Fall 2008 Wines - They Actually Taste Like Wine

So much has happened at Huevos Caballos and Bullock's since we last corresponded, dear readers.

I took my 08 wines, the Ruby Cabernet and the Riesling, to the Home Beer Wine & Cheese Shop up in picturesque Woodland Hills, California for their free post-harvest wine clinic. Vinters from all over the area were buzzing around a room that reminded me of the Henrietta, Texas Church of Christ rec center. The main differences were that all the men had beards, and there was not a drop of punch to be had. Related? I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Both wines are within nominal pH ranges, meaning something good, apparently. The Ruby Cab is a beautiful ruby color, proving that whoever named it wasn't an idiot. It's also developing a rich flavor that I would describe as "wine-like," something to which I'm unaccustomed. I would use other foods to describe what it tastes like, but I've found that making wine doesn't make one better at doing that. If pressed into a corner, I would say it tastes like carnitas and buffalo wings. Happy?

Wines change tastes throughout their aging, and I don't think I'll know exactly what they taste like for a few years. The woman we bought the grapes from gave us some of their 2005 vintage from the same vines, but the country elected an intelligent person and pirates have taken over the coast of Somalia since then, so who knows what dazzling flavor characteristics have weaseled their way into the grapes?

You've read all about the Riesling saga, but I'm happy to report that primary fermentation is completed in both the main 5 gallon batch and in the one gallon Gran Reserva batch. They're so new it's hardly describing what they taste like, as sediment is still dropping out and the pH hasn't settled down, but it tastes good. Like spicy white wine. Um, I'm gonna go with cayenne pepper and apple fritters for this one.

I haven't tried the GR, but I'm dying to see the difference. For starters, I used native yeast in the GR, and the White Labs Steinberg-Geisenheim strain for the regular batch. The GR was fermented a little hotter than the regular, and I added yeast nutrient to it as well. Bored yet?

I also bottled the 2008 Wait til They Get a Load of Mead, a sweet honey mead I started on the day The Dark Knight came out. It's a handsome looking mead, a nice golden color that might be mistaken for Sauvignon Blanc or Chardonnay by someone who is unwilling or unable to read the label. The case is currently sitting on the floor in the kitchen, waiting for its moment in the sun...December 13, 2008.

In our semi-regular trips up to the central coast, we've joined a little winery called Sort This Out Cellars, a fairly new but very cool little joint in Buellton. It's run by two guys who used to work together at Club 33 in Disneyland, and has a Rat Pack/Swingers theme to it. We've thoroughly enjoyed every wine we've bought from there and Lauren joined the Wine Club a couple months back.

I've been talking to the owners about my own winemaking for a couple months now, and last time they suggested I bring up some of the mead next time and I can give a little mini-tasting to whoever wants to try it. So if you're not busy on December 13th, come to Buellton, California and drink some mead.

Riesling the Body Electric, Part the Second

It's been almost four weeks since I ordered my pail of Johannisberg Riesling juice from Delta Packing of Lodi, California. My previous shipping attempts failed in grand fashion. FedEx spilled 5 of the first six gallons, but I decided to make wine out of sour grape juice. From this orphaned juice, Huevos Caballos plans to produce five bottles of wild yeast fermented Riesling Gran Reserva, perhaps the most reserva wine ever.

UPS "damaged" the next attempt. There were no survivors.

UPS was again dispatched on Monday of this week, with my shipment to arrive on Wednesday. Wednesday came and went, and Condescending A-Hole #3 at UPS said I would have to wait another day before I could put a tracer on the package.

Thursday morning, I did just that, and, surprise surprise, UPS NEVER EVEN PICKED UP THE PACKAGE. I spoke with the supervisor at the station in Lodi, who also passed UPS condescension school with flying colors, and she told me that Delta didn't put it out. I called Delta back. The guy I spoke with told me that it had been sitting on the dock, but the driver didn't pick it up. She informed me that they would not overnight it to me for no charge. I delicately told her that I found this to be disagreeable, and hung up.

The next call to UPS landed me an elderly sounding C student from UPS Condescension School who told me very nicely that it wasn't their fault and that they would indeed not overnight it to me. I asked her to cancel the order, then sighed heavily.

And then I went crawling back to FedEx. Sure, they're a hair more expensive, but I don't hate them with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

Then something amazing happened. I went to their website, scheduled the pickup, sent Delta the packing slip, and FedEx picked up the package. Then Saturday morning, they brought it to my house. In one piece.

Sure, the box was a little wet, and maybe a little less than half a gallon of juice had leaked out, but with all the drama that accompanied this juice, I would have settled for two gallons and a kick in the jumblies from Pauly Shore.

Thankfully, that didn't happen.

All the juice's numbers seemed to be correct according to my half-assed measurements. The homebrew store in Woodland Hills is testing your wines this weekends for free, so I'll be taking the Riesling and Ruby Cabernet up there for their mid-terms. If they don't pass, no PS3 for a week.

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The 2008 Wait til They Get a Load of Mead is bottled. It's a nice color, the little sip I had of it tasted pretty good, so I'm excited to see what a little bottle aging will do. Only 12 bottles were produced, so this should be in pretty high demand in fantasy town.

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In Bullock's Brewing Co. news, I've bottled Frank Shirley's Christmas Ale and Tobias Funke's Cream Ale, and will be bottling the Belgian Dubbel this weekend. I also started an Ethiopian T'ej, which is a cross between mead and beer. I made a trip to the Ethiopian district on Fairfax to buy a $10 bag of sticks that I need to make it, so good times there.

I also started a Kitchen Sink IPA, the first beer I've ever made using my own recipe. Of course I lost the grain bill and only vaguely remember what I put in there, but I can tell you that it will be a heady, citrusy IPA. I used a liquid and a dry malt extract, and agave syrup as an adjunct. Three different kinds of hops are in there, and I'm dry-hopping some Cascade for good measure. Thus the name. That and, well, it's made in the kitchen sink.

Keep an eye out for your Bullock's Brewing Company Christmas Party invitation...

Nice to Mead You, Part the First

Man, do I love Vikings. What's not to love? Dudes plundering whatever they saw, taking what they pleased, their only concern in life dying in battle so they'd get to live in a mead hall for all of eternity. By some accounts, there's a possibilty that they hunted down and wiped out the Neanderthals. I realize this is highly doubtful, but COME ON. To top it all off, there's an epic battle at the end of days, in which the earth is consumed by fire and almost all the gods die, and it's already decided and public knowledge.

These dudes were not effing around.

And they drank mead.

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Jeremy and I wrote a script a couple of years ago, which we love to no end, called ROBOT ROBOT STRIKE ZONE (which I will gleefully send to you if you'd like to read it). It prominently features a crew of berserker Vikings. It's probably my favorite thing I've ever been a part of, and more importantly, it got me thinking about mead.

Mead is one of the oldest alcoholic drinks, with the first mentions of it coming in Vedic texts, an ancient precusor to Hinduism dating around 1700 B.C.. Aristotle and Pliny the Elder drank it, presumably without sharing with Pliny the Mrs. or Pliny the Brother.

Somewhere along the way, however, we lost our taste for the drink of Leif Ericsson and Hagar the Horrible. Beer and wine supplanted mead as the preferred drinks. I blame the Germans and the French. They apparently blamed each other for some stuff as well.

After having some commercial mead, I thought 'why buy one bottle for $12 when I can MAKE 24 bottles for less than $100. That's a savings of over $8 a bottle!

I read up on mead making, which goes like this. Get some honey, get some water, get some yeast, put them all together, heat them up, let the yeast eat the sugar, wait six months, then drink the stuff. Seems easy, right?

At this point in my winemaking career, I didn't yet have a good six gallon stockpot to make my concoctions, only a tiny two gallon one. In addition to making everything take three times as long as it should, it also looks dorky. As we all know, there's no place for looking like a dork in wine making.

Anyhoo. So instead of heating up 6 gallons of water and adding my 15 pounds of clover honey all at once, I had to rinse and repeat three times, doling out the honey in highly unscientific increments. Honey, as you may know, is not known for its non-stickyness. You can imagine the countertop/pants situation that quickly developed and escalated beyond control.

I was seeing Dark Knight that evening, and I was worried that I might be attacked by bears on the way to the theater that night. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

So it took a little while, but I finally got all the honey boiled and poured into the bucket. It would have to cool down for awhile, so I happily drove to the Hughes Center with Lauren to meet Jeremy for some chile con queso and some Batman. Both went extraordinarily well, and we raced home to check on the mead.

When I arrived home, the carboy containing the mead was still hot. Not warm, hot. It would be well over 24 hours before it was cool enough to add the yeast.

I'm happy to report everything has gone normally to date. The mead has been racked off and is clarifying nicely on its own. It's currently sitting the coat closet, anxiously awaiting November, where it begins the next stage of its journey.