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Midwest Wine Press Top Viticulture Stories For 2012

2 Jan

This article was first published in Midwest Wine Press and is written by Mark Ganchiff

Some of the most popular stories in Midwest Wine Press are about growing wine grapes. At Midwest Wine Press, we pride ourselves on being the only publication that consistently covers Midwest viticulture. Other topics we cover - like winemaking, winery marketing and interviews with regional experts – are all important.  But the key driver for growth of the Midwest wine industry is increasing regional grape production.

Vineyard at Black Star Farms in Leelanau Peninsula Michigan

Vineyard at Black Star Farms in Leelanau Peninsula Michigan

Midwest Wine Press Top Viticulture Stories For 2012

1. John Marshall: Forst Protection for the Small Grower

2. Grape Freeze Damage Extensive in OH, NY, MI

3. Brianna Grape is Midwest’s New Tropical Fruit

4. Winemakers Love Southern Illinois Grape Growers

5. Offbeat European Grapes Growing Across Midwest

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Bottle Shock: Why aren’t Local Wines in More Restaurants and MO and KS Wines in TV Blind Tasting

24 Jun

Here’s the full Kansas City Public Television (KCPT) half-hour show about regional wines and their absence from Kansas City wine lists, plus the big grape showdown where Missouri and Kansas wines take on the French and Californians in a blind tasting – and win!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kskvjN1Zhno&feature=player_embedded

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Bottle Shock Redux: Missouri Wines Triumph in Blind Tasting

22 Jun

In yesterday night’s regional wine special and blind tasting on ‘The Local Show’ on Kansas City Public Television (KCPT), Belvoir Winery’s Plumeria and Stone Hill’s 2008 Norton received the most points in their white and red blind tasting sections.  What a great result! Both sections included competition from well respected Californian – Rodney Strong Vineyards – or awarded French wine makers – Baron Rothschild and Gerard Bertrand.  The ‘wild card’ randomly chosen wine – $3 chuck from Trader Joe’s – was cause for a bit of giggling and the five blind tasters from Belvoir customer Lucinda to former football star Eddie were chatty and articulate about he wines and their scoring.  Show hosts Nick Haines and Randy Mason lucidly knitted the show together and wine expert Doug Frost provided engaging commentary and explanation as to what was going on as the wine tasters responded and scored the various wines.  Emily Ghertner and Eric Mater produced the show with flair and calm (a good combination!)  and the editing job was great.  It was a lot of fun and hopefully helped to squeeze out some of the stigma against local wines and show that Midwest wines can rub shoulders with the best!  Hopefully we can have another round some time.

Here are the full points scores and wine descriptions courtesy of KCPT:

THE WHITES

A Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Bordeaux, France
THE WINE: Mouton Cadet Blanc, 2007 – $12.99 retail

From one of France’s legendary and most well known winemakers, a white blend of Sauvignon Blanc (40%), Semillon (50%) and Muscadelle (10%)

Total Score: 10

B Belvoir Winery, Liberty, Missouri
THE WINE: Plumeria – a blend of Traminette, Vignoles and Seyval – $18 at the winery

The wine is named after the owner, Dr John Bean’s, late wife’s favorite flower. The winery is located in an impressive Jacobethan Revival style building that was a former orphanage for the International Order of Odd Fellows.

Total Score: 21

C Holy-Field Vineyard & Winery, Basehor, Kansas
THE WINE: Seyval, Kansas Table Wine – $12.95 at winery and retail (only available in Kansas)

Holy-Field is a father and daughter team – Les and Michelle Meyer – who pride themselves on their canine ambassadors who feature on some of the wine labels. The dogs are: Vinnie, Bacchus, Corkie and Sinbad

Total Score: 17

D Charles Shaw Winery, Napa and Sonoma, California
THE WINE: Chardonnay, 2010 – $2.99 at Trader Joe’s grocery store

The wine is affectionately known as ‘two buck chuck’

Total Score: 11

E Chateau Ste Michelle, Washington State
THE WINE: Chardonnay, 2010, – $12.99 retail

A respected wine making region of the US. This winemaker is often in grocery stores and on restaurant wine lists in Kansas City.

Total Score: 18

THE REDS

A Rodney Strong Vineyards, Sonoma County
THE WINE: Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006 – $17.99 retail

A California Sonoma red that is often seen in Kansas City grocery stores, liquor stores on on restaurant wine lists.

Total Score: 11

B Jowler Creek, Platte County, Missouri
THE WINE: Chambourcin, 2010 – $19 at the winery and retail

Jowler Creek emphasize their sustainable vineyard practices. They use Olde English Babydoll sheep to control grass and weed growth.

Total Score: 4

C Stone Hill Winery, Hermann, Missouri
THE WINE: Norton, 2008 – $18.99 at the winery and retail

Stone Hill is Missouri’s second biggest winemaker producing 260,000 gallons of wine in 2011. They’ve been making Norton for decades. A Stone Hill Norton is thought to have won the prestigious award for best red wine “of all nations” at an international competition in Vienna in 1873.

Total Score: 21.5

D Gerard Bertrand, Languedoc Pic Saint Loup, Narbonne (Languedoc-Roussillon region, on the coast, south of Marseille) France
THE WINE: Grand Terroir, 2005 – $16.99

European Winery of the Year for 2012 in Wine Enthusiast Magazine’s annual Wine Star Awards. Wine Spectator magazine’s ‘Best Value Winery From France’ in 2008.

Total Score: 14

E Charles Shaw Winery, Napa and Sonoma, California
THE WINE: Cabernet Sauvignon, 2011 – $2.99 at Trader Joe’s grocery store

The wine is affectionately known as ‘two buck chuck’

Total Score: 20

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Midwest Wines vs The Rest of the World

20 Jun

Tomorrow, Thursday June 21st from 730pm on Kansas City Public Television (KCPT) it’s the battle of the grape.  Two blind tastings, one for reds and another for whites, will determine if wines from Missouri and Kansas can compare with the best wine making regions in the world.   The show also tackles the issue of why most restaurants in Kansas City (and in cities all over MO and KS) are happy to serve local food, but don’t serve local wines.  The blind tastings will help determine if the preference for Californian, French and other international wines is actually fair and based on quality and customer preferences, or just a result of inertia, snobbery, ignorance – or all three.

White paper bags look quite classy don’t you think?

Surely if French and Californian wines are so good and the local wines so poor, the blind tasters will prefer those? The restaurants will be proved right afterall…but if MO and KS wines do well hopefully it will be a small wake-up call to consumers and restaurants alike.

So tune in to KCPT on tomorrow! Or come to Belvoir Winery in Liberty where we’ll be watching the show.

Lucinda, Stretch and Katie Van Luchene rehearse raising their numbers

I tried hard to make this a fair contest.  The five reds and five whites in each tasting cost between $12 and $20 retail, except for a ‘wild card’ that could cost anything.  Two of the wines in each red or white tasting are from MO or KS, one is from California, one from France  and one that ‘wild card’ that could be from anywhere.

The basis of prejudice against MO and KS wines is often based on their tendency to be sweet.  People seem to think that sweet is all the Midwest does well and discount the quality dry stuff that has emerged and is emerging all over the place.  This tasting will be meeting Californian and French wines on their own terms: all the reds competing are dry and all the whites are dry or semi-dry.

I was also conscious of how the order in which the bottles would be tasted could confer an advantage.  It is probably not ideal to be the first wine tasted, or the last.  The order of the tasting was determined by me reaching blindly into a case where I’d place the bottles and pulling the bottles out, lottery style, one by one.

The bottles were placed in white paper bags and each labelled with a letter – A to E.

From left to right: Nick Haines, KCPT host, Stretch, Lucinda, Stephen Molloy, Katie Van Luchene, Eddie Kennison and Doug Frost.

The 5 blind tasters were chosen to be widely representative of wine lovers and to be fun – there’s a mixture of celebrities (Eddie Kennison and Stretch), wine and food experts (Stephen Molloy and Katie Van Luchene) and Lucinda, a young woman and regular customer at Belvoir winery, chosen to represent ‘normal’ people (possibly like you?).  They all like a wide range of wines.  Overseeing them and to offer his analysis, wine brain and expert, Doug Frost.

The blind tasters are not comparing the wines to each other, they’re just making a very simple judgement: how much do they like each wine and why? In other words, how does the wine they’re blind tasting compare to their idea of the perfect white or red?  They mark each one with 1 to 5 points, 1 being ‘not to my taste or ‘I don’t like it’, up to 5, which means ‘excellent ‘ or ‘I love it’.

So tune in! Will this be a humiliation for the Midwest wine industry?  Or will this be a case of Bottle Shock and a humbling experience for  French and California? Find out on Thursday at 730pm…

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“E” Gives “D” Wine Marketing Advice

7 Mar

Here’s another tale from February’s Midwest Wine Conference in St Charles.  In the upstairs section of the venue I stumbled on Elizabeth Slater, founder of In Short Direct Marketing, who gave a series of seminars on wine marketing and also spoke at the conference.  Elizabeth was sitting down with the owner of a regional winery who had some questions about the labeling on her wine bottles and how to attract more visitors to her tasting room.   Elizabeth and the winery owner (who preferred anonymity) allowed me to sit in on their conversation and take notes for this blog.

Elizabeth Slater, founder of In Short Direct Marketing

Elizabeth Slater, founder of In Short Direct Marketing

Elizabeth likes to be called, and is widely known as, “E”, so from this point onwards in this blog post, Elizabeth will be referred to as “E” and the anonymous winery owner will go by “D”.  From the start I was impressed by E’s sensible and insightful advice.  She was the sort of person who makes you think to yourself, “Why didn’t I think of that!” and “Yes, that makes sense” – a lot.

Much of the conversation – about twenty minutes – was about bottle labeling.  D the winery owner was concerned about her logo and the style of the labeling.  E stressed the importance of sticking with a logo and making sure it remained in the same style and font on every bottle.  It turned out this particular winery had been playing around with the logo in the last couple of years and E said that was undoing good work by confusing customers who might have recognized the label in its old format.    Once you have a logo, said E, you have to stick with it to allow customers time – many months or even years – to get used to you enough to start recognizing your bottles in the grocery store.   She said the other decorative elements and writing on the label can change, but the logo must remain the same in order to build recognition of your brand.

As far attracting more visitors to the tasting room, E’s approach was to make D see herself as the creator of an experience.  “Winemakers are the rock stars these days,” she said, in other words, one reason people visit wineries is to enjoy meeting the winemaker.  E said it was also important to remember that wine lovers drink wine with their friends and fellow wine lovers, so once you’ve given one wine lover a good experience in your tasting room, you’re likely to attract more customers – ie their friends.  “One customer at a time…it’s about giving them a story to tell their friends,” said E.  That good story or experience to relate about what they discovered at your wine tasting venue should help up the visitor numbers.  “It’s not about the wine, it’s about the experience,” said E, but of course it’s a given that the wines have to be good.

“it’s about giving them a story to tell their friends”

Bottles searching for labels at the Midwest Wine Conference

As far as how to decide what sorts of experiences to provide in your tasting room, ask your customers what they want.  If possible, E suggests sending your customers a questionnaire via email and ask them things like what they like about the winery, what they don’t like and what they’d like to see there.   Given that many wineries are at least an hour’s drive from a lot of their customers, it’s also important to make sure you serve food so that people know they can come out and spend time there and not get  hungry.

D the winery owner also brought up the issue of whether to charge for tastings.  She explained that they recently decided to charge but had a couple of complaints from customers.  E thought it was a good idea to charge and said you can’t expect to please everyone but suggested offering one free sample as a way of compromising and keeping most people happy.

The conversation continued and moved onto sweet wines.  Given the popularity of sweets wines in regional USA, D told E she was looking at adding a sweet red to her wine list.   D said a “pretty high” number of her customers wanted sweet wines and her winery offered only dry wines apart from her slightly sweet Riesling.  E thought a sweet red was a good idea but D said she struggled with this because she didn’t like sweet reds.   At this point D made an interesting observation that other winery owners may be interested in confirming or commenting on.  She said people who prefer sweet wines tend not to buy in volume – they’ll come into the wine shop and buy a bottle or two – but those who prefer dry wines often buy by the case.  At this point I excused myself from the conversation because I had to start the long drive home to Liberty.  Thank you E and D!

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Midwest Wine Conference: Your Local Barrel Maker

27 Feb

When I first spotted the A & K Cooperage booth on the trade show floor at the Midwest Wine Conference, I thought it was a rest area for the conference goers.  Somewhere to lean over a barrel and have a chat.  But Matt Kirby caught my eye and it was soon pretty clear this was another interesting topic for a blog.

Matt Kirby, A & K Cooperage at the Midwest Wine Conference

This year it’s forty years since Matt’s father and grandfather started their Midwest barrel making operation located in Higbee, Missouri.  Today, the family employs about ten people and usually assembles between 4 to 5000 oak barrels per year. Much of construction is done by hand.  “Our standard barrel is a 60 gallon American oak barrel,” says Matt.  At $330 per barrel this local option for aging wine is a lot cheaper than importing French or other European oak barrels.  French oak can cost about $1000 a barrel by the time you’ve organized transport to the US.  There are other reasons for going local.  When I was in Spain a few years ago, a farmer I knew from Merida, in the region of Extremadura (a Spanish region not renowned for its wines – a bit like the Midwest in some ways) said he wanted to grow vines on his farm and age the wine in French oak, but because French oak was in such high demand, he was faced with a wait of at least several years for a barrel.  Here’s an article in Wines & Vines that compares the costs in recent years of French, European and American Oak.

According to Matt there’s another good reason for choosing an American barrel over a European one and it allows me to bring back, with a vengeance, the topic of the Norton grape.  That’s because Matt makes wine as well – mainly sweeter varieties but also the Norton.  They don’t grow the grapes but bring them in and use their barrels to age them.  A & K Cooperage say they’re the only cooperage and bonded winery on the same grounds in the United States.  With his Norton Matt says, “I try to really cut the acid out of it and make it smooth.  I think you really need to give it a lot of time in the barrel.  I think a Missouri Norton really needs American oak to help tame it down.  It helps smooth it out a lot.” And it needs at least two years in the barrel, he says.

At the moment, most of A & K Cooperage’s barrels get sold outside Missouri.  One winery in California, Silver Oak Cellars, buys half of what they make each year, or about 2500 barrels.  But in the last 6 years or so, along with and because of the sprouting of dozens of new wineries in the Midwest, their business has been growing in Missouri and they now sell up to 200 barrels locally.  At the Midwest Wine Conference Matt said he’d sold about 30 more.

“I think it’s just really good to push your local products that are growing right there in your own grounds.” He says. “I think that’s a big part of our industry – push local.”

But as the industry grows creating both opportunities and the prospect of more competition, one big issue for Matt’s barrel company is finding the funds to do marketing and choosing how exactly to do it via social media, TV, radio or print:  “that’s the most expensive part of the game right now,” he says.  A timely reminder – see below!

The author, Danny, is an Australian gun for hire who’s just moved to the Midwest from Spain via San Francisco.  Apart from being a wine lover, he’s a former BBC News reporter and a history documentary maker. If you need videos for your website to tell the unique stories about you and your winery, its people and history, highlighting your quality wines and awards, please get in touch.  Or if your winery’s website or blog is languishing without any content, and needs articles or blog entries, also get in touch.  I can also set up your internet social media for you, from websites to Twitter. Email danjwood@hotmail.com or call             816 863 2496      

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Historic Downtown Liberty Promotes Missouri Wines

20 Feb

On Saturday there was an annual wine tasting event just around the corner from my house.  Let’s Wine About Winter, organized by

Liberty Square sunshine on the day of "Let's Wine About Winter"

Historic Downtown Liberty Inc., involved the shops on the pretty Liberty square (site of the first daylight bank robberyin US history, thought to have been performed by the Jesse James gang) providing a selection of free wine on a sort of round the square wine crawl.   You bought a wine glass for $10 and then strolled around on a gorgeous sunny spring like winter’s day, popping in and out of the shops, tasting wines.  Each participating shop chose its wine and the great thing about their selections was that about half of them were local Missouri wines. This surprised me given that you might expect high-end clothes boutiques, antiques and nick nack stores to favor high-end Californian or French stuff – but not on Liberty Square!

Cathie Meyer, owner of "Quotations" boutique, and to her right, Amigoni Winery's Cabernet-Franc

While the restaurants in Kansas City might generally be neglecting their local wineries, the Liberty shop owners proudly poured wines from Jowler Creek Vineyard, Amigoni Urban Winery, Westphalia Vineyards and Crown Valley Winery.   It was a popular event – there we dozens of people out.   In fact, since moving to Liberty in November, I haven’t seen so many people on the old downtown square.  It was a great way for the locals to explore the shops and for the owners to get to know their potential customers over a vino.

Heather Chaney and Anna Wright with Jowler Creek wines in their "Catfish & Tater" boutique

Liberty square's "Let's Wine About Winter"

Daphne Bowman from "Willow Spring Mercantile", that specialises in Missouri wines, pours for two wine tasters in "The Polished Edge" jeweller

In the foreground, Vicky Burnett considers her next wine stop after sampling some Spanish vino in "Crepes on the Square", as owner Neil Battrum serves wine tasters

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Midwest Wine Conference: Missouri’s First Mobile Bottling Trailer

17 Feb

In the foyer of the Midwest Grape & Wine Conference, to the right of the registration desk, there was a large, white vehicle that looked to me like an ambulance.  It was ready for action with its back door open and I could see a man inside, who I assumed was a medic, probably checking heart monitors and other instruments.   I know health care in this country is expensive and problematic so I thought to myself, “This is great! At least this conference is concerned about peoples’ health – they even have an ambulance standing by in case people get a bit too excited about the free bar.”  I realized my mistaken assumption a bit later when Danene Beedle from Missouri Wines told me that the vehicle I’d seen in the foyer was in fact a brand new, mobile bottling trailer belonging to Old Woolam Custom Bottling  – the first bottling operation of its kind in Missouri.

Brent Baker's mobile bottling trailer

Brent Baker, the man inside the vehicle, turned out to be the head bottler (rather than a medic).  He said their service is for wineries that don’t have their own bottling machinery. “We can run about 1200 bottles an hour and that is filling, corking, capsuling and labeling.  So we have empty bottles after the rinse go into the machine, they get filled and when they come out they’re complete and ready to sell.”  Brent says their operation can save winery owners a lot of time. “When you’ve got to bottle, you can spend a full day doing 150 to 200 cases by hand, when we can do about 600 in a day”, he says, “and so they can focus more on perfecting the craft of making wine, going out and doing sales and marketing and self-distribution.”

Brent’s business is a Missouri first, but he said mobile bottling is widespread across Europe, Australia, New Zealand and also California, where there are about 100 mobile bottlers and many of the wineries, even the larger ones, prefer this method to either having their own machinery or sending their grape juice away to be bottled. “Mobile bottling is very big in California, Washington, Oregon and becoming very big in Virginia, New York and Texas”, he says.  “It’s becoming a really big thing because the cost factor of buying a fully automated bottling line is cost prohibitive and, in a lot of cases, you may only run it two weeks out of the year.  They can be anything from $50,000 to several hundred thousand to install.”  It’s also quicker than sending the grape juice away to be bottled and ensures it gets into bottles as quickly as possible.  “It’s very high quality, the fill height is perfect, the cork depth is perfect every time, the label, it  just makes a really professional product,” adds Brent.

The high-tech insides of Brent's bottling trailer

The mobile bottling machine can even do screw caps, although Brent estimates screw cap bottles still only cap about 20% of wine bottles in the USA.   As you probably know, in Australia and New Zealand screw caps, even for quality wine, are very popular and my Australian dad – who’s a big wine drinker – is a big fan of them.  There’s interesting further reading on the history of the screw cap and the pros and cons versus the cork and other bottle-sealing devices here and here.

For anyone who’s had the opportunity, it’s always fun to watch a bottling process in operation: the upright bottles like soldiers clunking along, the corks being squashed in, the conveyor belts going this way and that.  In this BBC News  report about how climate change is effecting Spain’s wines (from my former life as a Madrid correspondent), at the end of the video there are some neat shots of the bottling operation in Penedes, Catalonia, of Miguel Torres, one of the world’s biggest winemakers. Of course, there are big bottling plants like the Torres winery and then there are much smaller mobile operations like Brent’s.  Comparing the two and their difference in size and flexibility reminded me of the US Army compared to the Navy Seals, or perhaps a real train (here’s one leaving Kansas City’s Union Station) compared to a model train (here are some model train sets inside Union Station, annual event).  That’s what it felt like anyway, when I contemplated the much bigger, factory style bottling operations as I stood inside Brent’s high tech, shiny, mobile bottling trailer.  Here’s a video of Brent’s trailer in action.

Brent Baker of Old Woolam Custom Bottling

Brent has long been connected with the art of putting alcoholic beverages into bottles.  He used to own a brewery and for the last decade has worked at a number of wineries, helping them with their bottling processes, often by hand.  Brent can remember being taken to Stone Hill Winery as a kid, where his parents’ friends, Jim and Betty Held, were renovating the buildings and reviving what is now one of Missouri’s most respected wineries.  It could help explain why he’s a patriot for Missouri wines.  “There’s always been good wine in Missouri,” he says.  “The thing about the Missouri wine industry is that sometimes it gets poo pooed by California and other states, but we’ve got some very good varietals in Missouri and a lot of really good winemakers who are trying different things – even pumpkin wines.  Kansas is growing, Iowa’s growing, Illinois is growing, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky. It’s pretty amazing what we’re doing here in Middle America.”  And Brent’s mobile bottling trailer is ready to help things along.

The author, Danny, is an Australian gun for hire who’s just moved to the Midwest from Spain via San Francisco.  Apart from being a wine lover, he’s a former BBC News reporter and a history documentary maker. If you need videos for your website to tell the unique stories about you and your winery, its people and history, highlighting your quality wines and awards, please get in touch.  Or if your winery’s website or blog is languishing without any content, and needs articles or blog entries, also get in touch.  I can also set up your internet social media for you, from websites to Twitter. Email danjwood@hotmail.com or call 816 863 2496

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Midwest Wine Conference: The Grape Chemist Part II – A Perspective on Midwest Wines

16 Feb

In this second part of the interview with Rich DeScenzo, the grape chemist from ETS Laboratories, I sought his opinion on a few Midwest grape industry issues.  We talked about the growth of Midwest wines and the rising awareness – even surprise or bottle shock – outside and even inside the Midwest, that this region can make great wines.   Harking back to that ‘Search for a drinkable Norton’ posting, we also talked about some of the pros and cons of the Norton grape.  I’m Australian and probably not a very good judge of the distinguishing traits of people from different US states, but with Rich’s home and company based in California (although he is originally from New England), he did strike me as a good source for a Californian type of perspective on Midwest wines.  So here it is…

Busy on the Trade Show floor at the Midwest Grape & Wine Conference

Danny: You’re at this Midwest Grape & Wine Conference for the first time.  I’ve just moved to live in the Midwest and I’d never heard of wines coming from this region even though I’ve drunk wines for quite a long time.  Your presence here, representing the biggest independent wine laboratory in the US, does that confirm that this is a wine region that is growing in importance?

“If you want to be a winemaker, here (the Midwest)

might be the place to come and start.”

Rich:Well, no, we have a lot of clients in the Midwest but indeed it is a growing region and I think if you read some of the wine magazines you’re seeing that the people who evaluate wines are starting to look at some of these wines from the Midwest and for the first time, I think, on a national level, you’re seeing wines made with Norton and Chambourcin getting some really nice reviews.  There are so many people that came by the booth that are just starting up; there are so many start-ups here winerywise! And I think if you want to make an impact this is the place where you can start.  If you think about what it costs to start in Napa, about $100,000 an acre on the valley floor to buy land, and then you’ve got to get a winery.  If you want to be a winemaker, here (the Midwest) might be the place to come and start.  You can do it for far less money down and there’s this really great community of people who are very friendly and very helpful with each other.  I mean Texas has a big industry, I heard Iowa has 75 wineries! I did my post-doc there 15 years ago and there were no wineries.  So I think this is a pretty neat thing.  Some of these people are mom and pop but they understand that this is a competitive market.  I think if you go to the sessions that they’re doing right now on marketing, and how to get your wine sold, and how to have your tasting room really stand out, those are the ones that are really heavily attended.  I think it’s going to grow and grow; we’ll be back at the conference here again.

Nice bottles at the Midwest Grape & Wine Conference

Danny: The Norton grape fascinates me.  Presumably you’ve had people come to you with their Norton grape and say why is it doing ‘x’ or why is it doing ‘y’?  Could you give me a guide as to what this grape’s issues can be?

Rich:  Well I think any wine can have issues.  Nortons have a lot of acid and so their pH is usually lower and their total acid is higher.  That can be a challenge to some of the bugs certainly.  But when you get down to it, a winemaker takes the grapes and makes wine, but for the microbes out there, their goal is to turn it into vinegar.  So your job is to prevent the bad bugs from having a nice home and so whether it’s Norton, or Cabernet, or Riesling or whatever, individual wines have different problems that go with them.

Danny:  I always thought Pinot was a particularly hard grape to grow, is Norton also particularly difficult?

Rich:  Norton is wild American grape, they’re pretty hardy, but I think they have challenges here although they are somewhat disease resistant and pest resistant.  The climate here, the humidity!  I lived in Iowa and it can get really humid.   I think every region has its own individual problems as far as producing grapes.  Pinot can be really finicky, but I think Norton is maybe better acclimated to this area and so I haven’t heard anyone saying anything about it being difficult, but I don’t know that much about the varietals here.

“I’ve had some wines here and I was really like,

‘Wow! That’s pretty darn good!’” 

Danny: Okay but I guess you drink a lot of wine yourself apart from studying it?

Rich: (Laughter) All for research!

Danny:  It seems like if I tried a Norton 20 years ago I could have really struggled to find a nice one…

Rich:I would say that too.  When I lived in the Midwest we were going to St Louis once and we stopped and did some tasting and the wines were not memorable.  I think what’s happened is it’s one thing when you’re just selling locally because people will buy almost anything because that’s all they know.  But I think what’s happened now is the Midwest wines are starting to get national exposure and when you’re competing on a national level, then you really tend to step the game up and I think they’ve done that.  Like I said, I’ve had some wines here and I was really like, “Wow! That’s pretty darn good!” You know if someone opened that bottle at dinner I’d be quite happy with that.  But I don’t think it was that way 15 years ago.

These sandwiches were very nice

Danny: You seem like you’re a Californian by origin?

Rich: Ahh no, I’m from New England but from all over really.  My Dad was in the service and we lived all over the country.

Danny: Oh I see. I guess with some of the interesting stories I’ve heard about attitudes towards the wines here, the Norton especially, it’s like the French attitude towards California wines thirty years ago, there’s a bit of a snobbery towards Midwest wines…

Rich: But like I said, I even read something about a recent, national competition, with the best wines out of Napa and Sonoma and there were some wines from the Midwest.  Some Nortons in particular did very well with gold medals.  So that tells you that the ability is here and the winemakers here are stepping up their game.   More and more people are accepting them and it has changed my mind about them, truthfully! Before, if I came here, I probably wouldn’t even look at a Norton but now I’ll do some price comparisons at Trader Joe’s and see if I can find what I like…

Danny: I don’t think you’ll find it at Trader Joe’s, I wish you could.

Rich: BevMo maybe!  So we do a lot of work here and we’re at this conference to start to meet our clients and get more clients and we’ve talked to quite a few new people.  I think we’re reaching a critical mass in the Midwest where it’s good to come out and meet people

Danny: Thanks very much for  your time.

Rich: My pleasure Danny.

Danny is an Australian gun for hire who’s just moved to the Midwest from Spain via San Francisco.  Apart from being a wine lover, he’s a former BBC News reporter and a history documentary maker. If you need videos for your website to tell the unique stories about you and your winery, its people and history, highlighting your quality wines and awards, please get in touch.  Or if your winery’s website or blog is languishing without any content, and needs articles or blog entries, also get in touch.  I can also set up your internet social media for you, from websites to Twitter. Email danjwood@hotmail.com or call 816 863 2496

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Midwest Wine Conference: The Grape Chemist Part I

15 Feb

Rich DeScenzo is a microbiologist with ETS Laboratories in St Helena, California and a grape chemistry expert.  Rich has spent a decade researching grape genomics (examining the DNA sequences of grapes) molecular diagnostic methods and fermentation.  I was attracted to the ETS booth on the trade show not by Dr DeScenzo’s scientific pedigree, but instead by a large plastic scorpion, the mascot for one of their diagnostic technologies.   As he poked the scorpion, Rich told me that ETS is the biggest independent wine laboratory in the United States with about 45 employees who do the microbiological analysis for almost 90% of the domestic wine industry.  Their aim is to prevent microbial spoilage at the grape, bottling or beyond stages of the wine production chain, what Rich describes as “full spectrum analysis.”  The good doctor was lively and entertaining as he explained the microbiological problems that can occur during the wine making process.  Here’s the first part of our conversation.

Richard DeScenzo, Microbiology Group Leader, ETS Laboratories

Danny: So if I’m a Midwest grape called the Norton and I’m not tasting too great…?

Rich:  I’ve just tasted two very nice Nortons thank you! One had a little bit of Brettanomyces in it, but not bad.  I tasted one yesterday too that had a little of what I might call a microbial funk in it.

Danny: Is that what produces that inside of an artichoke can taste?

Rich:  Well there are lots of different ones.   I’m the microbiologist so I’m very tuned into microbial spoilage and that’s what we focus on trying to help people prevent and we have all the diagnostic tools.  I gave a talk yesterday (Friday 10th February) at 830am, it was the first talk early in the morning…

Danny: Nice to get it out-of-the-way?

Rich: Yeah, yeah! There were about 30 people and they came for a microbiology talk.  Historically people have looked at microbiology as regards the wine industry as a forensics tool, in other words, if something goes wrong you call the microbiologist, for example  if the wine starts smelling.  We have the tools now that we can prevent spoilage because we can detect the organisms long before they spoil the wine.  Overall I’ve tasted a number of wines here and I was very pleasantly surprised at some very nice wines.  There are some that have some problems but it doesn’t matter if it’s a Norton or a Cabernet from Napa, you still have problems in the wine.

Danny:  So people come to you when they have a problem but are you able to tinker with things in the wine?

Rich: We’re able to tell them what caused the problem.  If we catch it before it’s a problem that’s really the power we have and what we’re seeing is a gradual shift in the industry towards pre-emptive screening instead of forensic analysis.  Now with the chemistry side, the chemistry is the standard, you need to follow things, you need to know, where are my sugar levels? Is sugar dropping? Is all the sugar gone?  Is my fermentation complete?  Or malolactic fermentation, is it complete?  That type of thing.  There’s a great deal of science behind this and what’s interesting, really interesting, is that people who want to have the fewest touches on the wine, the very purest, minimal impact, those are the people who benefit most from having all the information.  If you’re one of the large manufacturers and you’re adding lots of SO2 and you filter and then you sterile filter in bottling, maybe you don’t need to know as much, because it’s more like an industrial wine production, but for the folks who are really trying to do as little as possible then the more technology they use and the more helpful it is.

Danny: Is there a typical problem that wineries just starting out come to you with?

Rich:  I think the biggest problems early on revolve around sanitation, and not sanitation in a way that there is anything that could possibly harm anyone, but sanitation and not understanding the difference between say cleaning something and then sterilizing or sanitizing it.  So a lot of times they end up making a wine which is a nice wine and then they go to the bottle and some microbes, bacteria or yeast get into the bottle and they spoil the wine.  That’s what we’ve had a lot of comments about  in the context that, maybe in the first few years a winery doesn’t have a lot of natural microbial inhabitants, but over time you start building up these populations in your winery, your house strains, and then you can get bugs in there that can cause a problem in the wine.

Danny: Gosh!

Rich: And so that’s probably for the startups, other than the basics people need to know.  Invariably they start having problems with microbial spoilage, that’s usually the big one, either that or oxidation, that’s the other big issue.

Danny:  Can there be a fine line between the job a microbiologist like you and the task of a winemaker?

Rich: No! We’re completely different.  For winemakers, their job is to keep the right microbes in and keep the bad ones out, but there’s so much more to it all in the decisions during the process, like when to harvest the grapes, how to manage the canopies, what crop load on the grapes, what yeast they select, what bacteria, what oak, what toast level.  These are decisions they make along the way and we don’t really influence any of that, what we do is work specifically on the chemistry of the wine and then prevent microbial spoilage.

This is the first part of a two-part interview.  In the second – and arguably more interesting part – Rich gives his views on Midwest wines and the future of the industry.  Part II will be posted very soon.

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