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.
I picked up this wine as a benchmark for my Roussanne project but it became my Thanksgiving wine. Beckmen Vineyards is a family owned winery in the Santa Ynez Valley, the same place the grapes for the wine my Crushpad group is making. They are a winery devoted exclusively to Rhone grapes and, if this wine serves as an example of what they can produce, I’ll be coming back for more.
Beckmen Vineyards, “Le Bec Blanc” 2005 ($20) – A blend of 57% Roussanne, 30% Marsanne and 13% Grenache Blanc. Golden straw in color with aromas of white peach, almonds and orange blossom. Rich and oily in the mouth with citrus and pineapple flavors finishing with some minerality, nuts and spice.
13.9% ABV
Natural cork closure
Score: 88
[rating: 3.5/5]
Buy this wine online
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.
Another Quick Picks just in time for the Thanksgiving table featuring two Roussanne-based wines from Tablas Creek Vineyard.
Tablas Creek Vineyard, Roussanne 2005 ($27) – Light straw in color with aromas of pear, pineapple and orange blossom. Crisp pear and pineapple flavors with nice minerality on the finish. Wow.
Score: 91
Rating: 4/5 stars
Tablas Creek Vineyard, Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc, Roussanne/Grenache Blanc/Picpoul Blanc blend 2005 ($35) – Light yellow in color with aromas of pear, honey and spice. Pear, citrus and pineapple flavors finish long with refreshing acidity. A delicious Rhone blend that shows what can be done with these grapes in California. I will cellar a few bottles to see what happens with 5, 10 and 15 years of bottle age.
Score: 92
Rating: 4/5 stars
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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!
