SonkinCellars - Our first barrels are filled!

I just returned from pressing out the first barrels of SonkinCellars wine.  These particular grapes came from the Whitehawk vineyard in Santa Barbara County in California’s central coast.  It was a very exciting experience.

Entering the winery during Crush (the period when wines is fermenting in vats) is a heady experience that is hard to describe.  Although it was warm outside, the winery has a cool comfort.  As I walked in, the first sensation is one of cool temperature on my face.  Quickly those tactile sensations are replaced by olfactory ones.  For many wine geeks, the smell is akin to the bell for Pavlov’s dog.  The scents of grapes and yeast dominate the senses.  Those comfort like sensations similar to those one gets from walking into a bakery seemed to be hard wired into my brain as I both relax and feel heightened senses.  The yeasty fermenting grapes aromas are filling and mouthwatering. 

I couldn’t wait to glimpse our fruit.  As I inspected the Bin filled with the skins of grapes and the juice, it was such a gratifying feeling.  The grapes had been picked a few weeks before, but now, after a careful sorting to remove sticks, stones, and bugs, etc., the grapes had now fermented into wine.

Let me digress for a moment.  People are always asking me, what kind of wine I am going to make.  While it is somewhat cliché, the answer is one that nature, the vineyard, and the vintage give me.  What does that really mean?  It means I love Hermitage wines from the northern Rhone.  They are some of my favorite wines on the planet.  But I am not making wines in the Northern Rhone.  I am making wine in California.  I believe a winemaker who tries to stamp their imprint too harshly on a wine, ends up sacrificing the wines soul.  Yes, I believe the best wines have soul. 

These particular grapes grew in a warm vineyard.  That meant to get properly ripened they were allowed to hang on the vine.  The risk of a long hang time is that the sugar levels will rise too high.  It is a balancing act as too high sugar levels will make for a wine with very high alcohol levels.  While not necessarily bad per se, we are trying to achieve more elegance in our wines without super high alcohol levels. 

At the end of the day (or vintage cycle?), I need to be producing a wine that I like.  First, to do otherwise flirts with making a soulless wine, and second, if no one buys the wine, I am going to have to drink it.  So the question is how to make the wine I love in California? 

The first step everyone knows.  Start in the vineyard.  Get good sources for the fruit and make sure it is well taken care of.  With Whitehawk vineyard, that part was accomplished.  For me, the second part was also not difficult.  It just required a bit of thinking outside the box.  Our answer – blend.  California is a variety of climates and micro-climates.  The soils are different from vineyard to region.  The French use the word terroir to describe the attributes that can make wines made in the same manner but from just a few meters away, noticeably different.  Terroir are the factors including the soil but the angle of the sun, the altitude, the living creatures in the soil, the climate (aside from vintage characteristics), and everything else that make the vineyard special.  Some discount this notion.  I do not.  I believe in terroir.  But, just because I believe in it, does not mean I think it has to be bottled separately.  At SonkinCellars, we plan on creating our wines by combining vineyards that give us those attributes we want for our finished wine. 

And so, here I stood, waiting to see, smell and taste the first vineyard to give me wine.  All right, this was very young wine to be sure and over a year away from being put into a bottle.  But, it was a glimpse, my first glimpse and I was excited. 

The Whitehawk fruit came in ripe.  The summer was uneventful and the grapes were picked before any of the October rains hit California.  In wine speak, the grapes came in around 27 brix.  We allowed the grapes to rest at a cool enough temperature to prohibit fermentation for a few days.  A small amount (around 2%) of Viognier skins were added to the bin.  Then they grapes were inoculated with yeast.  Since we produce wines in a shared facility, it was important to avoid (as best as we could) feral yeast strains floating in the air.  Different strains have different effects on the wines and we used a Syrah yeast.  Fermentation took a couple of weeks until the wine was basically bone dry meaning the yeasts had consumed all of the sugar.  We toyed with the idea of extended maceration.  That is, putting the bin of grape must and juice in a cold are to allow the juice to absorb more color and tannins from the skin.  As it turned out, the juice was inky dark purple and we were ready to press and barrel. 

Press means that the grape must is gently squeezed to get every last drop.  Actually, you don’t want every last drop as the more you press the more bitter the wine gets.  This is another balancing act.  Besides wanting to get more juice, the press juice gives the wine more structure and tannins that will allow it to age and have complexity.  Once the press is completed, the barrels are filled and the extra is properly stored to be used to topping off the barrels as they evaporate. 

Before I left, however, I poured two glasses of wine.  The first was from a 1999 Chave Hermitage, and the second was a 2009 SonkinCellars Whitehawk syrah.  Now the later wine, will not be commercially released as such (we will most likely blend it with other vineyard(s) prior to releasing our inaugural vintage).  And how did they taste?  They were both excellent.  The Chave is still very young but with a nose that is the Northern Rhone; black olives, spices, hints of mint, boysenberries and layers of tight complexity.  Will our wines be like this?  No, that would not be what makes California Syrah so special.

The Whitehawk was, however, everything I hoped for.  It demonstrated sunshine, fruit, and exuberance.  It has gorgeous tight red and purple berry fruit.  Some hint of grilled meats.  This will be a powerful wine but short of over the top.  In short, I smiled and kept smiling as I tasted it.  Yet, this is not the end of the story.  As I sipped the wine, our remaining grapes were still on the vine.  Our plan is to blend this wine, with wine from the Alder Spring vineyard in Mendocino.  As you are reading this, those grapes will undoubtedly have already been picked and have made their way to the winery.  While I can’t wait to see what they have in store, I am even more anxious to see what happens when in the spring of 2011, we start blending the barrels.