Wines & Vines

40 WINES&VINES February 2018 OAK BARRELS W inemaker Andy Schweiger, whose family owns a Napa Valley vine- yard and winery, conducted an unusually extensive trial explor- ing the effects of barrels from different cooper- ages and with varying toasts on the same wine. Then he asked a group of winemakers and cooper representatives to help him evaluate the barrels' performance in a blind tasting, as well as comparing the sensory analyses with lab results. In setting up the trial, the winemaker wanted to explore with a blind tasting how one's sensory perception of a barrel aligns with objective, lab-based oak analysis. With the cooperation of several leading coopers, Sch- weiger organized a tasting of the same wine in many different types of barrels, with neutral barrels serving as a control. Preference versus analysis In the trial, Schweiger not only wanted to taste through different barrels, he thought it would be interesting to then compare those sensory (or "hedonistic") results to objective oak analysis conducted by ETS Laboratories in St. Helena, Calif. ETS was a sponsor of Wines & Vines' 2017 oak conference and provided basic chemistry and oak aroma analysis for the event. The company also agreed to run its oak aroma analysis for the wines from the barrel trial. ETS used an average of all the samples to establish a reference line for the spider graphs. The oak analysis by ETS determined the amounts of: Vanillin: vanilla Eugenol and isoeugenol: clove and spice 4-methylguaiacol and guaiacol: smoke and char 5-methylfurfural and furfural: sweet oak, butterscotch, light caramel and almond Trans-oak lactone and cis-oak lactone: fresh oak, coconut. All of the 15 wines in the trial came from the same lot of 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon that went into barrel Oct. 2, 2015. Each trial wine was aged in a two-barrel set from 10 different cooperages. The French oak, thin-stave barrels had different toasts. The wines underwent one racking before being put back into the same barrels and were topped from the "control" barrels. The control barrels were three-year- old, neutral barrels. Those tasting the barrels were a mix of other winemakers, a few sales representatives from the cooperages in the trials and Schweiger. Another of Schweiger's goals was getting outside opinions on the barrels. "I wanted to get some more palates on this," he said. "It was a pretty extensive trial for a small winery like ours—especially in a low-producing year like the 2015 vintage. That oak trial lot wound up being a third of my Cabernet production for the year." Schweiger set up all the wines in sample glass bottles. Attendees tasted at their own pace and held simple scoring sheets. The tasters evaluated the barrels by three simple criteria: "would buy," "maybe would buy" and "wouldn't buy." Schweiger asked those tasting to use the control as a point of reference to decide for their own hypothetical wine program if the barrels added something beneficial to the wine or could be a good blender for a wine. Schweiger said he adopted the idea of rating the barrels by would, maybe or would not buy from Michael Beaulac, the winemaker and general manager at Pine Ridge Vineyards in Napa Valley. Beaulac runs an extensive barrel trial every vintage to evaluate the best barrels for Cabernet Sauvignon wines from vineyards in several different Napa County AVAs. Barrels would then be evaluated on how they matched to that particular wine, at that particular moment. The analysis by ETS pro- KEY POINTS A barrel trial examined a 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon base wine divided among 15 two-barrel lots of new barrels and a control lot of three-year-old neutral barrels. The barrels were all made of thin-stave French oak by 10 different coopers and with different toasts. Ten tasters evaluated each barrel as "would buy," "maybe would buy" and "would not buy." Sensory analysis was compared to component analysis by ETS Laboratories. Exploring French Oak and Napa Cabernet In blind tasting, a winemaker gets help evaluating barrels with sensory and objective lab analysis By Andrew Adams SCHWEIGER MAKES SPRING MOUNTAIN ESTATE CABERNET SAUVIGNON A ndy Schweiger's grandparents purchased a property in what would become the Spring Mountain AVA in the 1950s. His father, Fred Schweiger, who also founded a construction company, developed the land over several years and planted the first vines in 1981. Andy Schweiger went to the University of California, Davis, in 1988. After graduating with a bachelor's in enology and microbiology, he worked at several wineries including Cain Cellars and Chateau St. Jean. He managed the first vintages of the Schweiger Vineyards brand that launched in 1994. Five years later, the Schweigers stopped selling grapes from their 35 acres of vineyards and focused solely on estate production. Schweiger Vineyards & Winery now produces about 5,000 cases per year, and Andy Schweiger oversees winemaking and the vineyards with the help of his parents, who still live on the property.

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