A couple weeks ago a wine sample arrived at my door. This is a fairly common occurrence here but I was intrigued to see it was a single bottle from Crushpad.
Could this be my first barrel sample of our open-source Roussanne, I wondered? Yes, it was!
Being near zero Fahrenheit outside the bottle was too cold to allow for tasting until the wine warmed up, so it sat on my desk for the rest of the day. The anticipation of tasting my first effort at non-home winemaking got the better of me later in the day and I poured out a sample… would this wine measure up to my expectations or would I be disapointed?
For a few moments, I thought the latter after sticking my nose in the glass and picking up SO2 along with fruit. After several minutes of vigorous aeration this aroma lifted, most likely due to a freshly sterilized bottle. I then was quite pleased to find a classically aromatic Roussanne with the characteristic waxy honeysuckle, stone fruit and ripe pineapple. The color at this stage is a lemon-yellow which tells you we have been aging the wine in oak. But there is no aromatic or flavor component from the oak as we have used neutral barrels.
The flavors are also what I expected with lean citrus and tropical fruit finishing very clean with good acidity. Overall, a very nice young wine that I look forward to see what happens with as we continue to stir lees and later blend with Marsanne and Viognier.
Members of my Crushnet group will have a chance to taste the wine late next month when I will be hosting a barrel tasting and blending party at Crushpad in San Francisco. We’ll also talk about naming and branding as labels will need to be prepared soon to ensure TTB approvals and printing.
If you are interested in buying some of this wine, join my group at Crushpad. Sometime in May I will close membership, so time is running out to get your hands on what looks to be a stunning $18 Cali Rhone blend.
It’s been a while since I last blogged here about the open-source Roussanne we are making at Crushpad.
After harvest in late October, the must started a slow, low temperature fermentation in two neutral oak barrels inoculated with two different yeast strains (D47 and QA23 for those interested in such things). Primary fermentation is now complete and the wine will settle in for aging for several months before blending and bottling.
I’ve recently asked group members on next steps in our Crushnet forum. The early consensus is to not allow the wine to go through malolactic fermentation and for the wine to be quite, but not fully, dry. Details are in a raw podcast interview posted for group members. I will be taking the interviews recorded to date and producing a full podcast on the project before the end of December.
If you are interested in joining the group, just visit Crushnet and signup.
Our grapes have been harvested and transported to Crushpad in San Francisco ready to start their journey from fruit to wine. That will start in about an hour from now but I’m 2,000 miles away in Minneapolis. That’s not a problem in this day and age as I’ll be joining via the Crushcam online. I’ll also be live blogging our progress here; stay tuned…
11:18 a.m. CDT – The Crushpad Cam is a bit choppy on my MacBook but the audio is fine… looks like the group is assembling now…
11:31 a.m. CDT – Alan has sent me pictures of the fruit… looks good with some raisins to sort out, etc. Several group members are online now on the Crushcam… and the first bin of Roussanne is in the sorting table now…
11:51 a.m. CDT – Several group members online chatting now trading Roussanne picks to try… sorting going well so far…
12:03 p.m. CDT – Now the group is getting geeky on yeast 
D47 & QA23 or shall we try BA11?
12:11 p.m. CDT – Sorting/Crushing complete… now the cold soak begins…
12:20 p.m. CDT – Just spoke with our winemaker and we will inoculate next Tuesday or Wednesday with D47 & QA23 yeasts (one in each barrel)… pressing is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. CDT today, so I’ll be back on the press cam then… will also post some photos here.
6:02 p.m. CDT – Back on the Crushnet cam, now focused on the press… not sure what is going on right now…
6:49 p.m. CDT – The Roussanne is finally going into the press…
7:09 p.m. CDT – Seems the pressing is near complete… a nice report from group member Robin on the juice; sounds like we have a good one in the works… a lot more as we get into fermentation, etc.
Cheers!
I just found out that the grapes for our open-source Roussanne will be harvested this Friday. There’s still time to join the group and participate in the sorting and crush, either online or at Crushpad in San Francisco. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll be here in Minnesota for harvest but there will be a few group members in attendance and I’ll be holding court online.
To join us, sign up at Crushpad and join the Winecast group.
Update: Well, harvest is on Friday but because the winery is 4 hours north of the vineyard, we’ll be sorting, crushing and pressing the grapes Saturday… I think I’ll live blog the event here Saturday morning/afternoon depending on your timezone.
The next element we need to consider for our open-source Roussanne, is target TA (total or titratable acidity). Since pH is the measure of the intensity of acidity, I will include both of these together in this post.
Roussanne is a high acid variety so we should have good acidity to work with right off the vine. If needed, we could acidify with tartaric acid which is very common in California winemaking and not something to be avoided, unless necessary, like watering back. The high acidity of the Roussanne can be blended back some with the addition of fatter varieties like Marsanne or Chardonnay which we will explore further as we go along.
So the main decision here is the intensity of the acidity, measured by the pH. The higher we go makes the wine more impressive by itself but sacrifices it’s friendliness with food. My preference is for the most food friendly wine here but I’m open to your comments and suggestions.
Next, we’ll get into yeast; such fun!
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?
