A Slow Descent into Madness

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I've gone totally mental. 

Right now, I have SIX different wines and a beer fermenting, with the ingredients for another wine in the fridge and yet another on a truck on its way here from Lodi. Oh, and Lauren got me a gift certificate for Culver City Home Brewing Supply, so I'm headed out there later today to pick up more beer kits, with an eye on a beer tasting party for the holidays. Seriously, you guys. 

It's not like I even drink that much to begin with. Lauren and I rarely have wine with dinner, and even less often have ambassadors over for fancy dinner parties. "What's that you say, Count Du Rainier? Of course you can have another glass of Pinot. Why yes, that is a hint of burned ammonia on the nose."

I took a couple of days off last week to celebrate my 31st annual gestation cessation celebration, and devoted a goodly amount of time to the creation of some new wines. The kitchen counter tops ran red with the juice of blueberries, strawberries, pumpkin, and blood orange. I'll be posting more when I press the fruit this weekend, for those of you awaiting news with baited breath. 

But that's not the point. One year ago, I had ONE wine, the little Pinot that could, sitting in a plastic bucket. How then, I query, did Huevos Caballos have a 700% increase in wine production in one year? 

It all started in 1929, when my grandfather, Bernard Schneider, made moonshine. At least that's what he told me when I was younger. My mom claims that he bought it at the state fair, but I choose to believe he was a bootlegger criminal mastermind, secretly running Windthorst Texas during prohibition. 

As he snuck off into the cold North Texas night air, Ben scanned the fields around the family farm carefully for anyone watching. Once he felt secure in his solitude, he checked again. 

His was an operation with no room for error. Elliot Ness was after him, and the slightest misstep could spell doom for him and his men. 

As he crept down the rows of corn and sorghum he grew as a cover (Grandpa hated sorghum passionately. "Goddamn sorghum," I often heard him muttering around the hearth) he felt at peace.  He had fooled everyone, including his own beloved family, into thinking that he was a simple dairy farmer. He smiled to himself confidently as he saw the first glimmer of light from his massive distilling operation. 

As he crested the hillock down into the ravine that hosted his "little operation" as he called it, he heard the unmistakable click of a revolver. 

"Freeze!" he heard someone say in a voice barely above a whisper. 

He turned around slowly to see the surprised face of Armando, one of his trusted guards. 

"Oh, Mister Ben, I am so sorry. I did not realize-"

"It's all right, old friend. How are we doing tonight?"

"Good, good. Esteban has stabilized the bourbon. I think you will find it most excellent."

"Very well," he said, as they descended into the hub of the production. 

Copper tanks lined the banks of the ravine, spewing out an obsidian smoke. (Most bootleggers in those days operated with coal-powered stills) A small one-armed boy ran up and handed Ben a blue speckled granite cup, brimming with a corn whiskey that doubled as an engine de-greaser and hobo poison. Ben took a small sip. 

Most men buckled at even a whiff of the undiluted product, but he was no ordinary man.  At his funeral, a family friend told me in confidence that he once drank a bottle of Drano and chased it with a jug of 230 proof horse whiskey, and still made it to church in time to play the procession on the organ. The Knights of Columbus of Windthorst still regard that day as the finest procession ever played in their small town. 

"Good work, son." The boy, whose name no one was sure of, smiled meekly. Someone had left him at the door of Ben and Mary Agnes, and Ben told her that he'd shipped the boy off to the service back in '22. The boy rarely spoke, and did little but make spirits. His blood alcohol level, tests would later reveal, had a standard baseline of 0.30. 

Ben and Armando continued their walking tour of the operation, watching as the hooch was filtered, bottled, and boxed up for shipping all over the country. They smiled in contentment, their empire humming along like the mythical perpetual motion machine. 

They heard a cry coming from the back of camp, and rushed over. Luke, the night foreman, had a worker by the shirt collar. He was red in the face with anger. 

"What's the matter here?" grandpa said, in his stern, managerial tone. 

"I found this man stealing a slice of corn pone from one of the others. He must be punished," Lucas hissed. 

Ben took Lucas' hand off of the man, and comforted the shaking worker. Ben gingerly checked inside the man's lower lip. 

"This man has a tapeworm," Ben said, patting him on the back. "No wonder he's still hungry."

Grandpa laughed and smacked Lucas on the back playfully. The laugh grew and grew, crescendoing until Lucas couldn't do anything but laugh himself. 

WHAP. The back of Ben's hand caught Lucas' unexpectant cheek. 

"Don't ever treat one of the men like that again, no matter their transgression."

"Y...yes, Mr. Schneider. I'm sorry, sir." 

"Now see this man fed and mix up a cup of the rye and two of the malted corn. That'll take care of the worm and any other critters that might've taken residence in his lowers."

"Yes sir."

"You take care, friend. You're a good man, and we need you healthy," Ben said to the afflicted man. A caring look washed away the sternness Ben had exhibited to Lucas. The man smiled. 

"Thank you, Mister Schneider. I will not let you down."

"There's a bright future for you in our little operation, son."

The man smiled as Ben walked away, but then felt uneasy as he noticed the glare Lucas directed at Ben. 

TO BE CONTINUED. 

So you can see how I got into home wine and beer making. 

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.