Wines of the New World, Fall 2012

Why it is interesting and important to learn about wine? Today world wine is become massive and full of various tasting experiences. Almost every country in the world produces wine that displays different characteristics, resulting from the use of diverse techniques. For me, studying wine has been a fun and interesting way to learn about world geography, history and culture. Also the benefit of taking wine class is to enhance my wine knowledge when I have to answer customer questions or helping them which decide should they get according to their palates. The experience at City Winery will enhance my wine knowledge to the next step. Thank you for such a wonderful opportunity.

Our Wine: Spicy Brooklyn 2012

Today’s blending wine session was an unusual session because we started a bit off key, usually we would have the opportunity to crush the grapes first then blend but it was vice-verse today. Our group was eager to experiment and discover the different combinations we could have created.

First we tasted the base wine which was a 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley which had little to no aromatics and not much of fruit taste. Then after we tasted all 4 wines that we may have used to blend into our Cabernet Sauvignon. The four wines were all 2010 vintage; Cabernet Franc from the Finger Lakes, Petite Syrah from Lodi, Petit Verdot and Merlot Mendocino.

After our tastings we decided that we would like to blend all four wines into the Cabernet Sauvignon, but we then had to do the math behind it and figure out what percentage of each wine we would in the bottle.

Our first try: 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc, 10% Merlot, Petit Syrah, and 2% Petit Verdot. We all seemed to be fond of the wine but thought it lacked some fruity characteristics.

Our second try: 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Cabernet Franc, 13% Merlot, 7% Petit Syrah and 2% Petit Verdot. At this point our taste buds were not into this strong amount of tannins that was too dry fro our tasting.

Our third try: 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc, 10% Merlot, and 10% Petit Syrah. This was a better taste and aroma out of all 3 tests.

Concluding, we chose our third wine to be our final draft. In the end our wine was chosen as one of the finalist. We all had fun doing this project and experimenting with the different percentages of wines and blending.

Amy Maharaj, Hongjie Su, Adrian Misacango, Matthew Fass, Adhali Ilescas

Today each group of students proved that a varietal name on a wine label is only one indication of what a wine might taste like. Each student began to understand that wine makers have thousands of decisions to make in order to make a wine that is enjoyable and marketable. Remembering that the marketing team sells the first bottle of wine and the wine maker sells all others the technical expertise required by a wine maker grew more evident to everyone.

Collaborating on the wine making process was important when deciding on the style of wine each team wanted to create. Working in teams can often be challenging but today it seemed to only enhance the experience. Students chose a style they wanted to create and then experimented with the various blends to create the style they wanted.

Finally the Final Blends… Some wines were spicy and full bodied while others were fruit forward. The wines that were loved by all were those that were balanced showing acidity and vibrant flavors. They were elegant.  I would be proud to serve any of these wines in the Janet Lefler Dining Room or even my own home.

In fact the wines were already served in the Janet Lefler Dining Room. The wines were an overwhelming success with the faculty who tried them.  For the students, they could not be more proud to showcase their work and transition the technical experience they just engaged in into a more “front of house” communication, speaking about their blends with ease, even to Dr. Hotzler!

For the first time in our Wines of the New World class, we were given the opportunity to blend and create our own wine today and we had so much fun doing that. It was interesting to see how we were able to agree on a final wine while we had so many different palates/tastes in the group.

Laliza and Kathy were looking for more fruity notes and very low tannins while I (Lyne) like my wines spicy with medium tannins and Hasret wanted some good acidity in her wine. Altogether, we were able to blend our final mixture (after six ones that we were not wowed by), and surprisingly we loved it and even the class picked our wine as one of the best.

For the “concoction” we used 80% of Cabernet Sauvignon which was our base wine, 10% of the Merlot for its beautiful fruitiness on the nose and palate, 5% of Cabernet Franc for some acidity/balance and finally 5% of Petite Syrah for its gorgeous deep color and tannins.  We are curious to see how this wine would taste after some aging but we are confident that it will develop more elegance, aroma and flavor with more time.

One base one, four blending wines and a bunch of imagination, creativity, dedication, intelligence and teamwork. The wine created by each team was fantastic because you each worked together through the scientific process in order to produce a wine that was complex, may it have been fruit forward or spicy and full bodied. They were each different and each a wine I would be thrilled to enjoy with a fine meal.

Congratulations on your accomplishments. I am looking forward to experiencing the wine making process with you.

Spicy Brooklyn and Charlies Angels have won! They wil be served in the dining room. Spicy Brooklyn won because it has soft tannins, balanced, smokey and has spice to it. Charlies Angel won because of its low tannins, ready to drink, jammyness, long finish and elegance. We now split up into 2 groups and making both blends.

Creating our new wine was based on being able to drink the wine today. We were trying to make sure the dining room would be able to drink the wine today so we aimed for a fruit forward, low tannins, medium viscosity wine. After knowing what we wanted and tasting each individual blend we decided to take away the tannins from the Cabernet. We still wanted it to be Cabernet so we made sure it was still 75%. We all liked the subtle less tannin wines number 2 and 3 were our first choices. They were Petit Syrah and Petit Verdot. We initially blended the Cabernet and the Petit Syrah. We all liked the subtlety and the low tannins in this one. After tasting this blend we didn’t like it because we still tasted the cabernets tannins. We then mixed it with the initial blend with the petit Verdot. This was our winning blend! It was fruit forward, had some spiciness, it had tannins but not too strong. It had a brick red dark and a pinkish hue. After presenting it to all the professors we were all very proud of the new blend.

Last week in class we were asked to participate in a blending project.  We were taught to first taste the base wine and then taste the other wines #1 through #4.  Our group decide that we like wine 2 and 4.  So we started off with the base with pouring in 75% of Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley 2010. Then we added 20% of Petite Syrah, Lodi 2010; finally we added 5% of Merlot Mendocino 2010.  We chose this blend because we wanted something fruity.  Sight: Clear with no sediments, garnet red, medium viscosity. Smell: cherries, smokey, pepper, bright on the nose, floral, jammy, spices. Taste: dry, well balanced, soft on the palate.

Experience: The experience was excellent, we enjoyed creating our wine because we felt it represents a little bit of everyone in our group.  We enjoyed the overall experience and it went above our expectations.  We learn what it takes to make wine and even though we blended what we wanted in our first try we realized that we got lucky that not all the times wine makers get there blends on the first try.

Group Members: Paula Oliveira, Won Joo Cho, Imani Wood, Genesis Rodriguez

Our first wine blending experiment went great, it was difficult to get the right blend but we think we were able to achieve that. After tons of trial and error we believe we came up with the perfect wine for us and we called it Fourth. We wanted to take the big bold Cabernet and soften but maintain some strength. What we ultimately came up with  was a well rounded wine. It has a little more fruit, it’s not as tannic but still has a little pepper there to give it some extra body. We were really happy with the result and the experiment overall

-Jintanun Mulpruke
-Careem Gordon
-Yomaris Estrella
-Shaell Escano

Header image found on http://www.michaelmondavifamilyestate.com/Visit—Taste-Gallery/Winemaker-for-a-Day. Upon copmpletion of this project, students will sumbit images to replace this one.