Comments on: El Dorado Mourvedre — A Very Special Wine

By: john

john — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 13:49:32 +0000

Stunning bottles! Where can i get some????
I am making Mouvedre for the fist ime this year as well. really excited about it.
How long did you leave it in the skins?

Thanks

By: Gabriella Opaz

Gabriella Opaz — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:47:39 +0000

Sounds as if your wine is going exactly according to plan. With or without additives, its great that your experimenting with your grapes and I wish you all the best. And as a side note, keep up with your explanations on how you’re making the wine. It’s great fun to hear your reasoning behind the process.

By: hank

hank — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:10:12 +0000

ew.

By: Loo

Loo — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:46:51 +0000

OK OK. I’ll take yours with 50 ppm.

Oh and I think you totally ignored the food fetish people who would just LOVE to get in on your crushing, only keeping their naked, writhing bodies out of your mash might prove to be more than you bargained for . . .

By: hank

hank — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:50:42 +0000

It is impossible to make quality wine without the addition of sulfites. There is a process to do it, but it is wildly expensive, requires a fuill-scale labratory and even then does not result in quality wine that can age for more than a few years.

The use of sulfites dates back to the Middle Ages, when monks burned sulfur in their wine barrels. The problem with sulfur isn’t its presence or absence, it is in the level of sulfites a winemaker uses. The poison is in the dose.

A cheap wine will have something like 175 parts per million. My wine will have something closer to 50 ppm. This is what you would get with any boutique red wine (whites need more sulfite) where the winemaker has been able to fuss over the grapes.

By: Loo

Loo — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 18:29:42 +0000

Yo Bro. I need a wine with no sulfites added and I am counting on YOU, yes you, to make me one.

Love, your picky SoCal Sis

By: NorCal Cazadora

NorCal Cazadora — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:27:05 +0000

“Good for compost, bad for anything white.”

You mean like the couch?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha….

Love you, babe!

By: hank

hank — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:04:02 +0000

Hmmm…you’re right, Peter, hadn’t thought about the crack-smoking, S&M crowd thing. My oversight!

I, like probably every other winemaker, want to make wines with nothing more than grapes, but you can only really do that when they come in perfectly, as these did. To go “natural” with imperfect grapes when fixes are easily made seems bull-headed to me. Others may have a different view.

Everything has limits: How far would I take it? Reverse osmosis to drop alcohol levels? “Engineered” wines that require a lab to make inferior wines taste something like great ones? To me, that’s to far. But that’s me.

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:15:46 +0000

I’ll plan a trip out there sometime in 2010. I’ve been drinking some 98 Bandol lately, and it sure does love the beasts. I also applaud your more natural approach this time; my only quibble is that you ignore the very real possibility that people who enjoy pressing wine might be smoking crack AND really, really into S&M.