Come One, Come All

Friday, May 27th, 2011

 

As we head into the summer season, I would once again like to extend an open invitation to all wine lovers.  Please do join us for a tasting over the coming months during our weekend retail hours (11-5).  It’s an exciting time at Five Rows, as we’ve just released our 2008 Shiraz, 2008 Pinot Noir, 2010 Sauvignon Blanc and 2010 Pinot Gris.  The weekend barn traffic has ramped up dramatically in recent weeks and there has been a very positive response to our new products.  Anyone wishing to reserve a case, please call or email sometime soon.  History has shown us that these wines will not be around very long!

 

Exhale

Friday, Apr 08th, 2011

In the past, all of our bottling has taken place offsite at other wineries.  There was always a calming sense of security associated with these occasions knowing that we were at a place where this had been done many times before.  On the eve of the first ever bottling day at our own barn, these secure feelings were nowhere to be found.  I’d spent three months preparing and going over every possible problematic scenario in my head, but doubt still lingered.  Would there be enough room to maneuver in our barn? Would the truck fit on our crush pad?  Would my bottle choices pan out and, most disturbingly, would bottling icewine prove to be the  nightmare I had heard tale of?

All these troubling thoughts kept me awake on the eve of April 6th.  I was to be at the barn for 6am sharp the next morning to greet Glenn Hunt and his mobile bottling crew.  As the minutes ticked by, I actually started feeling nauseous and got up to take some Pepto Bismol.  It didn’t help.

I took solace in the fact that Glenn and Randy do this every day, convincing myself that they must have encountered every conceivable problem and were very seasoned at dealing with anxious winemakers.  It was still dark when the truck rolled in and right away Glenn put me at ease when he looked up at the clear sky and confidently stated, “It’s going to be a great day for bottling!”  If he could be excited about today, then why couldn’t I?

My second boost of confidence came at the arrival of my father-in-law and brother-in-law who had graciously offered to lend a hand.  More important than their braun, they offered a good dose of comic relief that kept us all loose despite the fast-paced dynamic.  In times of stress I’ve found that it’s good to surround yourself with hardworking Polish pranksters.

Set-up took far less time than I had anticipated and the first Pinot Gris bottles were rolling off the line by 7:30.  Riesling, Sauv Blanc, Pinot Noir, Shiraz and Cab Sauv followed in quick succession.  I figured it must be close to lunch at that point and had to look twice when my watch read 10:30!  We were flying – but the dreaded icewine still loomed.

Bottling into 200ml icewine glass presents a bevy of problems to the line.  The bottles are very tippy, and filling consistently with such a small amount of wine is tricky.  Thankfully, our Cabernet Sauvignon Icewine was fairly cooperative and we were able to wrap up bottling by noon.  I’d endured months of sleepless nights and we had bottled our entire 600 cases in half a day…the sheer stupidity of this is not lost on me.

I would like to thank Glenn, Randy and all my helpers for making the first Five Rows bottling day a huge success.

Bottling Looms

Monday, Mar 21st, 2011

Perhaps the number one stress for a winemaker on a yearly basis stems from getting his or her wine safely into a bottle.  On the surface it seems like such an easy and routine task.  In reality it involves a lot of preparation, hair-pulling, and moolah.  For small wineries who put “all their eggs into one basket” so to speak, there is no room for error.  Every little spill or bottle gone bad is greatly magnified.

Thankfully, there are people who specialize in this field.  Mobile bottling lines are a very useful tool for small craft wineries like ours.  It does not make fiscal sense for us to purchase a bottling line when the mobile unit can set up and bottle our entire portfolio in one day.   Unfortunately, the mobile line does not alleviate the vast amount of prep work and the high cost of raw materials.  I’m currently working through an extensive pre-bottling checklist which includes: final blending of wines, protein and cold stability tests, VQA lab and panel testing, coarse and sterile filtration, ordering bottles and corks, floor plan logistics, and shamelessly enlisting family members to help me out on bottling day.  Our labeling and waxing is done by hand at a later date, so that removes two finicky variables from the marathon undertaking.  The fewer things that can go wrong the better!

The bulk of my worries come long before bottling day and involve decisions like the type of closure to choose and the extent of filtration to employ.  The screw cap closure is becoming more and more common these days for good reason.  It’s much cheaper and it provides the perfect seal.  I thought long and hard about going to a screw cap for this season’s wines, but in the end I’ve opted to remain faithful to good old cork.  Call me old fashioned, but it just feels like the right closure for our wines.   The potential savings in price by using screw caps is substantial (high grade cork is 70 cents per bottle, while a screw cap  comes in around 18 cents per bottle),  but the traditional visual and tactile appeal of natural cork still resonates with me.  I’m also not convinced that screw caps provide the best mechanism for properly aging my wines.

I’ve talked to a number of our customers about this decision and they are overwhelmingly in favour of cork closures in their premium wines.  There is still the perception, albeit unwarranted, that screw caps represent lower quality wine.  One only has to look at the increasing number of high-end wines using screw caps to know this is not the case.  Aside from cost, a second significant drawback to cork is the inevitable problem of “corked” wines caused by the cork taint chemical TCA.  Encouragingly, new technologies and sterilization procedures have gone a long way in reducing the number of “corked” bottles to a manageable level (under 3%).  Higher grade corks generally have fewer nooks and crannies for TCA to hide, so we’ve always spent a bit more money for the added security they bring.  We’ve been lucky with TCA to this point, but I would encourage anyone who ends up with a “corked” bottle to return it in exchange for a new one.

I’ll probably re-visit this closure debate every year around this time so, as always, I reserve the right to change my mind in the future!

On April 6th we’re scheduled to bottle our 2008 reds (Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir), 2010 whites and 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon Icewine.  The 2008 Shiraz and 2009 Cab Sauv Icewine are first time entries into our portfolio that I’m very excited to have you try.  I plan to release these wines early in the summer.

A Night To Remember

Thursday, Feb 03rd, 2011

 

I want to take the opportunity to sincerely thank everyone who attended our first Winemaker’s dinner this past Saturday at Treadwell’s.   It was an amazing night of food, wine and merriment.

James was a great host, as always, and his astute pairings worked out perfectly.  He really gave our wines a chance to shine.  In the end, we all agreed that we should do this more often!

Treadwell Winemaker’s Dinner

Monday, Dec 20th, 2010

It’s fitting that the first Five Rows Winemaker’s Dinner will take place at Treadwell Farm to Table Cuisine in Port Dalhousie.  James and the Treadwell family have been ardent supporters of our wines since they agreed to showcase our very first release of 2004 Unfiltered Cabernet Sauvignon.  We’ve come a long way since that initial 12 bottle release, but our vision and commitment to small batch craft wine remains the same.

Not a week goes by that we don’t meet someone who was either directly or indirectly introduced to Five Rows through Treadwell’s.  They are a key to our winery’s success and have always been a family favourite place to dine.  In fact, my mother made James promise to include her favourite Mussel dish as an appetizer at the dinner.  I’ve seen a draft of the menu and simply put – it’s tantalizing.  The Treadwell team has chosen four complementary courses to pair with our wines.  I’ll be pouring our 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, 2007 Pinot Noir, 2009 Sauvignon Blanc and the last of our 2008 Pinot Gris.

I encourage all friends of Five Rows to join us for this undoubtedly memorable dining experience on Saturday, January 29.   You can find ticket information here.  I’m told they are selling fast.

2009 Whites

Sunday, Nov 07th, 2010

2009 Five Rows Sauvignon Blanc:

Roughly one tonne of fruit was harvested on a beautiful day in early October of 2009.  Half the fruit was sourced from our younger, more clay-based block of  Sauvignon Blanc, while the other half came from the older vines located in predominantly clay-loam soil.  Each block contributes distinct characters to the final blend.

The younger “clay” block tends to be less vigorous, leading to increased fruit exposure and consequently lends the riper, more tropical notes to the blend.  The older “clay-loam” block vines are extremely vigorous and require more intense hand labour.  Generally they are slightly more shaded, leading to the fresh citrus aromatics and crisp flavours that are classic characteristics of cool-climate Sauvignon Blanc.

As I mentioned last season, the key to achieving the full complement of flavours and aromas is a long, cool ferment carried out in a combination of older French oak barrels and stainless steel tanks.  For this wine I opted to go with a two-thirds barrel (2003 Jacques Garnier) and one-third tank fermentation regimen. The tank-fermented portion was allowed to age in oak for a few months prior to final blending.  All fermentations were carried out at around 13 degrees Celsius with X5 yeast.  68 cases were bottled on August 31, 2010.

Aromas:  vanilla, pineapple, lemon, lime

Flavours:  melon, lime, balanced finish

Technical data:  13.1% alcohol, 5.8 g/L residual sugar, pH 3.2

Price: $25/bottle

Production:  68 cases

2009 Five Rows Pinot Gris:

Pinot Gris is quickly becoming a standout varietal in the Niagara Peninsula.   Rick VanSickle recently wrote about this trend and chronicled a tasting of 17 different Pinot Gris.  Rick was kind enough to purchase a bottle of our Five Rows Pinot Gris to include in the tasting and you can read the exciting review here.

My view is that Pinot Gris is such a labour intensive variety to grow, it better damn well turn out to be a good wine!  It would not be worth the extra hand work and stressful pre-harvest nail biting to produce a mediocre, uninteresting wine.  “Good” Pinot Gris is without a doubt the most sought-after grape variety by premium Niagara wine producers at the moment.  It even has enough clout to be used as a bargaining tool by many growers to help them unload their lesser in demand, easier to grow varieties like Chardonnay and Cabernet Franc.

As is evident in Rick’s article, getting good fruit is only part of the equation.  Each winemaker seems to have their own method of coaxing out the best in their Gris.  A few years back, a couple of wise Creekside winemakers introduced me to the benefits of fermenting a portion of Pinot Gris in older French oak barrels.  I’ve experimented with different oak/stainless blends ever since.  The barrel-fermented wine always seems to have weightier mouthfeel and more complex aromatics, so in 2009 I decided to go with a 2/3 barrel, 1/3 tank final blend.  I’ve always had good luck with a yeast called R2, so I stuck with it and fermented at the coldest temperature the yeast could tolerate.  This led to a slow and beautiful month-long ferment.  70 cases were bottled on August 31, 2010.

Aromas:  honey, apple, pear

Flavours:  vanilla, melon, spice, left slightly off-dry (1)

Technical Data:  13.0% alcohol, 8.5 g/L residual sugar, pH 3.46

Price:  $25/bottle

Production:  70 cases

Both of these wines are now available for purchase at our winery, on our website or can be enjoyed at select licensees.  We are happy to announce the addition of two new members to the Five Rows extended family:  Ruby Watchco in Toronto and Brookstreet in Ottawa!  Ruby Watchco will be carrying our 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon and 2009 Pinot Gris while Brookstreet will be pouring our 2007 Pinot Noir and 2009 Pinot Gris.

Out With the Old, In With the New

Thursday, Sep 30th, 2010

 

It’s an exciting time at the Lowrey Vineyard.  The majority of 2010 fruit has been harvested, and the usually stress-inducing  late varieties are ripe already!  Summer wine sales have exceeded our initial projections and we’ve sold out of most vintages much sooner than expected.  I still have to pinch myself at times to make sure this is all really happening.

I’m continually amazed at the awesome people who happen upon our winery each weekend.  It turns out that if you build it, they really will come.  They pick me up on rough days and drive my passion to continually push viticultural boundaries.  They are always patient when I’ve got a barrel to fill or tank to clean, so I will always try my best to craft wines that keep them coming back.

As the old vintages sell out, I quell my nostalgic thoughts with the early reviews of our 2009s.  We’ve been selling a few hastily labelled and waxed bottles of our new 2009 Sauvignon Blanc to a few customers who refused to leave until I could prove to them that this wine was not ready to sell yet.  They ended up winning the argument and left with bottles 1 through 12.  We are now taking case orders for this wine ($25/bottle).

In other news, we’ve recently made a decision not to actively promote our wines through submissions to wine writers.  I’m happy to arrange a tasting for any reviewer at any time, but unfortunately we just don’t have the quantities to send samples to all those who have put in a request.  Up to this point in our evolution as a craft winery we’ve relied mainly on “word of mouth” to sell our wines, and I see no reason that needs to change.

Every Wine Has a Story

Monday, Aug 23rd, 2010

 

Every vintage and every wine has a story.  Some are thrillers, some are tragedies, some are uplifting romantic dramas and some, like the story of “Howie’s Own” 2008 Vidal, are dark comedies.

Tonight I cracked a bottle of this ’08 Vidal (bottled elegantly in a recycled Creekside Cabernet bottle) and marveled at the irony of how this wine that I cared about the least, neglected the most, and don’t sell to the public, turned out to be so damn good.

It’s an understatement to say that I wanted no part of making this wine in the late fall of 2008.  Those unfortunate enough to be around me at that time would no doubt be able to describe the kind of mood I was in.  Frazzled and crabby only begins to describe my state of being.  Having just completed our first full-scale “Five Rows” vintage, in facilities that rivaled only the most modest of U-Brew joints, I’d actually spent the majority of my time scouting vineyards for other wineries to make ends meet.  I was officially burnt out.

With evey sip of Vidal the stroy gets clearer.

My father, and I give him credit for mustering up the courage to do this, meekly suggested that we make a small tank of Vidal from the little bit of leftover fruit that falls onto the ground after mechanical harvesting, just for the fun of it. The fun of it?  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”  I thought or perhaps yelled aloud along with some interesting adverbs.   I’d been slugging away for three months straight and making Vidal for fun was not high on my To Do list.  I didn’t have the tank space, the yeast or the patience for this venture and made my feelings perfectly clear to a bewildered Howie.

“No problem.” he calmly stated, “I’ll make it myself.”  Now this was funny.  He didn’t have the foggiest notion about the practice of whole bunch pressing, the use of pectic enzymes, the protective benefits of potassium metabisulphate or how to properly monitor a fermentation.  “Good luck with that!” I rudely exclaimed.

I arrived early the next morning to see him diligently stooping to pick up the fallen bunches of Vidal.  I went on to tend to my other wines and after a while he pulled up to the crush pad with his wagon load of roadkill.  Then, in a fateful moment of weakness, I decided to can the attitude and help my old man press some grapes.  I suggested we press them “whole bunch” in an effort to be gentler on fruit.   I’d done this before with Chardonnay in Nova Scotia and really felt that the end product was more complex.  It also meant skipping the destemmer-crusher, which I didn’t feel like cleaning anyway.

We loaded the press quickly, I was probably still giving him the bum’s rush, and soon the sweet free-run juice began to flow.  Normally, pressing is done slowly with gradual increases of pressure and a periodic break-up of the press cake.  Sadly, this was not our protocol.  I cranked the pressure input valve, quickly achieving one bar of pressure when, mysteriously, the free-run juice stopped flowing.   Judging by the high-pitched squeal emanating from behind the wooden slats, I guessed we had an air pocket somewhere within our small basket press.  Stupidly, instead of dismantling the press and breaking up the cake, I increased the pressure and leaned in for a closer look.  All of a sudden, in one almighty instant, a tsunami of angry Vidal riding two bars of pressure streamed violently between a crack in the press screen, directly into my eyes and clear onto the roof of our barn!

Now if I say that I hit the ground and rolled around like I thought I was blind for life…it wouldn’t be a lie.  I tend to be a bit of a drama queen at times, but I swear that this situation warranted my blasphemous screams.  When I think back now, I truly believe that I’m lucky I wasn’t seriously injured.  A seed or stem hitting an eye at that velocity could have done some serious damage, but the juice just stung.   When I regained my vision enough to see blurry images, I quickly felt around and opened the pressure release valve to stop the geyser.

There are still a few Vidal skins adorning our barn roof to this day.  When my dad and I recovered from the shock of the situation, we had a good and much needed laugh.  I think we agreed not to tell my mother how bad it really was, but she will know now.  Sharing that experience was priceless.  I will never forget the look on his face when my vision finally returned.  It was a weird amalgam of shock and stifled laughter that he’d be hard pressed to ever duplicate.  Winemaking has since seemed less complicated and my attitude at vintage time has lightened tremendously.  Taking time to enjoy the experience is my new motto.

In the end, we were able to scrape together some yeast and cold-fermented the Vidal in a small stainless steel tank.  Last summer we bottled (more or less siphoned) 23 cases of Vidal, unfiltered, into sterilized, recycled bottles.  We’ve been enjoying it ever since.  The aromatics and presence of this wine are captivating.  Our supplies are getting low, however, so maybe we’ll make some again this year…just for fun.

Good Reviews

Friday, Aug 13th, 2010

 

When the back aches from successive days of thinning Pinot Gris that is trellised annoyingly too low (remind me to raise that damn bottom wire next year) its especially nice to retire to the winery for a pleasant afternoon tasting with someone who has recently “discovered” our wines.  This has happened quite a bit lately, which signals to me that our wines are finding their way to the right people despite our lack of promotion.

My mother has shouldered the load for the majority for these pop-in tastings which she quite enjoys.  Despite her claims of nervousness, I think she has really found her niche.  She is passionate about our vineyards and loves to talk wine, especially Pinot!

We both feel very lucky when we receive firsthand positive feedback from our guests.  It’s by far the most rewarding part of what we do.  I’m still humbled and tremendously grateful every time people decide to purchase our wines.

Good reviews from a wine writer are nice too.  Read what Michael Pinkus of Ontario Wine Review recently wrote about our 2007 reds here.

Sold Out

Friday, Jul 16th, 2010

 

Due to an unanticipated boon in sales, I regret to inform that our 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon and 2008 Sauvignon Blanc are now sold out.  Maybe all this hot weather is making people really thirsty.

To build a library of past vintages I’ve decided to hold back a few cases of each red wine that we produce.  I intend to personally monitor the aging process of these wines to determine when they are drinking best.  A relatively new wine region like ours has little knowledge of the long term aging potential of our reds.  Wines are generally drunk young, and perhaps ahead of their best days.  I hope to shed some light on this age-old conundrum.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to crack a bottle of our 2004 Cab Sauv at a dinner with family and friends. Upon nosing and tasting, I cooly expressed my pleasant surprise to the group (privately I was downright giddy) at the immense progress this wine had made since the last time I tried it 6 months ago.  I would encourage those who still have a bottle of the ’04 in their cellar to give it a try sometime soon with a nice red meat dish.  It’s also a goal of mine to keep our regular customers abreast of the development of these wines through invite-only vertical tastings.  I’ve also held back some unfiltered versions of each vintage, which would be fun to try at these events as well.  Stay tuned to the blog for details.

For a limited time it’s still possible to purchase the 2008 Sauv Blanc and 2005 Cab Sauv at our great stable of Licensees, which now includes Spencer’s at the Waterfront in Burlington, About Thyme Bistro in Vineland, and Langdon Hall in Cambridge.