Blood Into Wine Page #8

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about processing the grapes

and after destemming is that,

you know, we all roll up our pant legs

and jump in the bins

and start stomping on them like Lucy.

And that's not actually the case.

As I'm punching through the cap,

you can see that it starts to foam.

This is our mixing process

that's helping this color and the flavors

and all the wonderful things

that make a red wine what it is

extract from these-- from these skins.

See how this thing is much denser now

than the other one?

This is a much more compacted cap.

And watch this.

Okay? You might want

to get the sound, too.

Okay. Did it.

We used to just kind of indiscriminately

add a bunch of nutrients,

because we wanted to make sure

this fermentation finishes.

But there are some compounds

that come from yeast stress

that add another layer

of complexity to the wine.

And we try to dial it

to just the right point,

because too much of it is too much.

None of it,

and then things are too squeaky clean.

The wines that are too perfect

just aren't as interesting.

At some point,

we free-run them and we press them.

And we want to basically

get this stuff out first

and separate that out into a bin,

and we'll barrel that down.

And then we'll take, you know, the skins

that are kind of left on the bottom.

There's still juice in those.

So then we dig those out

or put those into the press

and then press those out slowly

so we get what we call the pressed wine out.

And then they end up in one of these tanks,

depending on the size of the batch.

So even though we pump off liquid,

there's all kinds of suspended sediments

and solids in that liquid.

And then we get

the secondary fermentation going.

And once the wine's completely done,

all those solids start to settle out.

Once that has occurred, we--

that's usually the time

we end up going to barrel.

Barrels are all about aging wines primarily,

but there's also a seasoning,

i.e., like a chef and a spice rack,

and you're adding different spices.

You've got to pick the right barrel to accent

and support and enhance

the wine you're putting in it.

You can choose different barrels,

you can choose different aging regimes,

but when it really comes down to it,

you get to be the chef

when you start putting wines together.

To me,

the art of winemaking is blending.

Most of our wines are blends,

and that's because I love blending.

I mean, do I just want

to make cabernet Sauvignon every year,

or just make a Syrah every year,

or do I want to tinker with it

and see if I can take that wine

and make it better?

So how do you not only

achieve complexity,

but get these things to knit together

and form this fabric

that is beautiful and smooth and velvety?

And again, I think this all relates back

to the idea of deliciousness.

My job as a winemaker is to tinker

with all these different batches in here,

get to know them as grapes,

then get to know them as must,

get to know them as young wines,

and form these relationships

with these wines

so that over time, I start to have

this kind of a mental and emotional map

of how these things ought to work together.

This one has something over here

that's wondertul, but it's lacking something.

But just the other day,

I was tasting this over here,

and I think it's got what that needs.

And there's nothing cooler than watching

somebody drink a glass of wine

or a blend that I put together and just

watch them close their eyes and smile.

You can see it take them away

to somewhere else.

I mean, to me, that's-- I did my job.

Bottling is kind of the process

that every winemaker rues.

I'm pretty mechanically minded,

and I can keep this line going.

And there's a bunch of complex processes

that are all interacting

to make this line function correctly.

You've got to be kidding me.

And my job is to understand

as many of those as possible

so when the line breaks down,

I can figure out how to get it back up

as quick as possible.

We've talked about the whole process today,

but we haven't really talked

about the endgame here,

which is the most important part.

Today we're bottling caduceus Primer Paso.

"Primer Paso" means first step.

This was the first wine Maynard

ever conceived here with me

at Page Spring cellars.

As you know, Caduceus--

I've helped Maynard

make these wines from the get-go.

This is a really neat wine,

and it's unique

because it's a blend

of white and red grapes.

Syrah blended with Malvasia.

So not only was this his first step,

this is also a great first wine

for somebody who's getting into wine.

It's soft, it's aromatic,

and it's not over the top.

Here's what our ten-hour day--

but really the culmination

of almost 16 months worth of work

all coming together

in this bottle right here.

April 1 0th, 2009.

This is the first time we have bottled

a hundred-percent caduceus wine

from Northern Arizona.

All the elements that go into

making up the terroir of this area--

it's the limestone, the volcanic ash,

the slopes, the rainfall,

everything going into it.

This has kind of added up to something

that's far less Californian

than we'd anticipated.

It's much closer in profile

to, like, a Loville-Las Cases

or, like, a Left-Bank Bordeaux.

If this is what we can get out of this soil,

kind of letting the soil speak for itself,

then anything's possible.

It's taken about nine years

contemplating the areas

where we were going to plant,

breaking ground, navigating local politics

to even break ground.

Very hands-on, very small site.

We have just under 670 vines on this spot.

No one in their right mind

would plant a vineyard

that's less than 6 acres or 10 acres

just because financially,

it's just as easy to farm

a hundred acres as it is to farm ten acres.

So to farm a half an acre

is just kind of silly.

But the location is special.

The vineyard itself is special.

It's worth taking the risk, basically.

This is the first bottling

of Nagual del Judith,

cabernet Sauvignon

from Yavapai county, Arizona.

Judith is named after my mother,

Judith Marie.

She passed away several years ago.

She was an invalid for almost 30 years.

She had an aneurysm

when she was about 31 .

It left her paralyzed

on the right side of her body,

and so she couldn't

really do a lot of traveling,

couldn't do much of anything really--

read, write, speak, walk, tell time.

You know,

having to live roughly 29 years in that state.

It just kind of felt like

this was the obvious solution--

to spread her ashes over the vineyard.

That way,

she kind of comes back in the form

of vines and grapes,

and she gets to travel the world now

and see other places.

There's not that much of it, really.

Our first year, we were only doing

about a hundred cases of it.

I'm going to pull the first one

off the bottling line and, uh, stick it away.

I'll probably take the second one

and send it to her mother,

just because she'll want this--

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