Drink with Care

Without ignoring all the health benefits of drinking a glass of wine a day, I couldn’t in good conscience ignore a few newer bits of research into health challenges triggered by wine and alcohol.

Similar to our childhood experiment of making a chicken’s wishbone “rubberized” by soaking it in vinegar, researchers have found that teeth soaked in white wine lose their calcium, causing premature loss of enamel. Being generally more acidic, whites could potentially do this more than reds.

Research presented at a meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine shows that if you are a woman using in-vitro fertilization to become pregnant, the odds of being successful drop by about a quarter if you are drinking white wine.

In general, research suggests keeping off just about all alcohol once a woman does get pregnant.

Rush University Medical Center published research showing a link between alcohol and aggressive cancer cells. Exposing benign colon and breast cancer cells to alcohol triggered a change to make them more likely to metastasize, showing rapid growth and becoming less anchored to neighboring cells.

This is further evidence that if you have a history of breast cancer, in particular, in your family, you should limit your consumption of alcohol.

Good to the Last Drop

The classic winemaking image is an old guy in a hat heaving all his might into twisting a wine press, getting every last drop of wine from the broken-down, fermented grape skins shoveled from his tank.

As we enter the final stretch of Lodi’s 2009 crush, instead of wooden-slatted basket presses, most wineries are using air-inflated, stainless steel bladder presses that purr like a fine sports car. And the latest fad is an all-steel, hydraulic version of the old basket press.

Each winemaker has a personal preference for how to press – or not to press – each variety of grape he or she works with.

One winemaker I know wants all the “guts” he can get out of Lodi Cabernet Sauvignon, requesting us to press as hard as possible. He wanted more tannins to make the wine age longer and give it a more interesting feel in the mouth.

Other winemakers want to use only what drains out of a tank as “free run,” not bothering to press.

Some will keep portions (“fractions”) of wine separate as the press pushes harder. They blend them back into the main batch if the wine needs them – or if the winery needs to bottle as much wine as possible!

First Sip of 2009

The most awkward time to taste new wines is when they are still fermenting. They just don’t know what they want to be yet.

In Lodi wineries, white wines have mostly finished the first round of cold-fermentation of sugars by yeast, and bacteria is now making wines bubble as acids are softened.

Reds, fermented at warmer temperatures, are about in the same stage of development.

What you get when trying a fermenting wine is a strong appreciation for the entire winemaking process, particularly the effect of oak barrels and aging. The wine goes from disjointed and “grapey” to balanced and “respectable” over the next several months.

That’s what makes this weekend’s 3rd Annual First Sip, being held at over 40 Lodi wineries, so much fun.

Tickets good for Saturday and Sunday are $45 at the door of any participating winery, but if you purchase them before Friday night at www.firstsiplodi.com, you’ll save $10 per ticket. Better yet, if you are a wine club member, call the winery and see if you can get tickets for $25 each.

By the way, those kind designated drivers get to listen to live music, take tours, and munch the appetizers and small plates most wineries will be offering for free.

The Placebo Effect

Friends and loyal readers know that I’m a big fan of Riedel wine glasses.

I’ll admit I’ve been most happily duped all these years.

With the presses no longer rolling on the old, reliable Gourmet Magazine, the publisher has released the archived articles for the world to see on line, such as, “Shattered Myths: Expensive crystal? Coffee mug? Jelly jar? Does it really matter what you drink your wine from?”

Daniel Zwerdling’s August 2004 article knocked me off my high horse.

Apparently the scientific community no longer endorses the idea of mapping tastes to specific areas of the tongue, which thereby destroys most of the logic of how a glass of a certain shape can direct wine to where it will be best enjoyed in the mouth.

However, the scientists that have debunked the effectiveness of Riedel in making wine taste better are also willing to defend the heightened experience based on the placebo effect.

As with so many things in life, if you believe the wine tastes better, then, to you, it will actually taste better.

No matter what, if I’m served the same wine in a Styrofoam cup and in a nice glass, I’ll think it tastes better in the glass any day.

Renaissance Wine

Compared to our European ancestors, we’re drinking some pretty nice wine.

In yet another very interesting podcast, Napa Valley Wine Radio’s Nancy Hawks Miller interviewed Diane De Filipi, owner of “Let’s Go Cook Italian”, about wine and food of the Renaissance.

The wine of the 1400’s seems to have been universally bad enough that it was a common practice to add cinnamon and honey to provide some flavor.

While the grapes may have been potentially very good, faulty long-term storage made wines worse rather than better.

Since the wine couldn’t age, the smoothest, least tannic new wine that first flowed out of the fermentation vats (“free run”) was what our wealthiest ancestors drank.

The poor drank the left-over wine that was pressed from the fermented skins, while the poorest soaked those skins in water to get a tiny bit of alcohol.

Sulfur additions were just starting to be allowed in Germany to protect the wine from bad microorganisms. And the first “Ports” were being made by adding extra alcohol simply to kill off more bad bacteria and yeast so the wine could be exported.

Quality improved tremendously once wine was stored in early versions of the glass bottles we now take for granted.

Vines Killed by a Name

Marketing in the wine world is incredibly powerful. Wines can live or die by a name on a label. The same is true for grapevines.

Dyed-in-the-wool Lodi wine fans are familiar with the word “Carignane,” but most of you probably gave up on trying to read it correctly.

Carignane, correctly pronounced “kahr-ing-YAWN,” but affectionately called “kerrigan” by locals, was once the third most planted wine grape in California.

The grape produces a floral wine with good food-friendly acidity, especially in our warm growing region. If you look at the gold medal count, you’ll see Carignane from such producers as Jessie’s Grove and Van Ruiten among the winners, with wines produced from vines up to 120 years old.

So it’s hard to see what was a beautiful 32 acres of gnarly-old Carignane planted just after World War II now completely gone.

Southern France, where Carignane once occupied over half a million acres, can’t seem to yank out the old vines fast enough, having already replaced ¾ of them with Merlot and Syrah.

Hard to argue with dollars, of course. Old vine Carignane is selling now mostly to small producers only wanting a ton or two each – sadly more of a hassle than it’s worth.

So save Carignane! Buy a bottle!

Dumb Yeast

Time to talk about yeast, because without them, I wouldn’t have much to write about. So, at the risk of scraping from the bottom of the barrel, here I go…

Bet you didn’t know that yeasts have a tendency to kill themselves in their own excrement. They’re such voracious consumers of sugar that they ignore how fast they expel ethyl alcohol, carbon dioxide and heat.

Yeasts can cook themselves to death, especially in a large tank, because the act of fermenting sugar gives off a wasteful smidgen of heat. While you wouldn’t be able to feel anything remotely warm from one yeast doing its work, put billions of them together and you’ve got a mini power plant.

They start dying off over 130 degrees, which is why those dimpled stainless-steel cooling jackets or internal coils are crucial to keeping large batches of micro-winemakers happy. We commonly set the thermostats to an optimal 85 degrees.

Most yeasts struggle to work once they are swimming in 14% alcohol or more. At 15%, all but the specially-bred über-yeasts are ready to explode.

And you don’t want them unhappy, because disgruntled individuals cut loose with nasty aromas and flavors that can sabotage a season’s worth of work in the vineyard.

Lodi Wine Utopia

As a conscientious Lodi resident, I figured I’d better submit my suggestions for the General Plan while it is still coming together.

Completely selfishly, I’m happy to see the business and city leadership staking the future of our precious town on the wine industry.

I’m squarely in the camp of subscribers to the idea that more recognition for the quality of our local wines will improve the quantity of dollars that fourth-generation wine growers receive for grapes. That, in turn, is really the best way to maintain our unique identity and prevent us from becoming North Stockton.

A thriving School Street with a critical mass of interesting wall-to-wall stores and restaurants, along with recognized national brands and a nice hotel, circled by New York style brownstones would keep overnight guests coming back for more.

Continued access for wineries to our state-of-the-art water treatment plant at White Slough will help grow successful boutique wineries to the next level. Safe bike paths and trails to the wineries would also be nice.

Good-sized “Welcome to Lodi” signs on the east and west approaches with photo-op turnouts wouldn’t hurt in establishing our collective brand.

High-density office complexes, like Blue Shield, located on the industrial east side would encourage restaurants serving the lunch rush and give commuters ideas for spending the weekend with the family shopping and tasting the best of Lodi.

Great Wine from Disgusting Grapes

While working at one Lodi winery years ago, the winemaker rounded up the skeleton cellar crew at the end of crush to hand-pick whatever Zin was left hanging on the vines.

Having already cleaned up the crush equipment, I wasn’t too pleased to see a couple of bins of hairy grey and green grapes waiting to restart the winemaking process.

We decided to make the Zin a “Port” by adding 190 proof distilled alcohol while the yeast were still fermenting the wine, leaving it deliciously sweet.

Fortunately, this Zin dessert wine turned out pretty nicely.

For all the whining I’ve been doing about the rains botching the tail end of harvest, all this moisture has actually been a huge benefit to those producing Sauternes-style or Late Harvest white wines.

In Richard Ripken’s vineyard, for example, the good mold, Botrytis, in many years loses out to the bad Penicillium mold in his thin-skinned “Neuf-du-Pape” clone of Viognier, meaning he can make very little or none of his award-winning Late Harvest Viognier.

Fog and humidity this year, however, were ideal to allow a few early-shriveling Botrytis-infested grapes to send spores through the field, covering 100% of clusters with perfect fuzz practically overnight.

I can’t wait to drink that!

Lodi’s Spanish Maestro

The average wine drinker is familiar with Chardonnay and Merlot, but few know about Spanish varieties from Europe’s Iberian Peninsula, such as Albariño, Graciano, or even Tempranillo.

With many similarities in climate, Spanish wines are a natural fit in Lodi, which is one reason Markus and Liz Bokisch of Bokisch Vineyards decided to bet the farm on their future success.

I’ve been fortunate to get to know Markus and Liz while consulting on their wine club, and from the turnout of new guests to their bi-annual club party on Sunday, it appears their bet is paying off.

A consultant himself to vineyard owners as far as Hungary, as well as winemaker and grower, Markus is developing a following in the academic world, having been a guest lecturer on “Aroma and flavor profiles for Spanish varieties in different California terroirs“ at a symposium on the “Grapes of Iberia” held at UC Davis in May.

Just last week, Mike Dunn, a longtime wine writer for the Sacramento Bee, shined a spotlight on the Bokisch 2007 Garnacha (a.k.a. Grenache).

If you are interested in getting a feel for much of the immense detail and thought that goes into producing exciting, organically-grown wines, you ought to give Markus’ lecture a spin.