Helping winemaker friends
- Details
- Published: Saturday, 02 March 2013 18:04
- Written by David DeCiero
A few weeks ago, I went over to a couple winemaker friends who needed some help bottling.I had offered them the use of my Enolmatic (which is the greatest machine in home winemaking).The Enolmatic makes bottling so easy, and 99% of the time it is just sitting at my house anyway.So, I drove to their house and had a few hours of bottling.
These winemakers do only Cabernet Sauvignon and they had recently started using a barrel.They have been getting a used barrel from some other winemakers.It was a neutral French Oak 30 gallon barrel.The wine they were bottling was a 2010 and had been in the barrel for 2 years.I took a taste and it was fantastic.The color had become very concentrated and the taste was very powerful.It still had some fruit on the nose, but was classic Cabernet that had a lot under the surface.In short, it was great for a Cabernet.It took us about 1h 20 minutes to do 150 bottles.It went fairly quickly as there was another person corking.Cleanup was a snap for me as we ran some sulfite through the Enolmatic and then rinsed it with water.In about 2 hours, I was all set and it saved them a lot of time and mess.(They remarked that they would always spill some wine, whereas with the Enolmatic, it’s completely clean).
They then gave me a taste of their 2012 that had yet to go in the barrel.They mentioned that the fruit was not that great and they had to add sugar.They also do an extended maceration on their Cab, and this tuff tasted terrible.The acidity tasted sky high and there was no balance.Granted, this was after tasting their 2012 from the barrel, so maybe my taste buds got shocked.However, I exclaimed how bad it tasted.I should have been nicer, but felt that it needed to be said.I’ll be watching this one, though, to see how much the barrel changes the profile of this wine.I would say it is just terrible wine, but want to see how it turns out.I will hopefully be pleasantly surprised by it.