We Wear Many Hats

Brad Post:

When most people think of working in a winery they probably conjure images of the winemaker, the tasting room attendant, or someone out in the vineyard tending the vines. And for large winery operations it's probably a valid conceptualization, however, for most of us in the wine business, those of us in a small-to-mid sized winery, we wear many hats.

In 2005 I began playing around with making wine and shortly thereafter enrolled in an enology (wine science) program.  By 2008 my interests took me to a local winery where, until June, I volunteered to learn winery operations and gained a great deal of knowledge.  With my shiny new wine making credentials in hand and my college teaching baggage behind me, I sought full time employment.

The wine gods must have been smiling on me because, in short order, I found myself up to my neck in a job, whose making was my own.  You see in these parts of the country it isn't often a guy can find full time employment in a winery, frankly because most operations are small family-run enterprises, but I was lucky.

Understanding wine from the perspective of a winemaker, and as a vocal advocate for a regional wine industry, was a bonus as I began my new endeavor.  As the External Relations Manager, a fancy new title that captures everything from public and social media relations, writing and editing, to my main focus - strengthening and building a wholesale program, I wear many hats.

Some days I visit potential wholesale/retail accounts, other days I deliver wines, many days are filled with scheduling my volunteer wine ambassadors monthly wine tastings.  There are days when I work behind the tasting room bar serving guests, while other times I shoot a short video and post on YouTube, but all times I am thrilled to be part of a growing local wine industry.

I'd like to think that I am somehow special in this way but I know I am not.  I meet many colleagues who wear the same hats, perhaps in different ways, but we are all trying hard to do it right.

The days become weeks and weeks blend together too quickly.  The Summer events are now the snapshots I visit on my Facebook photo album, and our harvest, which began in late August finally reached its zenith last week with the delivered Cabernet, Merlot and Zinfandel.  I rode shotgun during the fermentation while the winemaker took a week-long vacation.  Another hat.  Working in the cellar doing Punch Downs and Pump-Over operations was enjoyable and brought me back to my wine making roots.  I've missed that.

Can't help but wonder what's in store as the next year approaches and what style of hat I'll be wearing. 

Cheers, my wine friends!
~Brad


















 

Hobby Gone Wild!!

Brad Post:

When I lived in Moscow, Idaho about a decade ago I had a neighbor, Heidi, who brewed her own beer, root beer, and made fruit wine from wild plums.  Me, immersed in the quagmire of a PhD program, thought to myself “wouldn’t that be wonderful to do”?  I even purchased a how-to book from the local bookstore and promptly placed it on my bookshelf, where it remained as I sank deeper into an academic black hole.

Fall 2005 arrived with me and my family settling in to our new home in Iowa.  And on a late autumn day, my wife, left for a weekend science educators conference somewhere in western Iowa.  Not knowing anyone in my new, little town, I picked up and dusted off that same book which five years ago intrigued me (and to be honest, kind of intimated me).  It wasn’t necessarily a page-turner, but I couldn’t stop reading – I was hooked!

Since then, I’ve immersed myself in wine: wine making, wine growing, wine history, wine regions, oh, and let’s not forget wine tasting and drinking!

Shortly after my epiphany, or whatever you want to call it, I began making wine and not long after that I found others with similar interests. 

• 2005 – Read home wine making book
• 2006 – Began making wine at home.  First batch explodes in bottle. 
• 2007 – With four others, established the Eastern Iowa Wine Club, an amateur winemakers group.  Our group has grown to more than 100 followers and about 25 regular participants.
• 2007 – Started “Two Wine Brothers” as a way to stay connected with my brother, Terry.
• 2008 – Began taking wine science classes at Des Moines Area Community College.  Also began volunteering at Fireside Winery.  Fantasized about owning a winery.
• 2009 – Conducted market research for Iowa wine trail under Johnson Research Studio.
• 2009 – Started working part-time at Fireside helping out as winemaker assistant.
• 2010 – Launched Winedustry: wine news for the “other” grapes -- An online wine industry news, information and collaboration website for makers and growers living in nontraditional areas.
• 2011 – Launched Midwest Wine Review: An online wine review website for Midwestern wines. 
• 2011 – Hired by Fireside Winery to serve as their External Relations guy.  Will be working to maintain, build and expand wholesale program, and manage and grow public relations and social media.

What began as a hobby, grew into a passion, and continues to evolve deeper into the wine industry.  I am thrilled and excited to be a part of this booming Midwestern wine industry and look forward to seeing how the next few years unfolds.

Cheers!
Brad

Testing & Tasting

Brad Post:

After reading my brothers posting yesterday about “writing on wine” I began to think more about the influences on my own writing.  As a relative newcomer to wine critique, mostly a response to my introduction to wine course, my experiences and insights are tainted from an academic perspective.  Understanding experiences of visitors was my gig for awhile, using a pragmatic approach, meaning it could be purely experimental quantitative or headlong into qualitative methods such as naturalistic observation. In any case my approach to wine appreciation or wine making is muddied from my screwy philosophical position: post-positivism / pre-constructivism.  It’s my own version of a philosophy of science that gives me lots of latitude in understanding things.  These days the experience I am striving to understand is Wine Appreciation and Wine Making.

Wine appreciation is totally different compared to wine making.  You see, as I am making wine a different part of my brain is activated, the part that gets off on science.  When making wine, I am critically looking at the various grape parameters; first I visually inspect the new grapes to make sure they look sound, then I take a good sniff to make sure they smell right (i.e., they don’t have an unpleasant, vinegary odor), and then a more quantitative process begins.  This quantitative process can be as simple as taking a refractor reading, a measurement of how much sugar the grape must possesses, and tests for pH, acidity, and calculations for additions (e.g., yeast, enzymes, tannins, etc.).  Not that wine making is formulaic but there tends to be a lot of science in the cellar these days.

Complementary to my wine making is wine appreciation, the artist side of my brain, where I am encouraged to release my inner-prose. The simple act of attempting to gain a deeper understanding of a wine by first viewing, then smelling, and finally tasting is more difficult than I initially anticipated.  When going through my tasting ritual, instead of identifying specific aromas like grapefruit or honey, I may have a recollection of a time long ago, a faint dusty, earthy quality of a memory and then romantically inspired words to spew forth.  A very different experience from wine making, one might even say there is a qualitative difference between the two.  I enjoy both immensely.

There is harmony between the craft of wine making and the appreciation of wine. Last Thursday I set-up my wine laboratory at the winery and spent the day conducting our regular, periodic wine tests.  My bench, a portable lab table, provided ample space within the cellar to construct a series of wine tests. Every so often wine makers need to assess pH, acidity, and sulfur-dioxide (SO2, aka: sulfites) in the aging wine and adjust, as necessary, to keep the wine happy and protected from micro-critters and oxygen.  In front of me (from left to right) is an array of scientific devices; first is a Titratable Acidity (TA) assembly where, just like in high school chemistry lab, we titrate to determine the acidity in the wine. Crowded next to that is my desktop pH meter where, after calibration, I take pH readings of the wine. And to my far right is a Free SO2 Assembly, another elaborate set-up that might look illicit to someone who hasn’t been in a lab for awhile. (Photo: from my home wine lab).

Lab days tend to be hurry-up-and-wait days.  It goes something like this: take samples from the various fermentation tanks, test for pH, run an acidity test and calculate TA, and then conduct a Free SO2 test (add additional SO2 if required).  Each test takes a different amount of time and precision: pH, quick and easy; TA, about 2 minutes unless I screw up the titration (then I have to re-do it); and finally the Free SO2 test which takes at least 10 minutes to run and a bit more for the math calculations.  All told, it takes a better part of a day to run a series of laboratory tests for only our white wines (I didn’t finish them all either).

I taste, I test, and I try to remember.  Testing is a meditative effort, repeated tasks, calculations and formulas; Tasting is also a contemplative process, smelling, tasting, and feeling.  Each aspect, whether tasting for learning or appreciation, or tasting to assess a fermenting wine, is a complementary process – one without the other and something would be amiss.  There are a lot of things I don’t know about wine – but one thing is certain, I will continue to strive to understand wine from both a scientific point of view and from an artistic/philosophical perspective.

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