When birds got the better of my 2016 Marquette crop, I turned my frustration into a learning opportunity. With fewer than 5 gallons of must fermenting from my meager crop, I had a few days to make a critical choice: dry or sweet? Having never made a Port-style wine, I decided to stretch my limited … More Just Desserts
I’ve always loved the sound of “veraison,” the French word that signifies the late-summer change in the color of berries. With my Marquette grapes, that means a transformation from green to pink to red over the course of several weeks in August. Veraison for me has the added benefit of letting me exhale a … More In Grape Growing, Veraison is for the Birds
When I planted my Marquette vines five years ago, I had every intention of becoming an organic grape grower. It was really never a conscious decision; it just fit my philosophy of putting the best ingredients in our mouths and not demanding perfect looking fruit. So I tolerated foliar Phylloxera which made many of my … More The Continental Divide of Wine Making
The Mexicans, that is. It would help them keep an amazing wine region all to themselves. Just a few hours’ drive south of San Diego sits a gem of viticulture and gastronomy, still largely unspoiled by crowds, white stretch limos, or tipsy tourists drinking too much at the tasting bar. Valle de Guadalupe is less … More They Should Build a Wall
There is a restaurant in the wine film Sideways, called the Hitching Post II, where Paul Giamatti’s character embraces both the laid-back vibe and the sophistication of a staff who know the intricacies of the best local producers. On a recent trip to Sedona, we found the Arizona desert’s version of that restaurant, and discovered … More Sideways in the Desert
Every year, at the end of summer, our family spends a few hours sifting through the used books at the Spencertown Academy Festival of Books in Columbia County, New York. This past year I was lucky enough to stumble across a ten-year-old recounting of the famous 1976 Paris Tasting that put American wines on the … More American wine in its bright-eyed youth
At the end of winter, when the vines have been dormant for several months, it’s time for some family planning. For my grape vines, that means being trimmed back to about 40 buds per vine. The vines are trained to the top wire of a 3-wire trellis in a method called Top Wire Cordon. The … More Family planning
I just bottled my first rosé. With more grapes in the 2015 harvest than I could fit in my red wine fermenting tub, making a rosé was part necessity, part curiosity. As wine lovers know, a rose is produced from red grapes using white wine techniques. So rather than adding yeast and beginning fermentation with … More Spring in a bottle
Dirty Hands Wine 