The hills are alive, with the smells of rubber . . . 

 Read a very interesting article in the New York Times today. Apparently the controversy about stinky South African Wines is heating up. 

 For years the cognoscenti (a word that means 'those who know', but looks more like, 'those who smell') have had some doubts about South African wines. They claim a specific smell to them, one of 'burnt

In this episode our wine goes from maceration to innoculation, and useless icky fruit rapidly becomes delicious, useful wine!

After two days in a cool spot (the Executive Washroom in my offices--bless the previous occupants of this space--a 250 square foot restroom complete with shower stall is a joy for the workplace winemaker) the fruit was as macerated as it was going to get.

The sugar had

In our previous episode, our hero discovered his stand-up freezer thawed out all over his carpets, defrosted fish swimming upstream in the broadloom, and the cats sitting in the basket with looks of complete innocence.

In order to salvage the many pounds of berries and rhubarb he had squirreled away he chose to make it all into fruit wine. We now return you to the story in progress.  

Once I was

When the thaw comes, only a fool stands against the tide

A sad example of climate change . . . 

Of all the things I wake up to in this life (hangovers, cat gack on the carpet, summonses, etc) , perhaps the least pleasant in the last month has to have been a squishy wet carpet and the umistakeable smell of defrosting fish in my hallway. The stand-up freezer in my pantry had defrosted. 

Perhaps one

Liveblogging? Not precisely, but it was lively!

 

My secret is out. Previously only my editors knew that I stink at making deadlines. To quote Douglas Adams, I actually love deadlines. They make a wonderful wooshing noise as the pass by. But be that as it may, I thought I'd better finish up my notes on the Winemaker Magazine conference. 

Betsy, Kiev,

Day two was even more intense: action, chills, thrills and a few (unfortunate) spills--not to worry: there was more wine on hand.

Wow! I'm blogging this from my soundproof suite at the fabulous Marriot Hotel in Napa. The conference is over, most of the stragglers are gone now and all that remains is a mountain of empty wine bottles many happy memories. 

Day two was a wacky-tacular one for me. Due

Winemaker Magazine Conference is happening right this minute in Napa Valley, and Tim's Blog takes you there!

It's a beautiful day in Napa Valley--temperatures are going to hit nearly 100 degrees today. That makes for thirsty work--thank goodness there's a lot of wine here. 

I'm blogging this live from the big ballroom at the Napa Marriot, while Michael makes his keynote address speech to the

Know Your Enemy!

Spring is here and for winemakers that means one thing: the inevitable return of our sworn enemy, Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly. Minute little flying monkeys of doom, they're hard to exclude from your winemaking areas, and while they're easy to kill, by the time you've swatted one thirteen more have materialised out of thin air, looking for a free

Note: I'm not a doctor. I don't even pretend to be one to pick up women anymore. I can't give medical advice, remove a sliver, take aspirin without a consulting physician, or even stand that ‘House' show (he's mean). Information provided below is strictly for informational purposes and makes no claim to health improvement, fresher breath, or whiter whites and should not be construed as medical advice, on the pain of having a lawyer mortgage my firstborn.

I give a lot of presentations to home winemakers. I like doing it for a variety of reasons: folks who make their own wines are universally nice and I like helping them out, I enjoy interacting with people who are actually using my products and thinking about them, plus of course I can't get enough of the sound of my own voice pontificating on the subject that interests me most. What's not to love?

With amazing regularity, approximately once per consumer lecture, I get told a specific anecdote. Someone will stand up during the question period and say, "I can drink my homemade wine and never suffer a problem, but as soon as I drink commercial wine, I get a terrific headache/stuffy nose/allergic reaction/hypotension/palpitations/flushing/edema/ black plague/nuisance phone calls, etc, etc. Why is that?"

It's a fair question, and it's a real phenomenon. But for most people it doesn't happen with all commercial wines. And it's almost always worse with reds than with whites-a very important clue. But a clue to what?

First things first: what it isn't. The reaction people describe isn't one to sulphites. Even if it were possible to be allergic to free sulphur dioxide (it isn't), there's an awful lot more of it in white wine than in red-reds have tannin to protect them from oxidative damage, so need less sulphite. Also, there's no wine that doesn't have sulphite in it. In for a penny, in for a pound, the difference between a wine that has added sulphite and no added sulphite is only 30 or 40 PPM, so one glass or two, you'd still react to it.

It's also not any raw material that commercial wines have that kit wines don't. They are, after all, both made from the juice of grapes, sometimes with a bit of wood from oak barrels or chips.

What many commercial red wines and a few whites frequently have that kits never do is the processing step of malolactic fermentation (MLF). Not fermentation in the precise sense, this is the deliberate introduction of a bacterial organism (a strain of Oenococcus oeni) into commercial wines. These bacteria consume malic acid-which has a somewhat harsh ‘green apple' character-and produce lactic acid and carbon dioxide. Lactic acid is more desirable than malic because it's softer in character (it's the principal acid found in milk) and reduces the perceived harshness of a red wine (or a big Chardonnay).

There are a couple of by-products of MLF. The first is normally fortuitous: diacetyl. This compound smells just like melting butter or buttered popcorn, and can cover up a host of harsher, less desirable aromas, blends well with oak (buttered wood!) and is generally thought of as a sign of sophisticated, high-quality wine.

The other one is headache juice, a side-effecty hellbrew of toxic biogenic amines such as histamine, cadaverine, phenylethylamine, putrescine and tyramine. These chemicals in wine have been shown to produce undesirable physiological effects in susceptible individuals; histamine causes headaches, and other allergenic symptoms.

Cool CSI fact of the week: cadaverine and putrescine are two of the chemicals responsible for the smell coming from rotting corpses! Tyramine is part of the yummy smell of cheese! (Phenylethylamine? Neurotransmitter, regulates mood in the brain, found in chocolate).

Now, not everyone is susceptible to these amines. Many people (myself included) can drink vast quantities of commercial red wine without any other difficulty than stumbling, embarrassing karaoke episodes, and a warm sense of unearned self-worth. But to individuals who experience allergies, they can have a miserable time on even a small glass.

What's the solution? Well, I'd strongly recommend against taking antihistamines with your glass of wine-that's Chateau Marmont territory. My suggestion is to make your own wine, so you know for sure you're getting the delicious alcohol-y goodness of fermented grape juice and nothing else.

If my readers are anything like the publisher of Winemaker, they're probably wondering to themselves, ‘Hey I wonder when Tim is going to continue that thing in his blog about improving wine kits?' Fortunately for me at least they're not phoning me or sending little emails asking if I'm in jail or if my fingers fell off so I couldn't type. Hi boss!

But wonder no more! It's a project I'm very