IYKYK........
What's in your glass tonight?
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Shots. Tequila. Blanco and Resposado. Owners are friends in Fredericksburg 
My next-to-last bottle of a FWK Tavola Pinot Noir, coming up on 3 years old.
It's holding well at 3 yo; the quality is fine and the longevity is great. However, I'd not make another Tavola without 1 skin pack. I intentionally made it as a concentrate only, wanting a quicker drinker. In hindsight it's too light bodied for my taste.
However, it's a fantastic cooking wine for beef. Tonight I pressure cooked stew beef with onion and mushrooms, and this wine make a VERY rich sauce.
It's holding well at 3 yo; the quality is fine and the longevity is great. However, I'd not make another Tavola without 1 skin pack. I intentionally made it as a concentrate only, wanting a quicker drinker. In hindsight it's too light bodied for my taste.
However, it's a fantastic cooking wine for beef. Tonight I pressure cooked stew beef with onion and mushrooms, and this wine make a VERY rich sauce.
retaste:
Appearance - clear, deep, lemon yellow
Smell - good creamy, fragrant muscat nose that lingers
Tannin - good
Acid - good
Flavour - this is very tasty and fragrant with a really good finish. It should improve as it ages with the potential to become very good-excellent. So I'll try to age much of it. Consider adding citric acid to any flat Chardonnay. 71B gives you a good nose but drops the acid. Its a good yeast candidate for a white hybrid grape.
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retaste
Colour - deep yellow with very slight gold
Smell - very nice and complex - bananas, lychees, pears, honeydew melon, papaya
Tannin - good
Acid - good
Flavour - rich, complex Chardonnay with a really nice aftertaste. I have one left. This is excellent. So I'll age the last one so I can see how it morphs over time.
retaste:
Appearance - clear gold
Smell - honey smell is dominant, lingering complex interesting nose:
Tannin - good from the russet apples
Acid - good
Flavour - intense cyser. very pleasant, with a long finish, slightly sweet. Because of the colour it is probably peaking so I'll use what I left to make prawn linguine this week.
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retaste:
Appearance - clear deep lemon yellow
Smell - intense buttered popcorn, limes, lemon meringue (the lemon meringue smell is new and interesting)
Tannin - good
Acid - good
Flavour - This is improving. I think it is very good right now and totally different from any Chardonnay we've ever made. This is my first home made Viognier ever. I like it and would make it again along with the Orange Muscat. Chardonnay seems to be a really good blender.
I'd tap that... but I have never come across it. Where do you get it in your neck of the woods?
jswordy
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It usually comes on the truck by the case from Woods Wholesale. I'm told it is also available at some Total Wine & More stores, but the nearest one to me is 2 hours away.
World Market has carried it.
jswordy
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Don't even know what that is.
https://www.worldmarket.com
It's mostly overpriced furniture and junk. However, the one local to me has a decent wine selection at reasonable prices, nice coffee selection, low priced spices, and a variety of foreign (to USA) snack food stuffs. I go each November to buy stocking stuffers for the family.
jswordy
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Yeah, I Googled it. Nearest store is like 2-1/2 hours away. Shrug. The truck brings the wine just fine.
It's not a regular stop for me, except once in November. Most of the products are not of interest, and a lot are overpriced.
But the stocking stuffers for the adults are fun. My sons may be adults, but they still love pulling stuff out of the stockings.
Marechal Foch 2024
This is tasted from a carboy into a glass and sweetened in the glass with corn sugar (dextrose) to SG 1.002. It is homegrown SG 1.076 chaptalized to 1.085 crushed, pressed and fermented without skin contact i.e. juice only with 71B yeast. It has dropped a pile of tartrates in the carboy. Here are my tasting comments:
Appearance - clear deep red i.e. ultra-dark rose
Smell - good nose - red currants, cherries, sour cherries
Tannin - good
Acid - slightly high so I resweetened it to SG 1.010 which seems to balance the acid.
Flavour - this is ok, not great but ok. It has a good aftertaste. I may bottle some of it like this say 12 bottles out of about 50 and blend the rest with something lower in acid like dead ripe wild 2025 blackberries or even juice in a pail like Fresco Grenache to drop the acid and improve the smell. This will be fun to play with. Right now I'd rate it as fairly good with the potential to become good on blending.
This is tasted from a carboy into a glass and sweetened in the glass with corn sugar (dextrose) to SG 1.002. It is homegrown SG 1.076 chaptalized to 1.085 crushed, pressed and fermented without skin contact i.e. juice only with 71B yeast. It has dropped a pile of tartrates in the carboy. Here are my tasting comments:
Appearance - clear deep red i.e. ultra-dark rose
Smell - good nose - red currants, cherries, sour cherries
Tannin - good
Acid - slightly high so I resweetened it to SG 1.010 which seems to balance the acid.
Flavour - this is ok, not great but ok. It has a good aftertaste. I may bottle some of it like this say 12 bottles out of about 50 and blend the rest with something lower in acid like dead ripe wild 2025 blackberries or even juice in a pail like Fresco Grenache to drop the acid and improve the smell. This will be fun to play with. Right now I'd rate it as fairly good with the potential to become good on blending.
I think that the Fresco Chilean Viognier really helped it along with killer Macintosh and Russet juice plus unpasteurized honey. Certainly it wasn't my homegrown grapes at SG 1.073 i.e the low end SG for German Kabinett wines. Last years brix/SG on my culled white wine grapes is the lowest that I've seen since 1991. This blend proves that if you are careful, discerning, patient and creative (willing to experiment) you can fix almost anything. The secret in this case is to have lots of different options so you can play with blends. This is a killer blend which I am tasting now from an opened bottle in my fridge. White wine can change quickly so I'll give you my tasting comments on today's sample (I do this not to inflate my ego but to teach beginners that all is not lost when they create something slightly out of whack to try to create something better - e.g. "the bitter Merlot" which we are trying to help a winemaker fix). I think we should start a thread called "Slightly out of Whack". I offer my 2024 Marechal Foch to that thread. The "bitter Merlot" goes in there as well. Here are my tasting comments before I go upstairs and cook prawn linguine with my peaked but not oxidized golden Cyser.
Appearance - deep lemon yellow
Smell - really good, complex nose that lingers - key lime pie, lemon meringue, honey, apples
Tannin - good
Acid - good
Flavour - rich, complex white wine. I'm using it as a house wine. It has a killer aftertaste and I would make it again in a heartbeat. I would need the Chilean Viognier to do it, which I won't necessarily have this year, but that is OK since I have 16 of these and could save the last 4 to see how they age over 4 years and or give some of them away to my female yoga instructor soulmates since they deserve platonic wine love and are all wine afficionados.
As always I wish you all the best of luck with all of your wines. If you hit a wall on anything, post your issue here. This is a really good website with some really good winemakers who will help evolve your skill in a really good way. The "ego" push on this website is minimal i.e. everyone pays attention to everyone without judgment so you can relax and learn at high speed. Namaste Klaus.
VinesnBines
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Fascinating the difference in climate for producing Foch. My 2024 Foch was harvested on 9/3, crushed on 9/4 with sg of 1.100 and ph 3.41. I fermented on the skins for 13 days before pressing. Yeast was a blend of Avante, Bravo and D254. MLF after pressing - Lalvin 31. Racked to a barrel on 10/28. The last barrel topping was 12/25. The appearance is deep red, beautiful nose of dark fruits. It has medium tannins and very low acid. No after bite of acid or sharpness. Taste is smooth and wonderful flavor. Right now this is better than the 2024 Chambourcin.
I’ll keep this barrel as a single varietal. I have some 2024 Foch to blend with Baco Noir, Chelois and possibly Chambourcin.
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