Rest in Peace, Seymour

It's bittersweet, this year of changes for Riverbench. We have now become a 262 acre vineyard after removing a large section of Chardonnay vines which have hit the ripe old age of 40 and are no longer productive enough to continue to support farming them.

It's rather sad to see these beautiful, gnarled trunks pulled out of the ground. We'll grind them up and use them as compost, so they'll do what they were supposed to do and recycle themselves. These sections are eerily empty, though still peaceful and beautiful in their own way. The empty parts of the vineyard will remain fallow for at least a year while we decide what replanting measures to take.

All that upturned earth creates such a beautiful Riverbench-y smell. Hard working vines, we salute you!

I wish I had a picture of Seymour, but I can't seem to find one (sometimes the OCD gets the best of me and I end up deleting things I shouldn't). He was a special vine right outside the tasting room who happens to be a different clone of Chardonnay than those around him. Every year in the summer when the vines are green and leafy, Seymour was the greenest and leafiest and biggest of them all. Seriously, he stood out in a crowd. Alas, he was part of the removal, but he'll not be forgotten.

Lest it seem morbid that we're taking out so many vines, I'd like to point out that there are still many more original vines left on the property which still produce enough grapes to make sense. Maybe they'll be around another 40 years. These phases of vineyard renewal are just part of the process that will keep the quality of Riverbench grapes excellent for many years to come.

Cheese Disasters: An Update

I took a bit of a break from cheesemaking for a while, but I realize that I haven't even mentioned my favorite food at all in the past few months, so it's due a blog post. (Bees coming sometime soon, promise.)

I had a little free time before class started last week, so I planned to make a batch of feta. It's half cow half goat milk, which always gives it a really nice tang. But apparently I've been too distracted to make cheese, because immediately I heated the milk too much, then realized I was out of lipase, which is an enzyme I use to give cheese flavor, then heated it too much again. Eventually I ended up with something resulting that was a little less like feta and more like a grainier chevre. Though it did taste ok.

The point is that making cheese under duress or while you have other things on your mind just doesn't work out well. Don't get me wrong; it's nothing a bottle of Cork Jumper bubbly couldn't fix, but I found myself frustrated at my own hobby. In fact, doing anything when you just don't have the mindset just doesn't really work. I tend to be pretty good at psyching myself up even in my most dire moments, but sometimes a girl just needs a break.

I'll have to give it another good shot in a few weeks. Until then, at least I can buy and eat some good stuff. Here are a few of my favorite pairings of wine and cheese:

Crottin de Champcol and bubbly, preferably Brut Rosé.

Trader Joe's Truffle Cheese and Pinot Noir - earthy and creamy. Yum!

Fontina and oakier Chardonnay - the cheese has a nice soft bite to it that matches well.

And the old favorites which go with everything are Pecorino and Manchego.

Lordy, Lordy, Riverbench is Forty

Riverbench the wine label is new (first vintage: 2006).

Riverbench the vineyard, however, is one of the oldest planted vineyards in the Santa Maria Valley. The first vines were put into the ground in 1973. It's kind of amazing to think on what those vines would say if they could talk: "Man, that was a helluva frost we just had," or "That winemaker Clarissa sure is picky!" (in a good way) or "Who is that goofy chick who gets a kick out of riding the night harvester at midnight?" (That last reference is to me, in case you couldn't guess.)

But seriously, those vines have seen generations of winemakers and vineyard crews, overseen the opening of our tasting room in 2008, and posed for many an amazing photograph. They've produced some gorgeously delicious grapes and weathered a few storms and heat spikes here and there.

So we'll start celebrating now. Heck, you only turn 40 once! We'll be doing some fun events across the country, spreading the word about this special place and its place in Santa Maria's history.

It's auspicious that we'll be opening our second tasting room in Santa Barbara during our anniversary year; that has to bode well for Riverbench's future for sure! It's a good thing we make celebratory sparkling wine now, because I know that this year above all others we'll be needing a lot of it.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Ladies of Champagne...and the Santa Maria Valley

If you've ever heard any of the stories of how Champagne got started (read: The Widow Cliquot by Mazzeo), then you're familiar with those hard-working, brilliant, inspiring women of the region who, let's be honest, made it all happen.

Mme. Cliquot was essentially the heroine of those days, which were particularly unstable and troubling thanks to wars, weather, a terrible economy and lack of funds, and, of course, the attitude of the world against women in business.

Most people, even the strong willed ones, would have given up trying to make Champagne successful, but Mme. Cliquot just kept at it. She believed in her product and relentlessly studied the science behind making sparkling wines, constantly set about improving the process, and knew, very deep down, that someday it would all come together.

Now, I'm not about to start comparing myself to this extraordinary woman, but I can't help but be inspired by her as not only a woman in the wine industry, but as one who has fostered a deep and passionate love affair with all wines sparkling for many years. This obsession has led me to not only taste, examine, and enjoy countless bottles of bubbly, but to learn the process of making exquisite sparkling wines from the grapes to the end product. It's fascinating and relatively untouched, especially in Santa Barbara County, where few pioneers have dared to even try it. (Definite props to Flying Goat Cellars, who really got into it first.)

We started experimentally making sparkling wine in 2008 out of only Chardonnay, operating under the assumption that if it turned out tasty, then one made with Pinot Noir would be outstanding. Winemaker Clarissa Nagy is an admirer of sparkling wines and Champagnes as well, and immediately showed excitement in our budding program, adding her own unique touches. Gerald Ployez, a Frenchman whose family hails from Champagne and has made it for centuries, offers his insight, experience, and equipment, which help us as newbies make the best quality sparkling wine. The process is long, arduous, and sometimes dangerous (Gerald's arms are scarred from explosive bottles!). Yet we have continued to combat the obstacles against making sparkling wine to introduce the three in our portfolio that have, quite simply, become some of the most gorgeous bubblies made domestically.

Trust a girl who's tasted 'em all.

Wanna See My Shake Face?

My world is wine with a little beer mixed in, so cocktails are relatively new to me. But they're making a comeback, and the more I taste some of the purer, fresher quality concoctions, the more intrigued I become. I gotta start out slow, so right now I mostly enjoy drinks made with a little wine.

Making cocktails is a little like being a mad scientist. Limitless different ingredients, mixed together in different ways to make thousands of different drinks. And when you shake your masterpiece with some ice, the expression on your face is called your "shake face." One bartender I met claims to have seven different faces; I'm gonna stick to just perfecting one.

My friend Jason Burton (pictured here with Brent Anderson, Stir Branding) from The LAB is a pro, and this summer he invented a drink that uses Riverbench Chardonnay. He served it at a recent tasting we hosted, and it was, in short, eye opening. I might be in love with St. Germain Elderflower. I bragged about our Riverbench cocktail to my owners and it ended up on the Far Western Tavern's bar menu, named, embarassingly, for me: the Mohseni. I'll probably always think of it and remember this past (unbearably hot) summer's trip in Kansas City, where it was invented, but I'm super honored.

The takeaway here? Dive in, folks. The cocktails are fine.

Try our very own Riverbench cocktail, and work on your own shake face. Here's the recipe:

Alien Invasion

The other night, I was driving home from class around midnight and saw intensely bright and somewhat eerie lights throughout vineyards as I passed. Hulking machinery, which vaguely resembles alien space craft, lumbered through rows of vines, and tiny tractors pulling huge bins wove in and out. Extra-terrestrial invasion? Nope, just vineyards picking their grapes by machine.

While hand harvesting grapes is all around better, most large scale production wineries use machines to harvest their grapes. It's not as delicate, but it doesn't really matter because the fruit that is picked goes into lower priced wines. (It costs about $55 per acre to pick by machine, compared to over $350 per acre to do it by hand, so the math speaks for itself.) At Riverbench, we pick the fruit for our wines by hand, but for one of our vineyard clients, machine harvesting is it.

Picking by machines is done at night because it's cooler, and nobody wants a hot bin of grapes. They have high beam lights to make sure everything is illuminated, so it really does give the impression, at least from far away, that alien craft might be landing in the vineyard.

Craving my own alien encounter, I ventured out for a night picking experience. Earlier that day, Jim showed me every part of the machine up close so that I would understand what would happen and how it would work. It's hard to explain, but you can see by the pictures that the machine is pulled over each row, and the arms inside shake the vines to remove the grapes. These are then pulled by a conveyor belt into a gondola a few rows over, which collects the fruit. I don't mean to romanticize something that is rather aggressive on the vines, but the machinery is astounding. All those moving parts! Additionally, those guys driving the heavy machinery in pitch black dark perfectly? Stupefying. I can't even parallel park.

Jim and I followed along behind the machine to make sure it was picking right. It's a ton of walking, and dust, leaves, grape matter, and who knows what else completely covered us after just a few minutes. It was cold, but we were walking so much I didn't feel it. Riding on top of the machine was pretty killer, too; you can see every working part. Being about 10 feet up in the air is kind of empowering, too, especially for someone 5 feet tall. It was an adrenaline rush, and probably one of the coolest things I got to do this harvest.

Afterwards, we had a little while to just chill and wait for the fruit to come in, so me, Jim, and Raul, one of the foremen, watched the stars, talking about everything from beers to grapes to families to beers. And the aliens...well, they were probably up there just laughing at us.

Clarissa Explains It All

Well, harvest is officially over for Riverbench Winery. The vineyard still has another week until all of the fruit is picked, but for the most part things are starting to calm down as cool weather approaches. And while I didn't get to work nearly as much as I wanted to with the fabulous Ms. Nagy (the day job got in the way), every moment was full of new things to learn. Here's a recap of the highlights:

Inoculations! Not only is it a cool word, but it's a cool thing to do. Clarissa explains that while native yeasts (those which occur naturally in the vineyard) are beneficial, they're not always predictable or constant. So if you truly want the best quality wine, it is best to inoculate with yeast which, by the way, is not man-made, but the real thing just produced in bulk. Adding it helps prevent stuck fermentations and other problems in a wine's baby stages.

I loved learning to inoculate, and I especially loved mixing the warm yeast/juice slurry with my hands. It smells amazing, and made me feel a little like a mad scientist.

Punchdowns! I didn't have time to do my usual kickboxing some mornings, but punchdowns more than made up for it. Clarissa showed me how to stand on top of a wooden plank balanced across the fermenter and then use a punchdown tool to mix the red destemmed grapes and juice. This keeps the color strong throughout and releases the most intoxicating smells of fermented wine. I find it super therapeutic, and man, your arms and back ache after! I not only got to do these by hand, but also got to "drive" the pneumatic punchdown tool this year, too. "Laura has the cleanest punchdowns ever!" See, I knew there would someday be a perk to having OCD.

Sorting! Again, the OCD makes me good at this, I think. Clarissa uses a very efficient sorting/destemming machine with a long conveyor belt which allows someone to stand over it and pick out pieces of vine, raisins, and leaves. Then off it goes to remove the stems from the grapes. I LOVED this- you have to work fast or it will get away from you, and it involves grabbing handfuls of grapes and picking out what shouldn't be there. Ultimately, this helps remove what could lead to undesirable flavors in a wine before you even start letting it ferment. With a new sorting table at our facility, this is the first year Riverbench has really been able to do this.

Overall, what can I say? Actually doing a little harvest work this year was pretty invigorating, exciting, and nerve wracking, but also so much fun! And Clarissa is truly an outstanding teacher. She explains things clearly and without being pretentious. She's calm and patient, the mark of a truly great winemaker. I learned so much just watching her and asking her a million questions. She is one of the most inspiring people I know, not only in the way she approaches her work, but in how she lives her life and shows such kindness to others. That, and she kicks ass and takes names in the cellar.