What a great opportunity, Fred! Anxious to hear how it goes.
Well it was very interesting and longer than I expected. We spent 3 ½ hours tasting and talking about wine making. In a nut shell he was very complimentary about my basic wine making and science skills. What he said I should consider improving is the artistic side. Mostly making post fermentation adjustment earlier in the process. However he would always reinforce it’s a style thing and his may be different from mine both in taste and procedure but there are basics I should follow.
He suggested adjusting the acid and S02 immediately after MLF and always adjust acid before adding tannins. I can’t remember why but he related it to construction in you can’t build a wall before the foundation because it can’t be supported.
As far as oak and primarily barrel oak he is not a fan of an over oaky wine and would prefer to add body with tannins. His recommended tannin is Scotts Tannin Estate which he told me about earlier but I cannot find on any of our online sites. In the end though he emphasized style.
He was not a fan of racking with the AIO in the wines early stages because he feels it doesn’t allow enough O2 to be added to the wine which he says is very important. I explained the splash rack cane but his response is you were removing the air you were also removing the wines ability to absorb the O2. He did like the bottling feature though.
There’s lots more things we talked about but a couple interesting things were when he imports whites from the west coast he gets juice not grapes. This is something Jim and I were debating but I think I’ll still do grapes for whites. This unrelated to wine making but interesting, with the weather we had in Virginia last year resulting in an unusually poor harvest, the State increased the amount of imported fruit allowed to still call it Virginia wine.
P.S. there was no spitting, in fact just the opposite. Addition samples of several of the wines were poured. Afterward we opened a bottle of the Norton blend and sat and chatted. Next will be a private barrel tasting of his 2017 and 2018’s.
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