Home winemaker’s competitions are here

Posted on 02/21/2012 by Ryan ODonnell in Home Winemakers, Local News Leave a comment

There’s prominent amateur winemaker competitions coming up and the time to submit your bottles is now!

WineMaker 2012 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition
This is the biggest competition for home winemaker anywhere. Send in your bottles by March 16, 2012

Sonoma Home Winemakers Competition
Submit your bottles by March 10, 2012 and get feedback from a highly experienced judging panel.

I think this is going to be the year. I’ve never entered my wines into any competition for many reasons. The primary being, I didn’t think they would score well being how novice I am compared to everyone else. But admittedly, there’s no better to learn than having other people taste your wines and provide feedback. Time to step up and take the criticism… the good, the bad and the tasty!

Which wines are you going to enter?

Origination of “user-friendly” wines

Posted on 02/16/2012 by Ryan ODonnell in Education Leave a comment

Clark Smith of Wines and Vines magazine had a great article in the December 2011 issue titled Some Like It Hot where he goes into the history of California wines alcohol levels rose 2% since the ’70s, how the trend came about and where it’s heading.

In the late ’80s, wineries in California, Chile and the South of France turned to Australia expertise that they believed held the keys to marketable styles. Their technique was simple: Push for even greater maturity. Crop left long enough on the vine loses its reductive strength and mean-spiritedness and softens into fruit-forward, user-friendly wine that “makes itself” in the fermentor (…) Recent Davis studies indicate that hang time has no effect on pyrazines. Yet in a sense, the fix works because the raisiny aromas mask other flavors including, unfortunetly, varietal and terrior expression, making Cabernet, Zinfandel, Syrah, what-have-you, taste pretty much alike. (…) The hang time cureis a way to destroy the vigor and structure of a red so it behaves like a white wine: simple, fruity, easy drinking and pointless to age.

In closing, “a month on the vine doesn’t substitute for a decade in the cave”.

It will take time before consumers just get bored with these wines that all taste the same and actively seek something unique. Those winemakers honing their skills now and finding what works best for their land and grapes will be the ones on the forefront of truly artisan wines.

Primera’s label printer looks ideal if you can make the initial investment

Posted on 02/13/2012 by Ryan ODonnell in Equipment, Packaging Leave a comment

Printing labels is always one of those last-minute jobs that always seems to have some sort of issue related to it. Ordering too few or too many labels is common. The dreaded fear of discovering a typo or grammatical error can cause ulcers at just the thought.

Personally, my quantities are small enough that commercial printers can run crack-and-peel labels on a digital press making the entire job somewhat affordable. I’m usually in the boat though of ordering too few or too many both (frsutrating) so I started to investigate label printers for my short-run wines.

There’s really only one manufacturer worth looking at that can create high-resolution, full color, label printers for wine bottles: Primera.

The one that caught my eye was Primera’s LX900 Color Label Printer. What I like most is that it’s a high-quality, fast printer with individual ink cartridges. That way, I only buy the ink I’m using and not wasting ink like those all-in-one cartridges. Primera makes some other label printers but LX900 seems to be the logical choice if you’re in the market. The downside is that this printer is far from cheap. While the return on the investment can be recouped, you’re looking to drop about $3k just for the printer. Amazon has it for just over $2k but regardless, that some serious coin for a printer.

Given my small quantities and constant change in bottled wines year after year, the idea of having on-demand label printing capabilities would be REALLY nice. Perhaps when I can start selling my wines legally, this could be a viable option but until then, the price tag keeps me from enjoying one more toy in my cellar.

If you have experience with this or any other label printer, tell us by posting a comment.

VinoTrac Joins the Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association

Posted on 01/11/2012 by Ryan ODonnell in Local News Leave a comment

In an effort to contribute to the ever expanding Livermore Valley, VinoTrac has joined the ranks of other local, industry-related businesses that serve this incredible winemaking region and is an official affliate of the Livermore Valley Winegrowers Association.

Our goal is to work closely with Livermore’s winemakers, better understand their approach to winemaking and learn how we can better position our software solution to meet their needs.

Our mission is to help winemakers better manage production during busy harvest months. Staying organized and logging notes into an affordable, flexible system is a big step toward making great wines. If winemakers can spend less time dealing with operational tasks and focus on making the best wines possible, then our software solution has succeeded.

I look forward to the new relationships that will be forged in this new year as well tasting the results these passionate winemakers put forth in every bottle.

Bob Bennett: the savior to amateur winemaker’s

Posted on 01/10/2012 by Ryan ODonnell in Local News Leave a comment

I’ve had the privilege to make fruit from Bennett Ridge Vineyard for two consecutive vintages and the fruit has always turned out fantastic wines. Of course, the wines would never had gotten to that point without a constant volley of question and answers between myself and owner Bob Bennett who has been helping home winemakers since he planted in vineyard.

Check out this article from the Press Democrate highlighting Bob and his dedication from the begininning.

Barrel tracking using QR codes is the latest feature to be released in VinoTrac

Posted on 12/19/2011 by Ryan ODonnell in Equipment, Technology Leave a comment

Barrel and vessel tracking in general is typically an expensive problem to solve. Not sure why really but I suspect it’s vendor who are holding your batch notes hostage and trying to shake every last nickel from your pockets. Sad.

Lately, the wine industry has been buzzing about QR codes and how to leverage the technology in their marketing efforts. Honestly, I haven’t seen an implementation that I thought made much sense but wineries continue to cram those square codes on anything they can think of. It did however, create the seed which turned into the latest feature offered completely free to any premium account in VinoTrac. If you make enough batches or use enough vessels in your operation, you know how important it is to label each vessel and track the actions and additions accordingly.

Our barrel tracking solution is simple. From the vessel page, you can easily print “tracking slips”. These are simply printer-friendly pages with the batch and vessel detail and a large QR code. Staple or tape these to your vessel. Using your modern cell phone or mobile device, download any QR code reader of your choice. Most are completely free. Use that to scan the QR code on your vessel which will launch you into VinoTrac on your phone’s web browser. Sign in and you’ll then see your vessel as confirmation and all the same great note adding functions of our system. Once you’re done adding your notes, you’ll see a simple confirmation meesage that it was received. Next time you’re looking at your batch notes on your computer, you’ll see all those vessel notes in your batch’s activity view.

There’s no special labels or ink needed. No expensive scanning devices. No additional fees or costs.

Here’s some pictures of the tracking slips in action, on my vessels:

This allows me to leave my laptop out of the cellar and use my iPhone to enter all those as they happen. Now, my notes are accurate as to when they occurred and saves me the time and effort of entering in my notes later in the day.

I really hope everyone enjoys this feature and finds it as useful as I have since it’s release. We’d all love to see how you’re using them in the cellar and of course, your feedback so we can continue to improve things.

Happy Winemaking!

Racking carboys? Check out this vacuum pump setup

Posted on 12/15/2011 by Ryan ODonnell in Equipment Leave a comment

I always try to leave my carboys somewhere elevated so when/if I have to rack them, I don’t disturb the sediment. However, this doesn’t always play out in an ideal fashion so I’m racking wine with sediment recently added into suspension. This creates the dilema of additional rackings later… and possible more oxygen exposure.

I also know a number of people who have difficulty lifting full, glass– 3, 5 and especially the 6 and 6.5 gallon carboys. Those bitches get heavy!

Enter the vacuum pump system designed for home winemakers: http://allinonewinepump.com/

Their website has a nice video of the pump in action and for being under $200, it’s certainly cheaper than the more popular Enolmatic bottle filler. My first impression was of excitement and I thought I’d Google what any others thought of it since the pictures on their site were rather small. There’s some really interesting threads on some forums:

WinePress.US
http://www.winepress.us/forums/index.php?/topic/49418-all-in-one-wine-pump-my-review/

WineMakingTalk
http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15976

The general consensus seems to be that if you’re a DIY kind of person, you can make a vacuum pump system rather inexpensively. If you’re not and the Enolmatic is beyond your price point, this system is your next best bet. This setup is very versatile for racking, degassing and bottling which for under $200 is not too shabby of a tool.

Wine Researchers Sequence Brett Genome in world first

Posted on 12/05/2011 by Ryan ODonnell in Local News Leave a comment

The breakthrough offers Australian winemakers a competitive advantage in managing the troublesome yeast, which has the potential to spoil wine with its ‘medicinal’ and ‘metallic’ characters. (…) Sequencing the Brett genome, which reveals its genetic blueprint, means the Australian wine industry can future-proof its strategy against Brett and the risk of spoilage. We’ve put science to work to build economic security for our industry.

Complete Article

This is pretty amazing and props go The Australian Wine Research Institute for undertaking this monumental task over the last two decades. How much they will share to the rest of the world and when they have their “silver bullet” will no doubt be of controversy. Regardless, this is a big win for wineries everywhere.

Scribe: the inspiration being my skin-fermented Chardonnay

Posted on 10/09/2011 by Ryan ODonnell in Techniques Leave a comment

I first tasted the Scribe 2010 skin fermented Chardonnay while dining at The Restaurant in the Meadowood resort. It absolutely floored me how complex the wine was, the colored was a deep, golden yellow, layered with creamy fruit flavors with subtle kisses of spice and tannin that made it stand up to some great foods. It was the first skin fermented while wine I’ve ever had and I knew I wanted to try my hand at making it too. What a learning experience it would be!

So when a grower hooked me up with a free 50 pounds of Chardonnay, I knew exactly what I would do with it.

I haven’t read too much about skin fermenting whites simply because there isn’t a whole lot of info to read. My attempt will be to keep the temperatures within a comfortable 60-70 degrees, fermented on neutral oak chips, push it through full malolactic conversion and age it on light-toasted oak. I want to keep the golden yellow color as much as possible as well as it’s fruit flavors but bring in creamy vanilla and spice from the oak.

You can follow the progress here:
http://www.vinotrac.com/community/user/29/batches/activity/392/

Punching the cap of Zinfandel by hand… literally

Posted on 10/02/2011 by Ryan ODonnell in Harvest, Techniques 1 Comment

I know winemakers like their tools but personally, I’m not a fan of the punch down tool. This is really only possible because my batch sizes are manageable and not dealing with macro bins galore so this technique isn’t exactly practical for everyone.

Basically, I prefer breaking up the cap and stirring the lees by hand er… arm. While breaking the cap, I’m scouring the skins for sticks, leaves, jacks and another other material other than grapes (MOG). Usually, I collect anywhere from 3-4 pounds of MOG per batch which is material not soaking in my juice or breaking down into off flavors. Using my hand helps break the cap up much finer while stirring up the lees from the bottom. It’s also far more gentle than a tool that could potentially break seeds.

Here’s a quick video of the process. It’s a little shaky and next time I’ll have someone hold the camera-phone for me… promise.

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