Winecast

Hi, I brought this up as an idea in a comment on Tim's blog:

if there's not enough Marsanne to go around, it struck me that-- especially if the grapes are not given a hard press, as per a client's instructions-- the skins should bring enough character & a bit of juice to 'support' our mostly Roussanne wine--

Hot off the press, just recorded about 90 minutes ago in the Crushpad barrel room. It gets noisy at the end which will most likely be cut from the full podcast but there is good information on Westerly and what we can expect over the next few weeks before harvest.

Download mp3 podcast by clicking here.

This forum is for posting tasting notes of Roussanne wines we like.

The next element we need to consider for our open-source Roussanne,
is target TA (total or titratable acidity). Since pH is the measure of
the intensity of acidity, I will include both of these together in this
post.

The next question to deal with for our
community-generated Roussanne is target and maximum alcohol. This one
is somewhat linked to how ripe the grapes are when harvested and which
yeast we will use to transform the juice into wine. But we can always "water back" very ripe juice to lower the alcohol if required (not my first choice).

Near the top of the Crushpad 30 White Wine Plan Companion is a simple question:

Style: Describe characters you would like to highlight or downplay in your wine.

Sounds like a simple request but one that I find difficult to put
into words. Sure, I've had some Roussanne I really liked from both
California and the Rhône but what were the specific elements that made
these wines something special?

Please post your intention to participate directly with harvest here. This will be at Crushpad in San Francisco sometime in mid to late October or very early November. If you want to venture down to Westerly in Santa Ynez (South California), please let us know that too.

Hope to see as many group members at the winery when the time comes. BTW, the CrushCam is back in action so you can follow along remotely if you can't make it to San Francisco.

Just recorded a call with our winemaker about the upcoming decisions we will need to make before the wine goes to sleep for a few months. Click here to listen to the audio.

We need to decide if we will run a barrel through partial malo or not and if we want to let the wine go bone dry or leave a gram or two of sugar left. Post your thoughts here after listening to the podcast.

Cheers,

Tim 

Here is a rough edit of my discussuion with our winemaker, Michael Zitzlaff. Please listen and post your thoughts on the wine plan here. It might also be helpful to print out a copy of the wine plan questions I posted a while back. We had this in front of us and answered all the major questions. None of the decisions taken are final, so I'm really hoping the group responds with feedback here.