CLIFF.HANGER

From Benmarl Winery we drive thirty minutes to Whitecliff Vineyards. Hoping. The road curls over hills, twisting East and away from the tempering humidity of the Hudson. The sandstone and shale crescent of Shawangunk Ridge (from where the wine-region gets its regrettable "get gunked" tag line) hangs in the distance. This ridge likely traps the convection of warm air from the river just enough to grow grapes. Maybe.
Whitecliff's gravel drive slopes between western-facing vines and parks us around the back of the converted shed. The lot is a stage for their stainless presses and pumps. Proud in their farming roots and hard work (and costly equipment), Whitecliff has little to hide. We wrap around the massive, ridge facing deck and squeeze into the tasting room.

Inside, the tasting bar is mobbed and all the coffee, I mean wine tables, filled by chatting bachelorettes. We bob and weave our way to the counter. Behind it a lone twenty-something pours and drops bottles. Once he wraps up a pack of small-talking couples, he rolls over to us.

With two pages of wines to pick from, we stick to the Estate and Hudson Valley wines. Why try imported Long Island Malbec or Merlot?

The whites are honest.

The 2009 Traminette carries its Gewürztraminer (lit. "spiced Traminer") roots lightly, with the typical lychee, floral and ginger spice notes wafting about. However, the Cornell University crossing with the Franco-American Joannes Seyve 23.416 adds a watery white melon blandness to the Gewürz. A lack of ripeness might also be to blame.

The 2009 Chardonnay is crisp and fine. No oak or butter here, albeit a bit on the light side.

The 2009 off dry Riesling is fine, although the sweetness might make up for the lack of body.

Whitecliff's Estate Awosting White blends Seyval Blanc (another French hybrid that handles New York's cold) and Vignoles (ditto) into a dry white with enough wake-up acidity to stay interesting.

MASSIVE TANGENT ALERT:

[Phylloxera, a nasty sap-sucking aphid, had wiped out most of Europe's vines by the end of 19th century. Europe scrambled, crossing or grafting their classic Vitis vinifera grapes with hardier American varieties (Vitis aestivalis, rupestris, riparia and to a lesser extent, labrusca). Grafting French grapes onto American vines won out. So to pretend as if nothing had happened, EU wine regions excluded the hybrid grapes. But in cool climate, underegulated US wine regions these hardy new grapes flourished.]

Then there were Whitecliff's reds.

Their Estate Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc and Gamay Noir, all from 2008, looked pale and pink in the glass. As if to compensate, the Pinot had an inch of sediment left in the bottle. The cool climate acidity cut across the palate. Finally oak veneered the faint fruit in harsh, woody tannins and toast. Whitecliff's overly petite French barrels left nothing but forest in the glass.

For kicks (and an extra $2) I tried their Hudson Valley Estate Port, distilled just down the road at Tuthilltown Spirits. The Frontenac grape (a recent French-American hybrid of U. of Minnesota descent) is red and all acidity. Combine that with 22% alcohol, toasted oak and 5.2% residual sugar and you have a maraschino cherry factory that's burning to the ground to sip, very, very slowly.

While waiting for our pourer to stop talking about guitars, Whitecliff starts to clarify. The flanking couple follows Whitecliff's mailing list religiously. Since the winery makes roughly 1,500 cases a year, getting a hold of anything takes will. Yet brand affiliation seems strong.

Whitecliff' has the will to experiment and learn but at the cost of focus. Having Merlot or Malbec might meet customer demand for fruity, warmer climate reds, but labeling them Whitecliff Vineyards is a bit of a lie.
There is even a Redtail red that claims to be their thirteen dollar "answer to Yellowtail". But why drag yourself into that battle (7.5 million cases -vs- 1,500)? New York wines will never be the soft, full bodied and cheaply mass-produced wines of the Aussies because the sun and available vineyards are not here. Competing on that level distracts not only the customers but the winemaker from learning what their vineyards do best. Also, now that Australia's wine market has hit a hard patch, such comparisons only lower expectations of your wine.

The only way to win is to trust your grapes and your location. Sell on the merits that differentiate you from the rest and find ways to take your customers there.

Next Time: garage wine with Brimstone Hill.

MYTHMENDING.ENDING

The final battle nears. Since late January, I have coerced grape juice into wine. Yet if I don't begin bottling, it all risks ruin. Pumping oxygen out has carried my wine through weeks of racking. Now I must use the remaining two cleanser packs to purge thirty three bottles of their pasts.
Drinking through the weeks left me with a few bottles. Work provided the rest. I rinsed and scrubbed each. Then my Trojan horse of Sodium Sulfate trumped any resisting bacteria. I re-rinsed everything three more times until the burning subsided. Tired and impatient, I brought in the fan.
Once somewhat dry, my siege-work of bottles were set for the final assault. I attached the bottling "Easy"-Siphon to the racking set, propped the carboy on a chair one last time, and, with help, began filling the bottles...
Messy. The siphon did not work with bottles that had curved punts (bases). Filling the other bottles went too quickly, so I had to manually top up to the necks (otherwise there would be excess air contact with the wine). My hands were bloodied and/or pink, the bathtub battlefield was stained by fallen victims, and tears strewn across my cheeks from the sodium sulfate.
Although only twenty-six bottles could fill, victory lay at hand, so I readied the corker.
Since I had sixty fresh corks from the separate juice and equipment kits, I used both in case one set was defective, thus hoping to save half of my surviving wine...unless both set failed...
Before the cork squeezed into the neck (more or less), I pushed the last oxygen out with the Nitrogen blend. In antiquity, everything from olive oil to still fermenting CO2 kept their wine from spoiling. Today, most bottling is mechanized in temperature controlled environments, and bottles are wholly absent of oxygen. Me...well I might have cleaned the bathroom earlier.
With cruel irony, I put my pseudo-barbaresco into real bottles of Barbaresco (still no reply from the company as to the grape type[s], provenance, or vintage of the grape must). Like Patroclus in Achilles' armor, my wine and I aimed at undue glories.
Rarely did the corks fit the differing bottles sizes (although screw-capped bottles seemed the most forgiving). The last task remained: foil capping. While wine is in storage, vermin love to nibble corks, so wax caps and later foil kept them at bay. Given my poor corking, an extra seal to keep wine off the carpet would not hurt...

Even if it could not hide the corks sticking out of the neck.

Now the bottles needed two days to stand and allow the corks to fully expand. I then took my completed twenty six and laid them rest, so that their corks might remain moist and the wine age.

A few nights later I uncorked a bottle at a friend's pasta party. The wine's levity and fruit went quickly and well, showing none of the blood, tears or kitty litter that went into it.

Thus, then, did they celebrate the wine of mine, tamer of Barbaresco.