Lips as Sweet as Strawberry Wine

Brad Post:

The Two Wine Brothers recently began writing about summer wines with my older brother leading the way. His reviews have included pieces on Vermouth, White Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. My contributions to the Summer Wine Series will focus on Midwestern wines.

Few things remind me more of the beginning of summer than a trip to a strawberry farm and my first review captures the pure essence of that. When I was much younger and living in Belding, Michigan I used to find occasional work as a field-hand in nearby strawberry farms, bending over I'd pick one for the owner and then I'd pick one for the worker – yum!  This wine takes me back to those wonderfully rose-colored memories, strikingly similar to the rose-colored hues of the wine I am about to describe.

Few wines elicit such romantically inspired verse as does strawberry wine – “lips as sweet as strawberry wine”.

This Strawberry wine is the winner of a Silver Medal in the 2009 Mid-American Wine Competition and was crafted by Breitenbach Winery. Located near Dover, Ohio, Breitenbach makes a wide assortment of wines and is well known for creating lovely fruit wines in addition to their traditional line of grape wine.

You want a fruit wine to deliver fruit aromas and flavors and this NV Breitenbach Strawberry American Wine provides heaps of it! Moreover, you want your strawberry wine to look, well, to look like strawberries and it does! Potent fresh strawberries on the nose and in the glass, rich and thick legs suggest a sweet wine. My palate was pleasantly surprised with a blast of STRAWBERRIES in a gorgeously balanced, just the right amount of sweetness (6% residual sugar) and acidity. RECOMMENDED! 

This summertime strawberry sweetie is the kind of wine that arouses the poetic side of me and so I’ll end this posting with a short poem by “The Flowing Pen”:

Strawberry Wine

A seductive potion to bring me bliss

As I drink it off of your sultry lips

And your fingers intertwine with mine

Lust brought forth from strawberry wine

A taste that pales the sweetest nectar

As I lie in your arms lost forever

Two bodies joining like moon and sun

Passion drives us until we are one

An aphrodisiac some could very well say...

Who ever knew that love would feel this way

I'd like to sit and drink with you one more time

Toasting love and laughter with Strawberry Wine

~THE FLOWING PEN~

1-26-04

Cheers my friends, enjoy all that summertime has to offer and I hope you’ll take time to seek out the Midwestern wines I suggest.

~Brad

Best of the Best

Brad Post:

On Saturday morning, with my back cooking from the unusually warm November sunshine, I sat in a nondescript room in a conference hall with nine others waiting for the first pour. In front of me rest ten small empty wine glasses in an convex arc laid upside down upon white linen; one at a time during the next several hours (with replacements at the ready) wine was poured, slurped, sipped, tasted, evaluated and scored.

We slogged through the fruit wines, one at a time, and some were very good. Others were not so good. With each evaluation, I carefully tasted and made comments to the winemaker in hopes of providing a fair assessment of their wine – hopefully something one could use to improve a bit (at least that was my intent).

The group sitting opposite of ours was responsible for judging the wine (grape wine) and mead, while ours critically scored three dozen fruit (or country) wines. Tastings began with light and dry and eventually ascended or descended into a syrupy mêlée of 10% residual sugary wines.

For some wine judges inexperienced in judging fruit wines this can be a turn-off, chore or simply beneath them. In fact, I noticed at least two judges scurry away from my table once learning it was the fruit wine table. Of course who could blame them with the reputation of fruit wine as an overly sweetened nasty concoction crafted from grandma’s dandelions, elderberries, and God-knows what else? What are Elderberries, anyhow?

Common problems: 1) Sediment in bottle, haze or cloudy plumes in bottle, 2) evidence of oxygen ingress (e.g., browning and orange-hued wines; acetaldehyde (sherry aroma); and way too much headspace between cork and wine) – probably the single most problematic issue and one so easy to remedy, 3) lack of fruit flavors.

Ultimately our group faced-off against the wine group to pick the best of the best. Theirs was a California wine-kit red wine, and mead, and ours an Elderberry wine. We tasted their wines and they tasted ours and we were all convinced “our” picks were best!

And in that warm, sunny room, on an unusually warm November day, we decided that we had already picked the best of the best – And the truth is that one cannot compare an Elderberry wine to a bold California wine, not to mention the Mead!

******
Brad Johnson is a contributing writer for Make Mine Wine Magazine, an artisan winemaker, and proud member of the Eastern Iowa Wine Club. He Tweets as "Iowine".

Wild Grapes

Brad Posts:

During the last hot humid days of September, 2007, after having scouted several natural areas over the preceding months, I was rewarded with a nice, albeit very small batch of wild grapes from which I would make my first gallon of wild grape wine.

If you have ever picked wild grapes to make jam, jelly or in my case wine, you'll appreciate the effort it takes. Unlike their trained cousins growing on a chest-high trellis ready for easy picking these tiny, wild rascals grow on old fences, bushes, and climb into the heights of nearby trees. Not easy to find. Not easy to pick. Add to that the mosquitoes, briers, and poison ivy -- now we're talking fun!

Seriously though, making wine from wild grapes is satisfying - both in terms of the amount of effort required and the wine made/consumed. The fact IS not many folks take the time to make wild grape wine. I remember when we bottled those first few bottles of Wild Grape wine last year and after sampling a bit I was shocked...shocked by how good and earthy it was.

Early last summer, my brother drove the 1,100 miles from Maryland for a visit with us (he was here for a crush party too - of fresh grapes from Chile). Later that night I opened the first bottle (of 5) of our Wild Grape and we sat on in our 3-season porch on a pleasantly warm evening and sampled the wine (13.5% alc). Just like I remembered -- yummy! By bottles end it was about time for bed.

After the Eastern Iowa floods of 2008 we scoured the landscape for wild grapes, but many of the locations we had from the year before were inundated with water and did not produce grapes this year. With the help of a friend, he led us to his fathers house south of Des Moines where we were to harvest wild plums...instead we found a good supply of wild grapes. We ended up harvesting over 26 pounds (post stemming) and placed the grapes into my freezer to wait until winter to begin fermentation. So today, on a -8F sunny Saturday, we freed the wild grapes to begin thawing. In a day or so (when the must is warmed enough) we'll introduce the yeast and wait for the onset of fermentation.

I'm excited about working with these grapes and feel grateful I can borrow from the natural areas of Iowa and craft a truly unique wine.

Cheers!
~Brad

What's in the Cellar??

Brad Posts:

After reading Terry’s post about his wonderful wines I kept wondering what I have in my cellar already bottled and what I have in the wings. First, let me assure you that I do not have a wine drinking problem – it’s more of a winemaking problem!

And while I am envious of those of you who possess wine cellars filled with the brim with exotic and rare labels, I must confess a bit of satisfaction at making my own variety of rare wines – some of which turned out to be big flops and others award winning. I’ll begin with what is already bottled in the cellar and then talk about what’s coming up.

Peach (2006) – lightly sweetened: One of our very first wines. Thin with notes of old tennis shoes – peach wines have a funky smell. (10 bottles).

Raspberry (2006) – lightly sweetened: Another one of our very first wines. Thin and not enough raspberry fruit flavors. (8 bottles).

Cranberry (2007) – lightly sweetened: A couple holidays ago, we purchased some fresh cranberries and made our first cranberry wine. Very tart and very past its useful life - oxidized (3 bottles).

Rhubarb (2007) – lightly sweetened: Grown behind the garage and fermented in the house! We produced only a gallon during our first try with rhubarb – a rascal to work with. (5 bottles).

Wild Grape (2007) - Dry: Handpicked wild grapes on state land in Iowa. One gallon was not enough! Very tasty! (2 bottles).

Concord/Marechal Foch Blend (2007) – lightly sweetened: A nice, fruity blend of Iowa grown grapes. First place: Eastern Iowa Amateur Wine Competition. (3 bottles).

Catawba (2007) – off dry: We got the juice from NY and fermented it here. This wine was very tough to start and is plagued with some off flavors – probably diethyl sulfide. Despite that we won these awards: First place: Cedar County Fair; third place: Eastern Iowa Amateur Wine Competition (13 bottles).

Apple-Kiwi-Strawberry (2007) – lightly sweetened: A summer, sitting in the garden drunk, wine! Second place: Eastern Iowa Amateur Wine Competition; Third place: Cedar County Fair.

Apple (2007) – off-dry: One of our favorites! Very reminiscent of a Riesling and so easy to drink. First place: Eastern Iowa Amateur Wine Competition and top-5 selection. (6 bottles – we’re sad).

I Was Bored – Grapefruit (2007) – lightly sweetened: Okay, I’ve heard that grapefruit makes wine with notes of Sauvignon Blanc – so, we tried! Yuck!

Rhubarb (2008) – Dessert-styled. If you like rhubarb crisp in a bottle, you might like this! (14 bottles).

Blackberry (2008) – Dry: We went wild making blackberry wine. Okay. (10 bottles).

Blackberry (2008) – Lightly sweetened: We left a little residual sugar. Okay (7 bottles).

Blackberry Port (2008) – Dessert, Port-Inspired: Our first attempt making a port-styled wine and we really like it. Bottled just before Christmas (2008) we give them as presents (375ml)! Very tasty! (22, 750ml bottles and 13, 375ml bottles).

Total: 142 bottles!

Just so you know, a family is legally allowed to make 200 gallons of wine per year and if our cellar isn’t full enough already, here is what is coming. FYI: 1 gallon is roughly equivalent to 5, 750ml bottles of wine!

To be bottled in 2009:

Peach – Sweet: We are phasing out of fruit wine making but I was bored in early August and so here is the result. Has nice peach flavor and its typical aromatic baggage. (6 gallons)

Marechal Foch (red) – free-run: We helped pick these grapes in late August – probably a little early but is showing its Fochy characteristics – strong earthy and coffee notes. Oak. (22 gallons).

Marechal Foch (red) – press-fraction. Same batch as above, but we separated the pressed portion. Thinner but less of the earthiness. Oak. (5 gallons).

Traminette (white): I have written about Traminette before. We are very impressed with this one. It is in the final stages of cold stabilization. (10 gallons).

Malbec (red): Our winemaking group purchased grapes from Chile and crushed them in April (08). Currently undergoing cold stabilization. We aged it with MT oak and is promising. (5 gallons).

Chambourcin (red): A true Midwestern favorite! Delicious berries and very tasty wine. One of our most promising reds! oak. (15 gallons).

Peach-Traminette (blend): We blended 50:50 peach-Traminette – sweetened! Yummy (1 gallon)

Pear – Sparkling): I helped a winemaking friend process a few hundred pounds of pears and came away with a few gallons. We are planning on making a sparkling wine from it using the traditional method. (2 gallons).

Zinfandel (red): After working the crush with a local winery that sourced some organic Zinfandel grapes from California, I was given four pails of must! Yay! (7 gallons).

Total: 73 gallons

If you’re in Iowa later this year and have an interest in being part of a bottling process, we welcome your help! What’s in your cellar???

Cheers ~Brad