Appreciating Wine in New Ways Through Winemaking
Like many of you, I joined the Orange County Wine Society to learn about wine. Prior to joining, I attended formal wine tastings, went to educational seminars, visited wineries, talked to winemakers and sommeliers, tasted at wine bars and probably did all the wine-related things most everyone else in the organization has done.
Yes, the OCWS offers these same opportunities and more. But what’s unique about the OCWS is the winemaking aspect, which I thought, would be fun and provide new ways for me to learn about and appreciate wine.
Well, I haven’t been disappointed. Winemaking has taught me to appreciate the importance of grape growers. To me they are the unsung heroes of winemaking. Without quality grapes, you simply cannot make a quality wine. Just like when cooking, you cannot make a great meal unless you start with fresh, high-quality ingredients.
I’ve also learned to appreciate commercial winemakers. I know the hard work, time and patience that goes into making my small batches of wine. I can only imagine the effort that goes into making large quantities of wine of consistent quality each year. To me, winemaking is just a fun hobby. If I can’t get a particular varietal one year, I just won’t make that wine. For a commercial winemaker, it’s their livelihood. If Mother Nature throws them a curveball and a particular varietal is unavailable or in short supply, they need to pivot quickly or their business suffers.
Winemaking has also taught me to appreciate the wine itself. It is estimated that 90% of all wine purchased in the United States is consumed within two weeks of purchasing it. And like most people, I drink my wine soon after I buy it. That is, unless I’ve attended the OCWS Auction and ended up buying more wine than I intended. But that’s a topic for a different article.
I never bought a case or two of a single wine with the intent of letting it sit in a cellar to drink sometime in the future. Sure, I’ve heard the anecdotal comments that wine changes as it ages. But I never had the experience of opening bottles of the same wine at different times to taste it happening. That is until I started making wine.
When I would buy wine, at the most I’d get maybe three or four bottles of something I really liked. They never sat in my cellar for more than a few months. When I started making wine, I would make three to four cases of a single wine. I’d wait several months after bottling them, open a few and then pretty much set them aside as I drank my older wines. When I revisited them six to 12 months later, they would always be different than what they were like when I first opened them.
For example, I entered a 2023 Merlot at the 2024 OC Fair Home Wine Competition. It won a gold medal. I have three cases of it, drank a few bottles over the summer and stored the rest away to drink in the cooler weather. When I revisited the wine in the fall, it had changed dramatically. It was not nearly as good as I remembered and wondered how it had won a medal at all. So, I set it aside with the intent of tasting it again in a few months.
Conversely, I made four cases of a 2020 Dolcetto which I thought was, at best, mediocre. I stored most of it way, way back in my cellar and literally forgot about it until I opened a bottle about a year ago. It was fantastic. It’s my new favorite wine right now.
So, I finally have the real-world experience of seeing (tasting) how wine changes as it ages. I don’t know why it happens. I’m not a chemist and can’t explain it. I’m sure someone using specialized analytical instruments can take chemical measurements, do a detailed wine analysis and explain it. But to me, that wouldn’t be fun.
Part of the fun of winemaking to me is just experiencing how the wine changes and accepting that it will change over time. Part of the fun is rediscovering a wine that had been stored away for a year or two. Part of the fun is tasting where a wine is in its “life cycle” and enjoying it for what it is at that moment in time.
So, the next time you open a bottle, think about the fact that it has changed over time and you’re enjoying it at a certain phase in its life cycle. You’re literally tasting a snapshot of where it is at that moment in its life cycle.
Cheers!
—Ed Reyes, ed@ocws.org