Vintner’s Blog Archive

This year saw several changes in the cellar at Rappahannock Cellars. This was my first full year here, and I tended to my first Rappahannock Cellars wines, the 2006 vintage. As you may recall, verasion (the ripening season) in 2006 was plagued by cool, wet weather. However, with careful attention in vineyard and cellar we managed some exceptional wines whose awards include a double gold, 4 gold, and two best-of-category medals.

2006’s bumper crop brought about the need to upgrade the cellar. So, this year we bought two new Ganimede red-fermentation tanks. These are Italian designed stainless steel tanks that utilize the fermentation’s CO2 production to mix the skins and juice. A PLC allows us to program the tank to mix the skins every few hours on a continuing basis. Traditional techniques involve “punching down” the cap by hand or pumping juice over the skins, both very labor-intensive procedures. These new tanks provide more mixing and theoretically more extraction from the skins. We are very happy with the results we’ve seen from 2007. Wines made this year in these tanks include the Glenway vineyard Cabernet Franc.

Continue reading Looking Back at 2007

Unlike its culinary counterparts, wine serves many roles other than that of mere gastronomic satiety. It is a reflection of tradition and technology in the cellar, nature and nurture in the vineyard, culture and civilization of the people who make it. At its best it is a culmination of these things.
As a result of this, wine has become a sort of barometer of cultures, illustrating that even though we have a common goal in creating a masterpiece of cuisine, there sometimes is little agreement on how to achieve it and what it should represent.

The most obvious example of this is the idea of “Old World” and “New World” winemaking. As the name implies, “Old World” refers to the customs of viticulture and enology where it was first developed and nurtured to its prominence today – Europe. Here, the defining character of its wines is place.

Continue reading Blending – Art or Abomination?

A famous wine writer has written a fun article about what he considers to be some unfortunate consequences of modern winemaking. I responded to him on his website with these words:

I essentially agree that modern winemaking techniques such as those discussed in your article tend to make wines more similar than dissimilar. However, having utilized alcohol adjustment and micro-oxygenation in several different varietals and climates, I would suggest that these techniques are more subtle than you give them credit for. Alcohol reduction was never meant to repair an egregiously alcoholic wine, only to fine-tune and hit a “sweet spot,” as Clark says. Similarly, micro-ox will not change the flavor of a wine, only the tannic structure, and subtly at that. And you can’t really blame some wineries for trying these techniques. Central Valley wineries are making wines that compete more with Napa/Sonoma wines than ever before, precisely because of alcohol and tannin adjustment.

Continue reading Resistance to Modern Winemaking

Few topics in the wine industry yield more strong opinions than that of cork vs. screw cap.  Corks have been the mainstay of wine bottle enclosures for hundreds of years.  And, until recently, have been the only realistic choice.  The past ten years have seen the rapid development of synthetic closures and, more recently, screw caps to seal 750 mL bottles of wine.

These alternative closures are used because they are much cheaper than corks, which can run up to $0.75 each.  That’s a lot when you consider most wines have only a few cents worth of processing treatments performed on them.  Presently, synthetic corks can be colored and used also for marketing purposes (red corks for rosé wine with clear capsules, for example).  But these wines were never considered “fine” wines.  And we all know about screw caps’ relationship with jug wines.

Continue reading Uncorking the Screw-Cap Debate

This year at Rappahannock Cellars, we made 3 vineyard designated Chardonnays:

1. 2006 Meriwether Chardonnay – unoaked and no ML (malolactic fermentation)
2. 2006 Glenway Chardonnay – fermented and aged in French and American oak barrels, +ML
3. 2006 Chappelle Charlemagne Chardonnay – fermented and aged in French and American oak barrels, +ML

And we have yet another Chardonnay in the works! With so much Chardonnay harvested and wine made this year we have been thinking about the different styles that suit this varietal and the marketplace.

Since the 90′s in this country, oaked Chardonnay has been all the rage, and this style has influenced Chardonnay produced in other countries, notably Australia. Oaked Chardonnay is rich, pleasantly aromatic, and easily approachable, which helps explain its popularity.

Traditionally, old-world (French) Chardonnay is made without the influence of oak, in stainless steel tanks or otherwise neutral cooperage. ML may or may not be promoted in the wine, based on the winery’s discretion. The famous Chardonnay producing region in France is Chablis. These wines are characterized by a more distinctive acidity, more fruit/floral Chardonnay character, and other regional influences such as “minerality.”

While both styles have their positive attributes, it appears that the regional style differences will remain, at least for the time being. But is this a permanent thing? Will Americans develop a taste for Chablis? Will the French come around to oaked Chardonnay?

I personally love Chablis, and also a properly oaked Chardonnay. One where the oak complements and enhances the fruit character of the wine, where you can still taste the Chardonnay. But we don’t make wine to satisfy our own palates, we have to make wines for the uninitiated as well as to the connoisseur – a tall order.

Chardonnay is known as the varietal that can represent the widest range of styles for a single varietal. And that’s what we’ve tried to represent this year with our 2006 Chardonnays. We are anxious to hear what you think!

-Jason
Vintner of Rappahannock Cellars

Continue reading Chardonnay, “To Oak or Not to Oak?...

Rappahannock Cellars strikes GOLD! In a year that has been hearalded as the year of red wines, we are making news with our white wines. A double gold medal at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition. 9 wines, entered with 9 medals received. The only double gold to an east coast vinifera wine went to our 2006 Viognier.

At the North American Womens Wine Competition we collected some of Virginias best results….two of the four vinifera wines receiving medals went to Rappahannock Cellars!

Vintner of Rappahannock Cellars

Continue reading Double Gold

We sat down yesterday to try the Meriwether Vineyard Chardonnay for the first time since bottling. WOW! It’s our first attempt at what I might call a “new-style” Chardonnay, as it’s 100% stainless steel fermented and aged, and was not allowed to go through Malo-Lactic fermentation. It’s clean, fresh, and a little flinty, while brimming with “chardonnay” flavor and character. As you might know most Chardonnay’s are fermented and aged in barrels, and allowed to go through a secondary fermentation to convert those crisp malic acids to softer, butter -like, lactic acid. Keeping the crisp malic acid and not covering up the wonderful chardonnay with oak and “butter” has yielded a terrific wine; especially for those not enamored with traditional Chardonnay’s. The wine will be released to the public in May or June.

Vintner of Rappahannock Cellars

Continue reading Meriwether Chardonnay