CWD: What did you drink last night (or whenever)?

It is fascinating to see the differences in brewing process and technique, which involves boiling, and is assiduously sanitary - starting with a sterile wort and striving for no biological activity other than that from the pitched yeast strain - and in wine making process, which involves allowing unwashed fruit from the field to generate its own fermentation activity. The mentalities accruing from both camps and processes are sooo disparate.
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It's funny—my first beverage-related jobs were working in breweries, and the level of sanitation in wineries surprised the hell out of me once I went down that road. But once you look at the potential of each beverage to have unwanted microbiological growth, it makes sense.

Wine is high acid, and high sugar (at least compared to beer) which leads to high alcohol. It's much, much harder for unwanted bugs to grow in must, plus it often comes with at least trace levels of its own innoculum.

Beer, on the other hand, is low-acid and lower sugar (which means both lower alcohol and lower osmotic pressure on the microbes at the beginning of fermentation). It's also impossible to make your wort *without* pasteurizing the liquid along the way (even if you didn't boil it, you'd still be holding it at ~140-160F for an hour or so for the enzymatic conversion in the mashing process), so you've essentially got a perfect neutral culturing medium on the back end. You've got to have everything exceptionally sanitized and hit it with a big dose of yeast so that your preferred bugs get a foothold before everything else does.
 
1999 Dönnhoff Hermanshohle Spätlese

After a long day at work, I drank the whole bottle.

Cellared since release. I liked this better than the 2001 I opened a few months ago.

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Is it okay to post on things on I drank this afternoon?

2020 Beuer Rosé is absolutely lovely. A deeper Rosé with beautiful acidity, lots of cranberry like fruit and a mineral spine. Warms up a cold day and cheers up any lunch. German Rosé is so damn under-appreciated.
 
originally posted by Robert Dentice:

Is it okay to post on things on I drank this afternoon?

2020 Beuer Rosé is absolutely lovely. A deeper Rosé with beautiful acidity, lots of cranberry like fruit and a mineral spine. Warms up a cold day and cheers up any lunch. German Rosé is so damn under-appreciated.
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having just been officially relieved of necessity to observe formalities and decorum, is this Rosé made from a grape(s)?
 
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by Robert Dentice:

Is it okay to post on things on I drank this afternoon?

2020 Beuer Rosé is absolutely lovely. A deeper Rosé with beautiful acidity, lots of cranberry like fruit and a mineral spine. Warms up a cold day and cheers up any lunch. German Rosé is so damn under-appreciated.
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having just been officially relieved of necessity to observe formalities and decorum, is this Rosé made from a grape(s)?
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Yes, red ones! It is a blend of Trollinger (majority according to the internet), Portugieser, Zweigelt and Spätburgunder. Not sure of the vineyard sources but I could find out if you like.

I think Trollinger's best use appears to be Rosé.
 
originally posted by Robert Dentice:
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by Robert Dentice:

Is it okay to post on things on I drank this afternoon?

2020 Beuer Rosé is absolutely lovely. A deeper Rosé with beautiful acidity, lots of cranberry like fruit and a mineral spine. Warms up a cold day and cheers up any lunch. German Rosé is so damn under-appreciated.
Click to expand...

having just been officially relieved of necessity to observe formalities and decorum, is this Rosé made from a grape(s)?
Click to expand...

Yes, red ones! It is a blend of Trollinger (majority according to the internet), Portugieser, Zweigelt and Spätburgunder. Not sure of the vineyard sources but I could find out if you like.

I think Trollinger's best use appears to be Rosé.
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Apologies you can't trust the internet.

Luckily I reached out to Joachim directly and he said "It’s seigne from Trollinger, Portugieser, zweigelt and Lemberger. Most of it from Zweigelt"

So there you have it, Swabian Zweigelt Rosé!
 
originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
2019 Domaine des Marnes Blanches Trousseau (11% ABV)

Is it red? Is it pink? Does it matter?

Happy, happy. Joy, joy.

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Nice! I'm still sitting on '11 Poulsard and '12-'13 Trousseau from Marnes Blanches.
 
originally posted by Larry Stein:
originally posted by Jayson Cohen:
2019 Domaine des Marnes Blanches Trousseau (11% ABV)

Is it red? Is it pink? Does it matter?

Happy, happy. Joy, joy.
Click to expand...

Nice! I'm still sitting on '11 Poulsard and '12-'13 Trousseau from Marnes Blanches.
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Fortuitously the wine turned out to be a crazy good match for my homemade (Sichuan spicy) Gong Bao chicken.

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originally posted by Ken Schramm:
originally posted by mlawton:

Thanks Ken, fruited weizenbock sounds interesting. Maltier, denser berliner weisse? dunkleweiss? I'm always curious about fruit beers and meads too, it's interesting to see when the fruit is introduced and how it affects the eventual taste, similar to bittering vs. aroma hop additions.
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Weizenbock is a German-styled wheat beer which combines the throatier malty flavor of a Bock beer grain bill with some malted wheat, and one of the yeast strains utilized for Weizens. It makes for a fun counterpoint for fruit. I have been known to mix one of my meads with an Ayinger Weizenbock or Schneider Aventinus.

We're doing all of our meads with real fruit in the primary, except our apple and pineapple meads, and our white wine pyments, which are made with whole pressed juice in primary, and then using pretty classical red or white wine production technique. I am a fan of the de novo characteristics produced by allowing the yeast to act on the fruit during fermentation. It also makes more sense - if we are not going to fine or filter - to allow clarification to get underway ASAP. It's easy to make something taste like you expect it to if you add fruit late in the process and use sterile filtration, but I'm disorderly. In my mind, you can either hit the curveball, or you are not ready for the bigs.

Kind of odd, but I don't know of anybody who was advocating on behalf of using fruit in the secondary for mead until I mentioned it in the book. I know the Belgians do it for Krieks and other fruited Lambics. Some traditional ale and lager brewers making fruit beers are putting the fruit in the hot must before chilling, so as to heat pasteurize and insure against infection. Tragically, though, many of them are not even using real fruit, and they can add their extract or concentrate whenever. That falls out of what I consider "craft." Too many decisions being made on the basis of convenience and lowering the cost of production.

It is fascinating to see the differences in brewing process and technique, which involves boiling, and is assiduously sanitary - starting with a sterile wort and striving for no biological activity other than that from the pitched yeast strain - and in wine making process, which involves allowing unwashed fruit from the field to generate its own fermentation activity. The mentalities accruing from both camps and processes are sooo disparate.
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This scrolled away but is super interesting, especially the last part which is a more precise breakdown of what I was saying above. Good beer, by nature of being sanitary and formula-driven, has minimal variable quality to the mix so it's really difficult to call any beer "spoof" because the same beer could be made anywhere, given access (either natural or "adjusted" to water with similar chemistry).

Your comments on fruit introduction are interesting as well. Something to think about when I make my next batch of beer - or maybe give mead a go sometime. We are growing gooseberries and black currants so maybe next fall.
 
Here is another one. 2020 Julian Haart Goldtropfchen Kabinett. Very classic Pierporter Kabi. Like a lime tea biscuit. Drinking surprisingly well. The slight roundness of the 2020 fruit hides a bit of extract and acid spine that is there if you pay attention. I will be interested to see where this goes as the baby fat recedes and the sponti remnants fade.

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I enjoyed Jayson's multi-media coverage of the 2020, but in the spirit of Coadian "this is nice but the 1927 was better" I searched the library archives and came up with the 2019.

Thrilled to have waited a few months between my second and third bottles. By design, the fruit was never primary here, but surrounding structure was. It has mellowed out and, more importantly, has gained some autumnal leafiness to match the out-of-the-blocks evolution of the fruit. Delightful.

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2011 Holger Koch Weissburgunder Scheibenhardt: This bottle was better than any I've had previously. My last, and it went out in a blaze of glory. I don't recall hints of pineapple in a Pinot Blanc before, and I know that could sound frooty and unappealing. It wasn't. If anyone still has this left, now is a great time.

2019 Alexandre Dupont de Ligonnes Comtesse: A rose made from Pinots Blanc, Gris, and Noir from a historic vineyard outside Dresden. From souce material. Glad I got to try it, and wouldn't mind running into it again. Didn't really soar, but it may improve yet with some cellar time.
 
originally posted by Jim Hanlon:
2011 Holger Koch Weissburgunder Scheibenhardt:
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nice. some idiot arranged for all of this to be shipped to the us. i only have the herrenstuck wb 11. i will crack one soon.

2019 Alexandre Dupont de Ligonnes Comtesse... Didn't really soar, but it may improve yet with some cellar time.
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i've been sampling various bottles from this dude over the past few. the story is cool, but nothing has really soared so far. and in teh fatherland at least, shit is quite spendy.

if you want to pursue teh sachsen wine thing -- and why not? i keep going back because curiosity -- look out also for teh hooch from klaus zimmerling. again i haven't had any real soar moments -- but i've come closer here -- and my fatpinion is that there is a stronger sense of something coming with this dude.

fb.
 
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