print guy, the production is excellent; much better, technically, than the Spectator or any other wine glossy in North America. But the writing is what drew me in. Instead of browsing features, I actually read them, and have a boatload more to read making this a fine value. I also appreciated the focus on Bordeaux and Burgundy which gave me an appreciation for the debate over the 2005 (a Parker favorite) and 2006 vintages like no other wine journal.

I also enjoyed comments like Steven Spurrier’s assessment of ‘06 Bordeaux as, “…not a vintage to buy off the peg.” My translation would be that 2006 Bordeaux is, in general, a bad value, but Mr. Spurrier’s understatement allows for the reader to infer their own experience. I enjoyed Mr. Broadbent’s comments comparing Madeira to the “morning coffee” at Christie’s with equal gusto. This took me back to my days working in London some years back, but I digress.

So the point here is to pick up a copy of Decanter when you see it, North American readers. It’s very worth your hard-earned eight U.S. Dollars or ten Canadian Dollars.

I knew it wouldn’t take long for the “why do you blog” meme to come my way and Gabriella from Catavino did just that 4 days ago. So I thought about it for a while and have come up with a few reasons:

1) I want to share my passion for wine: This is really the heart of the matter; I love wine and want others to discover it, too. I hope what I do here will get more people into wine.

2) I want to grow & learn: The podcast and blog have compelled me to try new wines I would not have otherwise. This has opened up an entirely new wine world to me. Each week I look for new wines to try and not the big jugs of plonk.

3) Wine blogging & podcasting is cool: OK, so this was one of the reasons back in 2004 when I got started. Now it’s just nerdy but I don’t care

4) I like the gigs: Kinda like a musician, this blog has provided me with employment marketing the beverage I love. How cool is that?

5) Because I can: I wish this didn’t sound so egotistical but the tools to share my thoughts about wine are well within the reach of tech geeks like me. I hope more folks with similar passions and technical chops follow, although it’s really pretty easy these days…

I hope I’ve shed some more light on why I do what I do and now will tag a few others in the wine blogosphere and ask the same question: Why do you blog?

St. Vini from The Zinquisition
Beau Jarvis from Basic Juice
Andrew Barrow from Spittoon and Wine Sediments
Tyler Coleman, a.k.a. Dr. Vino
Mark Fisher from Uncorked and The Dayton Daily News

You have all been tagged!

We have two daily newspapers here in the Twin Cities and today the St. Paul paper published a story on Twitter, in Twitter format. I was the local ‘wine nut’ Twittering tasting notes from my recent Napa Valley visit. More on the wine Twittering movement a bit later, in the meantime check out my 15 minutes of (local) fame