Operation Grape Expectations: A Prologue

The detour to Sonic had been a disaster. Lauren said "DisneyLand" and all I could think was "Sonic is near DisneyLand. I love Sonic. We have time!" Instead of the quick jaunt off the freeway I was expecting, it turned into a 45 minute cluster-eff which saw both my blood pressure and Baja Fresh levels rise. When we finally hopped back onto the freeway, I knew we weren't gonna make it. I had to call the woman I was buying the grapes from to ask if showing up 45 minutes or so late would be all right.

"I'm sticking around the vineyard all afternoon for you guys to buy 60 pounds of grapes," I expected her to say, with a curtness that I wasn't looking forward to. "Fine, just hurry up." I was wasting this woman's time and felt awful, but there wasn't a lot I could do.

I dialed her number and put on my customer service voice.

"Hi, is that Mary?"

"Yes."

"Hi Mary, it's Charlie Fonville, coming out for the grapes this afternoon."

"Of course. Hello."

"I was hoping that it'd be okay to show up around 4:45 or so. We're running a little late."

"Okay, no problem. See you then."

"Great. Thank you." Click.

"Phew," thought I. I'm sure they're busy, with it being harvest time. Probably a lot of work to do around the old vineyard. No problem.

The address was on Grape Street, which lead me think that they themselves had named the dirt road leading to their sprawling, picturesque acreage.

Nope. Two bedroom house at the end of a cul-de-sac with Norteno music blaring from all different directions.

An old pickup parked next to an even older van held the driveway down, and a varitable maze of succulents, pomegranates, and other landscaping made it clear that some serious greenery had gone down here.

"This can't be right," I said to Lauren.

"No, it can't," she replied. "Are you sure this is the right address?"

"Not at all."

I checked my e-mail, and sure enough, it was the right address. The numbers were the same, there was an "N" before the word "Grape," and the zip code matched.

"Ooooooookay," I said, with a specific gravity of skepticism well over 1.100. (If you knew what specific gravity was, as well as normal SG levels, you would find this hilarious). Actually, probably not.

So we rang the doorbell, half expecting to find a kindly woman to take us to the real vineyard, and the other half expecting to get shot in the face.

May answered the door, a kindly woman indeed, but she did not offer to drive us to the real vineyard. Nor did she shoot us in the face.

"Nice to meet you. Come around to the side gate and I'll let you in."

We grabbed our buckets, with a look of confusion still etched on our faces. An old wooden gate swung open, and May beckoned us to come through.

And there it was. A fully-functioning, mini-vineyard.

This delightful couple produced 1,000 pounds of grapes anually. Just for themselves. May's husband, who was in Hungary setting up their retirement vineyard, decided not to make wine this year, leading them to sell the grapes for only fifty cents a pound. Ruby Cabernet grapes aren't the most sought after, mainly due to consistency problems, but I figured that it would be no huge loss if there was a catastrophic incident in the winemaking process, which there almost undoubtedly will be.

Lauren and I dutifully picked grapes, filling up three large buckets amongst the vines and bees. After we were finished and weighed up (70 pounds of fresh grapes, $35), May invited us in to clean up (grape picking puts a gunk on your hands that is damn near indescribable, but I will try - it's gross) in the house and have some of the 2005 Ruby Cabernet that they'd made.

When we stepped back outside, May had laid out a jug of wine along with a plate of brie and crackers. After shrugging off my normal "this woman poisoned this wine and is going to eat us while we're still alive...oh my god why isn't she having any? 'Lauren, head for the car. I'll take care of this.' Wham wham whap. Gunshot. 'You must* have messed with the wrong people, lady.' Walk off into the sunset to the sight of cops pulling up and digging out countless bodies" delusion, which I think we've all had while picking grapes in a stranger's backyard, I had some wine and cheese. And both were excellent.

A glass of wine later, May told Lauren and I how they landed, of all places, in Escondido, California, selling grapes to a weirdo and her boyfriend. She and her husband owned garnet mines in Alaska that they had just sold to buy a retirement estate in Hungary. After he got laid off from his job as an industrial photographer, he and May drove from the northernmost part of Canada they could get to all the way to the Panama canal. Oh yeah, and he escaped a concentration camp.

We asked her about how she found her way over here, and I have to say, her answer was not what I was expecting. It turns out that when May was 18 or 19 or so, she moved from Ireland to London, and through some girlfriends found out about the bars where the American sailors hung out. Nearly every night, she said, she and her friends would go down there to "meet" some "nice" sailors. Please note that she was not doing air quotes as she spoke.

Ladies and gentlemen, we bought grapes from the most interesting people I'd ever met.

*Must (from the Latin vinum mustum, “young wine”) is freshly pressed fruit juice (usually grape juice) that contains the skins, seeds, and stems of the fruit.

Operation Grape Expectations, Part the Second

Day Three of the wine from scratch experiment is almost over, and it's been a good one. The fermentation seems to be moving along quite nicely.

You can tell from the before and after picture that things have picked up considerably over in the yeast department in the last 24 hours. The carbon dioxide that's constantly being produced is pushing the skins, pulp, and seeds, (or "cap," as we call it in the business) to the top of the must, and I have to stir and push the cap back down into the wine several times a day.

The cap is now sticking over the top of the fermentor, held together by what I can only believe is a diabetes-inducing amount of sugar and sheer willpower.

The grand mess that I made in the kitchen yesterday has been cleaned up for the most part, although it looks sort of like a good-natured dullard murdered someone and tried to clean it up with a bloody towel. Were this CSI: Franklin Hills, David Caruso would undoubtedly walk in and say "Sometimes...(long pause, removes sunglasses) grapes aren't the only things that get stomped."

But it's not, and I got grape juice everywhere and it's totally sticky.

Operation Grape Expectations, Part the First

I'm happy to report that Operation Grape Expectations is now fully underway. Lauren, who is a saint for putting up with all of this nonsense, and I went to Escondido yesterday and bought 70 pounds of Ruby Cabernet grapes from a very nice woman and her husband. More on that later.

We destemmed and crushed the grapes last night, and I analyzed the brix (or sugar content), the acidity level, and the pH of the must this morning. I'm happy to report all were nominal after the tiniest bit of tweaking. I added the yeast this afternoon, and fermentation should begin in the next couple of days.

In an attempt to make this blog more legit, I'll post some boring technical stuff along with the story of the grapes themselves and their eclectic international origins.

To tide you over, here's the apocryphal warning on the primary fermenter.

Try explaining THAT at your homebrew club.

Announcing the Huevos Caballos 2008 Ruby Cabernet

Faithful blogateers, your two and a half days of religiously checking this blog have finally paid off. You are officially the first to know that late next year, Huevos Caballos Vineyards will be unveiling its very first direct from grape wine - no concentrate, no kits, no effing around.

If you're not busy on Saturday and want to get in on the ground floor of this truly historic happening, come with Lauren and me to Escondido for the grape picking.

It is a proud day, dear readers.

2008 Port - The Sweet-ret of my Success

Cans of grape juice concentrate had taken me as far as I could go. I had given Charon (EC Kraus) my coins (money), and he took me across the river Styx (bad wine) on his ferry (experience). I landed on the far shore (using better ingredients) and continued my journey into hell (shoving wine bottles into every crevice in our tiny house). I needed to take it to the next level.

I love a good dessert wine. Port, which used to smell to me like grape jelly wrapped in gasoline, now makes me wish I could have it with every meal. Most people find port too rich or too sweet, two things that rarely are a concern for me. Changing hearts and minds is why I got in this business, and I decided to bring people around to port, even if it meant making enemies in the ultra-secretive dry wine cabals of California.

I ordered the KenRidge Classic Port kit this time, a self-contained kit that required no extra ingredients. The directions were easy to follow, with only eight or so steps, and to top it all off, in English. I was riding high.

"Oh shit," I thought to myself. "Did that say 'add water to bring to three gallons' or 'five?'"

It said three, and I was already most likely over four. Bollocks.

I went to enough masses growing up to realize that. Never once did the priest pour the water into the sacramental wine, then say "Oh shit oh shit oh shit! I have overly diluted our saviour!" as it transubstantiated. Never even a little bit.

Well, if Fathers Brophy, Edwards, and Stakowski didn't do it, I damn sure wasn't going to, either. I looked over my shoulder and saw no one. My secret was safe. I fitted the airlock over the carboy and backed out of the room on my tiptoes.

The first and second racking came and went without any problem. The must threw off sediment and smelled awful and I was happy for it. I added the port essence and clearing agent, and waited a couple more days. In less than a month from screwing up the easiest thing in the world, I had bottled port.

What happened next was utterly shocking.

The goddamn wine was good.

I called to Lauren, who was skeptical of my enthusiasm. It had, after all, burned her before.

She had some, sipping in her usual manner. Then she had some more, not saying a word.

"This is actually good."

"I know."

"What happened?"

"I'm a goddamn genius is what happened."

2008 Zinfandel - A Triumph in French Oak

Fresh off my first vinting experience, I was hungry for more. I went back to EC Kraus, the home of the finest canned grape juice concentrates in all the land. Convinced that the SunCal brand was to blame for my Pinot's burny nose, I compared their other two brands, Alexander's Sun Country and Country Fair. I worked hard to leave Jolly, Texas, folks. Alexander's Sun Country it was.

The other thing about the '07 Pinot is that it was very light. I'm a fan of robust wines, and I wanted to make sure that whatever disgusting aroma my new wine emitted would knock my dogs out from across the room. I ordered two cans of ASC's Zinfandel glop, along with some toasted French oak chips for that 'oak barrel taste.' After acquiring fancy sugar, I got started.

The primary fermentation went off without a hitch. I invested in a glass carboy for the secondary, determined for the new batch to not smell or taste like surgical gloves. Since I had doubled the amount of juice in this recipe, it'd be four to six months before I knew if I'd made any improvement. Good thing I love doing nothing.

The months passed quickly, with me working on scripts, playing PS3, hanging with Lauren and the dogs, and having general merriment. I checked the wine every so often, racking it carefully, measuring the specific gravity, and generally fretting over it like an expectant father over his babymama's enlarging babypouch. (I'm not very good with science words).

Finally, bottlin' time came. I had decided to bottle in actual dark green wine bottles, as opposed to the blue bottles I used on the pinot. The inelegant color was supposed to be a joke, but no one laughed. I decided to go classy. Black heat shrinks. Actual labels. It was a new day at Huevos Caballos, and woe be to anyone who stood in the way.

The bottling went better this time around. The floor stayed sober, and Hoover personally sniffed every bottle for quality control. Say what you will about that dog, but she is as fastidious as she is adorable. With two cases of Zin now bottled and ready, I allowed myself a glass. As I smelled it in the most pretentious way I could summon, I noted a conspicuous absence of that ol' paint can smell. My carboy had worked! I almost became dizzy at the notion of how amazing this wine was going to taste.

Right off the bat, it was different. A darker color. It coated the edges of the glass like actual wine, not Bolero-tinted water. Lauren rolled her eyes, which in her body language means "I am so proud of you and I can't wait to have some of your new wine." (Trust me, that's what she means.)

As I swished the wine around and savored it, I nodded my head.

"This actually isn't too bad." I said.

"Uh huh," said Lauren, enthusiastic as always. I poured her a fresh glass and handed it over.

She tried the tiniest sip possible, drinking so little wine that it barely qualified. A Mormon walking by looked through the window and said "Is that all you're gonna have?"

"Eugh!" she said, in her usual manner.

"What? I think it's pretty good."

"Oh, honey," she said, like she found a kid crying in the kitchen after being unable to make breakfast for his mom.

It was clear - I was the kid, and Huevos Caballos' 2008 Zinfandel was a burnt piece of toast.

"I'm sure it'll get better," she said.

---

A month or so ago, Paris and Marissa had another wine tasting, this time at Paris and Marquis' westside apartment. I brought all three varietals of Huevos Caballos this time, hoping against hope that the months had been kind to the wines and that I would once again be hailed as the victor. (I'll be filling you in on the Port's short yet glorious life next.)

Lauren's friend from childhood got married that night, and we attended the very tasteful ceremony in Pacific Palisades before heading off to the tasting. We were in our proper duds this time, partly because of the wedding and partly because I felt that, as proprietor, I needed to represent Huevos Caballos properly.

There were a lot of people there most of whom I didn't know. They had just finished tasting all the wines, and were mostly in an appropriate state. Like fish in a barrel, I thought to myself.

Jeremy helped me open up the bottles, and I began dropping subtle hints that my wine was available. As people slowly tried the Pinot, it became clear that the alcohol already coursing through their systems was doing what it do, and the HC was receiving warm notices from all inbimbing.

It was the first test drive for the Zin in a wide setting, and I was understandably nervous. Aside from the Huevos Inner Sanctum, nary a human soul had tried it. Sure, I'd given some to Lily, but she's a thirty pound keyeshound mix with a thyroid condition, and therefore not in possession of the most qualified palate.

The familiar sounds were all around. Idle chit-chat, glasses clinking, The Olympics. Then, nothing. Relative quiet.

"This is actually pretty good," one partygoer said.

"Yeah, I like this," said another.

And then, I got the blurb for the label.

"This tastes like alcoholic Sweet Tarts."

I knew that voice. It was Jeremy.

Once again, he'd come to the rescue.

---

By the way, all these wines are available. Just let me know what you want, and I will get with our shipping department.

2007 Pinot Noir - Painted into a Corner

The thing about making wine at home is that it takes a looooooong time before you know if you've made a lovely bottle of elegant, sophisticated wine, or bottled what can only be described as vile grape juice with a hint of latex paint.

Six months after ordering a starter's kit, I poured my first fully aged, ruby red glass of Sherwin-Williams #7600, known to the layperson as "Bolero."

"This isn't bad!" I said to Lauren, coughing and trying not to get throat cancer.

"Eugh!" she said, sticking her tongue out as the wine covered her mouth in a taste reminiscent of licking a new shower curtain. She coughed, and I noticed her eyebrows were singed. They must have had the misfortune, I opined, of coming in contact with the fumes my beloved Pinot was emitting, and it was a decision they will never forget.

---

Five and a half months before The Eyebrow Noir Incident, as we've come to call it, I arrived home to find two giant boxes waiting for me on the front porch. This pair of monoliths had traveled halfway across the country eager to become more than the sum of their parts - they would metamorphasize from simple grape juice concentrate and packages of chemicals to something special. They would be imbibed with great merriment and frivolity, used to make wine reduction sauces for haute cuisine dishes I would dream up. They would lower inhibitions and make weak men tremble. They would change the world.

After thoroughly reading the directions, an activity to which I was unaccustomed, I began. The good people at EC Kraus sent "First Steps in Winemaking" by C.J.J. Berry, who apparently lived in an English cottage surrounded by only glass carboys, rotting fruit, and his moustache. I read it quickly, glossing over recipes for elderberry wines and other assorted things that didn't seem germane to the task at hand. I learned about musts and hydrometers and sugar and how evil fruit flies are and how easy this was going to be. My days of Two Buck Chuck and crying myself to sleep would soon be halfway over.

I elected for the SunCal Pinot Noir Necessities Pack, mainly because Sideways had me convinced that making Pinot Noir was the best way to sleep with Virginia Madsen, who I've had a crush on since Highlander 2.

After buying five pounds of sugar (four white and one brown - already pushing the envelope), I started up. I cleaned the equipment fastidiously, making sure to keep the dogs mostly out of the bucket and concentrate. The recipe called for one can of concentrate to thirteen cans of water. Looking back, I should have bought some distilled water from my local food library, but I was young and uninformed back then, and also I don't think water poured from the Holy Grail could have helped this dime store disgrace of a concentrate. After I mixed up the purple haze of ingredients, I added yeast nutrient, acid blend, and tannins, each with the utmost care and diligence I could muster.

There are as many kinds of yeast as one would expect, and wine is finicky about which yeast she allows into her matrimonial chamber. But the can of SunCal concentrate spoke a name, and that name was Montrachet.

In somewhat unromantic terms, Homebrewheaven.com has this to say about The 'Chet.

"Red Star® Montrachet (Davis 522), a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, has been derived from the collection of the University of California. This strain has been widely used in the U.S. since 1963. It is a strong fermenter with good ethanol tolerance, and will readily ferment grape musts and fruit juices to dryness. This strain also has good tolerance to free sulfur dioxide. This strain is recommended for full bodied reds and whites. It is not recommended for grapes that have recently been dusted with sulfur, because of a tendency to produce hydrogen sulfide in the presence of higher concentrations of sulfur compounds. Montrachet is noted for low volatile acidity, good flavor complexity, and intense color. Certified kosher."

It was meant to be, as I was noted for my tendency to produce hydrogen sulfide in high school, and was in fact voted "Most Likely Not to Fight Acid" senior year. Go Bearcats!

So I dumped the yeast into the must (as we in the business call it), fitted the lid and airlock on, and awaited my soon to be homemade Chateau Latour.

The next day, the whole house smelled like vinegar, to Lauren's utter delight.

"Could you please make more wine? If only this smell would last forever!" I noted the sarcasm in her voice, but I paid it no mind. To me, that smell that reminded me of my grandmother washing her windows and of the stop bath I dunked countless black and white prints into during college. Now, and forever, that smell would remind me of hard work and something that I created myself and could torture my friends and family with.

A week later, after the violent discharge of carbon dioxide slowed, it was time to "rack" the wine off the sediment. As the yeast eats the sugar and converts it into alcohol, it throws off sediment and CO2, which I suppose is a nice way of saying that it poops out grit and farts out carbon dioxide. It's good work if you can get it.

The bucket that came with my hundred dollar kit included a very handy spigot at the bottom, which made racking easy and fun! All I had to do was hook the spigot to a tube, then lead that tube into a secondary fermentor, which in this case was a bladder-like plastic jug that I added to my order for only $12.00. After I had rinsed out all the gunk from the bottom of the bucket, I poured the wine back in, and sealed 'er back up so the yeast could finish its dirty business.

Three weeks later, my blue bordeaux bottles and gold heatshrink seals had arrived, and I was ready to bottle. I'll spare you the particulars of my clumsiness, but let's just say that the countertop and floor around where I was bottling were slurring their speech and they both had to crash on the couch for the night. I still didn't quite have the hang of the heat shrinks, which involves rubber banding one of those fancy foil things over the cork and dipping it into boiling water. That also did not go well, leading to some boiling water on my trousers, a couple of snapped rubber bands, and some really crappy looking bottles.

But I was finished.

I poured myself a glass, with the sensation of heat running up the back of my neck, like I was about to some public speaking. I was actually, really, physically, nervous.

As I tasted it, I realized two things: one, I was not blind, and every hillbilly movie I ever saw learned me that if you don't go blind after drinking, then the stuff is fine. Secondly, the wine tasted terrible.

"It says two to four months of aging, Lauren. That must be it. It's just not ready yet," I said. The full impact of those words didn't sink in for a few minutes. "Is it that the wine isn't ready for us," I thought. "Or are we not ready for the wine?" It turns out that we are mutually unready for each other.

"This tastes like Manishevitz," Lauren said, unaware of the psychic gashes her crazy Yiddish words were inflicting on my mind.

"I don't know what that is," I replied, in my usual manner.

"It's wine. We have it at Passover."

With me being a good Catholic boy, all these words just turn into a jumble.

"Thanks?"

"I'm sure it'll be better after it's aged."

Famous Last Words.

About two months later, our friends Jeremy and Marissa had their wine tasting party, which I've come to look forward to eagerly each year, not only for their company, but for these amazing little sandwiches that Marissa makes.

Seriously, the sandwiches are awesome. I cannot overstate this. Awesome.

The theme that night was "The Wines of Italy," as Jeremy and Marissa had just returned from Italy, and doubtlessly wanted to fix the results of the tasting in their favor. It was a dastardly plot, but a kid from Jolly, Texas, with only the shirt on his back and a dream of some day making a drinkable wine, had other plans. (Talking about me here)

I brought a Chianti that had been in the cupboard for quite awhile as my fake-out entry, designed somewhat cunningly as a diversion. By introducing a wine made by actual people who actually knew what they were doing, I hoped to confuse and disorient the party, splitting the vote and handing the Huevos Caballos '07 Pinot the crown. It was a Rove-ian gambit, I admit, but one I assured myself would pay off in the long run, earning me that door prize.

I snuck the Huevos Caballos in next to the Chianti, which was already generating a fair amount of buzz (in my mind). Marissa and Paris, another friend, covered the wines in brown paper, along with the wines the others brought, so as to make the blind tasting as fair as possible. I snickered as they walked past, my confidence growing like yeast in a stable, 77 degree, high sugar environment.

Like the yeast, I needed to be taken down a peg.

I could tell by the feeling in the room (and the top of the bottle, and the way that it made the whole apartment smell like paint) that it was Huevos time. as Marissa poured everyone their tasting glass, I leaned back in my chair.

"This smells like paint," Brian said. He was an actor, and at that moment, I vowed never to hire him again.

"What are you talking about?" I said nervously. "This smells great."

I took a sip, careful not to betray the wine corroding my larynx.

"You know what this tastes like?" Jeremy said, as he looked at me. "It tastes like love. This tastes like someone slaved over it and nurtured it, and that every drop of that emotion is in this glass of wine."

"That's a very good observation," said I, trying to hide the tears welling up in my eyes, which were caused partly by the wine's odor, partly because my friend had sommaliered the shit out of everyone there.

"No, this tastes like paint."

My ringer Chianti didn't fare well, scoring (much deservedly) toward the middle of the pack. No wine stood out, at least in terms of traditional "quality," that night. I hoped that Jeremy's rousing speech would be enough to send me and my paint juice over the line.

"And the winner is...number three!" Paris said. I whipped my head around. Marissa was cutting off the brown paper covering the label of the winner. A thin sheet of recycled pulp was all that stood between us and our destiny. As she tore, I saw a white label corner peek through.

Then an "H."

Then a "U."

---

An hour or so later, Paris' soon-to-be husband Marquis arrived at party, after most of us were in various stages of inebriation. There was plenty of HC left, and Marissa poured him a glass.

"This was the winner," she told him. "It's Charlie's. He made it."

He drank it, then thought on it for a moment.

"Need to work on the finish a little bit."

And I still am to this day.