Newsletters & Notes
September Tribe Newsletter & Nature Report
I know what you’re looking for: the September 2011 Tribe Newsletter and..
Molly’s Nature Report
In September, Molly was fortunate to host, for the second time, the Silverlake Country Club’s Vintners’ Golf Tournament and winemaker dinner. Part of her duties included manning a wine pouring station on the course at the “turn.” This important responsibility came with perks as well: She had time to observe the wildlife on the course between foursomes.
Unlike Sonoma County, where it seems there is only one kind of squirrel (gray with some brown edges and tips), Ohio has a plethora of squirrel color ways. Molly observed red squirrels with copper highlights, pitch black squirrels, brown squirrels, and one squirrel she named Rod Stewart for his brassy blond tail with black roots. All of these squirrels were on a frantic mission. Just behind the wine table there were two trees bearing what looked like small walnuts still in their outer husks. Upon closer scrutiny, it became clear that they were not walnuts, so Molly did what any red-blooded American would do in the circumstance: she googled “nut trees + Ohio” and, from the descriptions given, was able to deduce that the trees were yellow buckeyes. Despite having bee born and raised in the same part of Ohio, Molly was heretofore unaware of their being any buckeye other than the standard brown, OSU, variety. Take a moment to visualize Bambi’s daddy with bright yellow eyes…scary, huh?
In any event, these yellow buckeyes were ripe and the trees were squirrel central. Rod Stewart first caught Molly’s attention when he ran across the ninth green with two buckeyes protruding from the sides of his mouth. When she went looking for the source of his plunder, she found, in the glen fifty feet below the shop area, two groundhogs placidly eating their ways in widening gyres from their dens, and two black squirrels chasing each other away from the buckeye trees. While the black squirrels were so involved, one red squirrel ran clean up the trunk, scrambled to the very tip of a branch where the nuts hung, pulled one off, and raced down the trunk with it still in its husk. Rod Stewart returned and climbed more sedately up the trunk, plucked a nut and sat on the branch, holding it in both tiny hands and, with the efficiency born of long practice, chewed the husk off the nut in three neat swipes, and clambered down with it held in his teeth.
The black squirrels were now chasing each other dangerously close to one of the groundhogs, who lifted his head and waddled two steps in their directions, sending both of them racing frantically off in opposite directions away from the key trees. Simultaneously, the red squirrel was incoming, then swinging on the end of a branch, and popping a nut in its teeth while Rod shimmied up the other side and repeated the two-hands-and-teeth nut cleaning performance. The two black squirrels returned from opposite sides, ran straight toward each other, stopped dead, looked at each other a moment, chased tails around in a circle for a few seconds, got warned off by the other groundhog and, again, neither made it to the tree.
This entire process repeated itself several times over the course of three hours. Rod Stewart loped by several times with two buckeyes, the red squirrel several times with one (Rod had a bigger mouth), but, to Molly’s knowledge, neither of the black squirrels ever made it up the tree. Perhaps this is the reason they died out in California: in their determination not to cooperate with each other – or at least to tolerate each other and share the bounty – both went hungry.
Thanks, Gary Vaynerchuk!
Gary Vaynerchuk is a legend in the wine world – an innovator in social media who connects people to wine with honesty and as little fuss as possible – and the creator of WineLibrary.com, a pioneer site in selling wine online.
My parents, Molly & Charlie, were one of the first wineries to appear on Gary’s wine interview videos – they had a wonderful time and knew he was a star in the making. So after many years of loving Gary’s work, we were gobsmacked and thrilled to receive Gary’s recommendation in the above-referenced tweet.
Summer Tribe Newsletter #55
As a winemaker, I’m captivated by the winery: barrels, tanks, hoses, young wines, cases of maturing wine, wine of all kinds. The winery is my home base — but the tasting room is where the wine comes to life. The tasting room is our opportunity to connect the wines to the people who will love and enjoy them. It’s our place to meet and keep up with our loyal Tribe, to share a glass, make new friends and enjoy the products of our hard work. We work hard to make sure that the folks in our tasting room know how to create fun, interesting and delicious experiences for you when you call, write or visit. Molly, Lucas, Kelly and I enjoy spending time in the tasting room as the winery and travel schedules permit, but we work hard to hire great people to take the helm at the tasting room year-round.
Since Jean left us last spring to welcome her new child, we’ve been looking for just the right person to take on managing the tasting room and communicating with the Tribe. We’re very, very proud to introduce Julia Berman, our new Tasting Room and Tribe Manager. Julia is our dream tasting room chief: she knows how to create welcoming spaces and wonderful occasions. She spent the last several years working at Dawn Ranch Lodge on the Russian River near Guerneville, where she worked with customers to plan weddings and special events and enjoyed the wine country lifestyle. Julia is a native Californian with a deep love for red wine, dogs and sunshine — which means she’ll fit right in with the rest of us. Julia will be in the tasting room Thursday – Monday, pouring reds, rocking the blues, and keeping in touch with the Tribe. If you have questions, an empty cellar or just want to chat – call her at 707-431-2148 or send her an email at julia@meekerwine.com.
We hope you’ll help us welcome Julia to our family, business, and of course, the Tribe! We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible, as soon as possible.
Read on for the full newsletter.
More Woot Love
In the last couple of days, we’ve had the pleasure of offering two more wines on Woot – the 2007 Grenache and the 2006 Carignane. The Woot readers asked for a description of the Grenache, and Luke graciously complied:
Anyways, this 2007 Grenache (which we lovingly call Forklift!) is an awesome awesome awesome wine. This is probably in my top 5 favorite wines that we’ve released in the past 5 years or so. Here’s why…
Grenache, as you all probably know, is a varietal that can make a variety of different styles of wine. Some light and fruity, some dark and inky. This is not only because of massive variance in just plain old winemaking style, but also because the different vine clones that we have available to us can vary greatly in color and tannin production.
Now that most of you are relatively familiar with our style of wine (big structure, tannic, medium alcohol, long aging, high acidity, etc.), you can probably assume that a Meeker Grenache is not going to be your typical Grenache… and you’d be correct.
If you all remember, one of the techniques that we use when we ferment Cabernet Franc to avoid green-ness and maximize fruit extraction is to do a “bleed”, where we drain a certain amount of juice off of the must before fermentation in order to increase the skin-to-juice ratio. The point of this is simple: the tannin, color, flavor, everything delicious, the “good stuff”, in a finished red wine largely comes from the skins and seeds of the grape. If you decrease the amount of initial juice, but leave the original amount of skins and seeds, you have a smaller quantity of wine that all the same amount of “good stuff” goes into.
In grapes that don’t inherently produce massive amount of fruit forward character and big tannin development, juice bleeding is a very effective tool. In that wonderful Cab Franc we had on Woot a couple months ago, we did a 20% juice bleed. That’s a pretty heavy bleed, but well within industry standards.
This Grenache, however… 50% juice bleed. Seriously. We drained off 50% of the juice into our rose blend. We absolutely went bat-feces crazy on the bleed in order to maximize color, structure, fruit and character.
Kaboom. It worked.
This wine is awesome.
You all are probably familiar with Grenache’s role in Rhone blends and the like, and there are lots of great things to say about those wines. Hopefully, however, you’ve had the pleasure of seeing what this grape does in Dry Creek Valley. If you have, you probably liked it. If you haven’t, this is a heck of an opportunity to get your foot in the door.
I will say this, though: Whereas the Carignane we had up yesterday is pretty much the only “medium” bodied wine we make… this Grenache is NOT, by any means, a medium bodied wine. Even though the varietal’s general character and typical style would lead you to believe this is a light, fruity wine, don’t be fooled. This is Grenache with guts.
I think I’m going to trademark that last line.
Unfortunately, because I’m at home right now and not at work (you can thank my Dad for actually letting me go home), I don’t have any of that wonderful technical data that I would normally throw at you all. Hopefully you can do without it. As you know, we correct all of our wines to .75 TA, so that number I can definitely give you: this wine started fermentation at .75 TA. Past that, you’ll have to just trust me: this wine rules.
You can expect it to cellar for at least another 3-5 years. Maybe longer. You won’t, though. You’ll open one bottle and the other two will be gone within a month. And you probably won’t want to share with your friends that aren’t that important to you. Just saying.
Famous Frozini Recipe
One of our most popular wines is our FroZin – a Zinfandel dessert wine that is emphatically not port, not ice wine and not like anything else. It features fresh, fruity flavors, with a healthy acid balance and low alcohol. It’s fabulous served chilled alongside an elegant fruit or dark chocolate dessert (more of these recipes to come!) or as a glaze on a delicious hunk of meat. But one of my very favorite uses for FroZin is as the bases for a delicious cocktail – our famous Frozini.
The recipe is exceedingly simple:
- One part FroZin
- One part Vodka
- Twist of orange
Mix equal parts FroZin and vodka, and shake over ice. Serve in a martini glass and garnish with slice of orange. This version emphasizes the FroZin’s fruitiness.
To emphasize the vanilla richness, try using vanilla vodka or substituting a dash of chocolate syrup instead of lemon. Delicious.
A Report From Another Meeker: FroZin Makes an Appearance
Every now and then we get fabulous notes from customers, sharing a story about a special evening, event or trip in which one of our wines has made an appearance. We love these notes, as they fulfill our primary goal in making wine: enhancing the lives and stories of our customers and friends. Please don’t hesitate to share your Meeker wine stories with us – and trust us, these posts are even better with photos.
With gracious thanks to our friend Bob Meeker, we’re sharing his note below.
Charlie and Molly,
Just checking in to see how everyone is doing. It has been over a year since our visit and every time I open a bottle of Meeker wine it takes me back to California and having dinner with the two of you.
I have to tell you that this past week I had a very special friend and his wife in from Germany and they had dinner at our home. After a few glasses of hand print and a wonderful dinner I thought this is the perfect evening to open the bottle of FroZin that I purchased when I first met the both of you in 2004. It is a treasured bottle and I hate opening up any of that collection but as I said last year I was going to start drinking them on special occasions.
Well I have to tell you of course we had our dark German chocolate to add to the FroZin but it was the most wonderful experience and a perfect way to top of the evening. It was even a little emotional for me bringing back the memories of our first wine tasting together.
I am sure you get a lot of great experiences with your customers drinking your wine but this was such a great experience I had to let you know how great that bottle of FroZin was and what it meant to me.
Of course I had to order more hand print and FroZin on Friday and I will be sending some to my friends in Germany. Debbie and I are going to Germany in September and I am going to call the store to see if I can purchase a few cases of wine and have them sent before we arrive for a large party we were invited to.
Well I hope this e-mail finds all of you in good health and until next time. God Bless, Please give our regards to Lucas.
Bob Meeker
Whoop Whoop WOOT!
As our faithful readers know, we occasionally offer screaming deals to Tribe members and longtime customers. Lately we have been partnering with Wine.Woot, an online deals platform, to offer great prices on some of our limited production wines. A few weeks ago, we featured a 3 pack of 2004 Alexander Valley Cab Franc for $39.99 – a low price for a big, juicy, meaty red!
Today we’re proud to announce a fierce deal on the 2004 Kiss Ridge Vineyard Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon: $79.99 for a 3 pack (+$7 plus shipping).
In addition, Luke will be participating in the community discussion in Woot’s forums. Got questions about this wine or any others? This is a great opportunity to ask questions and connect with other wine lovers.
Winemaking and Age-ability
In a perfect world, where wineries and winemakers had infinite amounts of time on their hands, every customer would understand the optimal cellar program for each wine. Unfortunately, most winemakers are running around with their hair on fire and that information often gets lost. So let’s discuss the basics.
A wine for the ages needs a few basic components:
- Acidity. An acidic wine is typically very stable over time because it inhibits the growth of undesirable little beasts like bacteria, yeast and fungi. In addition, a wine that starts with high acidity will retain a balanced profile over time. On the other hand, wines that start with a higher pH (lower acidity) have a richer, broader mouthfeel from the start – without the astringent characteristics of typical young wines.
- Tannins. Tannins are extracted from the skins of red grapes, and form the “structure” of a wine: Its full-bodied, flavorful backbone. A wine that starts with good tannins will become rounder and fuller over time.
- Flavor. As a wine ages, fruitiness and phenolics soften along with the tannins and acidity. This perhaps goes without saying, but a wine better start with a lot of phenolics and flavor compounds in order to maintain an interesting flavor profile over time, much less develop a more interesting flavor profile.
- Cleanliness. If a wine is going to be set away to age for years, it is essential that nothing bacterial, fungal or yeasty is growing in the wine at the time that it is bottled. Skilled winemaking will ensure that a wine is “clean” before it goes into the bottle, but when in doubt a sterile filter will do the trick.
In general, if you are attempting to determine how well a wine will age, examine the acidity, tannins and overall flavor profile. If the wine seems acidic bordering on astringent, that’s a telltale sign that it could use a little more time in the bottle before prime drinkability.
A wine that is built for the ages will exhibit some of characteristics that make young wines less drinkable: high acidity and strong, punch-you-in-the face tannins. The tannins and acids will oxidize and “mellow” over time, creating the rich, round flavor of a well-aged wine.
Image Credit: Mr. T in DC on Flickr
Make Your Tutu Luna Into A Summer Cocktail
Our dessert wines are not only fabulous to sip with a fresh cobbler, cake, ice cream or cheese plate – they make unusual, fresh and fruity cocktail ingredients. Even if dessert wine isn’t really your thing – I guarantee you the TutuTini is worth trying.
The Classic TutuTini
- 2 parts Tutu Luna
- 1 part vodka
- hearty splash of mango nectar or pear nectar
Shake it over ice and serve it in a martini glass with a lime twist.
Kelly’s Mango Variation
- Fruit of one mango
- 1/2 bottle Tutu Luna
- 1 cup vodka (Absolut Citron is great here)
- a few ice cubes
- juice of half a lime
Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Serve in margarita glasses with a lime. Makes 2 or 3, depending on what kind of margarita glass you like.
A Spring Update, from Lucas
Formula 2 Sale Update
First of all, the response we got from the Tribe regarding the Formula 2 case sale was insane. We moved over 200 cases in about 5 days. That said, we’re still sitting on about 65 cases, and would be more than happy to move them out. Just to remind you, case price for the Formula 2 is currently $100 until we’re sold out. Tax and shipping additional. While you’re at it, order one of our awesome new “How to make wine…” T Shirts, and we’ll throw it in the box with the case of wine. T Shirts are $15, and you can see what they look like on our Facebook page (search “The Meeker Vineyard” on Facebook). 
April Tribe Shipment
Next up, the April Tribe shipment. My dad and I blended the wines yesterday, and I don’t want to quite break the secret yet, but let’s just say that it’s going to be one of the more fun pairs of wines we’ve ever done. Moreover, they both taste really, really good. I’m very excited about this Tribe shipment. You can expect it to ship in the second half of April. We’ll let you know more and give you the billing/shipping details when we get closer to the actual date.
Lucas J Cellars Update
Lastly, I have some exciting news. As you all know, I started my own label, Lucas J. Cellars, which is largely focusing on Pinot Noir. I crushed my first fruit in 2007 and even sent the Tribe the 2009 Vella Pinot Noir last year. Within the next month, I’ll be sending another email to you all announcing the final details of my own, separate wine club, which will send out fewer shipments per year than the Tribe, but with my wines exclusively. The details are yet to be entirely fleshed out (partially because I need to make sure I have some special treatment for Tribe members who join my club as well), but I’m hoping to send the first shipment out in May. It will likely be three different Pinot Noirs and one Syrah blend. I’m very excited about it, and the wines are all tasting really good. Send me an email if you’re interested in hearing more, or just wait for the official announcement email in a few weeks.
Finally, check the Events section for the latest news on the family travel schedule. Catch us in Texas and Florida for winemaker’s dinners and special events.