Aprl 20 - On the Patio

It has been difficult trying to start my blog. Where to begin ?
So having had enough wine, I feel empowered to just write about my day.
Apologies if it is boring, but it is the day of a wine student .....

First I started looking at Cover Cropping for Vineyards. This is for a friend who has a small backyard
vineyard with great soil and 200 vines. How to control vigor ? The vines are close spaced and may not be able to handle the fertility of the soil. Cover crops may be the answer. A perennial grass that will take up some of the water and some of the nitrogen and leave the vine wanting for just a little more. Stressed. Hopefully that may be an answer. We will have to experiment to be able to tell. Find what works for that vineyard.

Then, I spent a couple of hours writing up topics on Fortified Wines. I am taking the WSET Unit 6 exam in a little over 6 weeks ( July 6 ). There are around 113 important topics, around 27 "less important" topics and another 27 "beyond the syllabus" topics that they expect us to understand and be able to write a few intelligent paragraphs about for the test. The text is Jancis Rovbinson's wonderful "Oxford Companion to Wine" a (small print) encyclopedia of around 800 pages and thousands of topics. Fortunately the realm of Fortified Wines is relatively small, and fortunately it is also quite interesting. I am writing each topic from Jancis, in my own voice and in a more consolidated document to make it easier to study without thumbing through the book. ( as me nice and I will send you a copy )

Tonight i tried my tasting exam. Dismal failure, but I still have hope. I poured the following wines.
1) An amontillado sherry. 2) A 1986 Colheita Port. 3) A Sweet Sherry 4) A 20 year old Tawny Port and 5) Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry. However a failure that includes sitting in the patio on a comfortable spring evening watching the sun go down on Mt. Diablo and drinking really nice Ports and Sherries is not one to kill yourself over. I will recover.

I sat on the patio, closed my eyes and was fortunate enough to have Susan hand me glasses in various orders, sometimes repeating a glass, some times introducing a new one. I knew what wines were in the tasting but had to guess the order i which she was serving them. This was really not an easy task, as those who are honest will tell you.

My goal was to tell the 5 wines apart without looking at them. By taste alone. ( Looking wouldn't have helped much because they are all a similar shade of amber / reddish brown although of different intensities. ). I would have thought that it would be easy to tell a Sherry from a Port, but in reality it takes work. I could identify the amontillado because it has the flor sherry character. And I could identify the Harvey's because I knew it was there and it is so dark, rich, almost molasses tasting.

However recognizing and locking in the flavors / aromas of the Cream sherry, the Colheita Port and the 20 y/o tawny are harder. I was finally able to distinguish between the slightly higher alcohol ( 20% abv for the Ports instead of 17% for the Sherry ) as being the distinguishing factor. i just hope I can remember all of this tomorrow, because it took a number of tastes (swallow not spit ... I am at home, these are slightly expensive wines, and I am not driving anywhere soon ).

So, anyhow, I have more work to do and fortunately it is an enjoyable task even when you are devastatingly wrong.

I'll et you know how tomorrow turns out.

john