Meet City Winery’s Winemaking Team

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Erica Swallow

The diversity of the City Winery winemaking team reflects the diversity of New York City, where the winery is situated. Our head winemaker has been in the industry since he was 16 years old, while the assistant winemaker fell into the wine world after retiring from his 20-year career as a jockey.

To make things even more interesting, the winery’s cellar hand doesn’t drink wine (or any alcohol for that matter) and grew up in Mali and France. And finally, the kosher assistant winemaker jumped into the wine world as a home winemaker, out of a love for the drink.

So, just who are these unique individuals behind City Winery? I spoke with each of the core team members to learn just how they found themselves in the wine industry. Here are their stories.

Head Winemaker David Lecomte took on his first job in the wine industry as a teenager. David grew up in Tain-l’Hermitage, France, a town in the northern Rhône valley. His hometown economy was supported largely by wine production, followed by fruit farming. David said that a wine job, as a result, was just a common job in his area.

So, at 16 years old, David took on a summer job in the vineyards of Delas & Fils Sons, and after two years, he worked his way up to a winery position. Since then, he’s worked with Dragon Seal, Jean Luc Colombo, Chapoutier & Fils, Afton Mountain Vineyards, Premium Wine Group and Herzog Wine Cellars; and in 2008, he joined as the founding winemaker at City Winery.

David’s favorite part of working as a winemaker is when he has a huge diversity of crop coming into the winery. Having a diversity of metrics helps keep him on his toes, as he’s constantly thinking of how to work with each individual wine.

The biggest challenge of winemaking in an urban environment, though, is utilizing a small space to its fullest without compromising the winemaking. Even more problematic is the fact that it is impossible for the winery to be located near the vineyards, as it’s in the heart of New York City. For a classical winemaker, it’s a big challenge, but David says he has grown accustomed over the years, especially since he is “surrounded by great people” who manage the vineyard relationships in Oregon and California, where he is unable to see the grape vines and make on-the-fly decisions.

For the majority of his career life, Assistant Winemaker Bill Anton was a horse jockey, focusing on racing on the east coast of the United States. His love of wine began in his early 20′s, when he happened to compete on the west coast for a few years. A couple of owners, trainers and associates of his were interested in the wine world, and they all toured around Napa wineries together. It was there when he first began to take an interest in the winemaking process.

Furthermore, Bill has always enjoyed cooking, and his general interest in wine has always been intertwined with his passion for cooking. In fact, Bill believes that “A meal without wine is like a meal with a missing ingredient.” He enjoys every dinner with wine, “even if it’s a pizza,” he says.

Once Bill retired from his career as an athlete, he attended the Florida Culinary Institute to pursue his passion for cooking. At the end of the program, he took a course on food and wine pairing, reigniting his interest in wine.

From there, Bill happened upon an ad in a Long Island newspaper, posted by a winery searching for harvest help. He was employed with that winery, Castello di Borghese, for two harvest seasons. Afterwards, he accompanied the winemaker from Pindar Vineyards (in Long Island) to be his assistant winemaker at Childress Vineyards in North Carolina.

Bill heard about the opening of City Winery and began contacting the winery before it opened. He was fascinated with the idea of urban winemaking. At the time, the winery didn’t have an opening, but during the harvest of 2009, it brought Bill on as the assistant winemaker.

Bill’s favorite part of winemaking is that “every year brings a different challenge. Two years are never the same.” Furthermore, he loves to see the end product after the process of seeing it go from a juice to a high quality wine. On the flip side of the coin, Bill agrees with David that the most difficult aspect of urban winemaking is dealing with space constraints. When you’re restricted to a small space, the winemaking process becomes much more complicated, he says.

Kosher Assistant Winemaker Yanky Drew says his passion for wine goes a long way back, especially since wine is used quite often in Judaism.

“As a kid, I always tried to turn table grapes into wine,” he says. “As you can guess, I was not too successful. But when somebody was making wine, I was there to help. My real turning point was at Yarden Winery in the Golan Heights in Israel. I tasted their Gewürztraminer in the tasting room and was instantly hooked with the barrel rooms, vineyards and so on.”

Yanky’s passion for wine drove him to be a home winemaker, tweeting and reading tweets about winemaking. And it was through Twitter that he came to know of City Winery. “I met the previous City Winery Mashgiach, Ilan Tokayer, may his memory be blessed, through our shared tweeting. He then told me about the vacancy [at City Winery].”

For Yanky, winemaking is all about the love of the process. “What I enjoy the most about the wine world is people who have a real passion for winemaking and produce great wine for all to enjoy,” he says. “I also appreciate when wine tastes like the variety that it is, in other words, true to its variety. What I like the least about the wine world is producing and selling wine just for the business aspect of it — and people who don’t care to make good wine, only to make money.”

Cellar Hand Sikou Nikate was born in Mali, Africa and spent half of his life there before moving to France, where many of his family members live.

While Sikou doesn’t drink alcohol, including wine, he enjoys the winemaking process and working with wine.

Prior to working at City Winery, Sikou worked at a Japanese restaurant in France. He heard about the position at City Winery through a friend that works at the winery. While he didn’t have a specialization in wine before applying, the winery was a great fit for him, he says. He enjoys the people and the work.

Sikou began working as the cellar hand at City Winery during the harvest season of 2009.

The City Winery winemaking team works hard every day to make sure the winery is producing top-notch wines. With diverse backgrounds, each of the team members adds his own unique flair to the process.

Let us know if you have any questions about the crew in the comments below!

An Intro to Maceration Management: Pump Overs & Punch Downs

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Erica Swallow

Assistant Winemaker Bill Anton punches down the cap with a punch down tool.

“Maceration management is the most complex and critical stage of red winemaking,” City Winery winemaker explains. He continues:

“The best way to manage maceration is to adapt yourself every day for every tank and to see each tank as its own person or batch. Every day, every tank is behaving differently. Not coming in for one day would cause me to lose sight of what’s going on.”

Maceration is the process through which the solid part of the must — including the grape skin, seeds and pulp — comes in contact with the liquid content — the grape juice and young wine — to impart the desired color and amounts of tannins and aromas to the juice.

During this stage of winemaking, it is important to facilitate the right amount of solid and liquid contact, so that maceration is optimized.

There’s only one pesky thing that gets in the way: carbon dioxide. As sugars in the juice are converted to alcohol during fermentation, carbon dioxide is created as a byproduct. The gas rises to the top of the vessel, pushing the solid materials — including grapes, seeds and pulp — to the top of the container, creating a solid block of fruit, known as the cap (as pictured above).

Right: Assistant Winemaker Bill Anton uses his full body force to punch down.
Left: Carbon dioxide escapes through the cap as Winemaker David Lecomte punches down.

The cap has a tendency to dry out if it’s not redistributed into the juice, causing maceration to slow to a halt.

Lecomte says that one tank produces 20-22 times its volume in carbon dioxide during fermentation. At City Winery, we use a carbon dioxide extractor, which constantly pulls CO2 out of the tanks and into the winery. To keep the winery ventilated, we keep the dock door open when the extractor is on.

The wines are constantly changing during this period. With such rapid change in the wine, maceration management takes over during this time of year, pacing the staff’s work flow, as pumping over and punching down needs are high.

3 Ways to Manage Maceration

There are three methods for maceration management: punching down, pumping over and rack & return. Lecomte explained each method thoroughly — here’s an overview:

1. Punching Down: The first way to integrate the cap back into the juice is punching down, a method very common in the Burgundy and Rhône wine regions of France. Punching down is when the cap is manually or mechanically pushed back into the juice from the top. Feet, a punch down tool or a hydraulic piston can be used to punch down. At City Winery, we use a punch down tool (as pictured above).

Punching down can only be completed when an open-top tank is being used. The team places a wooden beam across the lip of the tank and gets to work with the punch down tool, using the beam to step on for balance.

During the beginning phase of maceration, so much carbon dioxide is produced that the cap is strong enough to walk on. We wouldn’t recommend trying that, though, because one slip into the juice could be fatal. Death is highly likely if a person falls into a fermenting tank of wine, because the carbon dioxide is so strong that it is impossible to breath, even in the case that you get your head above the cap quickly.

Assistant Winemaker Bill Anton pumps over wine.

2. Pumping Over: Pumping over is when liquid from the bottom of the tank is transferred to the top of the tank to submerge the cap. Generally, this is done through two methods. In the first method, a hose is connected to a spout at the bottom of the tank and pushes wine through a pump and into a second hose that sprays the wine onto the cap (as pictured above).

In the other method of pumping over, the wine is emptied through the bottom spout into a tub, so that it can aerate. As the tank is emptied, a hose connecting to a pump siphons the juice through to a second hose that sprays it onto the cap. In both instances, the same tools are used, but the only differing step is aeration.

If a wine has slightly reduced, the team will first aerate it before pumping over.

When a wine has reduced — which is detected by the smell of sulfur, rotten eggs, onion or boiled cauliflower, depending on the level of reduction — it needs air. In this case, the team will use the air method (as pictured above) when pumping over.

3. Rack & Return: The last type of maceration management is called “rack & return” and it’s a new method that’s starting to appear in the Bordeaux wine region of France. This method is uncommon, though, as it requires the availability of two tanks. Racking is the process of carefully moving wine from one place to another. In this case, half of the wine in a tank is moved to another tank and then returned to the original tank at a high velocity using a pump at full speed, causing the cap to break up.

With pumping over, wine can only be pumped as fast as it is flowing out of the tank — that way, it’s replacing the tank at the same rate. For example, today we’re using a pump at 40% its capacity — it can pump up to 120-gallon per minute. This is all based on the flow of the wine from the tank.

With the rack & return method, though, all of the juice in the second tank can be pumped at full speed into the original tank, overwhelming and breaking up the cap. This method enables a winemaker to extract the most character from the solids in the must and can be employed when pumping over isn’t enough. This method, though, would very rarely be used at the end of fermentation, because too much extraction would occur, pushing the wine into a bitter, aggressive state.

Variables to Consider in Maceration Management

Maceration takes about 2-3 weeks, and it’s a balance — the winemaker wants to extract as much potential from the solid materials in the wine as possible. If he extracts for too long, though, the wine can become bitter, harsh or too aggressive, because it begins to extract tannins from the seed, and not just the skin.

If he extracts for too little time, though, the wine may not be as complex as it could be, generally producing a more fruit-forward, than complex, wine.

In general, pumping over and punching down occurs once or twice per day, but can take place as much as 3-4 times per day at the peak of fermentation.

So, how does a winemaker know when he should pump over or punch down? Or whether he should use air to oxygenate the wine during the pump over process? Lecomte says there are a number of variables, of which these are just a few for starters:

Whether or not the juice has started fermenting
What the pH level is
What the Brix reading is
Whether the wine will have difficulty finishing the fermentation process
Whether another shipment of grapes is to arrive and needs to be placed in the tank
What the winery’s pump capacity is
What the winery’s cooling capacity is
Whether the tank is an open or closed-top tank
What the temperature of the juice is
How many Brix have been lost within 24 hours
What other wines in the winery are higher priority and must be tended to first
How much time and how many staffers the winery has available

Lecomte explained that while two wines can have the same Brix reading, for example, they may be behaving completely differently, so the day-to-day maceration management of each will be different. All of the variables listed above — and more — must be taken into account when dealing with each tank.

Maceration is a complicated process, and this post is merely an introduction to how the City Winery manages this phase of winemaking. Let us know if you have any particular questions in the comments below!

Destemming & Sorting Grapes at City Winery

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Erica Swallow

The City Winery harvest team sorts and destems Pinot Noir grapes.

The City Winery team has been busy receiving tons (literally) of grapes for the harvest season — in the past two weeks, we’ve received 21 tons of grapes to sort and destem!

Now is the perfect time to explain exactly what happens during the “crush,” as it is commonly called. I spoke with City Winery Winemaker David Lecomte to get all the details.

First off, the term “crush” is misleading, David explains — at City Winery, we don’t crush our grapes, so that we can maintain the integrity of the fruit as much as we can in order to optimize fresh aromas in the wine. Instead, we simply destem and sort grapes before they are placed in tanks.

Look at these beauts we received last week! Pinot Noir at its finest.

The majority of the wine industry crushes grapes when they are received. The only constraint that makes crushing necessary is the need for must — freshly pressed grape juice that contains the skins, seeds and stems of the fruit — to be transported through hoses from the crushpad — where the crushing takes place, usually outside the winery — to tanks. In order to push the grapes through the hose without clogging, there needs to be a fair amount of liquid.

Some wineries build their crushpads at higher elevations than where the tanks are located in order to take advantage of gravity. In this case, the must simply flows through the hoses and into the tanks as aided by gravity — instead of the other option, where the hose is ran up the side of the tank, which can stand at sometimes 30 to 50 feet tall, making a pump necessary to transport the must up to the tank’s opening.

High-end and smaller wineries are able to mitigate crushing, and even some large wineries take precautions to minimize crushing. Some buy special, large-diameter hoses that enable easier transportation of must, and others simply minimize the length of the pipe needed to transport must. Both of these methods reduce clogging and make it easier for whole berries to be sent through a hose — therefore, crushing may not be necessary.

In other cases, some wineries place sorted berries into vessels that are lifted and emptied into tanks. This operation must be planned from the building of the winery, though, as lifting tons of grapes isn’t an easy task.

Assistant Kosher Winemaker Yanky Drew and wine aficionado Lane load grapes into the hopper, where they are carried up a conveyor belt to the destemmer.

David noted that in France, his home country, there is no such term as “crush” to explain this process in winemaking. It is simply called “harvest” or “reception,” because grapes are received or harvested, not crushed.

At City Winery, we follow this idea and have a setup that enables us to only use conveyor belts to transport fruit during the destemming and sorting processes. Each tank has its own setup guidelines, custom for its size and location in the winery.

Once a load of grapes is received, we line up the bins of grapes outside the winery’s loading dock and bring them in to the winery piecemeal.

From there, the grapes are loaded onto the first conveyor belt, which carries grapes to the destemmer and is generally manned by two people. One person is in charge of dumping grapes into the hopper at the bottom of the belt, and the second is tasked with evenly loading the conveyor belt rungs with grapes (as pictured above).

The mechanical destemmer, the silver box at the head of the sorting table, is quite effective, but the team sifts through the grapes after destemming to make sure no stems made it through.

It is important that grapes be loaded evenly onto the first conveyor belt, so that the destemmer can work as efficiently as possible. Incoming grapes push grapes in the destemmer out onto the sorting table. Clogging can occur if too many grapes are loaded into the destemmer — and conversely, if too little grapes are loaded into the destemmer, they won’t supply enough force to push out the grapes in the machine, causing the team to lose time and efficiency.

A closer look at the sorting table.

Once the grapes fall onto the sorting table, the team takes one last look at the fruit to ensure that they are of top-notch quality. All remaining stems are removed, and expert sorters, such as our winemaker and assistant winemaker, are experienced enough to pick out grapes that are diseased or under-ripe.

After grapes pass the sorting table, they are transported up another conveyor belt into the tank, where maceration and fermentation take place.

Once the grapes are completely destemmed, another belt carries them up to the tank.

After the must is sent to the tank, it ideally goes through a cold soak, in which it is chilled at around 45 degrees. This process holds off the fermentation process and is meant to increase the amount of fresh aromas present in the fruit. At City Winery, the cold soak lasts for up to a week, but typically good fruit gets 3-4 days in a cold soak, as determined by the winemaker. For troublesome crops, though, that may be in danger of oxidizing or molding, the cold soak is skipped and fermentation starts as soon as the crop warms up, which generally takes about one day.

Some wineries implement a 10-day cold soaking period, with the belief that longer cold soaks yield more aromatic fruits. While difficult to prove, it may very well be true. However, in an urban winemaking environment such as ours, where space is limited, we have to think about logistics. The winemaker is constantly planning out when crops are coming in and when he will need to vacate tanks in order to receive new crops.

David noted that the most critical part of early-stage winemaking is choosing the date of press. The decision to stop maceration — the process by which the grape skins impart the desired color and amounts of tannins and aromas to the juice — in order to press is made no sooner than 24 hours in advance of the press.

Each day, the juices are monitored to make sure they are developing well and are not in danger of oxidation — when the winemaker finally feels that he has gotten everything he wants in his wines from the maceration and fermentation processes, he presses it.

That, my friends, is an overview of how City Winery destems and sorts its grapes. Let us know if you have questions in the comments below!

Photos courtesy of Hank Smeal, cellar intern

Harvesting & Pressing Grapes for Kosher Winemaking

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Erica Swallow

Last week, Kosher Assistant Winemaker Yanky Drew and his helper Chananya Zirkind were busy overseeing the harvesting and pressing of Chardonnay grapes sourced from North Fork, Long Island, to be used in making a sparkling wine.

I spoke with Yanky to better understand the ins and outs of kosher winemaking and the specifics of the harvesting, pressing and racking processes in particular. Check out the video embedded above for a look at the process, and then read on for details about each step.

The Two Tenets of Kosher Winemaking

Kosher Assistant Winemaker Yanky Drew prepares to rack the kosher wine.

Yanky explained that there are two main tenets when making kosher wine:

The wine must only be handled by an observant Jew.
The ingredients used in making the wine (such as yeast and fining agents) must be kosher.

These two principles are the foundation of all kosher winemaking and guide how Yanky and his team operate when producing wine with City Winery.

Cleaning the Press

Yanky and Chananya spent three hours cleaning the press in preparation for the grapes. They used a tweezer-like tool to individually pick out all of the seeds and skin from a previous pressing session. The press has to be completely clean of other fruit that may not be kosher. After all of the fruit was removed, the duo powerwashed the press for good measure.

In general, the rule regarding equipment and vessels used in kosher winemaking is that if it is to be used for storage, it must be kosher, but if it is used for anything but storage (such as transportation), it just needs to be completely clean.

For example, hoses used for moving wine from one vessel to another do not need to be kosher — they must only be clean. However, a tank for aging wine must be a designated kosher vessel.

Picking the Grapes

Grapes used for kosher winemaking can be picked by anyone, and the vineyards do not have to follow any kosher procedures. The only considerations are how old the vines are and what other foods are grown in the area.

Vines must be at least three years of age, and the grapes must not be grown in the same field as other fruits or vegetables. Yanky made sure of this when he visited the vineyard, located in North Fork, Long Island.

Furthermore, if any machinery is used — such as a forklift — it must be operated by an observant Jew. In this case, Yanky manned the forklift.

Pressing the Grapes

This time around, Yanky and Chananya pressed Chardonnay grapes for a sparkling wine.

In maintaining kosher standards, only observant Jews are able to handle the product. Along with keeping kosher standards in the pressing process, though, general winemaking procedures must also be followed in order to produce a high-quality wine. For this press, the team needed to follow sparkling wine pressing protocols, which call for a light, delicate press with many cycles, whether kosher or not.

Racking the Grapes

Racking is the process of carefully moving wine from one place to another.

When a wine is pressed, the first racking occurs when the pressed juice is transported to vessels. Sometimes this happens within a winery, but in this case, it happened at an off-site facility in Long Island. In this case, the wine was racked directly into vessels pre-loaded in Yanky’s van. (Check it out in the video above; it’s quite a site!)

Yanky’s vessels for transportation were all designated kosher. He used two 60-gallon drums, one 15-gallon keg and one 5-gallon glass carboy.

“Kosher Tape” Seals the Deal

“Kosher tape” seals a power switch during a racking, so that only Yanky can turn it off.

To make sure that only observant Jews have access to the kosher wine, Yanky uses “kosher tape” — which is distributed by the Orthodox Union, the supervising agency that oversees the procedures for creating kosher wine — to seal all storage vats, taps and valves. This ensures that only he touches the wine, as a tampered seal will prove otherwise.

Yanky also uses the tape to seal off power switches during racking when a pump is necessary. Only he can turn off the power to the pump.

Kosher winemaking may seem like a mystery for those not well-versed in kashrus, the set of Jewish dietary laws. So, let us know in the comments if you have questions about kosher wines.

The Benefits of City Winery’s House Wine Tap System

Posted on September 23, 2011 by David Lecomte

I have always been a big supporter of tap wines, and it just makes sense for City Winery to serve fresh and good wines by using this technique, being that there are a number of benefits to this system.

We launched our unique tap system with three wine taps in Spring 2009. The winery upgraded to five taps in Spring 2010, and in Summer 2011, the system was upgraded to 11 taps total with the launch of the winery’s Barrel Room.

City Winery probably sells the most volume of tap wine out of all wineries and wine bars on the East Coast.

In Europe, bulk wine “vin en vrac” does not always carry the connotation of poor quality. When you know the right spot and the right wine (either local wineries or a wine shop), buying bulk wine is often a good way to get pleasant everyday wines for a great price. Wine by the tap is similar, but for a winemaker it opens many doors.

Here are some of the benefits behind the tap system.

Lower stress: Wines by the tap do not need to be bottled!! One of the worst tasks for any winemaker is bottling; there are always last-minute problems (not enough glass, not enough labels, incorrect labels, not enough staff, wine plugging during the final filtration, the threat of microbial infection during bottling, equipment breakdowns, etc.). During the winemaking process, we work hard caring for the wines. We witness our wines fermenting and maturing in front of us. This evolution is usually slow and we can influence it if it goes awry. All our attention and care provided over 6 to 18 months can be wasted if we encounter any problems during bottling. No bottling makes our lives easier — I think we can all agree on that!

Minimal SO2: When bottling a wine, most wineries will increase the SO2 content to prevent any chance of microbial infection during bottling and to preserve the wine after bottling — Recall the obvious sulfite odor found in many recently bottled sweet white wines, such as German Riesling. I do not add sulphite before “kegging” any of our tap wines. The wine is stored at 60F and covered with inert argon. We simply don’t need to do anything more to protect the wine.

Truth In wine: Given the wine’s character (our Sauvignon Blanc did not go through malo-latic fermentation), we would have to sterile filter the wine in order to bottle it safely. Such a tight filtration would damage the wine (decrease richness and potentially induce some dryness), but it would be necessary to insure stability of the wine in the long run. Tap wines, however, do not need filtration.

Greener product: With tap wines, there are no supplies (cork, label, foil, bottle, boxes) to purchase, receive and store. As a result, there is no waste, and this product is much greener than traditional bottling. This is a big deal!

Reduced wine losses: There is no need to worry about an oxidized bottle opened last week or unsatisfied customers complaining that our wine is corked. Because it doesn’t go through the bottling process, this isn’t a concern.

More fun / unique wines: There are always some small batches of wine that are odd, but interesting somehow. They are usually light or hard press wines kept separate from the classic free run wines. We are speaking about 15 to maybe 60 gallon lots. In these cases, bottling these small volumes is unrealistic, because bottling costs are high and because there wouldn’t be enough product to market with so few cases. However, with the tap system, we can feature such a wine on tap as a special “barrel/ keg of the week.”

Fewer worries: You can’t even imagine how many ways a wine can go bad in bottle. It rarely happens because we take great care to prevent any potential chemical instability (protein and tartaric precipitation for whites, copper case and color instability for reds, TCA/corked bottles) or microbial instabilities (re-fermentation in bottle, Brettanomyces development in bottle). For example, our Sauvignon Blanc has some fresh aromas of citrus, hawthorn with a lively month feeling — it may not be tartaric stable, meaning than a few harmless tartaric crystals might appear (tartaric crystals do not change the wine’s taste but their appearance may make the wine unmarketable). I do not have to worry about this, though, because the wine is stored at 60F in the cellar and is chilled down to service temperature en route to the tap. Even if a few crystals appear, they will remain in the bottom of the kegs.

Wine education: We can also build educational value from our wines by the tap. For example, we could offer the same wine aged in French vs. American oak barrels to guests. The tap system also enables us a unique way to feature wine in wine flights for educating clients.

The Bottom Line

Wines by the tap make sense for City Winery. This system enables us to prepare our house wines with minimal winemaking intervention: no filtration (or light one if needed), no fining for white wine, no SO2 addition before kegging.

Basically our wines are closer to their true nature — raw.

This system also offers a unique experience for our guests. While other wine-by-the-tap programs are appearing in sophisticated cities at restaurant and retails shops, they cannot offer what City Winery does: We produce wines on site in SoHo. We can take risks others cannot. We can offer one keg of unique wine if it is tasting great on a given week. We can offer a wine at different stages of its life. We can serve our wines fresh and alive since we don’t have to stabilize them for shipment across the continent.

Whether on tap, from a barrel or in bottle, we hope you’ll enjoy a glass of good wine soon. And stop by our Barrel Room to try out some of City Winery’s tap wines.

The Wine Industry Embraces a Classic Meme

Posted on September 23, 2011 by Erica Swallow

Winos everywhere have been huddling in their cellars this week to watch the latest iteration of a meme known as “Downfall” or “Hitler Reacts,” which is based on a pinnacle scene in Der Untergang (2004), a German WWII drama.

The bloggers over at Red to Brown Wine Review uploaded a wine-centric spoof this week, as a reaction to legendary wine critic Robert Parker’s announcement that he would no longer be covering California, in order to focus solely on Bordeaux and the Rhone.

The parody illustrates how “one Californian winery was not particularly happy with this news.”

Check out the video embedded above to share in on the giggles and belly laughs that have thus far only been heard behind cellar walls.

The Great Closure Debate: Cork, Composite or Something Else?

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Erica Swallow

Straight cork (left) versus composite cork (right) closures.

Natural cork has been the wine closure of choice for centuries, but in the past few decades a debate over the benefits and shortcomings of alternative wine closures has flourished.

For the most part, the debate is over whether natural cork closures or screwcaps should be used to close wines. Most of the debate circles purely around perceptions, and there are a number of other types of closures that can be used, including composite cork, plastic and glass.

For most winemakers, though, there are three considerations to take into account when choosing a closure: cost, the type of product being bottled and marketing.

I spoke with City Winery winemaker David Lecomte to get his thoughts on this debate and learn how he chooses closures.

Lecomte says that he’s always believed, “There’s no bad closure; there is only the wrong closure applied to the wrong product.”

For Lecomte and City Winery, though, the only decision to be made is whether the wines should be closed with straight cork or composite cork, as the winery does not own a screw capper machine, which cost in the range of $15,000-20,000. Furthermore, Lecomte does not use plastic closures, as there is an unforgivably large disparity in sealing quality.

Cork wine closures are punched from cork oak tree bark.

Straight cork is made form the bark of cork oak trees, which is harvested about once every nine years. The bark is stripped away from the tree, and individual corks are either hand-punched or machine-punched from the bark (as pictured above).

After each straight cork is removed from the bark, the remaining bark is ground up into granules and compressed together to make composite cork.

Straight cork costs about $0.75-1.00 per closure, and composite cork costs about $0.07-0.18, depending on suppliers. (For the record, screwcaps cost roughly the same as composite corks.) Pricing and lead time for shipping are important for winemakers who must manage budgets and work on close timelines. As a result, closure cost is oftentimes a big deciding factor.

But the product’s profile is also an extremely important consideration. So when should a winemaker choose a straight cork over a composite cork, and vice versa?

“You shouldn’t choose a closure based on what you think. You should choose it based on your product,” says Lecomte. When deciding on which type of closure to use, Lecomte looks at a wine’s profile and its mouthfeel. “If the wine is all about the fruit, has a mellow mouthfeel, is ready to be drank and there is no point in aging it, there is no point in using a straight cork,” he says.

On the other hand, if a wine has the capacity to be aged for multiple years, a straight cork should be used, as a composite cork would limit the wine’s shelf life.

Straight corks provide the longest aging range, says Lecomte. Those used at City Winery have a lifetime of between 10-15 years.

Composite corks on the other hand “don’t seal forever,” says Lecomte. The $0.07 closure maintains its quality for about 1.5-2 years, while the $0.18 closure can last for up to 6-7 years.

Lecomte always runs tests on each shipment of corks to make sure that they are up to par.

Cork contains 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA), a chemical compound that is the chief problem child when it comes to cork taint in wines. While all corks contain TCA, it’s a matter of keeping the average TCA content level and the standard deviation within check.

A wine that has been bottled with a cork that is contaminated with TCA is called a corked wine, identified by undesirable smells or tastes from the wine.

While some reports have stated that 5-7% of all wines are corked, Lecomte says that if closures are chosen properly, a winemaker should only experience 1-3% of his wines being tainted. Lecomte elaborated that 1% of that will be completely corked wines, while the remaining 1-2% will just be slightly spoiled.

For winemakers, slightly spoiled wines are a bigger problem, though, as the customer may just attribute the undesirable characteristics to poor winemaking instead of a tainted cork.

The best type of closure is one that seals well and has no TCA content. Lecomte says that 10 years ago, composite cork was the lowest quality of the two types of cork. But today, there is technology that can extract large amounts of the TCA content (and other volatile chemical compounds) from composite corks, making it a desirable choice today. This process lowers the average TCA content level and also minimizes the standard deviation. With composite corks now, there is practically no disparity between corks, giving all closures in a batch equal potential.

Lastly, marketing can be a consideration when choosing a closure type. Lecomte says that he previously worked with a winery in which the marketing department requested that 25% of its Sauvignon Blanc be closed with screwcaps, as the marketing team was opening up a new market. In this case, the wine marketers felt that consumers would be receptive to a closure that was trendy and easier to open. In another case, Bonny Doon Vineyard, a winery based out of Santa Cruz, California, embraces screwcaps as the closure of choice — a move that could be called a marketing decision.

Once a winemaker chooses which type of closure he would like to use, there are also considerations when choosing a specific model — quality, grade, length and supplier are just a few decisions to be made.

What are your thoughts on choosing wine closures? Let us know in the comments below.

The Importance of Topping Barrels

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Erica Swallow

Cellar hand Sikou Nikate tops barrels on the top row.

The City Winery team topped barrels on Wednesday. Topping is the process of filling barrels with wine as small amounts evaporate through the barrel.

Wooden barrels are porous, and as a result, they breathe, causing the evaporation of small amounts of wine. As wine evaporates, an increasing amount of air space opens up between the barrel and the surface of the wine. Too much air space can cause a wine to oxidize — if a wine has been excessively exposed to air during either its making or aging, the wine loses freshness and takes on a stale, old smell and taste. This is known as oxidation.

To prevent oxidation, winemakers top barrels.

Sikou Nikate cleans around the barrel bungs prior to topping.

At City Winery, we top barrels every 2-3 weeks, using the same variety of the wine being topped.

Prior to removing the bung (the stopper that closes the barrel), the City Winery team cleans around it with a sulfur-citric solution, diluted in water. This solution sanitizes the area around the bung and hole, so that bacteria doesn’t enter the barrel during the topping process.

Once the bung is removed, it is placed in a bucket of the sulfur-citric solution, where it is sanitized during the topping to safeguard against contamination. After the topping is finished, the sanitized bung is replaced.

Blogger Erica Swallow tops barrels using a pressurized keg and small light.

We use a pressurized keg and small light to top barrels. The keg is placed on a dolly and trucked around the barrel room, and the light is handy for seeing where the level of the wine is in the barrel.

The idea is to top the barrel so that the bottom of the bung touches the surface of the wine. Topping too full will cause wine loss when the bung is replaced, and topping too low will leave unnecessary air space.

It is especially important to top barrels once a wine is finished fermenting. While fermenting, carbon dioxide is created, protecting the wine from oxidation. After fermentation, though, the wine is more sensitive to oxidation, and thus winemakers should take great care to top barrels when needed.

Let us know if you have questions about topping in the comments below.

An Introduction to Racking Wine

Posted on September 14, 2011 by Erica Swallow

Assistant winemaker Bill Anton racks wines using Nitrogen.

There are a number of processes in winemaking, of which one is racking. The City Winery team has been busy racking wines this week, in order to make room for our 2011 harvest. We’ve been finalizing blends on our City Winery Reserve Pinot Noir Bien Nacido Santa Maria 2010 and City Winery New York City Cab 2010, as well as a number of member wines. So, this a perfect time for an introduction on racking.

What is Racking?

Racking is the process of siphoning wine off the lees to a new, clean barrel, or “carefully moving wine from one place to another,” in the words of City Winery assistant winemaker Bill Anton. Because wine is very temperamental, winemakers must be very careful when siphoning it from place to place. It is important to note that it is not pumped — that would be a harmful process, akin to what happens during “bottle shock,” a temporary condition after a wine has been bottled in which its fruit flavors are muted or disjointed.

Winemakers check wines every few weeks or up to about once per month to decide whether a wine should be racked or not. Frequency depends on the health of a wine. Anton explained that a wine that needs to be racked will have a certain “musty stinkiness” to it, an aroma that winemakers pick up on right away.

What is Lees?

Lees refers to deposits of dead or residual yeast and other particles that precipitate to the bottom of a tank of wine after fermentation and aging. Particles can be more easily precipitated to the bottom of a vat through a process called “fining,” where a fining agent (such as egg whites or bentonite clay) is added to the wine to create a bond with suspended particles. This creates larger molecules that settle more quickly.

There are two types of racking: that which happens before fermentation and that which happens after fermentation. The first time racking occurs is when the wine is merely juice and has just arrived at the winery — this is before it has fermented. In this case, the first batch of lees that settles is called “gross lees” — consisting mostly of fruit pulp, this lees is tested for its health. A healthy, creamy lees can be great for wines.

The second type of lees is “fine lees,” which consists mostly of dead yeast and is found after fermentation.

Lees can contribute positive or negative characteristics to a wine, depending on whether the lees are healthy or unhealthy. Healthy lees can add to a wine’s mid-palate, acting as a natural fining agent and imparting more flavor and color to a wine; when a wine has healthy lees, it doesn’t need to be racked. In such cases, this good lees is left alone and may even be transferred to another wine to share the wealth. The presence of unhealthy lees can lead to reduction, which is detected by the smell of sulfur, rotten eggs, onion or boiled cauliflower, depending on the level of reduction.

When lees has been removed from a wine at City Winery, we recycle it to the kitchen, where white lees is used to make pizza dough and red lees is used to make pretzels. Really dark lees can also be used to paint barrels.

When Does a Wine Need Racked?

A wine’s need for racking varies based on where it is in its life cycle.

Young wines that have not yet been fermented are usually racked when there is a need to decrease the yeast and bacteria count in the lees.

Otherwise, wines that have surpassed the fermentation process may require racking if they have reduced — that is to say that they have been prematurely deprived of oxygen — or are showing tight tannins.

Finally, wines are also racked as they are being prepared for bottling.

What Type of Equipment is Used?

The racking cane connects to the racking hose.

In order to rack a wine, an L-shaped racking cane (pictured above) is placed in a barrel. The cane features a screw-like mechanism at the bottom of the probe that is inserted into the barrel — this mechanism touches the bottom of the barrel and keeps the cane from pulling up lees.

The cane is connected to a racking hose, which transports the wine from the barrel to its destination, usually another barrel or a tank. At City Winery, we use 1.5″ racking hoses with tri-clover fittings for wine movement.

The racking process is a slow one, so that lees are not sucked into the cane. The cane features a site glass, which tells the operator when to stop siphoning — when he or she starts to see puffs of cloudiness (that is, lees), it’s time to stop.

The siphoning process can be powered in a number of ways, including by gravity, by a pump or using Nitrogen, which hooks on the cane and pressurizes the barrel, pushing wine to the hose.

How are Wines Blended?

Small batches of wine can be blended in a blending sump.

This week, City Winery is busy blending a number of wines. Usually wines are blended in barrels or tanks, but small batches of two barrels or less can also be blended in our blending sump (pictured above).

Do you have questions about racking wine? Let us know in the comments below!

Capsuling and Labeling at City Winery

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Erica Swallow

Cellar hand Sikou Nikate and wine aficionado D. Tejada capsuling bottles of wine.

The City Winery team capsuled and labeled a number of member wines on Monday.

Capsuling is the process of securing the wine bottle’s capsule, the tamper-evident secondary closure that gives the wine bottle a finished look.

While there are a number of different types of bottle capsules, City Winery uses those made of tin and polylaminate.

In the capsuling process, the closure is placed atop the wine bottle before it is slid into the capsuling machine, which affixes the capsule onto the bottle using a hard plastic roller that rotates around the bottle neck.

Head winemaker David Lecomte shows wine aficionado D. Tejada how to operate the labeling machine.

After the bottles of wines are capsuled, they are ready for labeling, the process of applying the proper labels to the bottles.

The labeling machine works by affixing a label onto a rotating bottle of wine. The operator must first set the spacing and height details, so that the front and back labels are affixed in the correct positions.

Labeling one barrel of wine (21 cases), usually takes about 1-1.5 hours, but can vary based on a few factors. The biggest factor is bottle shape. Tapered bottles — such as some Bordeaux and Burgundy-style bottles — are more difficult to deal with and can take longer to label as a result.

Furthermore, if bottles have been stored in a cold area and have produced condensation, they must sit to warm up and dry off before the labeling process can be started. Otherwise, bubbling may occur, giving the labels a sloppy look.

City Winery typically orders rolls of 300 labels, which can label 21 cases of wine.

Let us know if you have questions about capsuling or labeling in the comments below.

A Look at How City Winery Bottles Wines

Posted on September 12, 2011 by Erica Swallow

Assistant winemaker Bill Anton bleeds air out of the line in preparation for filtering wine that is to be bottled.

The City Winery team bottled 10 barrels of member wines on Friday. The wines spanned three varietals, including 2010 Pinot Noir, 2009 Petite Syrah and 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon.

While the winery bottles wines throughout the year as wines are ready, bottling activities ramp up right before the harvest season (which is quickly approaching), so that space can be made for incoming crops, as is normal for the entire industry. Wines that are not ready to be bottled prior to harvest season are racked until harvest crops have been taken care of, which is usually around December. At that point, more attention can be dedicated towards bottling previous vintages.

The winery uses a manual bottling setup that is powered by gravity and a handful of dedicated wine lovers. The wine is pumped from the barrel, through a filter and to 60-gallon stainless steel drums located on a loft in the winery. From there, the wine is pulled by gravity through a hose to the filler bowl (pictured below). The filler bowl distributes wine through its eight spouts into bottles — from there, the wine is corked. The corking machine is connected to a pump that vacuums out any oxygen in the eulage — the space between the cork and the wine surface — to minimize the oxygen’s affect on the wine’s aging process. Once corked, the full bottles of wine are set aside for capsuling and labeling.

Wine aficionado Henry Gonzalez, kosher assistant winemaker Yanky Drew and wine aficionado Hank bottle wines.

While many larger wineries use fully automated bottling and labeling equipment, much of this process is manual at City Winery. Automated bottling machinery is ideal for large wineries, but it takes up of a lot of dead space. As an urban winery, City Winery has limited space and tends to produce a number of smaller batches, especially with our barrel member program, which enables individuals and small groups to make wines by the barrel.

As a result, the team bottles and labels wines in two separate sessions to maintain high quality standards. This allows the team to “focus on the bottling and do it right, and focus on the labeling and do it right,” says head winemaker David Lecomte.

With a team of 5-6 people, the bottling process for 10 barrels of wine takes about seven hours. At the end of the day, that’s 210 cases of wines (or 2,520 bottles of wine) ready for labeling!

Let us know if you have any questions about how City Winery bottles wines in the comments below.

City Winery Kosher Sauvignon Blanc 2010

Posted on September 12, 2011 by admin

Variety: Sauvignon Blanc
Vintage: 2010
Vineyard: Palmer Vineyard
Alcohol: 12.5% vol
Volume: 750 ml
AVA: Long Island, NY
Cases production: 55 cs bottled

Vineyard description: Palmer Vineyard is situated on the north fork of Long Island. CW’s Mashgiach handled all crush and winemaking just after the harvest in the vineyard.

Winemaking Info: Long, slow, cool fermentation in stainless steel for 5 weeks, kept at cold temperature to avoid malolactic fermentation, bottled 8 months after harvest to preserve freshness.

Wine Description: Bright and clear pale straw. Pear and peach notes with moderate tropical (lichi, pineapple) and citrus fruit expression on the nose. Bright palate with medium bodied with note of flint stone.

Aging Capacity: 2-4 years.

Food Pairing: Can be sipped by itself, and also be paired with sable fish with braised leeks and fennel.

Buy the City Winery Kosher Sauvignon Blanc 2010 here.

City Winery Kosher Cabernet Sauvignon Obsidian Ridge 2009

Posted on September 12, 2011 by admin

Variety: Cabernet Sauvignon
Vintage: 2009
Vineyard: Obsidian Ridge Vineyard
Alcohol: 14.1% vol
Volume: Retail
AVA: Red Hills Lake County, CA
Cases production: 62 cs bottled

Vineyard description: Planted high on the ridge separating Alexander Valley and Clear Lake, Obsidian Ridge Vineyard is a 105-acre vineyard set on a northwest facing parcel of 5 to 20% slopes, ranging from 2,300 to 2,660 feet in elevation. The site benefits from cool evenings due to good air drainage, high elevation, and breezes off the Mayacamas Range.

Winemaking Info: 17 days of maceration using daily pumping over, press wine blended back into free run wine. Malo-lactic fermentation completed in barrel during winter. Aged for 15 months in French barrels (Seguin Moreaux, Taransaud), blend of 1 new and 2 used barrels, 3 racking during barrel aging to soften tannins.

Wine Description: Stone and mineral influence is apparent in this wine. Brambly in both scent and texture, this wine is rich in dark fruits. Specifically, blackberry and plum. Firm structure and grip with subtle oak influence. From deep alluvial soils in Lake County, this powerful Cabernet Sauvignon is inky purple in the glass and exhibits dark briary notes on the nose. The palate is awash with firm tannins and balanced acidity. Dark fruit with a touch of minerality complements some clove and spice.

Aging Capacity: 7-10 years.

Food Pairing: Would pair well with duck sausage or grilled lamb, flatbread with fennel and caramelized onions.

Buy the City Winery Kosher Cabernet Sauvignon Obsidian Ridge 2009 here.

City Winery Kosher Pinot Noir Oregon 2009

Posted on September 12, 2011 by admin

Variety: Pinot Noir
Vintage: 2009
Vineyard: Hyland & Olsen Vineyards
Alcohol: 13.5% vol
Volume: 750ml
AVA: Willamette Valley, OR
Cases production: 98 cs bottled

Vineyard description: Blend of 3 barrels from Olsen vineyard and 1 barrel from Hyland Vineyard, both vineyards are in the Willamette Valley.

Winemaking Info: 12-day maceration into open top tank, daily punch down and few pumping over, partial press blended back into free-run juice. Full malolactic fermentation. Gravity pumped into a combination of 1/3 new Dargeau & Jaegle and 2/3 used Taransaud and François Frères for 8 months. 75% 2009 Pinot Noir Olsen Vineyard, 25 % 2009 Pinot Noir Hyland Vineyard.

Wine Description: Bright ruby color with a complex bouquet of black cherries, fresh earth and herbal notes of sage. Shows a restrained power and richly expressive fruit. A fine acid backbone balances a medium plus -bodied palate, complex Côte de nuit-style wine with immensely succulent cherry fruit, velvety texture.

Aging Capacity: 5-7 years.

Food Pairing: Can be sipped by itself if decanted for few hours. Salmon on bed of cracked barley and pearl onions. Arctic char on arugula pesto potatoes.

Buy the City Winery Kosher Pinot Noir Oregon 2009 here.

City Winery Kosher Cabernet Sauvignon Obsidian Ridge 2008

Posted on September 12, 2011 by admin

Variety: Cabernet Sauvignon
Vintage: 2008
Vineyard: Obsidian Ridge Vineyard
Alcohol: 14.1% vol
Volume: Retail
AVA: Red Hills Lake County, CA
Cases production: 65 cs bottled

Winemaking Info: Winemaking: 19 days of maceration using daily pumping over, press wine blended back into free run wine. Malo-lactic fermentation completed in barrel during winter. Aged for 17 months in French barrels (Seguin Moreaux, Taransaud), blend of 2 new and 6 used barrels, 4 racking during barrel aging to soften tannins.

Wine Description: From deep alluvial soils in Lake County, this powerful Cabernet Sauvignon is inky purple in the glass and exhibits dark briary notes on the nose. The palate is awash with supple tannins and balanced acidity. Dark fruit with a touch of minerality complements some clove and spice.

Aging Capacity: 7-10 years.

Food Pairing: Duck Sausage flatbread with caramelized onions, aged strip steak.

Buy the City Winery Kosher Cabernet Sauvignon Obsidian Ridge 2008 here.

City Winery Kosher Cabernet Sauvignon Napa 2008

Posted on September 12, 2011 by admin

Variety: Cabernet Sauvignon
Vintage: 2008
Vineyard: Blend of two vineyards.
Alcohol: 14.1% vol
Volume: Retail
AVA: Napa Valley, CA
Cases production: 66 cs bottled

Vineyard description: Blend of 2 vineyards: George the 3rd in Rutherford and Bettinelli vineyard in Yountville.

Winemaking Info: 18 days of maceration using daily pumping over, press wine blended back into free run wine. Malo-lactic fermentation completed in barrel during winter. Aged for 15 months in French barrels (Seguin Moreaux, Taransaud, Radoux, blend of 1 new and 3 used barrels, 3 racking during barrel aging to soften tannins.

Wine Description: Somewhat of a mix between red and black fruits, this wine is sour cherry on the nose with hints of orange peel. Menthol, eucalyptus nodes come through on the nose. On the palate, there is a smoky finish with perceptions of oak influence. Specifically, American oak perhaps hints of dill, maple, or even chocolate can be detected. Round ripe tannins and assertive acidity.

Aging Capacity: 7-10 years.

Food Pairing: Would pair well with roasted chicken, duck sausage flatbread with caramelized onions, aged strip steak.

Buy the City Winery Kosher Cabernet Sauvignon Napa 2008 here, or find the magnum here.