A Sweet Idea

We were chatting with our tasting room staff after closing recently when the topic of a trip Carrie and I took to Piedmont, Italy came up.

A Wine We Never Forgot

Carrie remembered the three-bedroom house we had all to ourselves for only $350 for the week. Keep in mind, this was about 25 years ago, but still!

What I remembered was the bottle of wine the owners left for us on the kitchen table.

There were some incredible wines on that trip. We had a glass of Barolo with Aldo Conterno himself that was probably the single most amazing wine I’d ever tasted, and might still be. We drank great Barberas and discovered Dolcetto.

But somehow, 25 years later, I was thinking about that strange bottle sitting on the kitchen table. A Brachetto d’Acqui.

We pulled the cork, poured it into a glass and discovered a red wine that was both sweet and sparkling. Sweet red wine was unusual enough, but sparkling too. We weren’t expecting that since it was sealed with a regular cork, not a Champagne-style cork. We were very surprised.

It was weird.

I’m pretty sure I poured out what was left in my glass after that first taste. But the next day I tried it again. And the day after that. By the end of the trip I was intrigued. The carbonation kept the wine fresh all week and I kept going back to it.

We Could Make That

So Carrie and I were reminiscing about this bottle with our staff when one of us said something along the lines of, “We could make that.”

And then: “We could make it with Syrah.”

Australians make sparkling Shiraz, what they call Syrah. We already had a scheduled pick for Viognier in a couple of days. We could easily have some Syrah picked that day too.  Change our harvest plans on a whim? YOLO!

It had been decided.

I immediately started searching for examples. How sweet should we make it? How much carbonation? I wanted to taste a few before committing to our ultimate style, but finding them locally was difficult.

Total Wine said they had a limited supply of Brachetto d’Acqui in Folsom. Since I was already heading to Sacramento the following week to shop for our Patriarche & Paella weekend, so I figured I’d find a few examples along the way.

Corti Brothers had a sparkling red from Veneto, but no Shiraz. Total Wine had the same Veneto bottle and a Lambrusco, but no Brachetto and no sparkling Shiraz.

I was forced to go online.

Wine.com promised next-day shipping.

The Wine Wasn’t Waiting

Meanwhile, our Syrah wasn’t waiting for FedEx.

I checked it the following morning and, wow, this was a fast fermentation. We were getting close. Carrie and I decided we’d taste it again at the end of the day.

One barrel had already dropped to about 1.5 Brix. At that point it tasted way out of balance with the acidity we’d picked at. But blended with the other barrel, the wine was around 3.5 Brix. And it tasted pretty great.

It was time to stop the fermentation.

We’d been hoping to open our examples with the staff over Paella weekend and use them as a guide. Instead, we were going to have to make ours without ever tasting them yet.

Even in our smallest tank, there wasn’t enough wine for it to reach the cooling jacket to get cold enough.

But no fear. I grew up on MacGyver.

I pumped the wine into a barrel waiting among all the kegs of beer in our walk-in refrigerator and let the cold do its job.

Research, Finally

Saturday, after all our paella quests left, we finally opened the example bottles with our staff. The Brachetto had a screw cap. It must be lightly sparkling, I thought. The rest had Champagne-style corks.

I twisted the wire cages and popped the corks one by one. The Australian Shiraz was last, but wait, the wire was twisted backwards. Just like the toilets flush backwards Down Under?

I went for the Braida Brachetto first out of nostalgia. It was much lighter in color than the one I remembered from our Piedmont trip and quite sweet. Although fun, this was not the style we were looking for.

The Paladin from Veneto seemed a bit off. I moved on.

Ooh, the Pezzuoli Lambrusco was very luscious and tutti fruity, but a bit too sweet.

The Chook Shiraz from Australia was quite nice with noticeable tannins, but maybe a bit too dry for my taste.

I went back to the Paladin and decided it was corked. Bummer. It seemed like it might have been nice otherwise.

 

After a couple more tastes of each, I decided a blend of the Shiraz and Lambrusco would be just about perfect. So I literally made a hasty blend of the two in my glass and presented it to Carrie with a bit of a smile.

She agreed. Pretty good. And I hoped this was what we’d already achieved with our own.

We weren’t sure, after all, how fast the fermentation would slow to a stop in the walk-in. Would we end up with a dry wine?

I hoped not.

Then harvest happened.

Did We Nail It?

Several days later we finally got back to it, racked the cold wine off the lees and into another barrel.

And, yep.

I think we nailed it.

So on a whim, in addition to our Sparkling Roussanne, we’ll have a Sparkling Shiraz. Or Syrah. Or whatever.

Either way, I think it was a sweet idea.

Josh Bendick
Co-winemaker