Tag Archives: California

Missouri’s Norton Workshop Revealed

22 May

For the last four years, the Missouri Wine Technical Group’s Norton Workshops have taken place behind closed doors with no media present and no in-depth media coverage.  For the first time, the newly elected President of the Technical Group, Jacob Holman, winemaker at Les Bourgeois Vineyards, has agreed to talk to Regional Wine Taster in detail about the workshops and about what happened at the latest one held last Tuesday.

The Norton workshops take place at least once a year and invite winemakers from across Missouri and the Midwest to share their issues and knowledge to help improve the quality of their wines.  Winemakers bring unfinished and problem Norton wines for a blind tasting followed by constructive criticism.  The initiative was started in 2008 by the newly founded Technical Group based on the idea of one of its members, New Zealander, Andrew Meggitt, winemaker for St James Winery, who brought the concept from his home country.  At last Tuesday’s workshop, thirty winemakers representing ten wineries attended to blind taste and discuss ten different Norton wines.

Jacob Holman, President, Missouri Wine Technical Group and winemaker, Les Bourgeois Vineyards. The vineyard’s restaurant is in the background

Regional Wine Taster: Can you explain exactly what goes on at your Norton Workshops?

Jacob Holman:  What we do is three workshops a year, each focusing on a varietal and because of Norton’s importance to the Midwest, we always include it every year. We’ve also done Chambourcin, Vignoles, Lambruscas, Concord and Catawba.  The way our workshops function is you submit wine – we prefer it to be an unfinished wine, not in the bottle – and we will flight those wines and sit down and taste them blind and then we break up into groups of six to eight.  Everyone will evaluate the wines on their own and then you go around the table and your nominated scribe will take the group’s collective evaluation and then the moderator will call on that group to say what they think of wine 1A, or whatever it is. Once all groups have spoken the winemaker is “outed” and that winemaker will have to stand up and talk about what he did, good or bad.

RWT: In most industries, it’s hard to picture competitors critiquing each other’s products in order to help improve them.  What is it about the Midwest wine industry that allows for such cooperation?

JH: I think most people in the industry recognize that the quality of Midwest wines hinges on our knowledge and this is a good way for small wineries to sit in the same room with bigger guys who have gone through this sort of stuff. I learn something every time even though I work for one of the bigger wineries.  The basic idea is that while there might be reasons that one Norton is better than another, there’s no reason to have flawed wine. I think that within the Midwest we recognize that and are willing to help each other out and also recognize that we are a growing industry and this sort of thing helps us to compete with California wines, Oregon wines and all those other ones in the grocery store.  Overall we need to have a perspective that is good for Missouri as a whole.

“Once all groups have spoken the winemaker is ‘outed’ and that winemaker will have to stand up and talk about what he did, good or bad.”

RWT: How unique is this workshop? Do forums like this exist in other parts of the United States?

JH: When we started this four years ago I couldn’t find any similar workshops but there are a lot of attempts and failures from State Associations.  There are quality assurance programs that haven’t typically been very successful and those state programs are exclusive with a board of winemakers, sommeliers and retailers who will put a stamp of approval on the wine.  So if you’re a winemaker and you don’t know enough and you fail to get that stamp, that’s a black mark against you. We’re not about that, we’re about education and helping winemakers make better wines. I haven’t found a lot of this kind of cooperation in other US regions.  We’ve had a lot of, “Gee I wish we had this in our state!”  And that is something we would foster if it got big enough, for example an Illinois or a Kansas technical group, because we work with a lot of the same varietals.  That’s kind of a dream of mine, but for now it’s Midwest wines.

RWT: At the workshop you tasted unfinished and problem Nortons. What Norton problems usually come up?

JH: They can include, for example, your tank not being topped, meaning not full – so your SO2 levels will be low – that causes your wine to oxidize. To solve this I would go to an extreme and tell people that if you have 350 gallons and you only have a 300 gallon tank, fill up the 300 gallon tank, even if it means throwing the 50 gallons away. That issue applies to all wines.  As far as Norton goes in particular, today we had a speaker talk about oak management, that’s something not specific to Norton but it does have a problem with it.  Norton’s tannin structure is light, there’s not a lot of natural tannin that comes in the fruit, so it’s important to manage your tannins and manage your oak which provide tannins to be able to stabilize your color and make a bolder wine style that is agreeable.

RWT: Winemakers often say that Norton is a hard wine to make.  At these workshops do you ever advise people that they should make something easier like Chambourcin?

JH: No I would never recommend that people not make Norton, just because of its clout within the state.  I would always advise that it is very tricky to deal with and you may not want to make Norton as your first wine ever, but at the same time it is manageable. I have learned a few tricks here and there and that’s what I would tell people, as opposed to discouraging them from trying to make it.

RWT: Can you tell us some of your tricks? I know you told us about one of them before, your reverse bleeding method? (see: Missouri’s Les Bourgeois Vineyards Profile)

JH: Oh I do a lot of different things that are not typically standard! To deal with the pH problem, I know that Norton has a high acidity so I will actually acidify Norton.  After fermentation I will drop the pH down to a microbial management level.  The higher the pH the more chance you have of a spoilage organism surviving so you’re really the safest with your preservatives if it’s around a lower level.  Even though I have to add acid to make that happen – and the wine will be relatively undrinkable for a few months! – I will maintain that pH and therefore maintain my sulfur level to where I don’t have to worry nearly so much about spoilage.  When I finish the wine I will change it back to a higher pH and drop that acidity out because once it is sterile filtered and in the bottle, in theory, you don’t have to worry about spoilage organisms anymore.

“RWT: Can you tell us some of your tricks? I know you told us about one of them before, your reverse bleeding method?”

RWT: In this workshop do you ever disagree about whether a wine has a problem or not and the nature of that problem?

JH: Typically, if a wine is a problem wine there won’t be a disagreement about that but a lot of the time there’ll be disagreement on what that problem is. So if I think its high T.A. (total acidity) or V.A. (volatile acidity) somebody else might think it’s a sulfide problem for example.  And sometimes the wine’s off and we don’t necessarily know why.

RWT: Are you finding after four years of workshops that the Norton wines you’re tasting now are having fewer, less serious faults?

JH: The people who attend the workshops and take them seriously have made huge improvements in what they do and how they do things and their wines have definitely got better. However, it is a work in progress and will take years.  I’ve only had one person get really irritated with the workshop and say that they weren’t coming back! I take a certain amount of pride in that too because winemaking is something you put all your time and heart into and as long as you stay in your winery your wine can seem fine! But once you get out there and start comparing apples to apples sometimes you realize you have a problem.  That’s hard for people to stomach but for the most part everybody’s really taken on the suggestions, gone home and the next year worked on things and it’s really made a difference.

RWT: With the unfinished wines you tasted today was there anything that that surprised you particularly?  Or that was notably different to previous workshops?

Norton vines at Les Bourgeois vineyard

JH: Mmmm no. I think there were fewer flaws in general than there have been in past workshops.  We had one guy who bought this one barrel in that wasn’t the same as his other twenty barrels and he don’t know exactly what was going on. He gave us a rundown and we were able to maybe figure out what the problem was.

RWT: What did you bring to the workshop?

JH: The wine I submitted today, there’s no flaw to it, it was an unfinished 2011.  It is very green and I wanted to see what people thought of it as far as what I could do to finish it a little better. So I bought it in and it was well received and the criticisms were along the lines of the wine being green, very young and having a lot of potential but needing a lot of time, maybe a little more oak and maybe a little more structure.  Those are all things that I can do between now and when the wine is released.

RWT: How long could you age that Norton for and have it sitting in barrels so you can manipulate it?

JH:  I think everybody agrees that you have anywhere from two to ten years to age a bottle of Norton – it’s not like a Cabernet that has the tannins to hold up – so we typically will do anywhere from 12 to 24 months in barrel and then release it and I think that is relatively standard within the industry.

RWT: Is there a difference between the technical skills and equipment you need to make a Norton, as opposed to another wine variety?

JH: As far as equipment, no, as far as skills, yes, I would say that. I’m not trying to promote Norton here but I have worked with vinifera and it is much easier to deal with. You don’t have the problems that you have with the Norton and I think that goes all the way from growing that grape to the finish.

RWT: What did the tasting today indicate about the progress of your endeavors to improve the Norton and what still needs to be worked on?

JH:  Well, as far as the progress goes for the Missouri Wine Technical Group I was very happy with the way things went today. I was also happy with the wine quality in general but I really believe that if we had more wineries represented (note: there were 10 represented and Jacob would like that boosted to about 30) then I think everyone could benefit a little more, so that’s the goal of the group, to get more membership and get more attendance.

Norton vines in my backyard

RWT: During four years of your Technical Group, what new varietals are you seeing more of?

JH: Well, we do experimental cultivar tasting through the University of Missouri in Columbia and some people are biting on that and there are some grapevines that are being planted that haven’t always been planted but I don’t think it’s a mad rush to do so…

RWT: Which ones?

JH: The best example I can think of off the top of my head would be Valvin muscat, a muscat cross that’s able to be grown in the Midwest. I’ve noticed a lot of people growing that and we actually had some interest in that today as the next Workshop but I don’t think we will because there’s probably not enough people making wine out of it yet . As far as consumers go, from what I hear in the tasting room and from what I see people buying, Vignoles is something that I think Missouri has a handle on and now people ask for it by varietal, more so than anything else apart from Norton.

RWT: The fact that people are actually asking for their local grapes by name, that must be quite pleasing?

JH: Yes it is.  This is something that has only happened recently, within my short career over the last 12 to 13 years.  When I started, no-one ever asked for Norton or Vignoles by name, it was all, you know, “Let me have your sweet white,” or, “Let me have your dry red,” but I believe that’s changing to some extent.

RWT:  Thanks very much for your time President Holman! 

JH: Ha! Ha! No problem, I hope you got what you need.

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Interview with Todd Kliman, author of The Wild Vine

29 Mar

Here’s the video interview with Todd Kilman about his book The Wild Vine and its “untold story of American wine”.  As explained in the previous posting, Todd wanted to be incognito, so that’s why there’s a little too much of me early in the interview.  Also, I didn’t follow-up the first question and clarify what exactly Todd was doing and how he got hooked on the Norton grape.  Todd got hooked on the Norton when he was drinking wine with friends during the fifth consecutive night of a blackout in Washington DC.  Here’s how he tells what happened in The Wild Vine:

“Whether it was the lateness of the  hour, the subtle power of the wine, the sense of being at the mercy of the elements, my drunkenness, or all of these things working on me at once, I can’t say, but it was as if what I was drinking was an embodiment of the moment, the mystery, a correlative to our primal condition.  It was dark, it was earthy; there was something wild, something alive, in the glass.

I had seldom tasted this earthiness in California wines.  I did taste it in European wines…but the Norton was bigger than most of those wines…

The conversation had moved on by this time, to talk of other meals, of movies, of how long we could live without our modern comforts, but I hadn’t moved on.  I was still thinking about the Norton.”  (page 8, The Wild Vine, Todd Kliman)

An appropriate teaser for the full interview.  Here it is:

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Missouri’s Les Bourgeois Vineyards Profile

8 Mar

This article is also posted at Midwest Wine Press

CEO of Les Bourgeois, Curtis Bourgeois

In 1974, Curtis and Martha Bourgeois bought a fifteen acre property on which Stephen, the fourth and youngest son, planted the first vines.  When these three acres of Chambourcin grapes produced a 5 ton harvest and 500 gallons of wine, the family decided to covert a hobby into a wine making enterprise.

Today, Les Bourgeois Vineyards in Rocheport is the third biggest wine producer in Missouri, making about 135,000 gallons per year.

“We were looking for a family business that we all could participate in,” says Curtis, Curtis Sr. and Martha’s oldest son, who was pursuing a television career in New York when he came home to join the enterprise. The younger Curtis is now the CEO of Les Bourgeois.  Together with his father, he oversees the daily operation of the winery, bringing in the whole family when big decisions need to be made.

The winery’s expansion has been ongoing. By 1991, the family had its own wine making equipment and bottling facility.  In 1994, a restaurant was designed by architect son, Stephen.  In 1998, an adjacent 180 acre property was purchased, and this year the family finished a two year project to construct a new production facility.  “2011 was our first crush in it,” says Curtis, “and it allows us to double our capacity and prepare for the future.”  Currently 30% of production comes from 35 acres under vines at Les Bourgeois and the rest from grapes brought in from local growers.

This year they’re starting construction of a brewery in the space left by the old winery to house their new venture: beer.  “We’re trying to look for new revenue streams,” says Curtis. “The Midwest is still behind as far as craft beer development, so we see some opportunities there.  We also see the beer demographics as being different from the wine demographics, so we’re hoping to pull a different customer base.”  Visitors will also have the novel experience  of seeing wine and beer making processes in the same location.

But wine is very much the primary business, and Curtis says the winery’s future involves two things. “We’re trying to expand the wines that we can make on a larger scale and selling the higher end, small lots on the property only.  This gives people another reason to come to the winery.”   The larger scale wines are generally sweet and include those made with the native American Concord and Catawba grapes.  The higher end, “Collectors Series” wines include locally grown varieties like the Norton and Vignoles as well as imported Cabernet, Shiraz, and Merlot grapes.

Curtis says the quality of one of their higher end wines, the Norton, has improved in recent years thanks to implementation of a version of a French technique called saignee.  Saignee is a method of bleeding off the juice after crushing the grapes and is used to make Rose and also to reduce the liquid content of the very juicy Zinfandel grape.  The technique was introduced at Les Bourgeois by

Les Bourgeois winemaker, Jacob Holman, testing Vignoles blends

winemaker Jacob Holman, originally from Moberly, Missouri.  Jacob learnt his winemaking skills on the job at Les Bourgeois and at a number of smaller Missouri wineries.  He calls his version of saignee  ”reverse bleed-off” because his objective is actually the opposite of Zinfandel makers. In other words, Jake wants to make the Norton more, not less, juicy.  “What Jake does is take a certain percentage of the Norton grape, and he actually squeezes it just for the liquid.  Then we add the liquid back into the body mass, so it gives it a much higher liquid to mass ratio and through that a cleaner fermentation.” Curtis says. “This increase in the liquid content of the Norton juice helps overcome fermentation issues caused by this grape’s high solids to liquid ratio. Through that we get a much cleaner, much more interesting, higher quality product.”

The use of winemaking techniques like reverse bleed-off that have helped improve the quality of wines, coupled with the growth of the Missouri wine industry, have transformed the way people regard the industry here compared to ten years ago, according to Curtis. “The business is now something that everyone recognizes as an important part of the economy and a viable concept for alternative agriculture, especially ag and ag tourism.”  Another change in the last decade is the increased cooperation in research and development through the universities and the State of Missouri.  Les Bourgeois, for example, works directly with the University of Missouri in Columbia.  “We have a pipeline for talent that is homegrown,” says Curtis.  Most of the wine expertise in Missouri used to come from outside the State, from California, Australia and South Africa, and Curtis says that talent didn’t always stay in Missouri for very long.  Today, there are degrees in food science and viticulture at agriculture schools which have created a new generation of Missourian winemakers who may be more likely to hang around.  “That’s how you keep a sustainable industry going,” says Curtis.  “It’s made a big difference for the industry and for us also.”

Norton vines at Les Bourgeois Vineyards

Even with these changes in the industry, plus the big expansion of its winery capacity, the improvements in quality and the move into craft beers, Les Bourgeois is content to distribute its wine in the Midwest.  “We see ourselves being a regional based winery. When you’re our size you couldn’t really fill that pipeline (other regional and overseas markets) very readily so we see ourselves staying close to home,” he says. “The regional wine business is growing, so basically we just want to keep expanding as the pool gets bigger, and that doesn’t necessarily mean exporting much further than contiguous states.”

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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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Midwest Wine Appearing in More Top Restaurants

21 Feb

The author of this article is Mary Mihaly of Midwest Wine Press (MWP), based in Chicago.  MWP is the first business publication dedicated entirely to the art and business of winemaking in the Midwestern United States.  The editor of MWP is Mark Ganchiff, whose stated goal is to help winery owners, grape growers and cellar masters be more effective and profitable. The story first appeared in Midwest Wine Press in December and provides a positive tonic to, as well as supporting, the dark findings revealed in the blog posting “Wine Lists of Shame”.

Salt of the Earth Rustic American Eatery and Bakery in Fennville, Michigan has a dozen Michigan labels on its wine list. The event was an upscale food expo in Cleveland. I was pouring wine samples; the fellow pouring at the next table owned an award-winning winery in northeast Ohio. Our conversation turned to restaurant wine lists—specifically, why don’t we see more local wines listed?

“Beats me,” he said, “and it makes no sense. They talk about using local produce, local meats, farm-to-table everything—and they carry wines from France, California, everyplace but Ohio.”

His point is valid: why don’t more restaurants carry regional Midwest wine—and more importantly, how can regional wineries get onto their wine lists?

“I suspect it’s probably a little more expensive, takes a little more legwork to carry regional wines,” says Jon Trasky, general manager of The State Room Restaurant and Lounge in East Lansing, Michigan. His 17-page wine list features dozens of Michigan wines; they show up in nearly every category from Riesling to rosé. Trasky concedes that as part of the Kellogg Hotel & Conference Center at Michigan State University, it follows that he would carry Michigan wines.Still, he has a choice, and he sees buying local as good business: “What’s good for Michigan is good for us,” he says. “We live here, so we want to do all we can to support Michigan businesses.”

Every restaurant and winery owner we interviewed agreed on the chief reason for carrying a local wine: because it tastes as good as wines from the “major” wine regions. “That’s the biggest factor for us,” says Nolan Cleary, beverage manager for Lola Bistro in Cleveland, one of several restaurants owned by Michael Symon, TV’s “Iron Chef” and star of  ”The Chew.”  “For us, quality is a big motivator; we’re not going to bring in local products if they’re inferior.”

For Cleary, carrying local wines was serendipitous. An owner of Laurello Vineyards in Geneva, Ohio is a regular at Lola and brought in some Vidal ice wine for Cleary to taste. It landed on the wine list. The other winery whose wines Cleary serves—Harpersfield Winery, also in Geneva—is on the wine list because, according to Harpersfield owner Patty Ribic, the Iron Chef himself “heard the buzz” and visited the winery.

“We’re a very small producer, just 3,000 gallons. Since we only use our own grapes, we’re at the mercy of Mother Nature.  There’s a finite amount so we watch where our wine goes and I guess that impressed [Symon],” Ribic recalls.  Symon’s bar manager called, they met, and as a result, Lola Bistro became Ribic’s only restaurant outlet.

Farmhouse Tavern, one of Chicago’s newest hot spots (open just 10 weeks at this writing and pictured on the homepage), is trying a more inclusive tactic, offering wines from throughout the Midwest. “All of our sparkling wine is from Michigan,” says Robert Diaz, manager, “and we carry wines from Indiana, and even a Riesling and Pinot Noir from Firelands Winery in Ohio.”  Wine selection,  he says, can be easy.  “Put together some reds and whites from Argentina, Australia, and France, and your customers will be reasonably happy. But if you want to stand out from the crowd, you need to seek out the smaller players, offer something different.”

Taste is Diaz’s top priority, and he speculates that perhaps more restaurants don’t offer local wines “because a lot of the root-stock in the Midwest isn’t old,” he says. “Europe and California have been growing grapes for a very long time, and older vines sometimes make better wine.”

Michigan wines “sort of fly under the radar,” says Mark Schrock, owner of Salt of the Earth in Fennville, Michigan, “but we produce some of the finest Riesling out there.” One of the most expensive wines on his wine list—“Shou,” a Bordeaux-style blend from Wyncroft Winery—is a Michigan wine with limited production. “You feel like the winemaker has examined every grape when you drink it, it’s that well crafted,” Schrock says. “If you want to be on a good wine list, quality is everything.”

Carey Amigoni, whose family owns Amigoni Urban Winery in Kansas City, agrees. “There’s no question,” she says, “a Cab Franc is a Cab Franc. If you make a pretty good one, people will want it.”

That view is echoed by the Wine Business Institute, which surveyed sommeliers of 74 restaurants in 2009. The results were unanimous: 100 percent ranked “tasting good” as the top factor in selecting wines for their lists. Nearly 98 percent ranked “matches with food menu” as the second priority, followed closely by “competitive price fit” and “balance of varieties.” Sixty-two percent said they prefer to buy locally—a bit surprising, since relatively few high-end restaurants offer regional wines—and only 35 percent said they would list a particular wine to maximize profits. Zero respondents said they relied on a supplier’s recommendations in buying wine.

Marketing, however, is critical to getting on wine lists, especially for small wineries. “Usually, a small distributor will do a good job for small wineries,” Carey Amigoni says, “where with a big distributor, the small wineries sort of disappear.” Amigoni likes her distributor, but she sometimes accompanies him on calls to new restaurants: “You have to go with them, personalize it, enjoy the wine with the bar manager, help sell it.”

That means talking up anything that would appeal to customers. If your wine is certified organic or Biodynamic, mention that to the bar manager. If Justin Timberlake or Bette Midler ordered a glass, or if it was fermented in barrels made of a special wood, that’s worth a mention. Anything that helps create a memorable experience for the customer will help sell your wine.

Megan Zander, bar manager at Blue Bird Bistro in Kansas City, offers wines by Amigoni as well as locally brewed beers and liquor from a local distillery. “Everything’s of the highest quality,” she says, “but we also want to talk to the winery owner and other producers. It’s about building relationships—you have to be as passionate about your wine as we are about our restaurant.”

Patty Ribic agrees: “Let’s face it, there are a million wineries out there. You have to have passion for your wine—put out a product you’re proud of.”

As for the future, Mark Schrock believes, “more and more, `local’ translates to sales,” he says. “Our guests are asking for it—but you’ve got to bring your best stuff.”

“I think you’re going to see people take notice of local wines over the next 10 years,” Robert Diaz predicts. “Wineries should start now, creating and developing relationships with restaurants and restaurant groups, and good things will happen.

“Get into a few good restaurants and people will start noticing—and buying—your wine.”

Reprinted with permission of  Midwest Wine Press.


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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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Wine Lists of Shame: The Top KC Restaurants that Serve No Local Wines

25 Jan

A survey of ten, top Kansas City Restaurants has found that none of them have any Missouri or Kansas Wines on their wine lists.  Many of the restaurants say they have the best local and regional produce on their food menus, but the survey shows they don’t observe the same criteria when it comes to their wine lists.  Regional Wine Taster contacted each restaurant by phone and consulted wine lists online and in the restaurants.   The failure comes as advocates, including business associations and farmers’ groups, continue to promote “buy local” campaigns to assist the economic recovery by supporting local industries.   Missouri’s National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and the Department of Agriculture are among a number of groups who support “buy local” campaigns.   Many of the wine lists in Kansas City restaurants are dominated by Californian and French wines.  Wine producers in Missouri and Kansas have told Regional Wine Taster of their frustration at the difficulty getting their wine into restaurants.    A winemaker in Hermann described Kansas City restaurants as having a “totally closed mind” towards Missouri wine. In recent years, quality wines from Missouri and Kansas have won numerous awards and accolades in national competitions and blind tastings, often against Californian and French competition.  The full survey appears below.  The restaurants are in alphabetical order.

801 Chophouse

  • Website says: “recognized as the quintessential restaurant of Kansas City’s Power and Light District”
  • Wine List Note: Some regional wines from Oregon and Washington
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None

Bluestem Restaurant

  • Website says: “a progressive fine dining establishment in the midtown area of Kansas City, Missouri”
  • Wine List Note: Focuses on a range of Californian and some international wines
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None

Bristol Seafood & Grill

  • Website says:  “An icon in the city since 1980…It offers the area’s freshest premium seafood, an impressive selection of wines and handcrafted signature cocktails.”
  • Wine List Note: A wide-ranging list including many smaller vineyards
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None

EBT Restaurant

  • Website says:  The cuisine “mixes rich heritage with a taste of rejuvenated modernism.”
  • Wine List Note: A range of US and International wines including bottles from Washington and Oregon
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None (MO and KC wines occasionally present at wine tastings)

Grand Street Café

  • Website says:  “Our food is simple, elegant and exciting.”
  • Wine List Note: Some regional wines from Oregon and Washington
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None (one MO wine was on the list in the past)

Houston’s Kansas City

  • Website says:  “presenting exceptional cuisine in the most inspired of settings”
  • Wine List Note:  A range of international and California wines
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None (one MO wine was temporarily on the list several months ago)

Lidia’s Italy

  • Website says:   The Tuscan Grill features “some of the freshest ingredients the weekly market has to offer.”
  • Wine List Note:  Focuses on Italian and Californian wines
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None

Piropos Restaurant on the Hill 

  • Website says: “The taste of Argentina is very Midwestern.”
  • Wine List Note: Argentinian, Californian, international and some regional US wines
  • Missouri of Kansas Wines Available: None (one MO wine -Amigoni red –was on the list until about a month ago)

The Savoy Grill

  • Website says:  “Dating from 1903, it is the oldest restaurant in Kansas City.”
  • The Wine List:  Includes international, Californian and Oregon wines
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None

YaYa’s Eurobistro

  • Website says:  “Straight-forward Mediterranean cuisine. Not overdone. Not pretentious. Simply Delicious.”
  • The Wine List:  Includes international, Californian and Oregon wines
  • Missouri or Kansas Wines Available: None

To enter a KC top restaurant for the Wine List of Shame, simply verify that the wine list has no Missouri or Kansas wines on it and email the details to: danjwood@hotmail.com or comment below.


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Regional Wines: “We’re Catching Up”

13 Jan

California’s traditional superiority over other US wine-making states is being challenged.   One of the challengers is Michael Amigoni from Amigoni Urban Winery.  Michael spoke to Regional Wine Taster after an evening tasting at his winery, which is uniquely located in the Livestock Exchange Building, nestled in the West Bottoms, the old stockyards district of Kansas City.  He says the Judgement of Paris analogy made in Kansas Wine Causes Bottle Shock  is a fair one.

Michael Amigoni in his tasting room at Amigoni Urban Winery

Michael includes wines from Virginia, the Finger Lakes of upstate New York, Texas and Oklahoma as “being judged against California wines and exceeding some of their ratings on the wines.”  He continues, “So I think there is some of that judgement, that we’re catching up with them fairly quickly.”

Michael agrees with Michelle Meyer from Holy-Field Vineyard in Kansas that US regional wines, including those from Missouri and Kansas, are growing in popularity in the Midwest and around the country.  “I think what we’ve seen, in especially the last five years, is more of the regional wines getting better.”  Michael says some of the natural acidity in wines here has been tamed and from a Midwest region better known for sweeter wines, more dry wines are entering the market.

Is California’s aura of superiority towards the rest of the country’s wines diminishing?  “A little bit.” says Michael.  As an example he points to California-based juggernaut Gallo Winery. Michael says Gallo’s production of sweet wines under the Barefoot Wine label is something of a tribute to the sweet wine making traditions of the Midwest.

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