It’s getting close to 6pm, and you should be thinking about leaving the office and getting ready for Valentine’s dinner.
Chaps, if you haven’t secured that restaurant booking by now, you are in deep shit; more shit than a Weeribee duck, or as a mate of mine says, “It’s like being in a shit shower and some bastards got the tap on full! Read More >
Day 19: 14/10/2011 The Finale for Moi
Shalom recounts the last day of his vintage experience at Undhof Salmon. He is now heading for Burgundy and will continue his blog as he travels the region, which I am sure will make for continued interesting reading…
Day 18: 13/10/2011 – A beautiful day to pick
Today was a great day. The weather was perfect and everything was calm. Ferments were well on their way. The winemaking team decided to lend a hand to the harvesting team. It was getting stuffy in the winery with all the CO2 gas being produced from the ferment and we need some fresh air.
Day 16: 11/10/2011 The Rain is gone!
Today is a beautiful day. I know I said that last week but after 5 days of rain, it was good to see the sun was up, the sky was blue and the chill was gone.
There was nothing much going on today except for 10 bins of Riesling from the kögl vineyard coming in this morning. We did an average sugar measurement on the grapes and it was an average of 19.5 KMW which is about 13% alcohol. The bins of grapes went straight to the press. More aeration was being done today.
We also spent some time re-bottling the 1969 WiedenGrünerVeltliner and 1968 Goldberg Grüner Veltliner & Müller-Thurgau blend. It gets really frustrating with the old bottles when the cork breaks while taking them out. I had to clean up the black, greasy mold that has seeped into the sides of the mouth of the bottle. Wine and grease don’t mix well together. I can now understand why some people insist on decanting old wines because time in the underground cellar does impart a stench to the wines.
It was really fascinating to taste the kögl Rieslings and get a better look at them. Having skipped breakfast, I spent a good amount of time eating the different coloured grapes. If without self-restrain, I would have continued chomping down a significant part of the 2011 kögl wines. I noticed that the grapes from there came in three different colours.
The first is purple which means that the grapes are affected by botrytis. Not all botrytis grapes taste bad. If they are quite desiccated, they have a sweet raisiny taste to them. If they are not desiccated, they are sour and foul to taste.
Yellow berries on left vs green on right and some purple
The second is green. The green grapes have high acid and taste sweet. To tell if the green grapes are ripe, I would put them against the sunlight. If the light is able to penetrate through the berries, it gives me a hint of their sweetness. The berries that can’t get any light penetration taste very acidic.
Lastly are the yellow-coloured berries. I was told that the berries are yellow because of sunburn. This is sometimes frowned upon by producers because sunburn can potentially produceperceptible amounts of TDN (1,1,6-trimethyl-1,2-dihydronaphthalene) in grapes, which imparts kerosene and overly-toasty characters to young Riesling wines.
Recalling my time spent in the vineyards, I remembered that the grapes that were mostly yellow tend to be on the outer rows of the terraced vineyards rather than the inner rows. The inner rows were more sheltered from the sun compared to the outer rows. Upon tasting the yellow berries, I noticed that they had more sweetness in there and more flavor.
I love Riesling that were yellow rather than green but it is not ideal to make wine from just yellow Riesling grapes. Riesling needs acid and the green ones have more acid than the yellow ones. I think that it is best to have some yellow, some green and some good purple ones in the pressing of the grapes. The concept of balance between sweetness, acidity and flavor ripeness begins in the material going into the wine and will be reflected when it finally goes into the bottle.
Day 8 – 03/10/2011
Another beautiful day in wine country. Sometimes, I wonder if it will ever get dark and cloudy. The temperature is expected to fall to 10 to 12 degree celcius this week. I can already feel a slight chill compared to the previous week.
Our indefatigable and studious sommelier, Shalom, is deep amongst the vines and rolled up his sleeves to do vintage at Undhof Salomon, in Krems, Austria, under the tutelage of the legendary Dr Bertold Salomon. Shalom is a dedicated student of wine nearly completed his WSET exams and taking on a Wine MBA next year, and in my estimation, a future Master of Wine in the making.
It is the peak of the season for Brown Turkish Figs, having purchased them twice at Jason’s, Tanglin Mall, Singapore at the excellent price, relative to quality and distance they need to travel, of S$4.50 for a packet of 4 large figs.
Another beautiful day in Cornwall, out at sea by 8am before the low-tide to check our lobsters pots. But no luck again save a young specimen that we threw back. Still, where’s there’s children there has to be adults so we re-baited the pots and hope we are more successful tomorrow.
The Salomon’s are a remarkable wine family, acquiring the Undhof around 1780, which was once the farm building of a Capuchin monastery, and have been producing wines since 1792. The Undhof is located in twin town of Stein (Krems/Stein), one of the oldest wine centers in Austria, founded on wine a millennium ago when the monks who followed Charlemagne’s army down the Danube saw the potential of its south-facing terraces. They are one of the most progressive and quality-driven wineries in Austria today, making Riesling’s and Gruner Veltliner of stunning purity and elegance.
Whipping up a quick salad and reaching for a bottle of Felton Road Block 1 Riesling from Wine Fridge. And a little nibble of Tetsuya Wakuda’s Petuna Lightly Smoked Ocean Trout.
This is one of those impromptu kitchen inspirations where a salad dishes builds itself purely from ingredients in the fridge at the time. I had been shopping earlier in the week at the Singapore delicatessen, Culina at Dempsey Hill, stocking up on what looked good, and the Prosciutto di Parma caught my eye, a sheet of thinly sliced rashes vacuum packed with its dark red-brown colour and streaks of creamy fat most enticing.
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