Saturday, April 10 2010
The Best Wine He Ever Tasted
The Unknown Comic's cellar
I get a lot of different pleasures from winemaking: the thrill of tasting a really great bottle, sharing the bounty of my cellar, learning about new grapes and new processes, and the feeling of connection I have with other winemakers that I’m privileged to meet. But without a doubt, the best thing about winemaking is teaching others. Seeing someone make their first batch and enjoy it is a great job reward.
One of the people I taught to make wine over the years was my friend Grant. He and I had made beer together before, but for some reason he had never thought about making wine. Indeed, even though he enjoyed drinking wine, he rarely bought a bottle for himself, instead he saved it for ‘special occasions’.
When I started working at a home beer and wine shop I finally convinced him to give it a try. Maybe the steep discount I got him on fermenters and carboys had something to do with it! After his first kit, he was hooked, and as soon as his primaries were empty, he would start another batch and buy another carboy, eventually showing as much enthusiasm for winemaking as he had for beer.
After a few years of making wine from kits he decided to branch out into premium kits and fresh juices. His results were more mixed after this. Partly his troubles were an aversion to taking measurements and keeping records, and partly his inability to allow the wine to age before tasting it. “I dunno,” he’d always say, “it’s more work and takes longer, and I really don’t have any luck with that stuff.” I tried to explain to him the cardinal virtue of winemaking (patience, of course) but it never seemed to get through—and, he was always ‘out of wine’.
Okay, that's pushing it
One evening he came over for dinner, and brought two magnum bottles of his latest batch of Washington Gewürztraminer. Latest in this case meant he had just bottled it that afternoon, after only eight weeks from the start of fermentation! We tried it, but it was pretty sharp. I recognised the beginnings of a very nice aroma—hints of flowers and tropical fruit—hidden behind young ‘green’ esters. Grant glumly concluded that it was yet another failed batch and he’d just have to drink it up and hope the next was better. We put it aside and switched to a nice Montrey Bay Pinot Noir from my cellar.
After he went home I hatched a plan. I carefully racked the open bottle into a sanitised 750 ml bottle and tucked it and the other into the unheated back hall. It was November and I knew that in the cold the wine would drop tartrates and smooth out quite a bit.
Indeed, when I checked on it in April, there was a thick crust of crystals in each bottle. I tasted the smaller one. It was fabulous. Not only had those early aromas of tropical fruit and flowers come out, it also had a luscious taste of lichee hints of red grapefruit. My wife and I enjoyed the rest of the bottle and I racked the magnum into two 750’s and tucked them in my wine cellar.
That summer Grant was over again with friends, and we were playing ‘Secret Wine’. This is a popular game in my house. We blind taste a wine and try to identify the grape, the region, and when possible, the producer or estate. While it’s very challenging, it’s also a lot of fun and with everyone collaborating you can learn a lot about wine tasting. However, this time everyone but Grant already knew the answers . . .
I poured him a secret sample, and while he immediately identified it as Gewürztraminer, he could get no further. Was it from British Columbia? Germany? Alsace? None of his guesses were close and finally he put down his glass, “I really don’t care where it’s from. It’s the best darn Gewürztraminer—heck, it’s the best white wine I’ve ever tasted! Tell me where it’s from, because I’m going to go out and buy a case!”
When I pulled the paper bag off and showed him the bottle, with his own handmade bottle tag on it, the room roared with laughter. I told him that that vintage was sold out, as people drank it too early—but there was one bottle left which I believed he should have.
Sometimes the best thing is showing someone that they have everything they need right in front of them.
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