Barrel Tasting

As many of you know, we make and store our wine at Rombauer, located on the Silverado Trail between St. Helena and Calistoga. Following crush, fermentation, and extended maceration, the wine goes into around 90% new French oak barrels, undergoes malolactic fermentation and then spends the next two years aging in Rombauer’s approximate one mile of caves. Over the course of those two years, the wine will be racked a few times, barrels topped off, and tasted regularly by myself, my winemaker, and our mailing list members who come by.

Barrel tasting is fun. It’s also a bit of a gamble for several reasons. Wine in the barrel is a very dynamic thing and I’ve seen it be really unimpressive one week and knock your socks off the next. Also, not owning our own facility means we are sometimes subject to Rombauer’s schedule. I remember one time setting up a tasting with some mailing list members at 3:30 PM, only to discover that the Rombauer cellar staff had taken off at 3:00 that day. Not a problem normally — we aren’t escorted there — but they had turned off all the lights in the caves and neither I nor anyone in the Rombauer tasting room knew where the lights were. Plan B, implemented quickly, was I invited this couple back to our house, gave them a tour and opened a bottle of the 2002, the only wine we had in the bottle at the time. I thought it went pretty well for an off-the-cuff endeavour, but I guess they didn’t. They never bought any wine. Oh well. This post is about barrel tasting.

Last Friday I checked out our 2004’s and 2005’s in barrel.

2005 Butterdragon – Already tasty, but still showing signs of the recently finished malolactic fermentation. For lack of a better descriptor, it makes the wine seem a bit “fizzy” in the mouth.

2005 Butterdragon (Skins Lot) – All our wines go through extended maceration but with about 1/2 of Butterdragon we provided an additional 5 days on the skins. This wine seems further along than the other lot showing more floral nose and rounder mouthfeel.

2005 Baconbrook – Monster lurking in the barrel. Tight.

2004 Butterdragon – Scheduled to be bottled in June. Lovely round mouthfeel, dark color, fruit forward with chocolate.

2004 Baconbrook – Also very tight but exhibiting exotic spice aromas, dark fruits, and a touch of eucalyptus. Although this wine is also scheduled for June bottling, we may keep in the barrel for a few more months.

Want to come barrel taste with me? Let me know and I’ll do my best to meet up with you at Rombauer. Also, as tastings are scheduled, I’ll post here if there are additional slots.

The next scheduled barrel tasting is Tuesday, March 14th at 10:30 AM at Rombauer. Let me know if you’d like to attend.