Our Wine

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Reading a fairly recent WS blog by James Laube about winemakers with style reminded me of what Scott has been saying since ’45:

“I don’t make wine for anyone except me.”

“Wait. Woah. Hold on, Hoss,”

I’d say to him.

“How the hell are we supposed to sell wine you only make for yourself?!”

Even before planting the vineyard we had talked about not catering to the critic’s palate, and for sure not rushing after or trying to predict the wine flavour of the day. That wasn’t the point of any of this. But to hear Scott put it out there on the table so, well, matter-of-factly (or egoistically, depending on how one feels AT THE TIME), I was taken aback, made a little nervous.

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Last week we tasted our very first bottled wine we made from our vineyard. What follows are some particulars regarding it.

The goal for our Riesling is to make it bone dry. No residual sugar. We planted Riesling because that is Scott’s favorite white wine. We have 4 rows’ worth on the south side, and around 3 acres on the north, for around 3.5 acres in total. Since our budget has only allowed us to trellis the south side, it is from here, some of the steepest ground on our site, where we take our harvest to date.

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[We tasted some of our wine last week. A Riesling. What we thought of it is in the next post.]

There it was. A bottle of wine from our vineyard on our kitchen table. Our wine. That we made. At long last. I couldn’t believe it.

You ever look at a “long-term project,” could be something or someone—like finally doing that remodel, the long-awaited high-school graduation of your more “difficult” child, that friend who simply never learns, making peace with an in-law or own parent…—and in a moment of realization, no matter how brief or lasting, you are simply thrilled by what’s there? “Ahh, look,” you might think, “all the WORK and TIME and EFFORT and SACRIFICE worked out. For all of us.” You pat yourself on the back, thankful that you never stopped believing. Or, if you did stop believing somewhere along the journey, it could go the other way, and you think, “[Expletive!] All that and for what? This?!”

I must confess: I was pretty excited by the fact that there was a bottle of our wine—OUR VERY FIRST BOTTLE!— sitting on our table, and secretly hoped I would be in my former category of long-term project reactions. But I am torn in this endeavor. I am. At times glowingly on board, I am a great believer, at others, I wish for my own quiet mountaintop to simply get away. But I am on no mountaintop, and there was our wine. Read the rest of this entry »

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