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92 WINES&VINES May 2015 WINEMAKING WINE EAST until Reidy is satisfied with the extraction. The wine is then drained off the solids into another tank. "I do not press," he said. "I simply drain the tanks over a five- or six-day period." Once malolactic fermen- tation is completed, the wine is transferred into barrels without any filtration. The cooperage is primarily French oak, with a small amount of Hungarian oak and an even smaller percentage of Ameri- can oak cooperage. The large ma- jority of the barrels are used cooperage, but Reidy sometimes adds new barrels to add complex- ity. What is his favorite cooper- age? "What I really like right now are Radoux and Francois Freres barrels." After four months, the wines are racked off the lees, "ho- mogenized" but still kept clone/ block separate, and put back into barrels for at least another 10 months. The exceptional 2012 vintage was aged a month or two longer, spending some 16 months in barrel. At the end of the aging period, he goes to each group of sepa- rated wines and tastes every bar- rel. He said, "There might be a random barrel in a group that is just too harsh—in a lighter year or a newer barrel—and it won't make the cut; it will go into our blend." The sole taster in this pro- cess, he samples an average of 10 barrels per week. With 25 barrels of Cabernet Franc, he takes about three weeks to determine the quality characteristics of each, makes trial blends of the separate lots, and once satisfied with the final result, empties the barrels into a tank. Reidy usually filters the wine with a .45-micron pad but found, "You seem to lose something— there was always this gap be- tween what I tasted in the tank, and what I tasted in the bottle." The 2012 vintage, which was bottled in the fall of 2014, was treated differently. "This was our first year of unfined and unfil- tered," he noted. Once the bar- rels were emptied into a tank, the wine was left to settle for two months, with a molecular SO 2 level of about 0.8 mg/L, and de- pending upon fill level of the tank, additions of argon gas. It was then racked to yet another tank for bottling. Hazlitt is cur- rently using high-grade natural cork from MA Silva, but Reidy added, "I can see us eventually going to screwcaps in the fu- ture." The winery already is using screwcaps for their white vinifera wines, so the stretch is not that great. The 2012 vintage could be the impetus for producing two differ- ent styles of Cabernet Franc at Hazlitt. Reidy is considering mak- ing a more extracted reserve to be aged longer in very ripe years, and strive to make a lighter, more Loire-like style in other years. His first effort, in 2010, was more in the lighter vein. He said, "I found it to be a very feminine style, brighter and not overly tannic. It was a really nice wine; I like that style." In 2013, judges at the New York State Fair and New York Wine and Food Classic agreed, award- - B E C O PA D - Y E A S T & E N Z Y M E S - C R U S H PA D E Q U I P M E N T - S T E R I L E F I LT R AT I O N - W I N E R Y H O S E - O A K A LT E R N AT I V E S Trellis Supplies • Notched Metal Post, Wood • Anchors • Wire • Tools • Gripples • Dura-Line Training & Tying Supplies •Tree-fix • Wire ties • AgLoc • Klip-on • Grow Tubes • Training Stakes • Tying Products Wildlife Control • Bird netting • Side Applied Netting • BirdGard • Scare Devices • Deer Fence & Deterrents Spring Pruning and Tying Supplies FINGER LAKES TRELLIS SUPPLY BUY ONLINE! www.fingerlakestrellissupply.com 315-904-4007 4041A Railroad Ave. info@fingerlakestrellissupply.com Williamson, NY 14589 Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards winemaker Michael Reidy looks for a sugar level of 23º-24º Brix for harvest.