Private Barrel Tasting with James Hendon, Winemaker at Pear Valley

Ron and I met James Hendon, winemaker extraordinaire for Pear Valley Winery (photo credit Pear Valley 2009), a few weeks ago at my official central coast book launch party at Kevin Rankin's awesome Paso Wine Centre in Paso Robles.

James and his friends bought a dozen of my book/CD packages and invited us to come out for a winery tour and barrel tasting so, uh, naturally, we hooked that up ASAP!

James is brilliant, friendly and funny. Plus I also think he is pretty cute. (It's okay, Ron understands). The three of us had a wonderful time touring the winery, sampling his wines and tapping his vast knowledge of farming, fruit, fermentation and fun. It was like a wine lovers' play date on James' playground!

When we arrived at the winery, a helicopter was spraying the vines. I assumed it was sulfur, but James took us to look at the vines and explained that it was a copper ion solution. Copper? Sounds bizarre.

But because of the impending freezing temperatures, the newly popped buds must be protected from frost or the winery could lose an entire vintage. Ouch. Some of the tiny buds and leaves were already black or brown from the previous cold snap.

James said there are three ways to prevent this: 1) by using large fans to keep warm air circulating around the vines, 2) by continuously spraying water on the vines, or 3) by spraying copper to form a protective barrier, which was the Pear Valley choice.

Then we toured the "crush pad," where the ripe grape clusters are processed.

Check out this custom basket press that James had made by experts at Diemme in Italy.

The basket, lower part on the right, holds three tons of fermented grapes and each press takes several hours.

The compressor, separate apparatus on the left, is meticulously calculated to gently apply pressure to the macerated grapes with the upper form-fitting lid, and then release after it "senses" that the right amount of grape juice has been pressed off.

All of this happens very, very slowly. According to James, winemakers need to be patient and use time to their advantage. Rushing any part of the process can lead to mistakes or lower-quality wine.

About this time, James introduced us to his assistant winemaker, Jared Lee, as he was finishing a tour of his own and wrapping up the day.

Here are the two masters in front of the custom crusher and de-stemmer.

It was really sweet of James to introduce Ron and me to Jared by talking about my book!

As we left the crush pad, I noticed a wood-fire grill next to the processing equipment, and asked James if BBQ was part of the daily regimen.

He said, "Definitely. BBQ and beer. I always say, 'it takes a lot of beer to make wine!'" Indeed.

We got to talking about craft beer, and specifically Anderson Valley Brewing Company (age required to enter website), then all agreeing that Arrogant Bastard Ale was a fave. We shared our love for Xingu beer with James (he will L-O-V-E this beverage!) as he opened the fermentation room doors.

Wow! Fermentation barrels of many sizes!

The stainless barrels pictured here are the ones James uses most frequently.

They hold approximately five tons.

There are also 40-ton barrels that look like small apartment buildings!

Pear Valley grows 100 acres of grapes which yield 30,000 cases of wine each year.

This is evident when entering the barrel storage room which, James says, houses some 1,600 barrels of numerous vintages.

With clean wine glasses in hand, we followed James into the depths of his creations as they rested in multifarious oak barrels from Minnesota to Pennsylvania to Hungary to France.

James keeps the barrel room at a consistent temperature of 60˚F and a matching humidity of 74%.

The stainless kegs pictured in the lower left of the photo are filled with top-up wines of each varietal.

James led us down Aglianico Alley to sample the '09 first.

This is precisely when we started discussing the title for my next book, the sequel to "Cravings, Ravings & Misbehavings," because I said the fruit in the wine tasted like a craisin on my palate.

James suggested I title the next book "Craisins, Ravin's & Misbehavin's," and we all had a hearty laugh. Clever man.

Here is James with his glass thief, retrieving sumptuous samples of his 2009 Pear Valley Aglianico.

We continued on to the '09 Grenache which was delightfully fruity. James says that, due to the light color, he will add 2-5% of Syrah to the wine prior to bottling to give it a deeper, more attractive hue.

Next we sampled the 2009 Syrah. The tannins were a little "grippy," according to James. He will bottle this wine in July and then, to allow the tannins time to soften, lay it down for one year prior to releasing the wine in the tasting room.

As we tasted the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, James discussed some interesting legal issues with regard to winemaking. In California, grapes have a longer growing season with more sun and so they can produce very high sugar levels, or brix. In France, the opposite is true: the growing season is shorter with less heat and the fruit is typically much lower in natural sugar.

So, it is illegal in France to add water to the wine before bottling, but in California, it is illegal to add sugar!

James dipped into the 2009 port made with Cabernet Sauvignon grapes. We found it to be silky smooth with flavors of caramel, nutmeg, ginger and toasted bread. I said, "Hey, this is like my Fluffy Pumpkin Pie with Gingersnap Crust recipe in my book!" James agreed, with a wink.

We moved on to the 2010 port-style concoction made from Tempranillo grapes, and all three of us concurred that it was like drinking buttered toast with triple berry jam.

James ended our delicious tour and tasting with his 2010 Cabernet Sauvignon. "It's a big cherry," he said. Definitely. Great tannins, smooth on the palate but chewy as well. He will bottle this in July or August of 2012.

Here's a photo of Ron and James in front of massive wine barrels.

When Ron went to take a picture of James and me, the batteries in our eight-year-old camera died.

Oh, the life of a budget-conscious blogger.

Anyway, we had a fantastic time with this amazing winemaker.

James, a UC-Davis graduate, is so gracious, charming and warm, and his wines match his energy exactly.

He is also a musician and a surfer, and I'm sure that the metaphors to these aspects of his life will apply mellifluously to his magical winemaking mastery!

Ron and I, with friends, will be heading to the Pear Valley tasting room soon.

Thank you to James and to adorable Pear Valley owners Tom and Kathleen!

All other photo credits BlipsWerx Productions 2011.

Castoro Cellars Wine Lab Tour!

TOURING A VERY SPECIAL WINE PRODUCTION FACILITY

Janet K. from Milwaukee, Wisconsin visited us in May and we had a blast!

Doing what? Eating. Laughing. Drinking. Driving.

(Oh, that didn't segue properly!)

I mean, Eating. Laughing. Drinking. Eating more. Laughing more.

We did drive, too! That's what you have to do to get just about anywhere when you live in the countryside of central California.

AND... we toured Castoro Cellars Wine Lab and Production Facility as well as the Tasting Room!

What a treat! Sherrie is the enologist at Castoro Winery.

She works in the lab in San Miguel, California, and she invited us out to tour the lab and production facility.

All I can say is, it's an amazing place! And being an enologist is cool. Check out this link for an official government job description.

Sherrie adds: "I would probably have to include that speaking Spanish is a must and you are also required to spend copious amounts of time attending TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) compliance seminars to learn how to file stacks of tedious forms with official titles such as: “Amended Form 5120.17 in accordance with 27 CFR 24.123."

And she is an amazing chick, both personally and professionally. Also looks great in "safety" orange!

This is Sherrie explaining the lab -- in just enough detail, which was refreshing for us because there are WAY too many tubes and beakers and vials and electrified sensor-type thingies. All under the flicker of fluorescent lighting.

Whew!

In the next photo, she does go into detail about the "blind tasting" that she and the rest of the winemaking team had done that morning. Castoro collects other regional wines and tastes them blind against their own wines to create an unbiased evaluation, or as they call it, "Organoleptic Evaluation." Very official, and probably also government approved.

Remember the song "Nice Work If You Can Get It (And You Can Get It If You Try)?"

With that in mind, think about having Sherrie's job:

First, drive through the gorgeous countryside of Paso Robles and San Miguel.

Enter a lab filled with tubes and beakers and vials and

electrified sensor-type thingies that YOU ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO USE because chemistry and formulas and organizing barrels and reading the Periodic Table of Elements and working with other like-minded world-class winemakers seems to make for an fun way to pass the day.

Next, drink wine. DRINK WINE!

Then figure out how to make wine better, if possible, and certainly make it as delicious as is humanly (or angelically!) possible.

Finally, GET PAID (regularly!) to do all this! Wow. That's a pretty cool job.

As we left the meeting room, I noticed the Periodic Table of Elements on the wall.

Sherrie pointed out that the box of each element

contained a comedic note about wine or the winemakers or other Castoro team members.

Sorry, you can't really see that cleverness in the teeny image which I have provided. Which is probably just as well, as far as Sherrie and her team members are concerned.

Then I turned to Janet.

"Hey, Janet," I said, "Remember Chemistry class in our Freshman year of college and how you got an A and I got a D?" She said she didn't know that I got a D.

"No, for real, you didn't know how little I, your friend and dorm-roommate, did not study Chemistry?" She said she didn't recall......... (Wait, maybe I shouldn't have posted this! I am a good student....)

Then, just before we left "The Laboratory" (mwah-ha-ha!), Sherrie showed us "The Board."

"The Board" organizes every lot of Castoro Wine and clients' wines on the production facility premise, the tank farm.

Organize. In code. Secret code.

Super-secret COLOR code. Pretty amazing.

One time, Sherrie said, The Board got accidentally ERASED. Ahhhhhh! Oh well, it's only every detail about every barrel, tank, carboy or bottle of wine at the facility. Now it is clearly written on The Board: Don't Erase, Ever!

Then, we got our little minds blown even further by touring the barrel "rooms" (more like, indoor massive canister caves, and outdoor massive canister sunbathing areas with auto-cool function.... Read on for explanation).

Here, Sherrie tries to get us novices to understand "de-alcoholizing" wine. I still don't

get it totally, but this is the gist:

A wine, in this case, a white wine (Viognier, if I recall correctly) ends up with too much alcohol.

No, really, too much alcohol?!?! Well, yes. An excessively high volume of alcohol doesn't balance well with the character of the fruit and can ruin the hard work of the winemaking team.

So the wine is sent away to a special laboratory that employs reverse osmosis to remove almost all of the alcohol, usually down to about 4% by volume. The wine is then shipped back to its home lab to be RE-BLENDED. Seriously, just keep reading!

We tasted the de-alcoholized Viognier and it was absolutely awful! Sort of like grapefruit juice mixed with sterno or perhaps pineapple scented hydrogen peroxide with a spritz of Aqua Net hairspray and a hydrochloric acid finish!

But Sherrie assured us that the wine would be RE-BLENDED into a phenomenal, non-toxic, lower alcohol wine. I trust her.

Okay, let's move on to the Bottling Bus. No, Castoro doesn't call it that, but I think it's cool. Like Magic Bus!

It's actually a semi-truck trailer, equipped with a high-tech wine bottling mechanism.

Castoro owns FIVE of these bottling buses that travel throughout the west coast.

This photo shows the bottles moving through this mind-bending machine, behind thick glass.

And although it fills 80 bottles per minute, Sherrie wants it to GO FASTER.

Yeah, just read that phrase again: 80 bottles per minute. Complete with label. FASTER!

These two women place foils over the bottle tops which get spun down and heat sealed.

The bottles are replaced into cardboard cases by the men on the other side of the conveyor belt.

While we were on this especially noisy wine

bottling bus, bottling manager Reggie

experienced a total shutdown of the machine.

Problem?

A label had been applied to a bottle off-kilter.

"Le Machine" sensed "le problem" and stopped before any other incorrect labeling occurred.

Ohhhhh-kay, then. This is an amazing machine.

Full cases are printed with a government approved wine label, then sent down the final segment of conveyor track, which you see in the right side of this photograph.

Sherrie is explaining to Ron the final process:

While traversing the conveyor belt, a motion-sensing hot glue applicator sprays the box tops. The man at the end stacks each case cork-side down onto the palettes.

Someone else with a fork-lift moves each palette to its intended pick-up spot.

Now, let's explain how the grapes are processed in the outdoor stages.

Grapes come in by the truckload and are initially weighed, right outside Castoro's lab at the government approved and calibrated weighing station.

The grapes get transported by magic and pixie dust -- No! By trucks and pumps -- up to this level.

In this picture, you can see rows of 60-gallon barrels below at ground level. It's so high, they look like wine corks!

Once the grapes are verified at the weigh-in, they move to the processing area.

The grapes, still mostly in clusters, get pumped into this huge stainless steel bin.

It looks small in this photograph, but the dimensions are roughly 10' x 5'.

An sink-like opening at the bottom allows gravity to funnel the grapes downward to the next processing stage.

This photo shows a close-up of the augur-like mechanism beneath the grating and/or walkway. (Whatever that's worth for acrophobic bloggers like this one...)

This is all about red grapes. The stainless steel rod is equipped with stainless steel paddles that move the clusters of grapes forward.

The paddles help to remove the grapes from their stems, and to gently break the grape skin in a double helix cylinder.

It is imperative to accomplish this without shredding the fruit completely, with the goal being to not break any seeds.

Here is the double helix "grape de-stemmer."

Then, the fruit is rocketed to its home where it will be fermented.

The massive cylinder is made of small holes that are smooth on one side and sharp on the other.

On the other hand, white grapes are pressed differently.

An inflatable internal bladder squeezes maximum juice from the lightly broken skins and deposits the pulpy juice into another magical, mystical pumping device.

And then, the wine goes into fermentation barrels or tanks.

Or shall I say... TOWERS?!

I forgot the exact height of these receptacles from the Netherworld Of Wine.

But suffice to say, they are MASSIVE.

People, there is WINE in these towers. Or should I say...

THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF BOTTLES OF WINE IN THESE TOWERS!

Does that get the point across?

But, okay, I'm coming down from my hyperventilating experience.

Down, down, down to level ground!

Here, Sherrie is doing her best to try to inculcate us wine novices about the cooling band around the outdoor tanks.

Each wine has an ideal temperature.

Because the tanks are so large, a special band contains a cooling gel called Glycol that circumnavigates around the mid-section of the tank.

Here, Sherrie reaches up to pour a glass of one of Castoro's signature reserve reds.

The wine is excellent: 2008 Dam Fine Red Cuvee.

And we're impressed with her ability to not send red wine showering all over the place!

As you see, these tanks have been sprayed with a layer of insulation to assist further in temperature control.

This is San Miguel, California, where summer temps can reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit!

The wine must be protected!

We finally left Sherrie alone after she graciously answered all of our wine-related questions, then headed out to Castoro Cellars Tasting Room.

We tasted many samples of their amazing and delicious wines on the list.

Then we quickly at our picnic lunch so we could get Janet back on the road/in the air to Milwaukee.

It was a super-fun and informative day. Thanks, Sherrie! (She also provided invaluable details in the final edit before I posted).

Now, dear readers, go get some excellent wine! Castoro Cellars!