So long . . .

TheWinexpert Retail store will be closing permanently on the 24th of May, 2013. Winexpert will continue to produce and distribute all of its products, but the 1622 Kebet Way location will no longer be in business.

Originally founded as Brew King, the store opened its doors in 1983. The first sale was a single package of yeast that brought in 39 cents. From small beginnings, the store expanded under the leadership of the founders, Doug and Ross Tocher, who had a vision for the consumer wine and beer industry.
They began manufacturing their own beer and wine kits, distributing them across Canada and the USA. Eventually the company grew large enough that it became a force in the commercial industry as well, with one out of every five bottles of wine produced in Canada being made from kit products.

Even after the company was sold to Andrew Peller Limited in the late 1990’s, and the name changed to Winexpert, the retail store remained both as a source for home winemakers to purchase equipment, supplies and kits, and as a resource centre for Winexpert’s Customer Service department.

For the last 17 years Linda Kazakoff has run the retail store and answered incoming inquiries, at first through mail and telephone, and as the internet became the dominant business communication channel, through email as well. Her wealth of knowledge, along with that of all of her helpers and assistants over the years, has been a source pride for our company. Her patience, attention to detail, and her never-ending good humour have made her a valuable employee and a good friend to all who know her. In her own words,

It is with mixed feelings that I gave my notice to Winexpert and decided it was finally time I retired. While I am looking forward to checking off those items on my bucket list I will dearly miss the camaraderie and friendships that I have developed over the past 17 years. I would like to thank you all for being such great customers and making my job so easy and most enjoyable.

Hope you are able to drop in to say hi over the next few weeks.

Cheers,
Linda Kazakoff

It has been my honour to work with Linda the last 13 years, and to be her Manager the last two. Her hard work and dedication have made my job not only easier, but also more fun and rewarding than I might have thought possible. While I regret the store’s closing, I am confident that Linda is going to enjoy a wonderful retirement, and I wish her all the best.

The store will remain open for business during its final week, the 21st to the 24th of May. During this time we will be featuring all of our products at 35% off (while supplies last!), as a last thank-you to our customers. Going forward, we have some wonderful local retailers who are there to help you find all of the wine kits and supplies you need to keep making your best wine ever. Look for them at the Find a Retailer link on our homepage. 

On behalf of everyone at Winexpert, thanks to all of you for your loyalty as customers, your fellowship as friends, and for making this a thirty-year pleasure.

Tim 

But have you ever wondered how synthetic corks are made? Vectored from the wonderful site, Wine Folly, here is a short video of the process:

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Oh my, this is some kind of record. I'm going to talk about Winexpert products for the third time this year. Wow, you'd swear they paid me or something. 

But I'd talk about our Limited Edition wines even if they weren't my baby: top quality grapes from extremely cool regions and viticultural areas, varietals and styles that can be unfamiliar (at first!) and the opportunity to make a vintage wine to age and enjoy in the coming years--what's not to love? This year was totally cool because it was the first time we included a grapeskin pack in one of our LE 2012 wine kits.

For those fuzzy on the whole 'wine kit' thingy (how did you wind up here?), Winexpert produces consumer winemaking products. We take beautifully ripe grapes from growing regions around the world and process them in our winery. We do every last thing to them that a winery would need to do to make wine for commercial sale, but for one tiny detail: we don't add any yeast. Instead, we flash-pasteurise them to make them shelf-stable, package them in bag-in-box containers and sell them to you--along with a packet of yeast. You take the box of juice home, make a few additions according the (clearly and beautifully written) instructions and then pitch that yeast. In 4 to 8 weeks, depending on the type and style of wine, you can bottle it and when it ages you've got an excellent wine that you made, with no muss or fuss or squishing of grapes, that can stand up proudly to wines you can buy in the store. 

Fine and dandy, and every year we make a line-up of kits that are very special, each with its own story, terroir and style. We make a limited number and take pre-orders for them (when we're out of grapes, we're out of kits) and it makes a lot of people very happy (including me: I haven't missed an LE in 14 years). 

The LE2012 April release was the one with the skins. It's an Italian Nebbiolo from Reggio Emilia. I'm stoked on this, as the grapes came from a wonderful vineyard, the specs were great, and Reggio Emilia is where everything good happens in Italy. Seriously, check it out: Parma, where Parma ham (Prosciutto) comes from, along with Parmigiano Reggiano, wonderful Italian Mortadella, along with hundreds of different regional cheeses, preserved meats and wines, brilliant produce and some of the best cooks in the world . . . keep Tuscany, you can have Rome and the Piedmont, I'm for Reggio Emilia. 

But there's a mistake in the kit's instructions. And, like many things in this life, it's my fault. So I want to explain.

The instructions list the starting specific gravity (take after adding the grape skins) as 1.090-1.100. The SG before adding grape skins is between 1.065 – 1.070. The reason for this is that the skin pack is incredibly dense in fermentable solids (grape sugars), and it contributes very heavily to the starting gravity and to the finished alcohol content. But that incredibly sticky, sugary grape pack is very slow to dissolve. Lab trials show that it can take between 1 and 2 hours for the gravity to rise to its final level at 24C/75F, and it takes longer than that at lower must temperatures. The problem is, the instructions don't mention the extra time needed for the gravity to rise, which is confusing for some winemakers. 

This can be more confusing for consumers who have previously made Winexpert grapeskin wines such as Eclipse and Selection with skins. These start with a broader stated SG range (1.080-1.100), which appear to be in the correct range immediately, without stirring, even though the gravity will continue to rise as the fermentable sugars in the pack dissolve over a 24 hour period. 

So if you've started your Nebbiolo and and didn't measure the gravity, what should you do? Don't do anything: even if your must temperature was lower than the lowest level we recommend (22C/72F) the grape pack will still release all of its sugars in 24 hours. Poke the muslin sack holding your grapes once a day like it says in the instructions, and that will be more than enough to disperse all the good stuff into the must. I made two of my LE2012 Nebbiolo kits last week, one at 22C/75F and another at 18C/65F (don't try this at home: I am a trained professional who gets his experimental kits for free) and I used a very sensitive refractometer to measure the sugar content in the centre of the pack, and while the warm one went down in less than four hours (probably quicker, but I got distracted and didn't check it until I was leaving the office for home) even the cold one gave up all the good stuff by the third day, with plenty of time left for the yeast to work on it. 

To recap, other than egg on my face for not getting my stuff together and getting the instructions right the first time, no worries about the wine: it's going to be great. If the preliminary taste I took at racking, even before I added the toasted oak cubes for the post-fermentation hit of tannin and structure is any guide, this is going to be one of the best Limited Edition red wines we've ever done. It's exactly the right colour and hue (deep, deep ruby with garnet highlights, pure Nebbiolo fruit, firm-but-not-swingeing tannin and a bright acidity and pleasant red-fruit aroma. I am really glad I did two of this one because I'm going to age it out for a decade or so to watch it evolve (the joys of a giant cellar). I'll try my first bottle in November, so I can talk about the grapeskin experience during the LE2013 events, but my bet is that in about 18 months it will show pretty well and at three to five years it's going to rock out. 

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled blogs not about wine kits. Whew! 

This is without a doubt the most exciting announcement I’ve ever made in the 13 years I’ve been with Winexpert—and it’s something that’s going to change everything about the Consumer-Made wine industry, from coast to coast!

Let me explain: in Canada there are two ways to make your own wine. The first is obvious: you buy a wine kit and a few pieces of necessary equipment and in the comfort of your own home you go through the process of making up the batch, pitching the yeast, transferring the resulting wine, clearing and stabilising it, and finally bottling it so it can age until it’s ready to drink.

The second way, as done in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and in parts of Quebec is to use the service of an On-Premise operation. There you go in, purchase the kit, make it up (right there!) and pitch the yeast. At that point you get to leave, and over the course of one to two months the proprietor takes care of all of the racking, clarifying and filtering—you don’t have to worry about clean-up, setting up a wine room in your house, or buying equipment. All you have to do is pay a fee for the service and come back to bottle and remove your wine.

What’s not generally known is that consumer wine sales in On-Premise provinces are generally much higher than they are in take-home only markets. There is a certain amount of consumer hesitation about the process done at home, and it limits the number of people who are willing to try it on their own. Legislation to allow On-Premise in the other provinces is stalled with governments that are opposed to small business or against changing any regulations on principle.

But all that is about to change, because of a terrifically unlikely confluence of two laws, a quirk in interprovincial trade agreements, and the rise of Food Truck regulations. Let me explain.

Ontario and British Columbia were the first (and for a long time the only) provinces that allowed On-Premise because of a small grammatical error in the legislation covering home wine and beer making. Instead of saying, ‘Canadian residents can make any amount of wine or beer for their personal use on their own premise’, the act read, ‘on a premise’. Sharp folks in Ontario and BC noticed this slip and immediately opened storefronts and declared that their ‘premise’ was open for business. That’s the first law that we’re concerned about.

This was all well and good for them, but expansion has slowed down in recent years, despite a cadre of hard-working small business owners who helped grow the industry and promoted On-Premise winemaking for decades. What would really help things is a new business model—and the governments of various provinces have made this happen.

The second law has been in effect for many years, but was only noticed in the context of the consumer wine industry last year. It states that no-one may store or consume beverage alcohol in a vehicle, unless that vehicle is listed as their primary residence. This is to allow folks who own campers, 5th-wheel trailers and motorhomes to carry and to consume (when they’re not driving!) alcohol without violating the law.

The interprovincial trade agreements, signed into law by Ontario and British Columbia, now allow for shipping of wine between provinces without tariffs or restrictions. Many Canadians may not know it, but before this agreement, if you bought a bottle of wine in Ontario and brought it into BC, you would be obligated to pay provincial duty and taxes, and there are very strict limits on the amounts you could bring. Other provinces copied the legislation as boiler-plate and approved it with no debate—after all, BC and Ontario are the biggest producers, with Quebec and Nova Scotia well behind, so it just made sense to go along.

Finally, in an attempt to catch up with consumer trends and changing demographics, all major Canadian cities have passed Food Truck regulations, governing the kind and types of vehicles that are allowed to convey and sell ready-to-consume foodstuffs, with licensing, inspections and details now well sorted out.

When you put it all together, here is what Winexpert will be rolling out this April: the Winexpert Mobile On-Premise™.

In this business model a standard 40-foot tractor-trailer unit is used, our Winexpert Authorised Retail Partner (all Winexpert Mobile On-Premise™ operations are independently owned) declares it first as his primary residence, and second, as his licensed place of business. It is outfitted with kit storage, shelves, power and water supply, sinks, hoses and racks for transporting the wine. Because the trucks fall under Food Truck legislation, and sell only prepackaged juices, the inspections and licensing are minimal. Because there is already extensive legislation regarding making wine ‘On-Premise’, they are perfectly legal. And because there are no longer inter-Provincial trade barriers against the transport of alcohol between provinces, they are coming to every neighbourhood in Canada in the next three months!

The trailers are very carefully designed and laid out, with air suspension, heating and cooling and sprung shelving with safety restraints and impact bars—there is no worry about spills or broken carboys. There is enough room to make up each batch of wine and move it onto the shelves safely and easily

Although onboard storage space is limited, which could hamper sales (Winexpert carries over 100 different types of wine kit to choose from!) that problem is eliminated because at the end of every run, the operator transfers the wines each customer makes to a fermenting trailer, separate from the primary business trailer, located at our state-of-the-art Winexpert trucking hub . The wines are finished there, fined, racked and filtered, at which point they are ready to go back to the customer.

When the wines are ready for bottling they are transferred back into the Winexpert Mobile On-Premise™ truck, driven to the consumer’s home, and steps outside their front door (or their place of business, or any location they choose!) they can fill and cork in the airy and spacious bottling compartment! It’s big enough for groups of up to four people to bottle at once, making short work of even multiple batches of wine.

Naturally Winexpert is very excited to be rolling out this amazing service to our friends and neighbours in the other provinces of Canada. We’re starting with a fleet of 130 trucks, based out of locations in St. Catherines Ontario and Port Coquitlam British Columbia, and we’re on track to add another 3-400 trucks by the end of 2015.

If you’d like to learn more about this amazing service, including when it will be available in your location, please contact your local Winexpert Retailer by April 1st, 2013.

Winexpert:

Love Your Mobile On-Premise™ Wine

Guaranteed

Oh my: for the second time in a year I'm going to talk about Winexpert business. This has absolutely no correlation to the fact that it's my annual review, year-end, and I'm trying to bump up sales for the Winexpert Retail store. 

Suuuuure. 

In any case, it's a very rare opportunity for you to come in and get the sweetest deal ever on a wine kit. On March 28th we're doing our fiscal year-end inventory, so on the  26-27th we'll be holding a rare thing--a sale! 

It's kind of a dichotomy: you'd think being the factory store that we'd have the cheapest prices anywhere, right? Not so much: Winexpert has a business model that involves authorised retail partners that have defined trading areas, and there are several close-up in our neighbourhood. I know and love them all, so undercutting great, family-run businesses that serve their communities very well would be a pretty boneheaded thing to do. So, we sell things at the MSRP and rely on my charm and good looks to move product. 

Which is why we're having a pre-inventory sale! 

Buy 1 Selection International 15 litre kit at the regular price and get a second l5 litre kit FREE. (Personal shopping only, no phone or mail orders, while supplies last, first come-first served, may not be combined with any other offers). Yes, you heard right: if you buy one of my remaining Selection International 15-litre kits, I'll give you the second one of your choice, FREE. Wowie! Got to clear those shelves, and I hate counting stuff, so in addition to that, we've got Selection Original kits with BLUE DOTS 15 % off regular pricing! Need some fast fast wine for summer? Chai Maison is a great value from the start, but right now if you buy a Chai Maison kit, we'll sell you the second kit HALF PRICE! 

It's unbelievable. How can you afford not to come down and give me money? 

Keep in mind we'll be closed on the 28th for inventory, and on the 29th for the statutory holiday on Good Friday. 

We now return you to the regularly scheduled grumpy blogging and ludicrous opinions you've come to expect. Thanks for you attention. 

One of my favorite newspapers, the New York Post, published an article this March about rude bartenders in the city, Take This Drink and Shove It, detailing some very offensive interactions between customers and the members of the hospitality industry they encountered. While hedging their criticism by noting that there are plenty of good bars that don't intentionally insult and degrade customers, they gave some examples that are eye-popping in their unmannerly conduct. 

One spot in particular, Mayahuel has a charming bartender who declared, 

“I don’t carry vodka or light beer because they teach morons to like things that have no taste. I don’t carry Coca-Cola either. It ruins palettes. People should know where they are going and what they are doing. When somebody walks into a bar and says that he wants a Long Island iced tea, what he’s basically saying is, ‘Put as much s - - t into a glass as possible, so I can get f - - ked-up.’ They are saying that they don’t care about taste.”

Well, isn't that a relief, knowing that there is an ultimate arbiter of taste in this universe, and that he lives in the centre of his own little world? Potty mouth aside, what's he really saying here? Do people who like sweet or strong drinks have less of a place in the beverage-service world? Are patrons of a bar merely supplicants at the font of wisdom to be handed down from on high? 

In the article Jim Meehan, an author and mixologist, puts his finger on the issue: 

Part of the problem, Meehan says, is that some mixologists still see themselves as principled rebels going against the grain of the vodka-soda guzzling masses.

Everyone loves the story of a rebel, but the rebel himself? Not so much. Rebels are high-maintenance, tend to prima-donna-ism and acts that border on anti-social and can spill over and affect people who are innocent of ill motives, most of whom merely occupy the system that offends the rebels so much.

Another customer described their experience, 

“The bartender chastised me for ordering a mainstream gin, and then he sold me something that I had never even heard of,” recalls Weil, adding, “The whole thing was a degrading experience and makes me never want to go back there again.”

I initially wondered if this was a caricature of a New York stereotype, the shopkeeper who hates you and bullies you, but you have no choice except to purchase his goods--much like the Soup Nazi character from Seinfeld. I was in a place in New York last year, Katz's Deli, where if you didn't know what you wanted when you got to the head of the queue they chided you for not knowing protocol. But that kind of interaction really relies on people getting the joke, being on the inside, being included. These chaps with the chips on their shoulders seem determined to divide people into two groups, those worthy of their attention, and those who are not.

And that is a darned shame. There is no right or wrong way to enjoy the hedonic pleasures of a good beverage, and the only one who is an arbiter of your taste is you. I've had the opportunity to drink some terrifically high-end wines in my time. 

Does that mean I think people who drink Two-Buck Chuck or box wine are unworthy of attention? Hardly. I've said it many times: a good wine is one that tastes good to you, and there is no other criteria. My beverage's house contains many mansions, and all are welcome. The same goes for any other alcoholic drink. I like single-malt scotch, and generally don't touch vodka--in fact, I can't recall having had any vodka since I was a teenager. But that doesn't mean people who enjoy it are lesser beings than I am, just different.

And that's okay. Really. I might not enjoy light beer, but there's no way on earth I'm going to get my hate on for you if you order one at my local--there are lots more interesting things to tussle over than what you drink. And just because I take ten minutes to make my favorite Martini, one that requires many steps and attention to detail, I'm not going to mock you for liking rum and coke--forcing you to drink something you don't like to conform to my ideals is the worst sort of normative, cultural-imperialist snobbery I can think of. 

I'm beginning to wonder now that if this isn't part of trendy types attempting to justify their interest in esoteric or fussy attention to booze in the face of an 'Emperor Has No Clothes' situation--if you make a cocktail that requires a two-month trip to the Amazon to gather ingredients, and can only be made in the correct phase of the moon at the right barometric pressure and stage of the tides, and it winds up not tasting very good, you'd really need to keep the pressure on to cover up your huge investment in your own mythos. 

I recall going to an extremely trendy cocktail bar in San Francisco a couple of years ago. I'd been told a number of times that a cocktail aficionado like myself had to go there and try the drinks. When I got there I couldn't seem to order what I wanted--the bartender was selectively deaf to my desire for a Perfect Manhattan. Instead he bullheadedly directed me to order off of his cocktail 'menu', itself a piece of ephemeral art laser-etched onto organic, post-consumer recycled paper made locally. I tried three different drinks, and each of them was elaborate, over-sweet, over-strong, and over-wrought with weird combinations and offbeat garnishes (culantro in a cucumber-fennel 'mojito'? Tasted like organic window cleaner) that made me want a shot of Thunderbird or Ripple. Yet the place was packed with people. As I watched them I noticed that many patrons had a glass of (locally sourced, cruelty-free) mineral water with their drink, and with every sip they quickly gulped water immediately after, so the taste wouldn't catch up with them. 

Not that I'm criticising their drink choices: they're welcome to drink whatever makes them happy, and while I think they'd be better off with a simple, well-made drink that showcased the flavour of the alcohol and the mix, I'm not the decider. And much more importantly than that, neither is the person who is serving them drinks, because of that word, serve. 

I like to develop a relationship with my bartender. They're not therapists or dispensers of booze, they're service professionals who have a job to do. When they do it well, getting drinks right, making me feel welcome and that my business is appreciated, I tell anyone who is interested about what a great place the bar is. But a bar is a storefront that has alcohol and seats, and cannot be intrinsically wonderful (despite good architecture or other such features). It's the people who make it what it is, and good people don't judge you for harmless affectations, like your choice of cocktail, they accept you for who you are and encourage you to be that person comfortably, in a pleasant environment. 

One more thing: remember to tip your bartender. How much depends on the place, but a buck a drink is not too much, and if you order something complex and difficult to make during a rush, tip really hard--a pousse cafe when the barkeep has thirty beers to pour and six different margaritas to make requires a lot of effort to get right. And remember not to drink in places that don't make you feel welcome. Life is too short, and you have too little liver capacity to waste it on someone else' idea of what's right for you. 

Wednesday, February 27th is Pink Shirt day, when we wear pink to show our opposition to bullying in all forms. Every year I like to make a point of wearing pink to show my solidarity with people who are bullied. Everyone deserves to feel safe, to be a part of our society, and to be free from fear and harassment.

I'm of a size and disposition that makes it unlikely I'll be bullied, so that makes it all the more important for people like me to stand up and say we won't allow bullying to happen in our presence. If you want to participate, I'd love to count you in. Check out Pink Shirt day's Facebook page, or just join me in wearing pink--I think it's the toughest colour I know. 

Yesterday I checked my email and found a delightful note from Ashley Brandt, a law-talking person from Chicago, with this picture attached.

Tim,

Can't thank you guys enough. His mom is out of town for the week for work and we needed something fun to do. This will be the best batch ever.

No, Ashley, I can't thank you enough. Some days, dealing with planning, customer service issues, education, writing, marketing stuff, product issues, etcetera, it almost slips my mind that our wines are made by people. Ordinary, wonderful, normal people, on their own, with friends, and sometimes in the bosom of their family. Some people who make their own wine have a family legacy, especially if they're of European descent, but even more do not. For those of you who came to winemaking on your own, can you imagine how cool it would be to have shared this with your parent from a very young age? To connect with them on a shared hobby that has thousands of years of history and community? That would be pretty swell. 

Brandt Jr. is a lucky little guy. I hope he grows up to love wine, winemaking and the wine lifestyle, but you know what? Even if he doesn't he's still very lucky to have a family that wants to share wonderful things with him, and he's probably going to turn out to be a cool kid.

If you're interested in alcohol and the law, go on over the Ashley's website: www.libationlawblog.com and if you need legal advice on beverage alcohol in Chicago, now you know a guy. And his charming little tyke!

February 18th is National Drink Wine Day in the USA. Since we're bunkies, I thought that we could tag along and appropriate the date as well--after all, we share nearly everything. I propose that Canadians join in and take a moment out of their day to enjoy a glass of wine, and be mindful of the soil, the weather and the vines that brought it to you, and most especially, to share it with people you love.

Of course, today is also the US Presidents Day holiday. Since a few US presidents have been a bit cheeky towards Canada (James Polk was quite a scamp) I'm not sure how that ties in--perhaps if you have some Madeira on hand (a well-regarded beverage at the time of the American revolution) you could toast with that, or just hum 'Hail to the Chief' as you open your bottle. 

Then again, it's also National Battery day, Black History Month, Potato Lover's Month & National Weddings Month. There's really nothing I can wrap my mind around to make all of those things work at the same time . . . but maybe that's the point: wine is welcoming, inclusive and goes with any occasion or meal. 

Except batteries. Please don't consumer batteries with your wine. 

Note on the picture above: that's my table, about 15 years ago. Sigh, we drank the down-payment for a house that night. 

As Technical Services Manager, eventually the tough questions end up on my desk. Not that I'm complaining, because hard questions are delightful. I learn more from figuring out the answer to most people's inquiries than any other avenue of research, reading or study. Answering other people is an excellent way to get an education in your own field.

But it goes both ways--I often get to learn something about an entirely unrelated field, and then I'm smitten. Chasing down a new idea or the details of something complex and interesting is like catnip for someone with my particular kind of brain--I display some characteristics of nerd-ism that popular culture identifies with ASD or Asperger's, but I'm pretty certain that the only valid description of the way I am is 'Differently-Brained'. 

Today I got a new question, and it's made for a happy brain morning. After 20 years of being the answer guy, brand-new questions are rare and precious, like orchids or honest politicians, and equally to be cherished. It came from an unusual source . . . 

NAME: Christina H-----

COUNTRY: United Kingdom

MESSAGE: Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Christina H----- and I am currently working as an Assistant Stage Manager on a production of 'Cosi fan Tutte' with English Touring Opera. I was hoping you could help clarify my research into a prop for the show.

I have been asked to source a wine bottle from the late 18th century (1780 to 1800) and to make a replica label for the wine bottle. However I have been unable to find any sort of reference for this. My research has shown that the wine bottles themselves weren't standardised until the late 19th century and that most were distinguished by a seal on the glass. In this case, did wine bottle labels exist in the late 18th century and if so, do you know where I might find a reference for such an item?

I would really appreciate you taking the time to help me with this matter. Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you shortly.

Many Thanks,

 Well, how 'bout that. 

I like opera, enjoy Mozart (to me his music always sounds simultaneously as free and light as birds and as mechanical and regular as clockwork), and I'm familiar with the music of Cosi fan Tutte, but I've never bothered to learn the story--librettos and stage settings are just there to support the lovely music. In fact, the story behind most operas is patently ridiculous, with magic flutes and gold digging river-maidens galore. So I had to learn the story and setting and when I finally got past that distraction, I dug into my library to find out more about period bottles. Glorious! 

Here's the answer I came up with:

Ms. H-----,

The modern wine bottle is a product of the Industrial revolution in England. Only coal furnaces are hot enough (815+C) to melt sand into glass, and until large-scale coal use became standard, bottles were more used as temporary storage vessels: a householder or member of the gentry would purchase barrels of wine and bottle them at need--indeed, it was technically illegal to sell wine by the bottle in England until 1860.

As such, there were very few bottle labels produced. Most people would have written on the outside of the bottle in white paint to identify the wine, and relied on the idiosyncrasies of local bottle design to give them at-a-glance identification--hock bottles, bocksbuetel, Bordeaux, Burgundy et al were all made in characteristic shapes.

The milieu your production is set in would determine what would represent an authentic bottle. If it is faithful to the original Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti's setting (is the bottle for the Albanians 'poison' scene?) then perhaps raffia covered bottles (technically called fisachi), such as are seen on a modern Chianti bottle would represent well.

Set in other places a simple, older style of bottle might serve best. By the mid-eighteenth century glassmakers had recognised the need to 'bin' or stack wine bottles on their side, and switched from more bulbous bottle shapes to cylinders that would stack more easily. The only caveat would be to choose a bottle that has a hand-made look, rather than the starkly uniform character of mass-produced modern bottles.

And, in no case should the bottle have a label--terribly inauthentic, that.

I hope this helps--good luck with your production.

Tim Vandergrift
Technical Services Manager
Winexpert Limited

 See? Some days this is a cool job, and other days it's really super cool. 

I'm going to do something I have very rarely done in my blog: talk about one of Winexpert's products. I know, I know, quelle surprise! 

For folks who came here honestly expecting to read a blog about wine and got my idle ramblings sociological observations and lifestyle posts, I do in fact live my life in wine, despite the dearth of references I make to it here. Sometimes a day goes by that I don't enjoy a glass of wine, but not two in a row. And I'm an ardent user of Winexpert's winemaking juices--I make at least thirty batches a year (well, I would, wouldn't I? I have to know how they're working and how every new wine tastes, and that means a lot of make-and-drink. It's a tough life.)

Never made your own wine? Wonder what the heck I mean by thirty batches a year? Check out this video series on how-to. For why-to: it's fun, people who make their own wine are cool, it's astoundingly economical, and (this is important, gentlemen!) many nice people you would like to get to know drink wine, ahem!

The product I'm enthused about is our new Eclipse line. 

Eclipse is the ultimate expression of consumer-produced wine, in a shelf-stable package, and lets winemakers produce amazing AVA/region or even vineyard-specific wine from an array of top varietal grapes. All of the reds except one contain a package of grapeskins, which are fermented along with the rest of the wine to add flavour, tannin, aroma and depth to the finished wine (that one wine is the Sonoma Valley Pinot Noir--including skins with it throws the balance of a subtle, delicate Pinot a little off, and doesn't improve the gentle poetry of this shy little grape). All of the whites are wonderfully aromatic, lush and crisp, with excellent varietal character. 

I know what you're thinking: doesn't he get paid to endorse his company's stuff? Yes, yes I do. So don't take my word for it. Instead, here's what a bunch of folks said about it last weekend, at an Eclipse tasting party: Craig and Colin from Winesense in Manitoba wanted to do a tasting of the Eclipse wines for all of their staff so they could get everyone's feedback, and everybody in their stores could describe the wines to their customers. Here's part of the email Craig sent about the tasting event:

The event went exceptionally well.

We had 21 people with Staff and spouses in a Hospitality Suite. We also had hot and cold appetizers. The plan was to have all staff taste all styles before we officially launch. Everyone was impressed.

Reds:

The reds each showed varietal character especially considering their youth. The oldest wine was probably about 6 weeks yet they were all clearly different wines. All the reds got significantly better as they spent more time in the glass and opened up. The Pinot Noir was clearly Pinot Noir but definitely needs time to develop. The Cab, Merlot and Zin went over really well.

Whites:

The off-dry whites showed very well. The NZ Sauv Blanc was only in the bottle for 2 days and was clearly a NZ Sauv Blanc in nose and taste- it will be amazing once aged.

Summary:

Although a few styles came out as the 'favourites' all of the reds/whites seemed to be very balanced amongst the staff. There was not any wine that did not show up in someone's top 3.

My top picks- the Ranch 11 Cab and NZ Sauv Blanc.

Neither bottle of commercial wine (there for comparison purposes--Tim) was finished.

 

That's pretty close to my assessment as well. Considering the fact that the wines are probably going to start showing their best at somewhere between 9 months and a couple of years of age, they drink remarkably well when young--even when they've only been bottled for a couple of days!--showing strong varietal character, smooth tannins and good aroma right from the start. 

I'm really excited, happy and proud of Eclipse, and the winemakers and product development team that made it happen. We've always worked to make our wines better, year after year, but this is a big step, and shows just what you can do with a fresh slate and some of the best grapes in the world to work with. 

And I've got three on the go right now. On the other hand, maybe I should make a double-batch of the Pinot Noir . . . hmm! 

'Twas the Season to be jolly, and I hope you all had a fine and satisfying Saturnalia/Christmas/Hannukah/JØl or however you choose to celebrate this festive time. 

Astute readers of this blog, if there are any left, will have noticed that I haven't posted for over a month. Usually it's due to extreme lethargy, being very busy on the road, or just lacking a head of steam big enough for my usual narcissistic blather (as a pal once told me, 'Your blogs are as self-involved as a tween girl on Facebook'. Hah, he's completely wrong: there are plenty of really cool, self-aware tweens on Facebook!)

In this case it has been due to a serious illness in my family. It's slowly resolving, but it has taken a lot of my time, and a lot of my emotional energy to manage. From one perspective, it's an inevitable chapter that comes to every human life. From another, if life is a journey, then there are going to be times when the road is hard and long. Thank-you to everyone for your kindnesses, and your patience with me while I've been terribly distracted for the last two months. I'm back on my game, more-or-less and I really do appreciate all of your good wishes.

LE 2012 was an enormous amount of fun. I did events promoting our Limited Edition release all across North America, from Nanaimo, Vancouver, Kelowna, Portland (Oregon), St. Pauls/Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Calgary, Denver, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Baltimore and a bunch of others that have meshed into one giant, happy blur of seeing good friends, meeting new ones and sharing the story of our wines and then drinking them all up together. It's a pretty long slog, now stretching from the middle of September to the second week of December. It actually pretty much represents a third of my year here at Winexpert, between planning, writing marketing/technical stuff, shooting a video, developing a PowerPoint deck and then training other people to use it, and finally going on the road to tell the story. 

But I love it, really. It's not something I could do if I didn't really enjoy the program, and all of the wonderful people that make this business so refreshing--I could be out selling cars or running a plumbing store, and rarely see a truly happy face. Instead, I meet people who are making their own wine and loving every minute of it. Now that's a privilege. 

There's been a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff here at Winexpert as well. We've done a soft-launch (the phrase always makes me think of a Nerf rocketship or something) of our brilliant new Eclipse kits. If they're not in your neighbourhood yet, be patient, they're coming, and fast! The kits were actually delayed while we developed and implemented a couple of new production strategies and new phenol management technologies. They also threw kind of a monkey-wrench in everything, because they are such a departure from our previous 'best of the best' wines that we needed to jump on a product improvement program for absolutely everything in our line-up, to make sure everything measured up to 'the best in the industry'. 

The program has come to World Vineyard, Vintner's Reserve, Selection International, and we'll be doing to to every one of our table wine kits over the next year--they'll still be the kits you know and love, but they'll be better than ever. 

But enough about business. I usually use this blog to share little bits of my world (there's that self-involvement again) and what I'm up to, and although it was a quiet and sometimes solemn holiday season, we did manage to capture the spirit of thankfulness, mindfulness and the change of the seasons and the coming of the New Year. 

There were some fine walks on the beach

I bought a new hat

I took up hunting

We had a nice brunch

And we managed to have a few nice dinners ourselves 

I'm going to be blogging again, sooner than next month: my ire is risen with some shocking developments in the world of wine and beer (news flash: wine critics are dishonest shills, Robert Parker takes the title of worst person in the world for the second consecutive time, and beer is falling prey to fools with money) so I've got a pile of stuff to get off my chest. 

But until then, I'd like to leave you with a thought that I've been chasing around for a while now. There are many distractions in everyone's life, and not all of them are important. If I ever could give useful advice, it would be this: take time to tell the ones you love exactly how you feel, to make a connection with them, to cherish your time, to forgive wrongs and to find your peace with each other. There can't be anything more important than that. 

I've been laughing for two days now, and I thought I'd share the joke with you. 

Last night I did an LE 2012 tasting event for my friend Jason at Keystone Homebrew. We had a great time, sharing wine and great food and talking about the regions, answering winemaking questions and generally hanging out with a bunch of great folks. 

What was funny was Keystone's promotion of the event. They came up with a silly campaign based on 'The Most Interesting Man in the World', spoofing the Dos Equis commercial pitchman. They posted status updates all week, purportedly about me, from a list on their website. Some of the highlights:

His cerebral cortex contains more tannins than a top Barolo.

He once challenged himself to a drinking contest. Halfway through the third carboy, he won.

Bordeaux imports wine from him.

Bacteria refuse to touch his wine purely out of respect.

His doctor advised him to drink more wine, because it makes his liver stronger.

His organ donor card also mentions his ponytail.

He makes award-winning Pinot Noirs…using Chardonnay grapes.

He shuns the Methode Champenoise, and carbonates his wine with a wink and a smile.

He once submitted his wine for a pH test; it scored an “A+”.

Silly fun, and I love a good gag. But that's not what I found funniest. You see, four months ago, during the LE 2012 video shoot we whipped up a silly little parody video based on the same thing. I got inspired the night before the shoot, ginned up a costume, and we shot the whole thing in one take, with a short voice-over. It took about ten minutes, plus some post-production by my video guy, Jeff at Maverick Video, who really got into it and did a great job.

We originally buried it as an Easter Egg in the CD for the LE presentation, but it's close enough to the deadline to reveal it here to everybody, and it's a wonderfully funny coincidence that Jason's crew (I think it was mostly Lou who did the parody writing) did the same thing. 

I can't embed it in this blog (phooey on technology some days) but you can check it out here: http://vimeo.com/49143041

Stay tasty, my friends! 

Ahh, glorious Champagne: our companion at celebrations and important events, it christens our ships, welcomes our New Year, and gently helps the caviar and oysters along the path to culinary nirvana. Until recently, Winexpert has had a standard kit for making your own version of this glorious beverage--Selection Speciale Millennium Sparkling Wine--but alas, market forces (read: slow sales) have removed it from our line-up. This is terribly unfortunate: sparkling wine has no peer, and it is precious to me.

On the other hand, don't despair: you can make it at home if you’ve got a little adventure in your soul and a DIY attitude. But first, a little housekeeping: the word Champagne is protected under French law. Oh, those wacky gendarmes de France and their courts and laws! Since we won’t be using grapes from the Champagne appellation, we’ll be referring to the fizzy stuff as sparkling wine.

And since we’re not constrained by the shackles of French jurisprudence, why not make something really cool? How about a fruit-and-wine combination of deliciousness and fizzy happymaking? Chardonnay est passé: Vive le Viognier! Ever wanted a bottle of red sparkler to go with that meatloaf-cake you’ve been itching to make? Now’s the time!

Alas, one piece of housekeeping:

SAFETY WARNING! The techniques described in this article will carbonate your wine. This will put it under high pressure, inside a glass bottle. Fully pressurized, traditional-method sparkling wine has enough internal pressure to turn an ordinary 750-mL bottle into a glass hand grenade. Fermentation creates tremendous pressure, up to 90 pounds per square inch in traditional-method Champagne — up to five times the pressure found in beer or soft drinks.

Therefore, only proper sparkling wine bottles can be used. They are very heavy, made from thick glass, with a deep punt (indentation in the bottom of the bottle). They also have a lip on them to accommodate a crown cap (like a beer cap) which they are normally sealed with during secondary fermentation and lees aging, and before disgorgement (see below). Any other bottle can shatter, causing a very dangerous shower of glass. Remember, everything is funny until someone loses an eye (and then it’s on YouTube forever).

Getting bubbly: Three Ways

There’s more than one way to skin a glass of bubbly. The first, méthode traditionelle, is how they do it in Champagne: taking a base wine, adding a dose of sugar and yeast to it, letting it carbonate and age for an extended period, then freezing/shaking the lees out of it, dosing it with some sugar to cut the high acidity, and quickly re-capping or corking it.

This is not hard (people have been doing it without the benefits of safety goggles, modern refrigeration technology or precision hydrometers for a couple of centuries). But getting the lees (compacted yeast) out without losing most of the wine can be a bit complex and a bit messy in spots. On the other hand, it allows you to back-sweeten the wine: removing that layer of compacted yeast reduces the chances of causing another fermentation, which could (possibly dangerously) over-carbonate it.

The second way is to do méthode traditionelle, but skip the yeast disgorging. You then treat the wine like bottle-carbonated beer, keeping it upright and pouring the wine off the sediment, discarding the last little bit. This cuts out the most oogy part of the procedure, but you can’t sweeten this wine: the live yeast in the bottle will always eat all the sugar added to it, and if you do back-sweeten, before you know it the bottles are exploding in your cellar, turning your sheet rock into chalk dust and your floors into pools of fizz. So, you’ll always have completely dry wine, which is fine if that suits you.

The third way is to cheat with artificial carbonation. You simply take a still white wine, sweetened or not, and artificially inject carbon dioxide into it, much the same as is done with most commercial beer. This process involves much lower pressures, and thus smaller, thinner and lighter bottles can be used to contain this sparkling wine. There are a couple of drawbacks, however. First, lower pressures mean less fizz. The best you can do with civilian equipment is probably about one-third the level of fizz you get doing méthode traditionelle.

Second, it requires both carbonating gear (CO2 cylinder, gas regulator, lines and connectors, pressure tanks and bottling attachments) and a big freezer — the colder you get the wine, the more fizz it will hold. This gear, while not prohibitively expensive, is . . . well, it’s sort of expensive, especially if you just want a batch of fizzy wine now and then.

On the other hand, you could skip all the bottling and just keep your sparkling wine on draught and dispense it from the CO2 system’s tap . . . yeah, sounds like paradise to me too. Space doesn’t permit a thorough discussion of CO2 systems and carbonating protocols, but every homebrew shop that does beer will have equipment, details, and usually a geek on staff to guide you through the process.

Sans Disgorging: Dry As It Comes

If you don’t plan to do yeast disgorging, you’ll have to choose a dry wine (one that doesn’t use any sort of post-fermentation addition of sugar, sweeteners or “F-packs”: there’s no way to add this sweetness without having the yeast eat all of the sugars. You’d wind up with dry wine anyway, and it will be (perhaps dangerously) over-carbonated. That doesn’t mean you have to choose something tart and dry, however: many kits finish with a fruity character and tend to be on the slightly soft side (high acid means longer aging, so kits tend to be just slightly lower in acid profile than many commercial wines).

Good candidates on the dry-dry side include unoaked Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, dry Riesling, and anything your kit manufacturer’s literature describes as crisp or dry. Ask your retailer for more advice, keeping in mind that the wine shouldn’t be too high in alcohol to start (more on that below), and oak is a no-no, as it tastes awful when carbonated.

Good candidates on the fruitier side include any highly aromatic varieties with low acid, such as Viognier, Gewürztraminer, Symphony, Muscat, and anything the manufacturer’s brochures describe as soft, fruity or luscious.

Don't be Disgoraged: Sweeter is Possible

The secret that sparkling wine mostly never speaks is this: almost all of it is sweeter than you think. The driest wines possible still have at least a gram or so of residual sugar per liter of volume, due to the unfermentability of some of them. Most of us will have been exposed to sparkling wines that have ten to fifteen grams (about 11⁄2 to 21⁄2 teaspoons) of sugar per liter. They still taste dry because the flavors are balanced partly by acidity and partly by carbonation, which can sharpen the flavor profile. The French use the following terms to describe sweetness in their fizzy:

• Brut Natural or Brut Zéro (less than 3 grams of sugar per liter)

• Extra Brut (less than 6 grams of sugar per liter)

• Brut (less than 15 grams of sugar per liter)

• Extra Sec or Extra Dry (12 to 20 grams of sugar per liter)

• Sec (17 to 35 grams of sugar per liter)

• Demi-Sec (33 to 50 grams of sugar per liter)

• Doux (more than 50 grams of sugar per liter)

Note: If 50 grams of sugar per liter sounds sweet to you, keep in mind that cola is about the equivalent of 12% residual sugar, or 150+ grams per liter. Wow!

Wine kits that are intended to be sweetened after fermentation will come with a second bag or bottle of liquid. This is sugar syrup, grape concentrate, fresh juice, or some combination thereof. It may even have a bunch of fruit flavors and extracts for Mist or refreshment beverage fruit-wines. On average these kits wind up somewhere between extra sec or sec, with only the sweetest refreshment beverage wines clocking in at demi-sec.

So which kit should you make? Whichever appeals most to your taste will be just fine: off-dry sparkling wine is great with spicy food, and with (or even as) dessert and drinks very nicely by itself. Refreshment beverages are great party fare, refreshing as heck on a hot day, good with barbecue, and only the sourest of sourpusses will turn down a glass of sparkly good fruit wine. If you’re not quite sure what to do, start with a wine you’ve already tried before, or ask your retailer for some advice.

Fizzin’ It: Old School

The section applies to both disgorged and non-disgorged wines. If you don’t mind dry wine, and paying attention to a little sediment, it’s all you need to know. If you’re going to sweeten your sparkler, or want to completely rid it of sediment, you’ll need to carefully read this section and then the next on disgorging.

Necessary equipment (over and above your regular winemaking gear):

You will need thirty sparkling wine bottles (see warning on page 64) and either thirty crown caps or thirty plastic sparkling wine stoppers, thirty wire hoods (for holding the stopper down), a wire-hood twister and a wine kit of your choice.

One word about crown caps: sparkling wine bottles from different countries have different cap diameters. Double-check with your retailer whether their stock of crown caps will fit your bottles and that they have a capper that will fit them on to your bottles. Often it’s easier just to use a plastic stopper.

You’ll also need 13⁄4 cups of table sugar, a sturdy, heat-proof measuring cup and a riddling agent (read on).

Preparing the base

1. Produce your 6-gallon (23-L) wine kit in the normal way, following all instructions for rehydration, yeast pitching, primary fermentation, etc, up to the stabilizing and clearing day. Do not add the sulphite or sorbate (stabilizers). This is crucial because these packages contain enough sulphite and potassium sorbate to prevent the wine from carbonating.

2. On the stabilizing and clearing day follow the kit instructions for fining (rack or don’t rack, add finings, stirring, etc) but do not add the stabilizers!

3. Wait ten days for the wine to clear.

4. Observe your wine. When clear (you may need to wait an extra few days or a week), it is ready to be made into sparkling wine. Don’t bother filtering it, as it will go cloudy again in the bottle. Some commercial sparkling wines that contain tannins are filtered at this stage, but it’s unnecessary for wine kits.

Bottling

1. Rack the wine from the carboy into a sanitized primary fermenter or bucket. Avoid disturbing the sediment. Make up your priming sugar by dissolving 1-3⁄4 cups white table sugar in 2 cups (~500 mL) of warm water. Stir thoroughly and gently into the wine. This sugar is what the yeast will consume to begin fermenting again,
to introduce more CO2 into the wine to carbonate it.

2. Carefully rehydrate one package of Champagne yeast (Lalvin EC-1118 is an excellent choice, although there are others) following these instructions exactly: stir the yeast into 1⁄5 cup (~50 mL) of water at 100 °F (~40 °C). Leave it to stand for ten minutes, and stir thoroughly and gently into wine.

3. Add a riddling agent. These are technically fining agents that help to compact the yeast and will make it much easier to disgorge the wine later — the smallest amount of residual sediment can cause CO2 nucleation and foaming (think of what happens if you sprinkle salt in a glass of beer, or what happens when you pour root beer over ice cream for your float). For most wine kits I recommend either bentonite or a colloidal agent such as Chitosan, added at the lowest effective dosage rate listed on the packaging. If your package doesn’t have a dosage rate, add half the amount normally used for fining in the kit you’re making: i.e., if it contained a 150 mL pack of Chitosan, add 75 mL. This will help compact the lees without stripping flavor or aroma.

4. Siphon your wine into the sparkling wine bottles, leaving 2.5 inches (7 cm) of space at the top of each bottle. This might seem like a large ullage space, but it is necessary to give enough space for the lees to collect and to allow for foaming during disgorgement.

5. If your bottles accept crown caps, cap them now. Otherwise, insert plastic stoppers and wire them down using wire cages and a wire-twisting tool.

6. Store bottles on their sides at 65–75 °F (18–24 °C) for two months to carbonate. (While traditional Champagne secondary fermentations are conducted cooler than this, field results with kit wine show that this can produce inconsistent results.)

Testing

Stand a bottle upright in your refrigerator for one week. Carefully de-cap the wine and taste it to determine if it’s finished carbonating. It should be delightfully fizzy and, while still quite green, it should show the crispness and palate pleasing character of sparkling wine. Dry, un-disgorged wines can go straight to the drinking process. All others proceed to advanced stages of riddling and disgorging.

Skipping Méthode Traditionelle drinking (difficulty level = 0)

If you’re not going through the riddling and disgorging process, simply store the bottles upright in boxes to allow the sediment to collect on the bottom. Wait two months for the wine to develop in flavor, and chill before serving. Pour carefully, leaving the last half-inch of wine in the bottle, to prevent sediment from being transferred into your glass. Yum!

Méthode Traditionelle subverted: the middle path (difficulty level = 5)

In between decanting the wine off the sediment to enjoy it, and the process of riddling and disgorgement described later in this column, there is a third way that is far less gooey and complex. As with Méthode Traditionelle you need to prepare a sweetening dosage, but instead of all the steps of riddling, freezing, disgorging, dosing and re-capping you can do a home version of Metodo Charmat-Martinotti, the Charmat process.

Invented in Italy, this is a process where the wine undergoes secondary fermentation in bulk, in large tanks. When it’s fully carbonated it’s sweetened with a dosage and bottled from there. Rather than a single large pressure tank which requires special fittings and handling equipment, you can use each individual bottle as a tank.

Leave the bottles standing upright after bottling with the priming sugar. When the secondary fermentation is complete, chill the bottles to just above freezing. Don’t freeze the wine, as ice crystals will play hob with the next step. You will need to fill another empty sparkling wine bottle with the desired level of dosage and then chill it with the full bottles. Very gently and carefully uncap/uncork the full bottles and very slowly pour the wine into the chilled, dosed second bottle. Re-cork or cap and your work is finished (apart from product testing!)

Méthode Traditionelle: for the hard-core (difficulty level = eleventy-nine)

For this step you’re going to need a full-face safety mask, heavy gloves, a rain slicker, hat and a bit of patience.

After two months, invert the bottles (place them cap down) in wine boxes to allow the yeast sediment to collect in the neck of the bottle. To assist this sediment formation, raise each bottle about 2 inches (5 cm), twist sharply 1⁄4 turn, then drop back into the box. This is called riddling and should be repeated once a day for two to three weeks. (When riddling, please wear gloves, long sleeves and a face shield or eye protection, just in case.) The inverted wine should then be aged for approximately one month, until it is completely clear.

Dosage

Disgorging results in the loss of a small amount of wine, so it’s necessary to top up bottles to avoid low fill levels and oxidation. This is also where you get to sweeten the wine, or add your F-pack/sweetener pack/Süssereserve and a little bit of sulfite to protect against oxidation.

For a completely dry sparkler choose a wine similar to your sparkling wine base. You’ll need around 20 mL per bottle (if you’re steady with the disgorging technique), which works out to just under
500 mL of wine. Ensure that the wine is thoroughly chilled before use. Adding warm wine to chilled sparkling wine will result in foaming and loss of wine.

For kits with a sweetening pack you’ll need to pre-mark a sanitary container at the 500 mL level, pour the contents of your pack in, and top it up to the one liter mark with a wine similar to your sparkling base. This will ensure that you have enough volume to top up all of your disgorging losses. If your sweetening pack is more than 500 mL, you’re going to potentially have some left over — don’t let that faze you, stick with the dosage plan.

If you wish to sweeten a kit that does not have an included sweetening pack, you’ll need to figure out just how sweet you want your wine. Check the descriptions on page 66 for styles: If a brut is your goal, you’ll need to dissolve 15 grams of sugar per liter of wine, which works out to 345 grams per 6-gallon (23-L) batch. Use a scale for accurate measurement, dissolve the sugar in your 500 mL of wine and you’ll be good to go.

To either of these solutions, you’ll need to add 1⁄4 teaspoon of metabisulfite powder dissolved in a teaspoon of waterto help prevent oxidation from any air exposure the wine could pick up in disgorging and dosing. Stir it in thoroughly.

It is a bit tricky to get exactly the right amount of sugar into each bottle when you aren’t exactly sure how much dosage you will need, so you will have to accept a bit of variability in your finished product. Not to worry — your sparkling wine will still be luscious!

Freeze!

This step freezes the plug of lees in the neck of the bottle, making it much easier to get it out without losing half of your efforts to cloudy wine or accidental gushing. You’ll need an insulated picnic cooler, crushed ice, and a pile of rock salt.

Remove the sparkling wine from the box (still inverted) and place in your refrigerator, inverted. If you’ve got room for a wine box in your fridge, this is easily accomplished. If not, carefully prop the bottles up, making sure to keep them inverted. If they get shaken up or turned over, you’ll need to re-riddle them before you can proceed.

Place a layer of crushed ice about three inches deep in the picnic cooler and for every four parts ice, add one part rock salt. This will make super-cooled brine that will very quickly freeze the sediment. Be careful not to over freeze, however, as this could cause the sediment to remain stuck in the bottle and not disgorge. Immerse the bottles upside-down in the brine, being careful not to disturb the sediment. The object is to freeze the lees and about another 1⁄2 inch (1.25 cm) of wine above it solid.

Disgorging

This is best done outdoors or in a room where the walls, floor and ceiling can easily be washed due to possible gushing of the carbonated wine. Wear gloves, long sleeves and a face shield or eye protection and a rain slicker or poncho. My colleague Daniel Pambianchi claims to be able to do this indoors with no spills or excitement, but I have it on authority that he sold his soul in exchange for mad disgorging skills — not that bad a price when you really like sparkling wine.

1. Place a bucket or primary fermenter horizontally on its side directly in front
of you to catch the expelled caps and sediment plugs.

2. Remove the bottle from the brine and double-check that the sediment is frozen into the neck of the bottle.

3. Raise the bottle to nearly horizontal and aim it at the bucket and remove the cap or undo the wire and very carefully pop the cork. The pressure will free the cork and push the sediment out of the bottle in one step. As it gushes free, quickly cover the neck of the bottle with your thumb and turn it right side up. (You need a quick thumb and a dab hand to avoid losing much wine.) Do this too slowly and you’ll see why I recommend doing it outdoors.

4. After ten or fifteen seconds release your thumb and add the dosage/topping wine. Gently pour it down the side of the bottle to prevent foaming and gushing.

5. Immediately re-cap or re-cork the bottle and wire down securely. Work fast.

6. Return your wine to your cellar and age for at least a month (to allow all the flavors to blend) before trying it.

During this aging period, monitor the bottles every few days to make sure they’re not over-carbonating or leaking. Middle-of-the-night explosions are an unfortunate signal that something is amiss. In that case you’ll need to relieve the pressure on the bottles (hopefully by chilling and drinking them) but always use safety first: face shield, heavy gloves and a heavy long-sleeved jacket will help prevent any boo-boos.

Dry sparkling wine will improve tremendously with age. While it may be tempting to drink it all as soon as it is disgorged, try keeping back a few bottles for a year or more. You’ll be delighted with the results. Sweetened sparkling wine, or that made with refreshment beverage kits will drink just fine after the first month.

Whether you’re a sparkling wine novice, or a Lily Bollinger-grade bubbly fan, making your own is not only fun, it’s a great way to tuck away a very different style of wine in your cellar, for those special occasions — like when you’re thirsty.

Every year for the Limited Edition tastings I try to switch things up a bit, to keep it fresh, and for LE 2012 I tried a completely new tack: teaching people how to taste wine. 

Ha, I hear you say, 'Tim, I've been tasting wine for years: put it into your mouth and vi-ola! The taste is there! Quit wasting my time with your science-y foolishnesses!' And you know, you're not wrong. Sometimes as wine educators we get all wrapped up in the minutiae of this delicate aroma or that subtle flavour, until before you know it we're yapping about 'a hint of May blossoms carried on a layer of spice and apricot with subtle hints of boot polish and mild regret, to a long shallow finish of duck pond and figs'. 

A few years ago I got tired of all that hoo-hah and decided to do a different kind of tasting education, based on tasting base wines against component solutions of known strength. I made up solutions of acid, tannin, alcohol, sugar and oak, and paired them with a tart, unoaked white wine and a ripe, heavily oaked red. The results have been very good, because while everyone has very different thresholds of detection for aromas, pretty much every single wine drinker can get a very good idea of what these five components represent in the balance and flavour of wine. 

I've done four of these for LE 2012, and I couldn't be happier. This year I was mainly guinea-pigging them on unsuspecting consumers, but by gum if it didn't really help folks pick out the balance of flavours in the wines, and when we immediately launched into the tasting of the LE 2012 equivalent wines, you should have seen the lights go on! 

I did one event for my friends at Northern Brewer. I got very lucky that it was in a perfect situation: not a huge crowd, in a really great educational area, and my pal Chip Walton recorded it all on video. With their permission, I'm posting it here on my blog, along with the instructions on how to do the tasting below. If you want to do this tasting event in your own home, maybe for a few friends, go right ahead: the recipes for the solutions are here, and the format is pretty clear in the video. 

If you don't want to do the tasting, you can just watch the video and enjoy it along with the crowd. Please keep in mind that the cameras add about 15 pounds and I'm more charming in real life--so my mom says. 

Winexpert Component Tasting - Northern Brewer

Component tasting solutions are made in one-litre volumes, using any commercial bottled water that is free of flavour or minerals. Generic store brands work very well. Solutions are made for oak, tannin, alcohol, sugar, and acid. When making them up, be sure to taste them as you go. The flavours should be detectable, but not overpowering. Be sure and label your mixtures, some will look similar.

Oak: bring one litre of the bottled water to a boil and add sixty grams of American oak chips (two packages) and remove from heat. Allow to cool and soak for two hours, pour through a coffee filter, and top up to one litre with more bottled water

Tannin: approximately 2 grams (1/2 teaspoon) of winemaking tannin in one litre of water. Mix very well (tannin is difficult to dissolve) and taste: it should resemble the aftertaste of strong black tea. If it is unpleasantly puckering, or if it is difficult to detect, adjust to taste.

Alcohol: replace approximately 150 ml of the water in the bottle with regular 80-proof vodka. The flavour should be vaguely sweet and slightly metallic. If you find it overpoweringly ‘boozy’ or
undetectable, adjust to taste.

Sugar: purchase fructose (fruit sugar) from a health-food store, or the health section of the supermarket. Add approximately one and one-half teaspoons (ten grams) of sugar to the litre of water. The taste should be very gently sweet.

Acid: add one-quarter teaspoon (about 1.5 grams) of tartaric acid to the litre of water. The flavour should be definitely, but faintly acidic.

These components are then tasted against a fruity, unoaked white wine, such as a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and a fruity, oaky red—Australian Shiraz works well.[The video above uses Monkey Bay Sauvignon Blanc for the white wine and Yellow Tail Shiraz for the red wine.]

First, everyone should taste both the red and the white wine, and discuss their character—open forum style. Clear the palate with water afterwards. After this the process is:

Taste the white, taste the component solution, taste the white again

Discuss

Clear the palate with water

Taste the red, taste the component solution, taste the red again

Discuss

Clear the palate with water

Repeat for next component solution

Searching for the perfect holiday gift for the topologist/mathematician/demented genius in your life? Or are you just irritated by boundaryless compact 2-manifold homeomorphs? Then have I got a solution for you! Courtesy of Bathsheba sculpture, I give you the Klein Bottle opener. 

A 3D printed sculpture, it really works. According to the (delightful) ad copy on the site: 

The problem of beer That it is within a 'bottle', i.e. a boundaryless compact 2-manifold homeomorphic to the sphere. Since beer bottles are not (usually) pathological or "wild" spheres, but smooth manifolds, they separate 3-space into two non-communicating regions: inside, containing beer, and outside, containing you. This state must not remain.

A proposed solution Clearly the elegant course is to introduce a non-orientable manifold, which has one side and does not divide 3-space. When juxtaposed with the beer-bounding manifold described above, it acts to disrupt the continuity thereof, canceling the outdated paradigm of distinction between interior and exterior. This enables the desired interaction between beer and self.

It's all so obvious, when you think about it. Or when you've had enough beer. At $72 it's a bit pricey, but you'll be the only topologist on your block with one. 

One of the fun things about our Limited Edition program is the food pairings that go with the wines, and LE 2012 has some outstanding combos. Every year we produce a recipe book that has complete instructions on how to make our favorites, and this year as an added bonus, we've had them made into mini cooking-show type segments. I've organised them here, so you can see how to prepare them and what each finished dish will look like. Yummy!

January Red, Argentine Malbec Bonarda: The Best Lamb Sandwich

January White, Argentine Torrontes: Fig and Goat Cheese Tartlet

February, Portuguese Aragones-Cabernet Sauvignon: Wild Mushroom Risotto

March, Washington Riesling-Chenin Blanc: White Bean and Truffle Toast

April, Italian Nebbiolo: Slow Braised Beef

It’s been a long time since my last update. I’m starting to think this should be my standard blog header ‘Tim Seldom Blogs’. Ah, well, it’s a busy life and I do try to keep folks updated on my Facebook and Twitter feed.

I’ve been doing my Limited Edition wine tasting events for LE 2012, which amounts to about ten weeks of travel between the last week of September and the middle of December. Even at this schedule I’m still not getting out to see everybody who wants to come to an event. Luckily for me I’ve got a trove of capable and engaging surrogates who conduct the food and wine tastings and pairings for me in places that I can’t get to in my busy travels.

In addition to our dedicated and hardworking account managers who do a bunch of events for their retail partners, we also engage the services of both Dave Laroque and Tim Ellison across Canada. Dave is a wine educator who has worked for Andrew Peller (the parent company of Winexpert) for many years and now does education and consulting events. He’s a brilliant speaker, knows a tonne about wine and is probably even funnier than me (I’m not jealous, much!) He was the first non-Tim to do consumer events for Winexpert and it’s been a joy working with him—his take on the presentation is naturally different from mine, but it’s all the better for his input and insight, and folks who get to see him are very lucky.

Tim Ellison has been doing LE events for past couple of years and he’s another treasure. A wine educator and teacher, I first saw him speak at an industry conference four years ago and thought he did a bang-up job there. Luckily he can cover the parts of British Columbia I just can’t get to, and besides, anybody named Tim is automatically smart and handsome—of course!

So far I’ve done some events for our retailers in BC (Nanaimo, Coquitlam and Kelowna), for their customers as well, and done work in Minnesota (had some fun there doing employee education events, component tastings and a video interview) Ohio, Indianapolis, Port Moody, Abbotsford, and Calgary. Tonight I’m on an Air Canada flight between Vancouver and Winnipeg: tomorrow I’ll be in Brandon doing the first of two shows there, one a component tasting and the other a standard LE food and wine event. After that it’s back to Winnipeg to finish out the week doing more component tastings and LE 2012 food and wine pairing nights, then home for Sunday breakfast and to do some laundry and back out to Denver on Monday, and the week after I’ll be in the US Northeast to do New Jersey, Pennsylvania and environs, home to check and see if I still live there and off to the Pacific Northwest for Edmonds, Seattle, and probably Portland.

Whew!

I’ve mentioned component tastings a few times. This is something new we’re trying out this year. In the past I’ve done them exclusively for our retail partners, as an educational programme. It’s pretty simple to describe, but much more fully realised in person. What we do is arrange two wines, a crisp white and a medium-bodied, oaky red with some decent tannin and we taste them against standardised solutions of

• Acid
• Tannin
• Oak
• Sugar
• Alcohol

I’ve attended other component tastings over the years and all of them have featured aromatic components. While this is a worthy and desirable endeavour, I’ve never found them completely satisfactory, reason being, everybody has very different thresholds for smelling things. What might be glaringly obvious to some folks may not even show up for others.

But not so with the basic flavour components of wine: everyone can taste the major ones, and comparing them against two wines, a fruity, crisp white and an oaky, tannic red can help most people understand the basis of wine balance and character.

If you’re interested, and can’t make one of my events, I have a treat for you. My friend Chip Walton, videographer extraordinaire over at Northern Brewer, filmed the presentation I did for their customers.

I think it turned out pretty great (except for the whole camera-adds-fifty-pounds thing) and there’s also an attached explanation at Northern Brewer’s Connect blog.

Enough lollygagging on the interwebs: I’ve got to get ready for a big day on the road—Brandon Manitoba, here I come!

Aside from being Guy Fawkes day, it's the night before America goes to the polls to determine the next four years of Presidential leadership. The time has come to put down bullhorns and the signs and pick up pens (or however they do it in your county) and mark your ballots. 

I have a long history of voting, and have not missed one election since I was eligible for the franchise. I strongly believe that the strength and health of a democracy lies solely in the hands of its citizens, and their willingness to make sure--every time--that their voice is heard, and that their vote is counted. 

For all of my American friends, whatever your political affiliation, I wish you a good day tomorrow, and may all of your voices be heard. 

Now, you may say, 'Tim, I'm a woman, and I do not have one. What could we possibly discuss?' And that's a fair comment. But while you may not have one of your own, somebody you know, and quite possibly somebody you love has one. And as a society we need to talk about them. If you or the men in your life are like my family, discussing one's plumbing or even acknowledging it was never The Done Thing.

And that's where the danger lies. Prostate cancer affects almost everyone you know, from your brothers and uncles, your fathers, sons, husbands and all of the friends you have and the ones you haven't met yet. And it's not just prostate issues that affect men's health. From movember.com: 

• The average life expectancy for men is four to five years less than women.
• 1 in 4 Canadians are expected to die from cancer.
• 1 in 7 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime.
• In 2012, 26,500 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in men and 4,000 will lose their battle.
• 1 in 4 cancer patients experience clinical depression
• Testicular cancer is the most common cancer in Canadian males between the ages of 15 and 29.
• Tobacco is the single most preventable cause of cancer in Canada, responsible for over 37,000 death annually.
• 1 in every 11 men will develop lung cancer.
• While not as common, men can get breast cancer. About 200 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed among men and about 55 men will die from the disease.
• More than 75,000 cases of non-melanoma skin cancer are diagnosed each year in Canada.
• An estimated 6.6% of the population over the age of 20 has diabetes in Canada.
• Approximately 6 million Canadian adults have high blood pressure, representing 19% of the adult population; 17% are unaware of their condition. Even 30 year olds can have high blood pressure!
• 1 in 5 of Canadians will personally experience a mental illness each year
• Four times as many men commit suicide compared with women

So what can we do? It sure can't help to throw a little money the way of men's health. To that end, I've joined up with Movember. From their site:

During November each year, Movember is responsible for the sprouting of moustaches on thousands of men’s faces, in Canada and around the world. With their “Mo’s”, these men raise vital funds and awareness for men's health, specifically prostate cancer and male mental health initiatives.

On Movember 1st, guys register at Movember.com with a clean-shaven face. For the rest of the month, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Supported by the women in their lives, Mo Sistas, Movember Mo Bros raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts.

Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November. Through their actions and words, they raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

And here is what I've done:

Man, do I feel naked. But it's for a good cause. And I hope my blog readers will help out: you can check out my Movember donation page and contribute to me and my team. The money will go to men's health, and I'll post a picture of my re-growing mo every day to my Facebook page so you can see my progress. As an added bonus I've made a video of my shaving adventures which you can view here: My First Shave. 

We all get asked to donate a lot these days, and there are many deserving causes. I feel this one personally, both for the friends and family who are directly affected, and by the way it affects their loved ones. If you can contribute, I'd love it, but in any case, rest assured that I'm growing it back as fast as I can!