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March 2017 WINES&VINES 71 WINE EAST GRAPEGROWING www.boxmo.com dsboxmo@gmail.com • 401-578-8579 quick turnaround • low minimums no plate charges or setup fees FULL COLOR CUSTOM PRINTED BOXES AUGUST 16, 2017 FOR THE FOURTH ANNUAL WINES & VINES PACKAGING CONFERENCE W&V PACK returns with another day of packaging innovation For complete schedule, speakers, sessions and registration information, visit wvpack.com Carolina Wine Supply The Southeast's Most Complete Winery Supply Company Stocking Distributor Enartis USA Laffort Waterloo Container Yadkinville, NC • 336-677-6831 www.CarolinaWineSupply.com He looks for Brix levels of about 20° to 21° and TA of 8-9 g/L, although he has seen Brix as high as 23° and, in a very warm year like 2010, TA as low as 6.8-7 g/L. As harvest approaches, Olsen- Harbich and his cellar staff take berry samples and analyze them together. Their Sauvignon Blanc typically ripens in mid- to late- September. The fruit is hand- picked and whole-cluster pressed with a Europress from Euro Ma- chines. He doesn't add any SO 2 unless the fruit exhibits noticeable damage, when he will limit the dosage to 20 ppm. Pressing doesn't exceed 1.5 bars, as he aims for clean juice with very low solids that will settle overnight at about 48° to 50° F. The following day, temperature control is turned off and the juice is racked into one or two stainless steel fermentors ranging from 375 to 1,000 gal- lons. As the juice warms it is ready to ferment, as Olsen-Harbich uses only indigenous yeast. Initially no temperature con- trol is employed for the fermen- tation. The indigenous yeast tends to struggle below 65° F, so Olsen-Harbich allows it to reach 70°-72° F at its peak. The cooler temperatures can lead to a re- ductive character, which he does not like. The fermentation is steady and smooth and will re- quire no more than 14 days to complete. He then adds 25-30 ppm of potassium metabisulfite, obtained from Presque Isle Wine Cellars, to protect the new wine, which will not be inoculated with a malolactic culture. The wine will be racked two or three times and is kept at 55°-60° F until late spring or early summer, when it will be filtered and bottled. Filtration is done with a Della Toffola plate-and-frame filter from Prospero Equipment, using moderate-sized pads. From there it will be sterile filtered through a .45-micron Pall membrane fil- ter just prior to bottling. "The more important part to me is to make the wine as a representa- tion of what the terroir is," Ol- sen-Harbich said. He doesn't want to adjust things like sugar and acid, or change the chemis- try to obtain a certain ideal tar- get or benchmark. "Following fermentation I want to preserve what we have and see that go through into the bottle," he added. Not a believer in "be- nign neglect," he said he uses SO 2 and filtration to protect the char- acter of the fruit. SO 2 quantities average 28-32 ppm at bottling, depending upon pH levels. Olsen-Harbich uses a GAI 3000 bottling line from Prospero to fill Bordeaux-shaped flint bot- tles from Hauser Packaging. All their wines are cork finished with Innocork natural cork from Cork Supply USA. (Innocork is a pat- ented process using steam and ethyl alcohol to volatize potential TCA molecules.) Bottle age at release is often market driven, and Olsen-Harbich stated that the wine could be released rela- tively soon after bottling, but he knows from experience the wine will drink nicely for three to five years. He likes to release the wine during the summer following its harvest and thinks it is a perfect match with local seafood, espe- cially oysters and shellfish. The finished wine has between 11.2% to 12% alcohol, with TA of 0.7- 0.8, and a pH of 3.0-3.2. Bedell averages about 500 cases annu- ally, and the wine retails for $35 per 750ml bottle. Stylistically, Olsen-Harbich calls the wine bone-dry, tempered with juiciness, exhibited from the tropical fruit elements that de- velop into pineapple and passion fruit flavors. He thinks the wine has a character of salinity, brought on by the ocean air (their vine- yards are within a mile of Long Island Sound and the Great Peconic Bay). Like his vineyard manager, Ol- sen-Harbich believes this is the place for Sauvignon Blanc to grow in New York. "To me, it's the quint- essential white wine of the North Fork, because it exhibits so much local character, reminiscent of the area with its salinity," he said. "I don't have to do that much with this wine, I just let it sing its tune." Ray Pompilio is a wine writer based in Ithaca, N.Y. While he has close access to the Finger Lakes, with its large con- centration of wineries, he also reports on other wine regions in the state, including Long Island.