Thanks for your comments. I’m not well versed in Chambourcin viticulture since we don’t have too much of that variety up here in the Finger Lakes. I know Foch and Frontenac sometimes present the high pH/high acidity issue (maybe it’s their V. riparia heritage…?)

Unlike Cyclist, whom I know from previous conversations to be a huge non-interventionist, I have no problem with stabilization to reduce acidity.

Re: oxidation, it was mostly acetaldehyde. I was just surprised at how quickly it got to that point. If you sterile filtered, then it wasn’t Acetobacter in the bottle (didn’t get any VA the first day), but who knows? It was just a guess, given the high pH.

For the record, Acetobacter CAN accumulate acetaldehyde under low-oxygen conditions (i.e., in a barrel, or perhaps a bottle with a cork in it?)
(http://ajevonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/39/2/143) (For those of you playing at home, acetaldehyde is the product of oxidation of ethanol [and smells "oxidized"]. Further oxidation of acetaldehyde leads to acetic acid [vinegar], which esterifies to also create ethyl acetate [nail polish]. So the presence of acetaldehyde in the bottle means your liquid is somewhere between wine and vinegar.)

Maybe low SO2? Or maybe the cork was letting oxygen in and it was already on the brink.

I hope I made it clear that I enjoyed many of the wines I had at Pinnacle Ridge (in fact, I just finished a bottle of the Riesling 2 nights ago). I went out of my way to try Chambourcins on my short, 6-winery tour, and I remember liking this one, at least enough to buy it. Maybe I just got a bad bottle. I still have the 2008 Chambourcin, so I’ll definitely give that one a fair shot. Again, thanks for your feedback. It’s great to have winemakers in on the discussion.

I guess I feel the need to chime in on this discussion since I made the wine and have some strong thoughts/opinions about chambourcin. Chambourcin growth behavior in the vineyard is generally very favorable with good disease resistance, good flavor development even in lesser vintages etc. The most significant issue (in my opinion) is that Chambourcin (in our vineyards) tends to come in with high acid and low pH. This combination is much easier to work with than the high acid, high pH combination discussed above. We always put our Chambourcin wines through malolactic and then evaluate whether further deacidification is necessary/warranted. The 2007 vintage was a superb vintage but did result in Chambourcins with acids in the 7-8 gms/l range after ML. This high acid necessitated deacidification. I brought the acid down to approximately 6 gms/l with KCO3 which brought the pH up to high levels. I then sterile bottled the wine due to the high pH. The reviewers comments regarding oxidation and acetobactor seem wrong to me. Oxidation occurs due to exposure to oxygen (e.g. in a half-empty bottle). Acetobactor causes high volatile acidity and ethyl acetate (not oxidation). Hope this helps.

Brad Knapp/Pinnacle Ridge

Thanks for the comment. Pinnacle Ridge and Galen Glen were my favorite stops out of the 6 PA wineries that I visited.

If the pH on “Chamby” always comes in that high, then low microbial stability could be to blame for “cesspool”. Usually anything above 3.6 is vulnerable to spoilage organisms, though this probably varies with alcohol content, etc.

I think there is still a hybrid wine competition in Loire somewhere, probably underground.

INAO rules “recommend” Baco Noir for Armagnac — I think the only place where FA hybrid are at that level.

The acidity on this one was actually still palpable in the mouth, in spite of the high pH. Hybrids are notorious for presenting high pH and high total acidity together, which is an apparent contradiction.

Potassium and calcium ions from the skin can increase pH, so my guess is that K+ and Ca+ are higher in hybrid skins, but I have no data to back that up. The long maceration may also have contributed to the low pH in this way. I would bet that before stabilization, this wine was in the 8-9 g/L range, very high for a red, so the cold stabilization was likely necessary for balance. Like I said, the acidity was definitely there.