Like most winemakers I have a love hate relationship to bottling. I love getting the wine in bottle, because it means my job is mostly complete, and there is a real since of accomplishment that the end of the yearly cycle of the task is ending. I also hate it because so many variables are at work and so much can go wrong. A friend of mine called it “your last chance to mess up the wineâ€, though he used a much cruder verb than mess up.
In some cases though the wine keeps getting better as you take it further along in the process. A good example this year is the Sauvignon Blanc which has been difficult since the fermenter. At every stage it has given me fits, and it has been a real chore getting it to taste delicious. Finally this morning tasting it at the bottling line, I could say to myself in all honesty, “This is a nice wine. It’s more similar to a French or New Zealand SB than a California, but it’s good.†That was both a pleasure and a relief.
I particularly like that we’re bottling a dessert wine this year. I only get to make one of these every few years, and it’s exciting to do stuff out of the routine. We used Viognier as the grape this year and I believe that with a little bottle age it’s going to be super. It’s pretty nice right now, which bodes well.
Mostly this time of year we bottle the fresh whites and the rose, but we’re also bottling our 2008 Syrahs tomorrow. This is a four or five months earlier than usual. The wines were so tasty in barrel that I felt like it was time to pull the trigger. These ’08 Syrahs are ridiculously concentrated from a flavor perspective, and inky dark. The only problem with them is that we have so little of them.
