Anyway, I was bummed that I couldn’t make it but as we went along I did quite a bit of spitting anyway (turns out that the people who just buy a bottle and sit outside usually get drunker on the wine tour than those who are actually tasting…). It turned out that we got back into Ithaca early, around 3:45. I decided to give it a shot and head out to Penn Yan (on the other side of the OTHER lake) to try and get to the tasting by 5…in a thunderstorm.

Grapevines on a grey and gloomy evening, lake esconced by billowy fog. The view from AWRC.

Long story short (too late?) I arrived at Anthony Road at 5:05, walked in the door to see a tasting room employee not too pleased about my arrival, who then directed me to the cellar where Peter and Johannes (the winemakers) were holding the riesling event. I arrived at the cellar, breathless, as the last patrons were leaving and they were starting to clean up. I introduced myself and Johannes and Peter were gracious enough to pour me every single wine (and a few extras), with Johannes staying to chat until 7 PM (in spite of multiple phone calls from his wife!). I even got 3 glasses at once to compare and contrast. I took quick and, frankly, illegible notes, so I won’t go into too many details about the wines.

Flight 1: Tierce

The Tierce logo. I like it.

Tierce wines are a collaboration between the winemakers at Fox Run, Anthony Road, and Red Newt. The aim of the project is to develop a riesling blend that showcases the best of three Finger Lakes growing regions, and the best that the three winemakers have to offer. The winemakers seem to lock themselves in a room with their wines until the ideal blend shows itself. Anthony Road was pouring 2004, 2005, and 2006 Tierce. 2006 is the vintage currently for sale, but I believe you can still get some 2005 at Fox Run. Tierce 2007 (not yet released) is a red blend, taking advantage of the hot, dry 2007 growing season, which according to many winemakers was a banner year for Finger Lakes reds. Another notable fact about Tierce wines is that they are all bottled under screwcaps, somewhat of an anomaly in the Finger Lakes region.

Tierce Riesling 2004 (library)  petrol around, still great acidity, herb/shrimp component
Tierce Riesling 2005 (~$30) looong finish, petrol/rubber amongst the fruit.
Tierce Riesling 2006 (~$30) really nice. I wrote a better descriptor for this than “nice,” but I can’t decipher it. It looks like “Cronunt”, but alas, that’s not a word. I will have to scare up some of this wine for a real review.

Flight 2: Anthony Road Dry Rieslings
According to Johannes, the cleanest fruit goes into dry rieslings. These should be able to stand on their own without relying on the balance and sweetness that leaving some residual sugar can provide.
Anthony Road Dry Riesling 2006 (library, 0.6% RS) good fruit, not as long on the finish. unfortunately, a bit of oxidized character is creeping in.
Anthony Road Dry Riesling 2007 ($16, 0.6% RS) I got an interesting piney note from this one.
Anthony Road Dry Riesling 2008 (NYR, 0.7% RS) Wow. Tropical, citrus, and green fruit (think honeydew melon). I wish I could have bought some of this, but I don’t think it’s been released yet. Quoth my notebook: money!

Flight 3: Anthony Road Semi-Dry/Semi-Sweet Rieslings
Just because the cleanest (read: not infected by {botrytis}) fruit goes into dry riesling doesn’t mean that semi-dry riesling can’t step up to the plate. In all of these, the sweetness is not just there for sweetness’ sake. It provides not only a bit of balance to the acidity but the sugar also seems to contribute to the mouthfeel.
Anthony Road Semi-Dry Riesling 2007 tasted great, see previous review
Anthony Road Semi-Dry Riesling 2008 ($15, 2.5% RS) stick candy (like you might get at an old-timey general store), passion fruit, with a nice acid background.
Anthony Road Semi-Sweet Riesling 2008 ($14, “around 3″% RS) big acidity on this one, tutti-frutti

Flight 4: Martini-Reinhardt Selections
These are the cream of the crop. The best wines from the best fruit of the year. They don’t make these every year. It seems like they really want to showcase fruit that really stands out from a vintage. Very limited production on these.
Anthony Road Martini-Reinhardt Selection Riesling 2005 (library, in fact I think that the one I had was from the very last bottle!) again, some oxidation leaking in. I don’t think it’s entirely a bad thing, as a little bit can add a toffee/caramel type note.
Anthony Road Martini-Reinhardt Selection Semi-Dry Riesling 2007 ($22) great harmony of sugar and acid. Very well-balanced and complex! Also, full-bodied mouthfeel.

Flight 5: Non-rieslings
Some non-rieslings thrown into the mix for good measure, including some interesting red blends.
Anthony Road Gewürztraminer 2008 ($16, 1.1% RS) good balance of floral and fruit on the nose.
Anthony Road Martini-Reinhardt Selection Cabernet Franc 2007 ($30, 85% cabernet franc, 15% lemberger) black pepper is the name of the game here, but with great fruit in the mid-palate. Not too much tannin, but it is certainly there.
Anthony Road Cabernet Franc-Lemberger 2006 ($18, 55% lemberger, 45% cabernet franc) fruitier than the 2007, and a bit more {astringency}

Flight 6: Berry Selections (unreleased so far)
These wines are very labor-intensive. Most of the work is done on the sorting table, selecting berries shriveled and dried by the noble rot, and separating them from those shriveled by sour rot, foot-stomping, then what I assume is a very slow-going fermentation in a syrupy {must}.
Anthony Road Martini-Reinhardt Riesling Berry Selection 2008 (NYR, Beerenauslese-style, ~60% {botrytized} grapes) pineapple, white peach, currant (currants smell like ketchup to me, so I guess you could say ketchup too). Some {volatile acidity} up in this piece, not too obnoxious though.
Anthony Road Martini-Reinhardt Trockenbeeren 2008 (NYR, 100% botrytized grapes) rich, syrupy, apricot. Spicy on the tongue. The only wines I can compare this to is Sauternes, Barsac, and Montbazillac, and well, that’s saying a lot. Will be worth the likely high price tag.

Overall impressions:
One topic that came up, and one that has been discussed lately a bit on LENNDEVOURS as well, is libraries. This was technically a series of vertical tastings, but the oldest wine was from 2004. Peter apologized, but noted that holding on to wines for a while just isn’t a priority for many wineries. It could be a financial decision. Lots of wineries don’t have the space or the capital to hold on to cases and cases of wine. (Overheard: “In the Finger Lakes, they make money with wine, in Long Island, they make wine with money.”) Storage is also an issue. When you’re next to a lake, it’s hard to find a passive cellar. And in an aluminum-sided facility, it gets hot in the summer. Johannes laments the lack of good storage space and library holdings but seems powerless to to anything about it.

With 25 years combined of vineyard management and winemaking experience, Johannes Reinhardt has a pretty good idea what he’s doing. When I asked if they whole-cluster pressed or destemmed the grapes, his response was that it depends on the fruit (then he showed me their destemmer-crusher, which can be adjusted to just destem in a modular fashion, pretty cool.). There is never a set policy. He’s not just following a recipe book, he is reacting to what the vineyard gives him. The BA/TBAs are a good example of this approach. When the climate was right to make botrytized wines, he did it, even a difficult and labor-intensive 100% botrytized berry selection. And those wines are something special, believe me.

and PS: Soft-spoken, extremely polite, slight German accent? Johannes is pretty dreamy.

*Science!
Botrytis cinerea can be a blessing and a curse to vineyard managers. Most of the time, it will destroy grapes. However, under certain conditions, a controlled infection of botrytis dries the grapes out, concentrating the sugars and acids inside. It’s way too complex of a topic to blow in one “Science!” episode, so I’ll only be looking at one characteristic aroma compound this time. Plus, I love botrytized wines, so I want to taste and review more!

4,5-Dimethyl-3-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone aka sotolon, sugar lactone, or my personal favorite, fenugreek lactone

The molecule of the day is sotolon, also known as 4,5-dimethyl-3-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone. At low concentrations, it smells somewhat like maple syrup, while at higher concentrations it tends to smell more like curry, and, if you get a whiff of it really highly concentrated, vomit. Just trust me on the vomit part. It was first isolated in botrytized wine (Masuda et al., “Identification of 4, 5-Dimethyl-3-hydroxy-2(5H)-furanone (Sotolon) and Ethyl 9-Hydroxynonanoate in Botrytised Wine and Evaluation of the Roles of Compounds Characteristic of It”, Agricultural and Biological Chemistry, 1984), but exactly how it shows up in BW’s is not quite clear. It also shows up in fino sherries, madeiras, and vin jaune, hinting that acetaldehyde may contribute to its formation. Others propose that it is a product of Maillard browning reactions in the berry, which also makes sense to me (Slaughter et al., “The naturally occurring furanones: formation and function from pheromone to food”, Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 1999). At any rate, it’s a characteristic aroma compund of botrytis, and one to think about with your next Sauternes, Tokaji Aszu, or Trockenbeerenauslese.

                          

Forgot to take a picture of the bottle, so here is a small one.

Appellation: Finger Lakes
Varieties: 55% Riesling 45% gewürztraminer
ABV: 12.8%
RS: 1.75%
Price Point: $10
Notes:
Looks: Lemony-green
Nose: Intense nose of flowers, peach, and lychee (What’s a lychee, anyway? I can only find them in cans, but they’re pretty good! Check the Asian section of the local market)
Palate: Pear coming through on the palate, and some passion fruit*. Good amount of sweetness and balanced acidity. A tad short on the finish, but all in all a nice wine. For under $10, I’d definitely get it again.
Rating: for outstanding {QPR}.

Winemaker Paul Brock is new at Lamoreaux Landing, and I understand that this is one of his first wines there. He’s also trained as a chemical engineer, so he’s got that going for him. Many estate whites in the Finger Lakes are made with Cayuga White, or other hybrids or native grapes. While there’s nothing necessarily wrong with these, it’s refreshing to see an estate white made with the aromatic white varieties that the Finger Lakes is known for. So far, it seems he’s doing a great job out at Lamoreaux. See where a little science can get you?

*Science!

In the last science section, we talked about volatile thiols and how enzymes in saliva can free them up. One example of a volatile thiol is 3-mercaptohexanol. It smells like passion fruit, and can be quite nice. At high concentrations, though, it starts to smell a little bit sweaty. When I first smelled a sample that had been spiked with this chemical, I though I had forgotten to put on deodorant. Nope, it was the wine. At least that time it was…

3-mercaptohexanol. Fruity and sweaty. Kind of like Richard Simmons.

This is a good example of something that can be pleasurable at low concentrations, but when the concentration gets too high can be considered a fault. Some people feel this way about the characteristic aromas of {brettanomyces}. But that’s a story for another post.

                          

The two competitors, plus my trusty Purity spit cup. Featuring the festive Easter tablecloth.

This test was done blind, with identical ISO 9000 wine glasses. Both bottles were opened at the same time and not decanted. Wine was poured into the glasses from the bottle before the test began to avoid bias, as one is a screwcap.

Stats:

Here we go:
Wine 1
Looks: pale yellow with a hint of green, with a little spritz
Nose: very strong lime peel, dominant petrol. It’s like WD-40 (I toasted enough tent caterpillars with my friend Brian when I was a kid to know what WD-40 smells like. It’s part gasoline, part floral sweetness) Part of that may not be all TDN, it may be more sweaty/grapefruity.
Palate: nice acid balance. Also limey on the palate, like biting into a lime. Not as acidic as a lemon, and a little bitter. A bit of pear on the palate, but the finish is what makes this wine really good. After a while in the mouth it develops some tropical fruit flavors*, like the Skittles that come in the blue bag. But you’ve got to be patient!
Rating: 3.5 corks It’s really, really good, but the petrol is a bit much.

I need some better lighting up in this piece.

Wine 2
Looks: about the same as wine 1, including the bubbles on the bottom of the glass
Nose: Very different. Intense green apple, cotton candy, and a little bit floral
Palate: Very acidic, almost off {balance}. Palate like the core of a pineapple, the part that’s not quite ripe and really tart. As for the finish, the only thing I get is acidity, like the one oboe player that didn’t cut off the note with the rest of the section.
Rating: 3 corks Also pretty good.

Some of you reading could probably tell which wine was which from the descriptors. Well, maybe. Anyway, I had a hunch that #1 was the Finger Lakes riesling, and it was! Overall, in spite of the WD-40 on the Wiemer, I liked the overall palate better. I liked the nose better on the Rheingau, but it just wasn’t enough to carry it through. Both good wines, and I would definitely buy them again. In this case, Finger Lakes riesling takes it.

Hermann J. Wiemer also produces premium single vineyard rieslings, which I have tasted before and are really, really nice, but a bit more expensive than the standard dry (~$30 or so). Wiemer is one of the most respected riesling producers in the Finger Lakes and it’s easy to see why.

*Science!

Sometimes flavors show up only after a little while in the mouth. This could be due to the way we perceive aromas (it’s not clear whether things are parsed one at a time or all at once), but in the case of some aromas there is a molecular reason why they may take a while to show up.

Many tropical fruit, peachy, grapefruit, passion fruit and other aromas are thiols. They’ve got a sulfhydryl group sticking off of what is usually an alcohol. Now, we’ve talked before about some sulfur compounds being rank-smelling, like hydrogen sulfide and mercaptans. Some mercaptoalcohols, however, can be quite pleasant.

But there’s one problem. The thiols like to bind up with the amino acid cysteine (which also has a thiol group). The S-cysteine conjugate molecules are not volatile and therefore are not perceived as aromas. During fermentation, yeast enzymes can liberate the volatiles from their cysteines, but often a large portion are left cysteine-conjugated. However, saliva contains enzymes called lyases that free these compounds from their cysteine anchors and lets them fly into the nasal cavity retronasally. This phenomenon was discovered in sauvignon blanc grapes (many, especially from New Zealand will have pronounced tropical/passion fruit aromas) (Tominaga et al., “A New Type of Flavor Precursors in Vitis vinifera L. cv. Sauvignon Blanc: S-Cysteine Conjugates”, J. Ag. Food Chem., 1998), but these compounds have also been found in riesling and other aromatic whites (Tominaga et al. (again), “Contribution of Volatile Thiols to the Aromas of White Wines Made From Several Vitis vinifera Grape Varieties”, AJEV, 2000).

                          

Rating:

I have not yet been to Anthony Road, but I have heard winemaker Johannes Reinhardt described as “dreamy”. So, that’s good for the ladies. If his other wines are just as dreamy, then they are doing a fine job out there. Riesling month is off to a delicious start!

1,1,6-trimethyl-1,2-dihydronaphthalene, or TDN to the syllabically challenged.

*Science!
The petrol component, as we discussed in the riesling ice wine bonanza, usually shows up in riesling wines after a bit of aging. But this wine is a 2007? What’s going on? Let’s look into the origins of the aroma compound.

The molecule in question is 1,1,6-trimethyl-1,2-dihydronaphthalene, which is thankfully abbreviated to TDN. TDN’s aromas can be described as kerosene, burned rubber, or the much nicer French term goût petrol. Nothing with a circumflex (château, l’Hôpital’s rule, etc.) can be that bad, right? While it tends to add a bit of complexity to a fruity bouquet increasing amounts of this compound can make it an off-aroma.

It’s thought that TDN arises from the breakdown of carotenoids in wine. What are carotenoids? Carotenoids are color compounds. In the fall, when chlorophyll in trees breaks down, what’s left are the carotenoids, yellow, orange, red, etc. They mostly serve to protect chlorophyll by absorbing damaging wavelengths of sunlight. As such, carotenoids are usually higher in grapes grown in hot regions with lots of sun. Carotenoid concentration can affect the emergence of TDN as wine ages. Also, carotenoids are produced until veraison (i.e. the beginning of ripening), then degraded during maturation. So (1) the more concentrated your carotenoids (e.g., hot, dry year), and (2) the longer your maturation time, the more carotenoid breakdown products you’ll end up with in your wine.

2007 was a hot, dry year in the Finger Lakes. As such, many producers produced very ripe grapes, and let them hang for quite a while for maximum ripeness. In riesling terms, this could be a recipe for TDN, if not now then in a few years. On a side note, not all carotenoid breakdown products are bad. β-damascenone (canned apple), β-ionone, and the aptly named Riesling acetal all are the result of carotenoid breakdown. I’ll be tasting quite a few 2007s during “May is riesling month”, so stay tuned!

If you want some real science, check out this quote from an excellent and very detailed review of the subject of carotenoid breakdown by Maria Manuela Mendes-Pinto in Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics (2009) which was the source for much of the above information. This is the kind of stuff I love.

It is important to take into consideration that the model systems studied for thermal degradation of β-carotene require extreme temperature over a long period of time, sometimes in the presence of organic solvents such as ethanol and benzene and . Although these conditions are not representative of the natural conditions that can contribute to the degradation of carotenoids and norisoprenoids formation, they are valid studies because they can be indicators of the naturally occurring reactions. The formation of TDN and Riesling acetal by acid hydrolysis of megastigmane structures as intermediates has been proposed by Winterhalter in 1991. The existence of multiple possible precursors for TDN, vitispirane and also of β-damascenone, was observed in heated juice of Riesling grapes; the glycosylated forms were hydrolysed to release the corresponding aroma norisoprenoids. In Riesling wines, TDN, vitispirane and Riesling acetal were formed in high concentrations by acid hydrolysis of the glycosylated precursors. While the precursor of β-damasenone has already been suggested (megastigma-6,7-dien-3,5,9-triol) the precursors of TDN and Riesling acetal were proposed later; the glycosylated form of 2,6,10,10-tetramethyl-1-oxaspiro[4.5]dec-6-ene-2,8-diol identified in wines was considered as a natural precursor of TDN after acid hydrolysis, while 1,4-dihydroxy-7,8-dihydro-β-ionone was considered as the precursor of Riesling acetal. This work also provided evidence of multiple precursors of TDN as previously suggested in related work with the same Riesling wine (P. Winterhalter, M.A. Sefton and P.J. Williams, Am. J. Enol. Vitic. 41 (1990), pp. 277–283).[74].

I guess it makes more sense with the figures.

                          

In Soviet Russia, wine crushes you! (apologies to Yakov Smirnov)

Appellation:Finger Lakes
Variety: Rkatsiteli
ABV: 11.4%
RS: 0.75% (the website says 0.75 g/L, (0.075%) but that is bone-dry. probably a typo.)
Price Point: $18
Notes:
Looks: Lemon yellow with a tinge of green
Nose: The floral notes remind me of both riesling and gewürztraminer. The biggest fruit in this basket is pineapple*, with some regular apple. Also, it kind of reminded me of a pear crème brulée I made one Valentine’s day. Actually, now that I think about it, we had rkatsiteli that day too (a different one, Westport Vineyards from Massachusetts)! Isn’t life grand?
Palate: Tangy acidity is singing the melody here. Just a little bit of residual sweetness backs it up like a nice descant, and a great, full {mouthfeel} rounds out the chord. I’m in a musical mood today, probably because I’m in the middle of 7 shows of Bernstein’s MASS, which you should see this weekend if you are in Ithaca. It’s got a long finish, too.

Rating:

I admit it, I’m a Frankophile. Dr. Frank’s has been in the news as of late, though not for the usual plaudits. The other day, their 3-year-old overflow tasting room burned to the ground. However, nobody was hurt, and the winery was open for tasting the very next day! Talk about unfazed!

Anyway, I love to try grape varieties I’ve never had before, and unless you emigrated from Georgia, chances are you haven’t had a rkatsiteli wine. The grape is Eastern European and apparently grown a lot over there. Dr. Frank appreciated its cold-hardiness and brought it to the Finger Lakes, where I must say it is doing pretty well. I’m sure it’s tough to market, except to people like me who will buy any wine that they’ve never heard of. I mean, if you thought blaufränkisch was a mouthful, then forget this one. By the way, according to Wikipedia it’s “rkah-tsee-tely”. Whatever you call it, it went great with Sarah’s beer/cheese/ham soup, with which we finally demolished the last of the Easter ham. It’s all about the little victories.

*Science!
Many components of pineapple aroma come from a group of compounds called ethyl esters. Wine grapes generally contain only low levels of esters. So why does the wine smell like pineapple? Ethyl esters are generated during fermentation by yeast. In short, fatty acid chains are combined by yeast enzymes (EHT1 and/or EEB1, ethanol O-acyltransferases) with ethanol and form these fruity-smelling compounds. To me, ethyl hexanoate smells particularly pineapple-y, as does ethyl decanoate, but the latter is slightly more metallic. Generally ethyl esters will take less time to hydrolyze and equilibrate than acetate esters (which we’ve talked about before), which explains why pineapple is still hanging about after a few years in the bottle. (Ref: Saerens et al., “The Saccharomyces cerevisiae EHT1 and EEB1 Genes Encode Novel Enzymes with Medium-chain Fatty Acid Ethyl Ester Synthesis and Hydrolysis Capacity”, J. Biol. Chem, 2006)

The reaction in question. Stolen from G. Sacks, Cornell Univ., again.

The same reaction, in simpler terms.

                          

Old school cartoon Oriole looks happy about this wine, but he is dying inside.

Appellation: “American”, grapes are sourced from WA state.
Variety: Riesling
ABV: 11%
RS: 3%
Price Point $12
Notes:
Looks: Pale yellow, a bit darker than a typical riesling from NY would be.
Nose: On the nose it is definitely not a NYS riesling. Very floral, perfumey. A bit of fruit cocktail comes in as well, but the major player in this nose is sulfur dioxide, aka sulfites, which kind of smell like when you first light a match. Wow. It burns my nose.*
Palate: Brazen acidity. Like “yeah, I’m acidic, what are you gonna do about it, punk?” So much sulfur that I can taste it on the palate and all the fruit is gone. Sweet, acidic, sulfurous. Yikes. As it goes down it feels like it will give me heartburn the next day. Blech.

Rating: 1 cork Maybe I am just sensitive to it, but i definitely wouldn’t want any more of this.

I went to Baltimore this weekend for an a cappella reunion concert. While picking up some plonk for the afterparty (André anyone?) I decided to review some MD wine. Boordy Vineyards is the largest winery in Maryland, a state that could be considered an up and coming wine region. Unfortunately, I didn’t look carefully at the bottle and ended up grabbing a wine made with grapes grown in Washington state. When I was there I thought I remembered them mentioning riesling vines, but upon further research it was that they had torn them out. Oh, well.

I have toured the winery and it is one of those “party” wineries. It is a fun atmosphere and they give a pretty informative and fun tour. So if you’re between Baltimore and the PA line, I recommend that you stop by.

As for this wine, a little sugar can be used to cover up some faults, but the SO2 is so profound in this wine that not even the 3% RS could save it. Sometimes you find this sulfite heavy-handedness in Mosel rieslings, as well as occasionally here in the Finger Lakes. I would avoid this one, though the label is nice. It’s got a Baltimore oriole on it.

*Science!
Sulfur dioxide, commonly called “sulfites” on the label, is an antioxidant and antimicrobial agent that has been used for making wine pretty much since wine was first made. SO2 irritates your nose, causing a trigeminal response (see the Jameson post for further discussion of trigeminal response), a burning sensation in the nose. In certain individuals, it can irritate the lungs and cause an asthma-like response. This wine likely has lots of sulfites added because residual sugars can bind SO2, rendering it inactive. If a wine has high residual sugar, chances are it will have higher SO2 to curb microbial activity. Sulfites are the most important preservative and rest assured they will keep coming up again and again in this section.

Addendum:
I didn’t want to get into the whole equilibrium thing, but yes, sulfites exist as molecular SO2 (the actual antimicrobial agent), HSO3-, and SO3–. At wine pH (3.5 or so), most (~95%) of the SO2 will be found as HSO3-. This means that to have enough molecular SO2 for microbial stability, you need to add about 20x more (usually people use potassium metabisulfite). THEN molecular SO2 can associate with ketones and aldehydes, including sugars, so you’ve got to add even more! Problem is the legal limit (US) is 350 ppm (total, free and bound), and the detection threshold is 2 ppm as molecular. And if you have oxygen pickup on your bottling line, then you’ve probably already lost it all! My theory is that the reason this was so overwhelming was that it had a combination of high RS (better add more SO2!) and high acidity, so probably a lower pH (though not necessarily), so more of that extra SO2 was available as molecular, and more went up my nose. I see too much SO2 as a winemaking mistake and it really puts me off a wine. I even tried this a couple days later after it sat in the fridge for a while and it still had biting SO2.

Thanks to Vinogirl for her comment.

                          

Though I’ve never sought them out, I’m sure that there are probably lots of great kosher wines out there, mevushal or not (more on that later). Israel is becoming a name of note in the wine world, especially the Golan Heights. I reckon that this theme was brought about to eradicate a sort of stigma that has developed about kosher wines. To be specific, it’s commonly thought that they are disgusting, sickly sweet, and only to be drunk once a year, 4 cups at a time, during the Passover seder, and that gentiles (like yours truly) should avoid them altogether. So I expect that many bloggers will be picking up selections from newer high-quality producers such as Covenant, Noah, and to a lesser extent, Baron Herzog.

Me, pleading with Laube, Jancis, and Parker to have mercy on bad kosher wines

But hey, everybody deserves a second chance, right? I mean, when’s the last time you actually had Manischewitz? The rest of the wine blogosphere will enjoy some high-end kosher wines that might rate 90+ from wine critics. I, like Abraham, will beg the wine gods to recant their punishment on the Sodom and Gomorrah of kosher wines. We’ll see if any righteous wines are found amongst the wickedness. Four righteous people were found in Sodom, so here are four classic wines, pretty much the only kosher wines to be found at Collegetown Liquors. Hey, times are tough, okay?

Manischewitz Concord Grape
Appellation: American (these grapes could be from anywhere in the USA, but chances are the Concords are from New York)
Variety: from the bottle: “Not less than 51% Concord”
ABV: 11%
RS: “Specially sweetened”
Price Point: $6

The kosher bunch

Notes:
Looks: uniform red with hints of purple, pretty translucent
Nose: The most apparent aroma is the characteristic aroma of native American grapes, e.g., Concord. Some would call this “foxy”. Never having smelled a fox personally, I’d say it smells like Welch’s grape juice. Next it made me think of Push pops. Remember them? A solid purple cylinder of grapey flavor that you could put a cap on and save for later.
Palate: Straightforward, decent bodied mouthfeel. A slight amount of bitterness on the finish. Very, very sweet in the mouth, with little acidity or alcohol to back it up. It drinks like soda, and it probably has more sugar than soda. That being said, people like to drink soda. I can see people actually liking this.

The mother of all kosher wines is Manischewitz. With its Concord pedigree and extreme sweetness, not many in the mood for wine should pick this one. However, just because it’s not a great wine doesn’t mean it’s a bad beverage. It goes down smooth and tastes like grape syrup. Ugh, now the outside of my glass is all sticky.

Rating: 2 corks

Herzog Selection Chardonnay 2006 (Mevushal)
Appellation: Vin de Pays de Jardin de la France (Jardin de la France is the now discontinued name for grapes from the all over the Loire valley)
Variety: Chardonnay
ABV: 13%
RS: N/A
Price Point: $10
Notes:
Looks: light gold, darker than I expected
Nose: As soon as I smelled this wine, I wanted to smell it again. If you know me and my love of smells, you may know that this is not necessarily a compliment. It’s not in this case. It smells like a mix of straw and rotten banana peel. There are some cereal notes mixed in there. It reminds me of a barnyard, but not in a {brettanomyces} kind of way. I don’t know what to say.
Palate: Wow. I have never tasted a wine like this. The more I taste it (and spit it) the more it reminds me of beer. Ever taken a brewery tour? Think of the smell of the brewery, then think of licking the floor next to a wort tank. Also, pretty acidic. After a bit in the mouth it does start tasting like chardonnay, but it’s too little, too late. Medium length of finish, but I kind of want it to go away. A nice way to describe this wine would be “rustic.” A better way would be “awful.”

Normally, to remain kosher, kosher wines must be handled by Sabbath-observant Jews (a full list of things that render wine kosher can be found here.) However, if wine is heated, the holy beverage is considered changed from sacramental wine and therefore is still kosher even if handled by a non-Jew. Today, mevushal is the process of flash-pasteurizing wine to render it kosher. My first guess is that this heating process has affected the aromas and flavors in this wine. Oh and PS, plastic cork?

Rating: half a cork for providing a unique experience, but not one I’m keen to repeat.

Baron Herzog White Zinfandel 2007 (Mevushal)
(Oy, vey! First Manischewitz and now a white zinfandel? I’ll probably get LOLed off the internets!)
Appellation: California
Variety: Zinfandel ({rosé} style)
ABV: 11%
RS: N/A
Price Point: $9
Notes:
Looks: Interesting color: between rosy pink and copper.
Nose: Here, I don’t get much of anything on the nose at first, a welcome surprise given the last two wines. Some generic, wine-like aromas, light floral and and apricot, but nothing too earth-shattering.
Palate: Fresh acidity, not too much sweetness. Strawberry. Not too complex, but hey, for $9 it’s not bad. Dry for the most part. I’m not sure I could pick this out as mevushal compared with similarly priced white zinfandels.
Rating: 2.5 corks for a light, refreshing offering.

And now, the wild card. Originally produced by the Mogen David (shield of David aka Star of David) winery in New York state, this sweet fortified wine quickly became the darling of college students and down-on-their-luck city dwellers. Technically, it’s not kosher, but let’s give it a shot.

A challenger appears...

MD 20/20 Red Grape Wine
Appellation: none, in fact there is practically nothing but the name, government warning, alcohol %age, and “Serve cold” on the label.
Variety: none listed
ABV: 13%
RS: N/A
Price Point: $5 (probably collegetown price gouging)
Notes:
Looks: Translucent dark red, very similar to Manischewitz
Nose: Well, it’s not on the label, but concord has got to be in here too. Solventy, somewhat medicinal I don’t get alcohol on the nose, per se, but I’m reminded of port. Not {oxidative} character, but the brandy that’s added.
Palate: Sweet, but not quite as obnoxious about it as Manischewitz. The balancing factor for the sweetness here is not acidity but alcohol. I can only imagine what the original 18% is like. Bit of bitteress and alcohol burn on the finish. Again, they’re not going for complexity here. They’re looking for that abstract quality known to Bud Light consumers as “drinkability”. And hey, if you like concord grapes/wines, this stuff is not complete rotgut. This wine used to be fortified to 18%, and you can still find it at that high level in some places. Again, not a good wine, but not the world’s worst beverage. I can see lots of potential for getting creative with this and/or Manischewitz in the sangria area.

Rating: 1.5 corks for a cheap buzz.

Overall my kosher wine experience was surprising.  The cheapos fared pretty nicely, though admittedly I had low expectations.  From the more expensive bottles, a decent one and a terrible one.  Again, maybe that was a bad bottle, but I have tasted and observed many different wine faults in classes and real life, and I don’t think that aroma would vary bottle to bottle.  I guess the lesson here is not to give in to wine snobbery.   If people tell you a particular wine is no good, you don’t have to believe them!  And hey, if you buy some Manischewitz and you don’t like it, you’re only out $6, and you can make jelly out of it.  To kosher wines, L’chaim! As for the Sodom and Gomorrah analogy, I’d say that while one of these deserves smiting, it’s not worth pouring fire and brimstone over an entire category of wines.

*Science!

Foxy wine, I'm cominna GITCHA!

The “foxy” aroma I referred to, characteristic of concord, Niagara, and other labrusca-type ad {hybrid} varieties, is the smell of methyl anthranilate. {Vinifera} grapes generally lack the enzyme alcohol acyltransferase, which synthesizes this molecule. It is thought to attract animals to eat berries and (some time later) spread the seeds around. Why is it called foxy? This is the subject of much debate, covered in detail in “A History of Wine in America”, which you can peruse here.

Ref: Wang and De Luca, “The biosynthesis and regulation of biosynthesis of Concord grape fruit esters, including ‘foxy’ methylanthranilate”, The Plant Journal, 2005.

                          

Click to visit Damiani's website

Damiani Wine Cellars Lemberger 2006
Appelation: Finger Lakes
Varietal: Lemberger aka Blaufränkisch
ABV: 12%
Price Point: $16
Notes:
Looks:  garnet in the glass
Nose: not too intense on the nose, light earthy, cranberry, slight bit of oak
Palate:  Decent {astringency} on the palate, but a little high in acidity. Sour cherry shows up, in a sour kind of way. See where I’m going with this one? If you can get over the acidity, there’s some black pepper that sneaks in after a while.

Rating: not a bad effort from a tough vintage.

I’d recommend it with food, the acidity will cut through just about any rich foods. Give it a little aeration* and the nose will improve a bit. I also appreciate the subtle oak, which shows up to the party but, unlike in some wines, doesn’t make a ruckus and dance on the furniture.

I’ve never been to Damiani Wine Cellars, a small producer on Seneca Lake, but I have had some wines from there and they’re not too bad. That’s why I picked this guy up at the annual massive wine tasting at Triphammer last weekend. (70 or so wines and I had to drive myself, so I filled up a Nesquik bottle with expectorated wine…) It’s also not too bad. I’m looking forward to visiting the tasting room some time to get a full sampling. Damiani is also on twitter! You can follow them at, wait for it… @DamianiWine

There seems to be a bit of confusion in the wine world about how to market this grape of many names. Lemberger reminds people of stinky cheese. Blaufränkisch, the oldest name for the grape (some date it back to Charlemagne), has an umlaut, and if you know anything about heavy metal music, you know that umlauts are scary.  My favorite name is the Slovenian modra frankinja, because it looks like it rhymes with “ninja”. I don’t think it does, though. Anyway, lemberger is another one of those “reds that do well in the Finger Lakes”, so I expect I shall be reviewing more. Plus I like it, and that helps.

Lemberger, blaufränkisch, or morda frankinja?

*Science!
Wait, are you saying that aerating wine “softens tannins”? NO! Decanting/aerating wine does NOT aid in the polymerization of tannins, at least not significantly on the time scale of 3-4 hours like you may have been told. (Ref: Salas et al., “Reactions of Anthocyanins and Tannins in Model Solutions”, J. Ag and Food Chem., 2003). I know, this is wine canon that I’m talking about here, but listen! The kinetics of tannin co-polymerization, even in the presence of oxygen (mediated by acetaldehyde), are on the order of months to years, and definitely not hours.

I can think of three purposes for decanting wine:

1. Blowing off hydrogen sulfide (sulfur off-aromas) which can suppress perception of fruit. (Ref: Sweigers et al., “Yeast and bacterial modulation of wine aroma and flavour”, Aus. J. Grape Wine Res., 2008)
2. Removing sediment from older wines
3. Aesthetics. Some decanters allow for long reach or just look really nice. There is a lot psychological about drinking wine from a beautiful hand-blown crystal decanter as opposed to a dusty old bottle with the label peeling off.

Please, prove me wrong. Find me some scientific evidence (blinded sensory studies, a chemical mechanism maybe) that explains the “tannin softening” phenomenon associated with decanting. Until then, I have to say it’s BS. Are there benefits to decanting? Sometimes. Just don’t let me catch you saying it softens the tannins. Decanting helps the wine to get rid of off-aromas, so it’s less about allowing the wine to breathe. It’s more like allowing it to burp.

                          

[

Some notes:

2,4,6-trichloroanisole, the main offender in cork taint

Polyethylene, the polymer that makes up plastic wrap

Cork taint is caused by accumulation of a molecule called 2,4,6-trichloroanisole (TCA) in wines. It makes the wine smell like an old basement. Musty, cardboard, soil, moldy. It’s generally believed that chlorine used in winery/cork sanitation can combine with phenolic groups to form chlorophenols. Chlorophenols are very toxic to things like microbes which might be growing on a cork (or a palette or a barrel). The microbes, which would prefer to stay alive, will detoxify the chemical by O-methylation of the phenol, producing TCA and other analagous compounds.

I should point out that I didn’t really observe any plastic-like flavors or aromas in the wine. With shorter contact, you can probably minimize any off-aromas while still extracting the TCA.

Plastic wrap can make a decorative and shiny addition to any decanter or glass

Refs: Simpson and Sefton, “Origin and fate of 2,4,6-trichloroanisole in
cork bark and wine corks”, Aus. J. Grape and Wine Research, 2007
NYT article mentioning plastic wrap as treatment for cork taint

                          

A "meh" picture for a "meh" wine.

Americana Vineyards Cabernet Franc (N/V)
Grape:Cabernet Franc, Baco Noir??
ABV: not labeled, (“table wine”) is it that hard to get your alcohol measured?!
Price Point: $18
Notes:
Looks: reddish-violet, pretty intense
Nose: Smoky*, vanilla oak on the nose. Toasty, chocolatey, I am smelling a lot of oak and not much wine. Kind of smells like a roasted marshmallow. Other than that, not much to offer.
Palate: I get smoky, oaky flavors on the palate, followed by straight up, somewhat harsh acidity and a short, bitter finish. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised (just guessing here) if this were blended with a bit of Baco Noir, a red {hybrid} which to me has an unmistakable smoky aroma, to add some color. Baco is found in a lot of other Americana wines as well…

Rating: 1.5 corks for a thin, acidic, smoky wine.

Americana Vineyards has its benefits. It’s one of the closest wineries on the Cayuga Wine Trail to Ithaca. Their tasting room is a big barn with a nice bar and ambience and live music on Sunday nights. Also, it’s usually open until 6 so when you get kicked out of your last winery at 5 or 5:30, you can always stop there on the way home. Also, one of their wines, Sweet Rosie, a dessert wine, comes with a piece of fudge. Um, and they have big wine dogs. I think that’s about it for me.

Cabernet franc is one of those varieties that is supposed to do well in the Finger Lakes, so I like to pick one up whenever I visit a winery. Now, 2006 wasn’t the best vintage (I bought this bottle in January or so, so the bottle made with 2007 grapes is probably not out yet) in the Finger Lakes. I’m also not sure that they used all 2006 grapes, since it’s non-vintage, there’s no way to know. This wine, though, is really going out of its way to hide it. Baco for color, oak for “flavor”. Not that I mind oak, but there’s just not too much cabernet franc expression here, or really any expression. And at $18, no way would I get this again.

*Science!

Guaiacol and its derivatives are usually smoky, like bacon, but sometimes not in a good way.

Smoky aromas could have several sources (e.g., the grape variety), but the most likely culprit is toasted oak. The insides of oak barrels are charred, or “toasted”, before being sold as wine barrels. Winemakers can usually choose light, medium, or heavy toast. Toasting extracts some flavor compounds from the wood, specifically lignin degradation products. Lignin, simply, is a molecule that holds the cellulose fibers in wood together. (For this reason, it’s a real pain in the biofuel industry, but we digress…). Compounds that result from the breakdown of lignin include eugenol (clove aroma), vanillin (vanilla), and guaiacol (smoke). (Ref: Galletti et al., “Chemical composition of wood casks for wine ageing as determined by pyrolysis/gc/ms”, Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 1995). In this case the smokiness could derive from the oak (guaiacol) or the smoky component in Baco noir which has yet to be elucidated (it could very well be similar to guaiacol.) Guaiacol taint (“smoke taint”) is sometimes found in wines made from berries that are near wildfires (e.g., recently in Australia) and therefore exposed to smoke. The guaiacol in the smoke will accumulate in the waxy outer coating of the berry and make its way into the wine.