Dirty Jobs, Wine Making and Sausage

I talk about the dirty job of making wine every season. Other than people in the wine industry, no one else sees all the stuff that gets cleaned every day with brushes, pressure washers, hot water, acidic and caustic liquids. All the public sees is a bottle with a cork in it and a really good looking winemaker (like me) pouring it.

Good looking winemaker...David Scheidt

Behind the scenes of the dirty job of wine making 2017.

After 5 tons of grapes are destemmed, this is what the machine looks like

The shaker table is a tool for sorting grapes. Look at all the debris around the table.

Every nook and cranny must be cleaned after grapes are processed

More debris and MOG, Material Other than Grapes

These jeans will never be blue again.

Compost and more compost of stems and bad berries

Green grape leaves are unwanted and are picked out in the vineyard and the crush pad

Someone has to get in these tanks to shovel out all the must for press loads

Sluggish fermentation? No problems. Adding some still active lees will help finish things off

The natural wine of Lencioni Vineyard in Healdsburg

Lencioni Vineyard: Ever since my first vintage in 2007, I have used minimally farmed Lencioni Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon in Dry Creek Valley. I’m going to use the term minimalist or natural to describe what Lencioni Vineyard is and it's typical of small farms in Sonoma County.

From a distance, Lencioni Vineyard looks like any other vineyard in Sonoma County. Rolling hillside. Beautiful view. The vineyard is laid out in clean rows, the Cabernet has a wire set up, the Zinfandel is head trained and there are remnants of the old drip irrigation system in place from 35 years ago. No water has flowed through those drip lines in 27 years.

Minimalist, Feral, Natural or Wild?

It’s the up-close and personal view, walking each row, inspecting each vine that changes your perspective from bucolic vineyard to individually wild vines.

Lencioni vineyard is ‘feral’ for lack of a better term, or perhaps ‘natural’ since that seems to be a term being used more widely in the wine business these days. The rows are difficult to walk, as thorny blackberry bushes are everywhere. Some vines are long gone, dead, forgotten. The occasional poison oak plant shows up from time to time, right next to a grape vine. The vineyard is in some places terraced and undulating and rarely ever flat due to the once, sometimes twice a year tractor work.

Two things happen in the vineyard each year, the rows get disced and the vine gets pruned. That’s it. Nothing else. No sulfur has been applied on these vines in over 10 years. No soil amendments, no cover crop (unless you count blackberry bushes) and most of all, no human applied water. Only Mother Nature provides water.

With this minimalist approach, in 10 years I’ve never seen mildew or rot. The birds don’t eat the grapes. I don’t see bugs or pests. No deer or wild pigs. And without a single drop of pesticide, fungicide or foliar spray, the vineyard survives.

The Wabi - Sabi of the Vineyard

I recently highlighted the struggles micro winemakers, like me, have with small farms, irregularity in harvests being one of them. In 2011, a wet and tempermental year in Dry Creek Valley, I had zero crop from Lencioni. In 2012, regarded as a great, near perfect vintage, I received over 6 tons of fruit from the Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard, the most I’ve ever received. Since the banner year crop of 2012, I’ve seen decreasing yields each year. In 2017 I’ll have harvested less than 1 ton of fruit from the Cabernet vineyard.

Working with the minimalist Lencioni Vineyard is indicative of what micro winemakers, like me, experience; high quality, pure expression of fruit with an unreliable yield and fickle vineyard management, near textbook example of the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi. It's strange to hear the words unreliable and fickle in the wine business; we're conditioned to hear perfect and dependable. Working with small farms is anything but perfect, but in that imperfection is beauty, the beauty of the fruit in the final wine.

What's Love Got to Do with It?

It took one full week of labor to pick 2 tons of fruit, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon in 2017.  We started picking September 1 for Zinfandel and September 5 for Cabernet. The vineyards are spread over 4.5 acres. It’s a pain to pick. It’s pure labor. Love has nothing to do with it. Paid crews don’t want to work it. The fruit is scarce, so hourly labor, not by-the-ton, is how crews got paid in the past. This year, I paid myself to pick it. Let’s hope that I can persuade someone to disc the vineyard a couple times in 2018 and get someone, other than my family, to pick Lencioni Cabernet and Zinfandel in 2018. Picking isn't easy, but like an old climbing buddy told me, "picking was easier than climbing the Eiger:" True.

The upside, after all this labor to pick such a vineyard? The fruit is delicious. The wine I make from Lencioni is intense, beautiful, colorful and full of character. I don’t need to do much of anything to it, as heartiness in the vineyard translates into heartiness on the crushpad and full-flavored wine in the bottle. The 2014 Signature is currently released and is 100% Lencioni Vineyard. The wine was completely on used barrels in 2015 and 2016 and will likely be released under my Signature label sometime in late 2018 and 2019 respectively. 

Micro Winemakers Under Threat

Jon Bonne’s book The New California Wine gave voice to many winemakers. He wrote more recently in PunchDrink, questioning what the future looks like for winemakers such as me.

You can’t make a living on 500 cases.

Winemakers who are adaptable, not doctrinaire have the greatest chance for success. The trouble is, if your hit eclectic varietal is limited in acreage or is planted in a distant part of the state, how does a New Californian style winemaker follow up their big local winemaking hit if their resources are limited to 2 tons or roughly 100 cases? Or even 500 cases? You can’t make a living on 500 cases.

The next generation of start-up winemakers will have to have a portfolio of adaptable skills, both boutique and industrial. Winemakers have to be well versed in wine style, interventionist and non-interventionist, what sells to distributors, direct to bottle shops, sommelier driven restaurants and in the tasting room. The approach is practical, not dogmatic and not out of step with some of the winemakers in New California. Defining the terms natural and industrial seems to be the hottest topic in wine making these days, when only 5 years ago wine making was all about balance, as in pursuit of. How will natural be re-defined in 5 more years? How will the broad California appellation evolve?

Cabernet in Sonoma Vs. Barbera in Mendo

We as winemakers have to be both aggressive and flexible in simply finding fruit. I can find Cabernet in Sonoma County pretty easily if I can afford it. But I can’t find Sangiovese and Barbera, at least not at the price I’d like. I could go to the Foothills, but good luck if they deliver in 2 ton lots to Cloverdale. I could go to Lake or Mendocino County for a couple tons, but I’ll have to pick it up and prices aren’t $500/ton any more for small lots. Try closer to $1500/ton and many growers won’t sell 2 tons lots.

A wine sold at $25/bottle full retail is not a sustainable model for a stand-alone winery if the fruit alone sells for $2500/ton, not including crush fees. $2500 per ton and higher is not uncommon for many varietals in Sonoma County, my backyard. Winemaking can work as a side-hobby, but not as a self-sustaining business with a 500 case production, so don’t quit your day job.

Sure, there are pockets of small vineyards in Dry Creek and Alexander Valley looking to sell to “home winemakers”, but fruit quality and consistency can be painfully erratic. I know; I purchase from small farms every season. As winemaker, I have to be part time vineyard manager and viticulturist.

Mechanization

Lodi is already dealing with lower yields on old-vine Zinfandel and increases in labor and facility costs. Much of that planted acreage will sell to the highest bidder or simply be torn out and replaced with younger, more vigorous varietals and planted for mechanized harvesting. Recent articles show the increasing economic concerns of growers dealing with decreasing yields and increasing labor or skills costs. Mechanization is here and is growing.

There was (past tense) a wave of New Californian winemaker using forgotten varietals at cheap prices. Now, everyone is using them (again). Unfortunately, those varietals are more expensive as demand has increased, or simply, those vines have been ripped out in favor of more vigorous and popular varietals that demand higher prices.

Small vineyards with eclectic varietals lack scale. Custom crush fees have increased from the time The New California Wine book was written. Today, with more elaborate “cooperative” spaces that require higher fees for smaller lots and minimum sizes of 10 or 20 tons crushed, not a grand total of 5 tons for a micro winery. Increases in varietal price and crush fees have squeezed margins on the entire boutique winemaking industry. Prices for Cabernet and Sangiovese are going up, not down, in premium wine growing regions.

As a winemaker, I make natural wine from a less popular varietal, Sangiovese. I also make a full-flavored Cabernet Sauvignon with plenty of new oak. I exist in four worlds, the natural and the industrial, the non-interventionist and interventionist. I even have a winemaking manifesto ascribing to a particular belief, Make Great Wine from Great Grapes! I’m a winemaker, playing the hand dealt to me by each season’s harvest and always thinking about the future.

I AM the New California winemaker and proud of it.

New Vintage, New Closure

Like many wine makers and wine drinkers, the belief that “cork is best” for all wines is a conceit. As I’ve grown in both experience and case production over the last ten years, natural cork is not the only wine closure in the marketplace.

I made the jump to screw caps several years ago upon the introduction of my Jug program. No one seemed to mind that I used a screw cap for a growler of wine. In fact, the screw cap fit the image of the wine and the growler package.

The next use of screw caps were for more traditionally bottled wines, the classic Bordeaux styled 750ml bottle that has had wide success in restaurants, delis, and grocery stores. The wines are typically served by-the-glass and easy to open and close in restaurant settings or purchased for nightly home consumption with a wide array of foods. I’ve increased production in the screw cap category, so I don’t see that screw caps have been perceived negatively by consumers.

Natural cork and the Diam technical cork

The most recent evolution in packaging is the technical cork. Nearly 100% natural cork, the closure is guaranteed to be free of “cork taint”; whereas traditional cork cannot make the same claim. Secondly, technical corks have been engineered to allow oxygen through the closure over time, similar to traditional cork, which allows for micro-oxidation of the wine, a beneficial characteristic for age worthy wines like Cabernet Sauvignon. Thirdly, you pull the technical cork with the same traditional corkscrew; no special equipment needed.

What crystalized my decision to move to technical corks was an experience I had with a restaurant customer of mine.  I was pouring a flight of wines for spring and summer at a restaurant in Fresno. When the owner and I got to the second wine, we both knew instantly the wine was corked. Not good. I’m embarrassed and the wine, even if he wanted to pour it in the restaurant, couldn’t be evaluated properly and therefore wasn’t chosen as a finalist.

As I’m looking to innovate where I can, I made a partial transition to technical corks with some of my 2015 wines. The main reason for me transitioning to technical corks was zero cork taint. Imagine buying one of my wines for $50 only to open the bottle and find the smell of wet cardboard. Disappointing. With technical cork, having a wine damaged by cork taint is not a possibility. With my 2016 vintage, I should be 100% screw cap and technical taint free cork.

It was a big decision to move away from traditional cork. I like the history, tradition and nostalgia of traditional cork. But from a customer viewpoint, the remote possibility of having a flawed bottle of wine because of cork taint in the 21st century isn’t nostalgic, it’s unacceptable.

Look for the new corks in my 2015 RWSC label, Superstrada 2015, and Cabernet Franc 2015.

00 Doppiozero, Lecce, Puglia

00 Doppiozero

Another restaurant recommended by Marco, 00 Doppiozero was another favorite in Lecce. Easy to pop in for an espresso, pastry, amaro, or light lunch. Here's the highlights.

Lunch of some of the best selection of breads I've had to date, followed up by an oversized bruschetta of a light, creamy blue cheese with bitter greens, tomato and anchovies with olive oil and some red wine of local flavor. Easy and tasty.

My Jedi Restaurant senses tell me this is a new model for Italian bar/restaurant/cantina in Puglia. It's open all day starting at about 730am, they do not close until midnight or 1am. You can buy a bottle of wine to take home at a discount to the dine-in cost. You can grab a espresso. You can buy bread. You can buy cured meats to take home. You can order at the counter or order at the table. You can have a full, sit down lunch or dinner (at 12 noon or 6pm), or you can do the Italian thing and have apertivo and sip Spritz and nosh on goodies.

I've popped in for an Amaro, a coffee, a pastry on different days at different times. I like the access and the quality. I was even greeted by a regular after the third visit. The breakfast croissant filled with pastry cream is outstanding. I could have eaten one each day.

When nearly everything is closed at 3pm, "00" in Lecce is open. They are open on Sunday. I want them to be open when I return here. They do close at about 3pm on Monday though, otherwise open.

Introduction to Lecce, Puglia

Lecce in southern Italy has long been called the Florence of the South. It's a trek to get down this far from Tuscany (Puglia is the heel of the boot), I won't lie about that. From Bologna by train, it's about an 8-10  hour trip depending upon the train you take and the delay factor. The nearest airport is Brindisi, about 30 minutes away by car. 

I hadn't been to Puglia since my 2009 trip. I only spent a few hours in Lecce back in 09 before moving further south to the town of Ugento. I promised myself back then to return to Lecce and give the town its due. I'm very happy that I returned for Tour d'Italia 2017.

Plenty of dining options in Lecce, from fast casual to full-blown multi-course formal. I'll detail my dining experiences in the next several posts, this post represents the overview.

Art on the streets of Lecce, Puglia

Lots of pizza and good bread (00 Doppiozero) being consumed in this town. The pizza places aren't large dining establishments for sitting down, street dining is the thing around here, so an entire family will be huddled around a small table eating pizza together outside. Pizza is social, it's family, it's friends, it's take-away. It's also creative. Everyday I walked by Il Pizzicotto, Pizza al Taglio (my preferred place, thanks Marco), there was another version of pizza being displayed. I love the variety. Sure, I'm a sucker for pepperoni and cheese in the States, but it's hard to beat a truffle cheese pizza with mushrooms on a Sunday night. A word of note, Il Pizzicotto charges for its pizza by weight, as each individual piece is cut for the customer.

Il Pizzicotto, Pizza al Taglio , Lecce

00 Doppiozero bread selection, the BEST

The town of Lecce is easy to navigate within the old city. Plenty of landmarks and churches to explore. Train station is a 5 minute walk to the center of town.

Sunday's are busy in Lecce, unlike some towns in Tuscany which can be nearly shut down except for the most touristy towns. Friday, Saturday and Sunday in Lecce the streets are packed with people and nearly every bar and restaurant open. The main restaurants don't open until about 730pm, sometimes 830pm. Pizza is served in some places as early as 6pm.

Monday’s in Lecce might lead you to believe that zombies attacked the town right after you walked safely back to your apartment on Sunday night. The streets are empty. Businesses are closed and you wonder where everyone is. I've never seen anything like it in a major town in Italy, there's always someone out. Not here. So remember to stock up on food for the day, because your options are limited.

This is one of two main squares in Lecce on a Monday morning.

I look forward to returning to Puglia. I would base my journey in Lecce but would rent a car to re-explore the towns around the region. 

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5 Things to know in Italy

Click bait time with a 5 Things headline on Italy. I posted last year about little things many guidebooks don't mention when traveling in Italy. It's not some insiders guide nonsense, just practical stuff one has to deal with while traveling.

Video sign in Italian and the warning in English

1. Recycle Containers when renting an apartment. How many recycle containers does one country need? Plenty. I think the most is 6 containers in Bologna? Or you just dump everything in a street container marked Indifferinziata. If you’re going to get a place on AirBnB, you’re gonna have to deal with waste containers.

2. Smoking is alive and well in Italy my friends. A new generation of smokers is coming. People can’t smoke in restaurants or on trains, but they can smoke right outside the door of the restaurant or the train while the door is open.

3. Graffiti is also alive and well. Regional Trains and buildings, get tagged a lot, the fast trains, not so much. Some of it is actually art, most of it isn’t.

4. Dog Poo. No change. Still plenty of poo on the streets. Lecce does a nice job of street cleaning. Minimal dog poo in Lecce and no less dogs than other Italian towns. Bologna, new to the dog poo rating scale has an issue with the portico system as poo needs to be cleaned by shop owners and rain can’t simply wash things away under a portico. Poo in Bologna is a problem.

5. Restaurant bathrooms (even Michelin rated Restaurants) don't always have toilet seats. But they do have very expensive hand air systems (think Dyson) instead of paper. And one toilet for an entire 30 seat restaurant, so keep an eye on the bathroom if you need to make a go.

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Il Brindisi, Ferrara

Il Brindisi has been in the Gambero Rosso Guide for many years. It's old. Real old. Plenty of dusty stuff all over the walls. Even has a squat for a toilet. Yea, that old.

Il Brindisi seems touristy, from the moment you walk up to the door, with every global guidebook sticker you can think of, some certification on table, and some other certificate on a eisle. But, it’s Sunday in Ferrara, so choices are extremely limited.

Walk in and there are plenty of visual clues telling you about the history of the place (besides the dusty stuff), from pictures to ancient bottles of wine to somehow make you love the place just because it's old. I can almost see my Mom watching Rick Steves on PBS telling me about Il Brindisi in the heart of Ferrara, (dub in Rick’s voice) "legend has it this is the oldest continually operated restaurant in town"...blah blah blah.

I started off with pasta in brodo or broth, a classic and hard to screw up. The dish was warm, filling, and salty. Belly filling. But there isn't that much to it. I've made this dish and had it in other places, it's a classic regional dish served here with irreverence and disrespect. In most cases, the simplest dishes can be the hardest to get right. 

Boring broth with salty pasta lurking underneath the surface

Moving on to the second course, cotechino with mashed potato was exactly as billed, no frills and cooked like it has been for the last 500 years.

500 year old cotechino sausage

My friend ordered the pot roast with mashed potato. This dish could have been cooked by my mother. One doesn’t come 6000 miles to eat a pot roast that can be duplicated by your mother.

Hey look, Mom's Pot Roast 10,000km away from Fresno

The wine? It tasted like the stuff they served at the Fresno Basque Hotel in 1989. The wine was 3eu a glass. If it wasn’t served chilled, it might not have been palatable.

Was it bad food? No. Was it knock your socks off? No. It was home cooked comfort food, nothing more...but it was open on a Sunday and saved me from having to get a sandwich or bad pizza.

Ferrara has three reasons to go back to: 1 Rizzati Gelato. 2. A walk around its ancient wall. 3. Find a better restaurant to eat in (don’t go on a Sunday).

Where to stay in Emilia Romagna, Italy

Is Bologna a jumping off point for Emilia Romagna? Or should you stay in Parma or Modena or even Ferrara?

Bologna is a big city. You can easily fly in from Paris or Frankfurt and be at your apartment/hotel in 20 min. The main train station, Bologna Centrale is part of the downtown and you can be in Parma or Modena within an hour by train. 

Bologna's secret canal network

Bologna has everything, high-end shopping, a nightlife, Michelin restaurants. It also has a lot of students, hordes of tourists, and plenty of trinket dealers. The town is big. You could easily explore a quarter of the town and not get bored. The guidebooks can detail walking tours and sites to see. Bologna is a culinary focal point, so there are plenty of cooking classes and schools you can attend to fill your time.

Parma and Modena by comparison have much less in the way of tourists, students,  or hordes of people. They are quaint towns compared to Bologna. You can walk the entire city center of Parma around the edge in an hour on a fast walk. Modena, is even smaller if you don’t venture out of the old center.

Where should I eat next? 

By train, Parma is an hour to Bologna, Modena is 30 minutes. If you want a Gucci bag, take the train to Bologna and go back to Modena. Modena has very well regarded restaurants, one of the best in the world actually. Parma has a great apertivo culture.

While I’ve never stayed in Ferrara, I visited. It is north of Bologna on the same train line that would take you to Verona/Vicenza/Venice. The city has an intact wall, similar to Lucca, although much larger. The town itself is also bigger than Lucca, but with charming streets. I could see an extended stay in Ferrara if you wanted to get both Emilia Romagna and some day trips in to the Veneto.

It’s a give and take, Bologna or the outlying towns? I think it depends on you and your personality. You want slower, eat lunch within a 10 minute walk, take a nap, don’t wanna fight a busy Main Street or smell the stank of yet another student’s cigarette smoke? Parma/Modena are your places.

If you just want to trophy hunt and say you “saw the sights” stay in Bologna and day trip everywhere. There’s always a train passing through Bologna to take you somewhere else for the day.

Tour d'Italia 2017

As I did in early 2016, I visited Italy at the beginning of 2017. I explored new territory in Emilia Romagna, (specifically Bologna and Ferrara), returned to familiar ground in Tuscany, (the walled city of Lucca) and re-explored one town in Puglia, ) the Florence of the South, Lecce). 

On this blog, over the next couple weeks, I will try to summarize some of my experiences in Italian travel, food, and wine with both specific reviews of restaurants and wines to general travel writing about the regions in Italy I explored.

Like all travel stories, there were themes and story lines, plot twists and turns.

You'll see a lot of pasta, a theme I'm happy to explore, it's Italy after all. If there was a primary dish to sample, it had to be tagliatelle with meat sauce. While a flat ribbon noodle was sampled most, a stuffed pasta with basically the same ground meat sauce was a close second. A meat sauce with pasta is reliable, it will not let you down, and there's really no translation necessary, most people know what a ravioli is. The variables with pasta and meat sauce are salt level, sauce thickness and pasta thickness. Salt can make or break the dish and salt level seems to vary widely in this dish. Secondly, do the chefs finish the pasta in the sauce pan to absorb any pasta water? Thirdly, how thick is the pasta and to what level of al dente are they cooking it? A lot of variables for a simple dish.

The story line of Puglia had to be baccala or dried salt cod in English. It’s on every menu in some fashion. I would have gotten on my pizza if I saw it offered, which if I had looked into al Taglio in Lecce every night, I probably would have found it. Sautéed, deep fried, brandade.

The winter theme of nearly every restaurant in Italy was artichokes or carciofo in Italian. I ate a lot of artichokes this trip. Raw, boiled, sous vide, stewed, you name it, I had it. Inspiring really. So often, artichokes don’t pair well with wine and are left off of many menus. Secondly, artichokes are difficult to clean and prepare. Thirdly, artichokes tend to either get boiled and then grilled in much of the Central Valley and Central Coast of CA and then served with mayo or some kinda Ranch style dip.

The plot twist this year was being able to dine with someone regularly. Rarely do I have the opportunity to dine with others, not so on this trip. Dining with just one other person doubles the amount of wine and food I can try. So, when you see 6 or 8 pictures of food and wine in a single restaurant review, I was not dining alone. Even with my rather formidable eating skills, I can't plow down 8 dishes and two bottles of wine in one sitting.  

I hope you enjoy my 2017 Tour d'Italia!