1st
wine plans …..
Because we’re in the midst of travel and triathalon training, we are in a time crunch for the next two weeks which means we need to crank on the wine plans and get them completely finished this this week. Once our drafts are done, we will submit them to our professional winemakers and discuss what we chose and why.
Now, making the decisions about what we are choosing could be as simple as checking off the box leaving everything to the (professional) winemaker’s decision but that would be like leaving your kids with the nanny and only showing up to graduation and maybe a couple of swim meets. We’ve decided to be hands on with these babies!
So what does it take to draft a wine plan? TONS OF LEARNING because we are new to this process. I get it now why parents are so much more at ease with the second pregnancy.
Today’s learning included:
- watching and taking notes on 23 episodes of “Winemaker’s minutes” in order to learn the basic components of the wine plan
- collecting extremely valuable information and advice from friends in the business (thank you all who participated)
- doing additional research on terroir, vineyards, etc.
- exposing your nose to a bunch of different aromas (no, not all pleasant) in order to define the wine style we want
- and finally, making 32 decisions about the future Cabernet and 21 decisions for the Roussanne
What a day! Tomorrow evening we’re going to kick back with some good wine and review our drafts. Assuming we’ve done the best we can, we’ll then go meet with the professional winemakers and the countdown begins to when our grapes arrive.
Now remember, you all can participate. You can join us in another barrel but we’ve got to get moving on that one soon. If that seems like too much, there’s always crush - haven’t you always wanted to destem two (literal) tons of grapes? Or maybe you want to participate in the four times a day punch down of the cap (see how much wine lingo we’ve learned all ready).
