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JANUARY NEWS Wineries Complete Cave Project Four wineries operate the Caves at Soda Canyon, an underground operation N apa Valley, Calif.—It's The operation is one of very few taken almost 9 years, fully underground wineries in but the wineries in the Napa Valley and even California. Caves at Soda Canyon It lies on 41 acres of rugged hillcrushed their first wine grapes side accessed by driving 3.5 miles last year. The four wine compaup winding Soda Canyon Road nies that inhabit the unusual toward Atlas Peak. Three portals shared-cave winery crushed into the caves will face east (one 195.4 tons of fruit Sept. 3, the isn't open yet) into the Vaca Range day they finished construction. and Atlas Peak, with a fourth supThey still don't have power plying a panorama of Napa Valfrom Pacific Gas & Electric, so the ley—even San Francisco, 62 miles wineries are operating from a away, on a clear day. Four wineries crushed grapes this fall at the new Caves at Soda Canyon. generator. Much of the cave About 9,200 square feet of the project remains unfinished, but 22,000-square-foot project is winesandvines.com the owners hope to get power in not too long, complete, with entrances to the planned extension capped at present. Learn more: and to complete the rest of the tunnels in a The part completed includes a large chamber where grapes are sorted, Search keywords "Soda Canyon." year or so. destemmed and pressed, plus tunnels, barrel storage and offices. The four wineries sharing the cave complex The caves yet to be dug will include a large tasting room, comare Buoncristiani Family Winery, Wulff Vineyards and Lobo wines, mercial kitchen and event space; even though the site is well off the Patland Estate Vineyards and Waugh Family Wines. beaten path, the winery partners are focusing on direct sales to conRyan and Crystal Waugh of Waugh Family Wines founded the sumers, and their spectacular site plays into that strategy. Caves at Soda Canyon in 2005, and they applied for a permit to Outside the portal overlooking the valley are a patio now used for construct the winery overlooking the Stags Leap District in August wine tasting, a pavilion for events above the winery and on the top 2006. Unfortunately, the recession delayed progress. "Three partners of the ridge, and an area being developed for additional event space. have come and gone," said Ryan Waugh, the managing partner and The winery can host 30 visitors per day by appointment and also has owner of one of the four wineries using the cave (three as alternating permission to host various events. proprietors). He's also had two management teams. —Paul Franson New Polyphenol Analysis Tested Development indicates wine, grape authenticity K elowna, B.C.—A team of researchers ity of (both) grape and wine would be the from the University of British Colummain targets." Saucier said, "The strategy bia at Okanagan recently developed here is to have a snapshot fingerprint rather and tested a new method for analyzthan to (identify) individual species." ing the polyphenolic content of wine. The researchers intended "shotgun polyCompleted in spring 2013, their work is phenomics" to indicate a fast, snapshot currently available online prior to publicaanalysis of total polyphenol content. Polytion in the journal Analytical Chemistry. phenols in wine vary greatly as a result of Named "shotgun polyphenomics" by the several factors, including but not limited to researchers, this high-throughput climate and other environmental winesandvines.com analysis technique has been conditions, soil type, the variety of Learn more: Search keywords shown to provide details regardgrape and viticultural practices "Phenolic analysis." ing the polyphenolic content of a employed. wine, which could have multiple applications Saucier and his colleague Delcambre conin the winery as well as in the advancement cocted the idea to develop this analysis of of wine research. wine by ultra-high performance liquid chroAccording to Cédric Saucier, co-author of matography-electrospray ionization-quadthis research along with Adéline Delcambre, rupole-time-of-flight-mass (UHPLC-ESI-Qpolyphenolic characteristics and "authenticTOF). In simple terms, once the UHPLC 26 W in e s & V i ne s January 20 14 conditions are optimized, this method would allow for the very fast characterization of many polyphenolic compounds at once, giving a unique "wine fingerprint" for each wine studied. Saucier and Delcambre tested this method on 49 different red wines that were all produced within the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. Nine different families of polyphenols were analyzed using the shotgun method, including proanthocyanidins, organic acid, flavones, flavonones, hydroxygenzoic acid, hydroxycinnamic acid, oxidation products, anthocyanin-O-flavanol and, finally, anthocyanins. In an attempt to quicken and simplify the method even further, the team also examined the specific ion ratio of two polyphenols (in this experiment, the ratio was malvidin-3-O-glucoside-(epi)catechin and myricetin-3-O-glucoside), which for each wine resulted in a unique value "The results are amazing with more than 100 compounds detected," Saucier said. —Rebecca Yeamans