Wines & Vines

Collector's Edition WINES&VINES 139 WINE EAST WINE INDUSTRY NEWS Black Star Farms added a white wine production winery and a tast- ing room on Old Mission Peninsula northeast of Traverse City in 2007. The combined vineyards in the two locations total 185 acres and the winery produces approximately 35,000 cases annually, according to Wines Vines Analytics. Lee Lutes, general manager and head winemaker, reported that the grapes for the award- winning wine came from the win- ery's vineyards on both the Leelanau and Old Mission Penin- sulas. Lutes noted that "the 2017 season was on the cooler side, and then, on Sept. 1, summer started. From September into October, we had a beautiful dry ripening sea- son. We could pick grapes, clean fruit, when the grapes were opti- mally ripe, not because we had to. The winemaking was easy." The grapes were picked by hand on Oct. 17 and 18 at 21.7° Brix, 7.5 g/l total acidity and a pH of 3.26. After being gently pressed the day they were picked, the grapes were cold settled and then racked into tanks. "We add maybe one-third to one-half of what's recommended for yeast additions and keep the fermentation cool, at 55° F or less," Lutes said. "The dry Riesling fermentation can take five weeks or more." One unique aspect of the fer- mentation is that neutral oak chips are added to the ferment- ing wine. Lutes said he adds a couple of pounds of Pronektar Fresh by Tonnellerie Radoux to 1,000 gallons of wine to increase the phenolic presence. "You do taste wood tannins in the fer- mentation," Lutes said. "That fades but [the chips] add to the mouthfeel. Then, as soon as the fermentation starts to struggle, we do macro-oxygenation." When the Riesling is dry, sulfur is added. The wine is racked off the gross lees, chilled down, and then rests on the light lees until Febru- ary or March. About 120 days be- f o r e b o t t l i n g t h e w i n e , t h e winemaking team begins bench trials to try blends of Rieslings from different vineyards and evaluate aromatics, fruit profile and the body and texture in the mouthfeel. Vladimir Banov, Black Star's pro- duction winemaker at the Old Mis- sion Peninsula winery, manages the operations of that white wine facil- ity and brandy distillery. He re- ported that the 2017 dry Riesling at bottling had a residual sugar of 0.55%, an alcohol of 12.04%, a pH of 3.13, total acidity at 7.09 g/l, free SO 2 of 29.9 ppm, total SO 2 of 82 ppm, and malic acid at 0.260 g/l. A total of 1,500 cases of the dry Riesling were produced. Trezise wins Riesling award Wolf Blass, owner of Wolf Blass Wine in Nuriootpa, Australia, pre- sented the Wolf Blass International Award at CIRC to Jim Trezise, founder of the International Ries- ling Foundation (IRF). The award is given bi-annually to a person or organization that has made a major contribution to Riesling de- velopment and promotion. Trezise received the award in large part because of his role in founding the IRF in 2008 and in serving as the Foundation's president until re- cently. Trezise has supported CIRC as a judge for four years and as a proponent of American wineries entering that competition. —Linda Jones McKee "We could pick grapes, clean fruit, when the grapes were optimally ripe, not because we had to. The winemaking was easy." –Lee Lutes, winemaker BlackStar Farms SELL TO MORE GROWERS The Wines & Vines Grower Online Marketing System (GOMS) enables users to create and save highly customized grower searches, and export results into advanced report types, data exports and mailing labels. (866) 453-9701 winesandvines.com/OMS SELECT RECORDS BASED ON: SELECT RECORDS BASED ON: region varietals acreage grape sales new vineyard

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