Wines of the New World, Fall 2013

The first thing that came to my mind was a rustic vineyard which grape varietals hanging on the vines all over the place when I heard of we were visiting a winery. Therefore, I was kind of disappointed when I arrived there. However, I changed my thought almost immediately right after I saw the sea by the winery, it was not a bad idea to have a winery built by the sea. The owner of winery Mark Snyder was friendly and informative. He spent his valuable time showing and guiding us how to make different kinds of wines and the equipment they used. Even though I had learned how to make wine from the wine textbook, but it’s always different to actual see the real equipments in person and how winemakers used these equipments to make a bottle of wine from grapes. I was glad that we actually had a chance trying their wines and the juice from the barrels. Everyone from the winery were very friendly and helpful. I felt welcomed and warm during the visit. I wish the school should make more fieldtrip like this.

Click here for photos of the Blending Session

Blending more than wine. You blended your passion, your knowledge and your spirit. This day was a great experience for me and I hope it was for you too!

What I learned was that each of you knows how to take on a challenge and work together to find a positive solution. The wines created during the blending session were complex and balanced, showing diversity even though many of the base wines were the same. Your results made it clear to me the complexity of what goes into making a fine wine. Your ability to set an expectation for the wine you wanted to make and then go ahead and create it was impressive.

This collaboration between education, philanthropy and small business proved successful and most of the success was due to you, the students of Wines of the New World because you welcomed what was presented to you and used your fine intellectual capacity to develop your understanding of vinification. Thank you to each of you and thank you to both the Julia Child Foundation and to Red Hook Winery.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79038441@N04/sets/72157636953478946/

Betsy Torrau, Maren Koya, Marjorie Mejia, and Ula Chin

As we discussed as a group last week, we try to make wine which has refreshing, tardy, citrus, grapefruit and apple taste. From the wine lists, we chose following wines in order to meet our target taste.

Wines from the list:
#1- BF RIES 2011 Riesling, #3- BF SARGCH 2009 SB/CHARD, #11- BF PALPB 2012 (stainless) Pinot blanc, and #13- BF MACSB 2013 (WOOD) SAUV BLANC
At first, we tried four different blending and we liked the second blending:

(2)
#11- BF PALPB 2012 (stainless) Pinot blanc@50%
#3- BF SARGCH 2009 SB/CHARD@30%
#1- BF RIES 2011 Riesling@20%

It has fruity but also bit of oaky smell. To improve the taste better, we changed the percentage of wine content as follow;

(2-1)
#11- BF PALPB 2012 (stainless) Pinot blanc@40%
#3- BF SARGCH 2009 SB/CHARD@40%
#1- BF RIES 2011 Riesling@20%
and,
(2-2)
#11- BF PALPB 2012 (stainless) Pinot blanc@50%
#3- BF SARGCH 2009 SB/CHARD@40%
#1- BF RIES 2011 Riesling@10%

We found that (2-1) blending has more smooth texture on pallet than (2-2) blending, and we tried again the (2) and (2-1) blending in order to diced which has better taste.

Finally, we decided the (2-1) blending as our group wine of bottle.

The reason why we have “#13- BF MACSB 2013 (WOOD) SAUV BLANC” on list but not using to the blend is since #13 has a lot of residual sugar. We afraid the taste will be changed in the future.

Blending experience in the Red Hook Winery is definitely a fun experience for us. It quite amazing that slightly change of percentage of wine can be effected powerfully to the taste of wine.

Please feel free to use these photos in your posts.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79038441@N04/sets/72157636872648533/

Photos shared through flickr

Group 6

• Benjamin M.
• Manteng C.
• Mary M.

On Monday, October 21^st, 2013 in our Wines of the New World symposium we learned how difficult it is to blend wine.  We learn that it is more beneficial to the wine blending experience when a group of individuals who love/like wine come together and try to create a wine with lots of character.  As with anything that involves group work, scheduling conflicts and meetings are one of the hardest things to keep.  As we in Group 6 frantically rushed to get to the red Hook Winery, all of our group members agreed that the time restraint on the bus ride to the winery was unfair.  We all signed up for an 11:00 A.M. class, not a 10:30 A.M. class.  Nonetheless we made it to the winery I made it the winery at 11:20 A.M., Mary M. followed closely behind, and Manteng C. was lost until 12:30 A.M., but made eventually made it.  I can imagine how difficult it would be for winemakers to meet-up with all kind of hectic schedules like ours, but since we are not winemakers by day I guess they probably would not have the problems we did.  So the next process was to blend the wines we had previously chosen.  We had a JU Merlot from 2010, an AFK Cabernet Franc from 2010, and a mixed blend called PUNCH from 2008.  At first we re-familiarized ourselves with each individual wine and then we began to think of possible blends.

Here is a list of our blends that we thought of:

1. Merlot  @ 80%                        Cabernet Franc @ 20%
2. Cabernet Franc @ 80%         Merlot @ 20%
3. Cabernet Franc @ 60%         Merlot @ 20%                                   PUNCH @ 20%
4. Merlot @ 60%                        Cabernet Franc @ 20%                  PUNCH @ 20%
5. PUNCH @ 40%                      Merlot @ 30%                                   Cabernet Franc @ 30%

We ultimately went with the third option as it was spicy on the nose with traces of plum and berry, a nice garnet with purple hue.  On the palette it lingered but wasn’t overpowering in any aspect.  It was a nice blend of acidity, sugar, and tannins masked in a full-bodies red wine.  It was a bit challenging with the cups and syringes, but once we all figured it out the rest went very smooth.  We also didn’t get to taste all the wines because the free-for-all to taste all six wines was a bit much.  Suggestions for the next time would consist of more organization in having designated pourers and maybe use one of the iPads as a record keeper of sorts to help with votes for which wines were the best.  In any case it was overall an experience our group would definitely love to have many times over.

What a great experience!

And today we have an addition to our group, so now Team# 1 members are: Petra Panak, Ebelisse Vargas and Joann Liew.

When we heard that we’re going to be blending our own wine in The Red Hook Winery on the first day of New World Wine class, we all felt like, “Oh My Gosh! We are not experts as Prof Dagorn or Prof. Goodlad who know so much about the wine world!” But in fact, it wasn’t that hard as we thought. Our white-chef jackets transformed to chemistry lab coats and we turned Red Hook Winery into our own labarotory for the day…

We work well as a group together and had a collective agreement to come up with our final blend. First, we determined the type of blend we wanted to create. Then we tasted the individual components separately. Our goal was to create a wineblend with a balance of fruitiness from the older vintages of the merlots, add the spicyness of the cabarnet franc, and counter-balance the peppery flavor with the acidity of the 2 latest merlot vintages. After our six trials, we narrowed it down to our top two choices, and eventually made our final choice.

I never imagined there could be such a place as a winery hidden in the historical Brooklyn. I always thought of wineries being open places in rural environments far away, at least from urban civilizations. However, Mark, founder of Red Hook Winery chose this spot to bring into life the concept of wine- making.

The class of Wines of the New World accompanied by professor Goodlad was very fortunate to witness the various stages of wine from juice to final product as well as tasting 17 different wines, whites and reds with the purpose of understanding the difference between grape varietals, vintages, and method of fermentation.

Personally, I was delighted to learn about the advances in technology in terms of machineries used to press grapes as well as the introduction to stainless- steel barrels vs. wooden barrels; Mark was capable of explaining us the impact that oxygen and reduction have when tasting our wines. Also, about the different process that takes place when making white, red and rose wine; especially learning about “orange wine”, which is a skin fermented wine. One example of this mysterious type of beverage was the AS SKL1 2009, a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay; acidic and cheesy on the palate. Something never tasted before . Mark, was very knowledgable of his business and the whole theory of wine- making which made the whole trip successfully informative.

I was so impressed with the room of barrels. Each barrel keeping a different type of wine, at different stage of fermentation and being a different vintage. For instance, I was able to taste a Merlot from 2010, 2011, 2012 and one still fermenting, the 2013 Merlot. I was surprised at how richer, spicer or more fruit oriented was one from the other. The 2013 one was juice in its totality. To the palate of some of my classmates, this one mentioned would be the “yummier” of the Merlots as it was so sweet, only juice; the content of alcohol was at its minimum as it was still fermenting.

Overall, I was very content with the visit, not only as a wine drinker and lover but also because it is a huge difference to being taught about wine in a classroom and experience the whole process firsthand.