Bordeaux - Monday AM Tasting Chateau Carbinoux

Peter & Patricia in the courtyard at Chateau Carbinoux

8:45 AM and the bus picks us up for the tasting. We are traveling with a group from the San Francisco chapter of the Commanderie de Bordeaux, who have organized the trip.  What a fabulous job by Kent and Chuck.  This is a very old Chateau, in fact, one that Thomas Jefferson visited on the 25th of May in 1787.  That Chateau is in an old Benedictine Abbey built in the 13th Century...800 years ago. Owned by the Perrin family, the Chateau makes both a red and a white wine.  But it also has an interesting, if small car collection. The vineyard is in the Pessac-Leognan appellation. I think their white wine is better than the red.  White wine is 64% Sauvignon Blanc and 35% Semillon. Red wine is 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot.  The vines are planted 7200 plants per hectare which equals 2914 plants per acre. Our most dense planting in Napa is about only 1210 plants per acre. A very big difference that causes a very different type of machinery to work the vineyards. Our tasting consisted of a 2009 White Wine and their 2008 red.  The white was very nice the red, undistinguished.

A small collection of old French automobiles

 The group with whom we are traveling

The Chai and Chateau Carbinoux

Bordeaux Sunday Afternoon at Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte

We arrived on Sunday afternoon at Les Sources de Caudalie, the on-site hotel at Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte in Bordeaux. The hotel is outstanding country inn with a distinct country feel.  The Chateau is owned by Daniel and Florence Cathiard.  Daniel made his money in the retail sporting business and spent much of his life in and around Grenoble.  Jean Claude Killy, the Olympic skier is a good friend.  When he sold that business 20 years ago, he purchased Chateau Smith Haut Lafite and has been improving it for years.  Great guy with a great wife.  We did a tour of the wine making facility and the cellars in the afternoon then had a wine tasting at their home, The Chateau, early evening.

The photo of the Moke shows Patricia riding with Daniel Cathiard back to the Chateau for the tasting.

They then joined us in the restaurant La Table du Lavoir at Les Sources Caudalie for Dinner. We drank 2008 and 2008 Smith Haut Lafitte white wine at the tasting and the 2007 at dinner.
 We also had their 1985 and 2005 Red wine at the tasting and the 2006 at Dinner.  In general their red wines are 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 31% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot.  All wines are fermented in oak tanks and fermented in French Oak barrels.  80 % of the barrels are new.

In the photo above, Peter chats with Daniel Cathiard, owner of  Chateau Smith Haut Laffite.

We had a wonderful foie gras pate to start at dinner and duck for the main course.  A perfect way to start a week in France. During dinner Bill Harlan who owns Harlan Estates and Meadowood in the Napa Valley and who was in town for Vin Expo was at the next table. When we talked to him he said that Les Sources de Caudalie was his "home away from home" in Bordeaux

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One of the most interesting things about the stay was to find that they still, in 2011, used horses in the vineyards (as shown in the photo) to minimize the impact.  They do use regular vineyard tractors also however.

The Start of the Bordeaux Research Trip

Sunday Morning - Amsterdam
Sitting in Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. Schipol seems huge, but it is only Europe's 5th largest and the world's 20th largest airport, measured by passenger traffic. Its airport tower was the highest in the world (391ft) when constructed in 1991.  However, its most interesting fact is that it is all below sea level. While the average level of the runways is a bit less than 10 feet below, the lowest point on the runways is more than 11 feet below sea level. The airport is loaded with shopping, has a casino and a modern art gallery. It even has its own mortuary and in 2010 became the first major airport in the world to have its own permanent library.

So,  here we are for 3 hours waiting for our flight to Bordeaux.

But this Blog is supposed to be about food and wine.

When is Delta Airlines ever going to figure it out. They offered 4 wines on the flight over, picked by their "Sommelier." Take the person's license or certificate away.  The Pouille Fussee Chardonay was too old although a 2009.  It was golden color probably because of poor storage and all ready starting to maderize. The alternative white was  "an Argentinian White" which tasted like a mixture of a poor Chenin Blanc and cat pee. A total put-off.
Ok so maybe the reds would have some redeeming value.  Take your choice of a 2009 Argentinian Malbec that was so purple it looked like it was bottled yesterday or a Pinot. The Malbec never saw a hint of oak and would not have stood a chance in a blind tasting against "two buck chuck."  OK, so there is one wine on the list that has to be respectable.  A Robert Mondavi, Carneros, Pinot Noir. While I hate to start on a negative note, it was also a grand disappointment, but what do you expect. Thin, watery and character less.  No nose and no finish. But... This is an airline and notwithstanding a business class ticket costing thousands of dollars why should I expect a decent wine. I guess that is what monopolies(or at least oligopolies) get you.

Speaking of monopolies and airlines.  Has it occurred to you lately how little progress we have made in commercial flying in the last 50 years?  My first commercial flight, just after I got out of college in 1963 was aboard an Eastern Airlines Boeing 727, from Minneapolis to Chicago. The food was better, the seats were bigger, the flights were seldom jammed to the rafters, the service extraordinarily better,  and it went just as fast, that's right, just as fast, as the best planes of today. .8 Mach.   I keep waiting for Sir Richard Branson and Steve Jobs to form a partnership to figure out how to improve travel. Maybe we also need the Tesla guys in the mix. It is a cinch that the CEOS of Delta, United and American will never get there.  We need visionaries, not accountants running our airlines if they are ever likely to improve at all.

On to Bordeaux where we will find centuries of tradition, explore the new techniques and sample some of the best wine and food in the world. Join Us. And feel free to leave a comment.

The Shopping Arcade awaits.
Cheers
Peter Kitchak

Barrel Selection 2011

This is the time of the year that we order new barrels for the 2011 Harvest.

When ordering barrels we must first determine the wines that we intend to make for the year.

Then we determine the number of new barrels that we will want to use.

From that we determine which particular barrels we will order.

French or American Oak.

Sometimes wine makers tell us what kind of barrels they use, sometimes it is a mystery. But different kinds of oak can do very different things to the wine.  French and American Oak are different species and affect wine quite differently. American Oak  species is Quercus alba while French Oak is Quercus robur or Quercus petraea.  American oak tends to be more opened grained and more intensely flavored than French oak with more sweet flavors and vanilla. This is generally because American oak has two to four times as much lactones as does French Oak. French oak, on the other hand, tends to be much tighter grain (particularly the Quercus petraea) and generates more delicate and silky tannins. French oak tends to add more spices, toasted almond flavors and flavors of exotic fruits. In general French oak is used for more delicate, sophisticated wines and American oak is used for more robust, aggressive wines.

Our plan this year will be to use more than 80 % French oak. About 80% of all of the barrels that we will use will be new oak.

The Cost and Life of Barrels.

The best new French Oak barrels will cost about $1200 per barrel. A new American Oak barrel is closer to $400 per barrel. So, there is, for many winemakers, a strong financial incentive to use American Oak.  For our best wines, Concerto, our Reserve Merlot and Adagio, we will use almost all new French Oak and we will use the barrels only once. Piacere and our Cabernet Franc will get about 50% new barrels and we will use a few American Oak barrels for those wines. Only our Scherzo Cabernet Rosato uses barrels that have been used more than twice. So each year when we bottle our wine we have once used barrels that we will sell to other wineries, many in Napa, for about $200-250 per barrel if it is French and $100-$150 per barrel if it is American.

Toast Levels.

Barrels are generally available in light toast, medium toast, medium plus toast and heavy toast. Barrels are toasted by placing them over an oak fire after they have been made.  We generally buy medium plus toast with one or two heavy toast barrels "thrown in."  Toasting cauterizes the wood and prevents the rough tannins and lactones from negatively impacting the wine. In addition, heavy toasting in just a few barrels helps create subtle flavors of tobacco and chocolate. You will also notice in the photo of the American barrel above that it has Toasted Heads.  The Heads are the ends of the barrels. Almost all American barrels have Toasted Heads and almost no French Oak barrels do.  That is because the flavors and the tannins are more delicate in the French Oak barrels and we can achieve more complex flavors using both toasted and untoasted wood.  You can, however, purchase American barrels with untoasted heads and French barrels with toasted heads. We don't do either.

The Forests.

We make our decision on which barrels to purchase early in the year so we can select French vs American, the level of toast, and the barrel manufacturer (The Cooper). In addition, by ordering early, we can also select the forest from which the wood is sourced. In general, we want wood from different forests and from different Coopers. It is a lot like cooking, you do not want to use only a single spice, we want complex, interesting wines with layers and layers of flavors. So we use a variety of Coopers and specify wood from a variety of forests. For 2011 our French barrels will come from three different areas in France, The Troncais,  and Jupilles are the main forests that we use. However, some wood comes from the Allier department in the center of France which includes the Troncais National Forest in addition to other area. 

Air Aging.

In addition to all of the other decisions, we also often get to select the length of time that the wood is aged prior to the construction of the barrel. Generally the trees are cut and the logs sawed or split into staves. The staves are then stacked crisscrossed on pallets which are placed outside to age in the sun, wind and rain. We specify that the American oak barrels we purchase must all be aged 3 or 4 years, with 4 being preferable.  French Oak is aged for 24-36 months and we generally specify 36 months.

Determining Which Barrels to Use.

Determining which barrels to use is not just guess work and listening to salespeople.  Each year we try a couple of new barrels to see how they will perform with our particular fruit and wines. In general, the differences between French Oak in particular are very subtle. Over the past couple of months we have, together with our  winemaking consultant Kian Tavakoli, tasted every barrel of wine which is aging in our winery.  We have made detailed notes and debated the desirability of  each barrel for each particular wine.  Some barrels work exceptionally well and others, while they may be good barrels from good Coopers, do not add quite the finesse and style that we are after to make world class wines.

Finally, the Selection.

So,  our final selection is based on much more than just whether the barrels are just French or American. In addition we select based on the Cooper (the barrel maker), the level of toast, the toasting of the heads, the length time the staves are air dried, the tightness of the grain of the wood and the forest from which the wood is sourced.

 This year we will use predominantly new barrels which will be almost entirely new French Oak. We are using a significantly higher proportion of French oak than we have in the past. All barrels will be very tight grain and most will be medium plus toast. We have placed orders for French oak barrels from coopers Taransaud, Ana Selection, Sylvain and Ermitage. Our very limited number of American oak barrels will come from Demptos (made right in Napa) and Canton which is owned by Taransaud and located in Kentucky.

Cheers, Peter

Slow in the Winery - Fast in the Vineyard

IN THE WINERY -

Things are quite slow at the moment.  We continue to ship wines and do private tastings, but the actual winery work is quite slow.  During the last week, we topped all of the barrels. Because wooden barrels are porous, a portion of the wine evaporates from the barrel.  If the humidity in the winery is below 70% more water than alcohol evaporates from the barrel and the alcohol level in the barrel will go up over time.  When the humidity is above 70% in the winery, more alcohol will evaporate and the overall level of alcohol in the wine will go down.

Many wineries like to keep the barrel rooms at around 80% humidity so they will lose less wine, however, if you want to keep the wine in perfect balance you keep the winery at 70% humidity.

As the wine evaporates, barrels must be kept topped up to prevent any oxygen in the barrel and to prevent spoilage. So once every two weeks we go through the entire barrel room (The "Chai" in French) and fill the barrels to the brim with the same wine.  We get the wine from stainless tanks in which we placed some of the wine initially so that it would be available as "topping wine."  Occasionally we must empty a barrel into a stainless tank when we run out of "topping wine" so we will continue to be able to top other barrels.  This week we did so with a barrel of cabernet sauvignon.

We also have to "gas" any empty barrels monthly to prevent spoilage within those barrels until we use them again. In the past we would use sulfur dioxide gas which can kill about anything, but which is very tough on our own respiratory systems. When using it, we use a face mask (much like old gas masks) with a special filter to prevent inhaling the sulfur. The good news is that we now have an ozone generator in the winery that we use for sterilizing almost everything we use.  Plug it in and it generates ozone which is a very, very effective sanitizer and no where near as caustic and much more environmentally friendly than sulfur dioxide. We put a small hose in the barrel, pump the ozone into the barrel for a couple of minutes and then stopper the barrel with a plastic bung. It keeps the barrel fresh and sweet until its next use.

IN THE VINEYARD

It is a busy time in the vineyard.  We have just mowed all of the grass between the rows and used a disk to turn the mustard under for fertilizer. By mowing the grass we also preserve water in the vineyard and delay the need for irrigation.  The shoots are now about 6 inches long and the grape flowers are clearly visible.  So, it is also time to spray for powdery mildew and to spray for the first generation of the European Grape Vine Moth.

We are also removing suckers and laterals from the vines.  Suckers are leaves on the trunk of the vine which use up more energy than they will generate and laterals are much the same.  We want all of the new canes growing straight up so all of their leaves will get a good amount of direct sunlight.  There is an old adage that  great wine is made in the vineyard and not in the winery and we are now at the point where taking great care with the vines will pay huge dividends later.

There is still plenty of water in the ground so we will not need to irrigate for another month or so.  We will talk more in a few weeks about how we determine when we need to start watering and how we determine how much water to use.

A Great Dinner and fighting the European Grape Vine Moth

A TRULY SPECTACULAR DINNER - Rabbit Risotto

Once in a great while you have a truly great dinner that merits talking about.  Usually it takes place in a Michelin starred restaurant or someplace similar. Well we had one of those last week and it was not at the French Laundry. It was, in fact, at the home of friends, Ralph (or Cellar Master) and Lindsay Bashioum who, incidentally, are both great cooks. The highlight of the evening was an Organic Rabbit Risotto, seasoned with herbs de Provence, rosemary, salt and pepper, carrots and fennel bulbs with copious quantities of Parmesan cheese melted in. The idea and the recipe was created by Lindsay.  The Rabbit Risotto was served with a 1997 Piero Antinori Tiganello which is  a blend of 80% Sangiovese, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Cabernet Franc, aged in French oak barrels for 12 months and filtered without filtering.  

We are going to be putting the recipe on our website, but if anyone wants it, send me an e-mail and I will make sure that you get it, compliments of Lindsay.

THE EUROPEAN GRAPE VINE MOTH. A huge and important battle in the Napa Valley

The European Grapevine Moth (EGVM) was first reported in the United States and in Napa County vineyards in October 2009. Native to Southern Italy, it was first described from Austria and is now found throughout Europe. Feeding by larvae of European grapevine moth results in contamination of grape bunches with webbing, frass, and fungal infections. Grapevine moth larvae hollow out berries, leaving behind just the skin and seeds. And, they can destroy an entire vineyard in one generation, as happened to a few vineyards around Oakville, in the Napa Valley in 2009.

Moth Damage 

In May and June, first-generation larvae web and feed on the flower clusters. Second-generation larvae (July-August) feed on green berries. Young larvae penetrate the berry and hollow them out, leaving the skin and seeds. Third-generation larvae (August-September) cause the greatest damage by webbing and feeding inside berries and within bunches, which become contaminated with frass. Additionally, feeding damage to berries after veraison exposes them to infection by Botrytis and other secondary fungi  Secondary pests such as raisin moth (Cadra figulilella), fruit flies, and ants may also be attracted to damaged berries.

The Fight.

We are battling the EGVM with an interesting combination of approaches.  We just completed placing mating disruptors in the vineyard. We place 200 of these ties per acre. One on every 5th vine. They are small ties which are contain sex pheromones which attract males. The males are then confused about where and who to mate with and the mating is disrupted resulting in far less moths. As the season progresses we spray the vineyard every two to three weeks with an insecticide that the aimed specifically at the EGVM; an insecticide that is not harmful to the grapes or ultimately the wine.

We are Winning. 

Due to the efforts of the Napa Valley Vintners and growers in 2010, trapping finds of the EGVM were dramatically reduced from more than 100,000 in the first generation to only 275 moths during the third generation. The entire Napa Valley was under quarantine last season and because we ship grapes out of state we had to have a special inspection. Fortunately we had no moths and we could then ship.  But, we continue to be vigilant and to fight the little critters. 

Budbreak - April 1 - On to a new season

The Winter rains are almost over in the Napa Valley
A week ago, our Cabernet Vineyard, looking toward Lake Cynthia was dark, gloomy and wet. Today it is basking in sunshine. It sure looks different, as you can tell from out photos. And Houston - WE HAVE BUD-BREAK.

It is almost as exciting as "lift-off" and a truly magical time of the year.  We declared April 1 our official day of bud-break at Kitchak Cellars and as you can see from the photo, taken yesterday (April 6) it took less than a week to go from bud-break to real leaves on the vines. One month from now we will have vertical canes on the vines that will be more than a foot tall (some as many as a two feet) all from those little buds. Then flowers and green clusters. By August 1 the grapes will start to turn color and around the end of September we will pick the grapes and start to make wine.  A truly magical process.  The next time you try a glass of wine, stop to think about the Magic. Dirt, Sunshine, a little water and voila' we have wine, and really special wine.

Next step in the Vineyard. Next we will mow the grass (and mustard) between the rows and disk it into the soil to add some nutrients. We will mow every other row (it reduces the risk of frost damage) and leave the grass between the other rows for a while. Growing cover crops help get the water out of the vineyard so the grapes have to struggle for water. Then the grapes will be smaller and the skin (from whence come the color and flavor) to juice ratio will be higher. The overall concentration level is higher and we get a more dense, more flavorful and higher quality wine.

Bottling Day April 4. On Monday we bottled our 2010 Scherzo (78 cases) after 5 months in the barrel,  and our 2008 Concerto (130 cases)  after 29 months in the barrel. I was worried about it, because it was our first time but it went off without a hitch thanks to our new friends John and Jennie Hofherr of J & J Bottling from Calistoga. The bottling truck and trailer got down the drive ok (I was a bit worried) and everything went as scheduled. The 2010 Scherzo will be released around June 1 and the Concerto will not be released until this time next year.  We are, at this point, very satisfied with each.

2010 Scherzo Cabernet Rosato - To release or not to release. I said that I would share our decisions and our questions with our readers. Today's big question is whether or not we should release the 2010 Scherzo Cabernet Rosato around June 1.  It is a very young wine and we think it will, again, age very well. We are sold out of the 2009 Scherzo and only have a few (less than 10 cases each) of the 2008 and 2007 left, both of which are doing just fine. The other day we tried our first Scherzo, a 2006, and it is still drinking very well. 

So, our dilemma is that we would like to release the 2010 Scherzo in time for Summer, but we think it will be drinking better in the fall after it has a few more months of age on it. A few months will make a difference. Our current thinking is to release the wine and suggest that people might watch it evolve over time.  If you have any thoughts you might consider sharing them with us.

Off to Bordeaux. In June we will be off to Bordeaux for a week. We will be there for Vin Expo - one of the largest wine trade shows in the world. We are traveling with the Commanderie de Bordeaux, San Francisco Chapter and will also be visiting some of the top Chateau in Bordeaux, indeed the best in the world.  I am expecting it to be a great learning experience.