One of the wines I made at home.

Good Morning!

I had an email from a pal the other day asking about starting to make his own wine. He was asking how to get started and sifting through all the info out on the internet and thought I should share where I get my information.

I have made 100’s of batches of wine at home and I always relied on trail and error and after the errors happened I would look up info a couple different places.

1. I would meet up with my other home winemaking buddies and bring a sample of the wine and after a taste most would have ideas of what had happened. I normally could tell what was happening as the fermentation process was occuring but from time to time I was stumped. Many of these guys make 100’s of cases of wine per year and most made fruit wine instead of grape wine and so they had issues I really did not have to consider. But they were so generous with information and we all shared wines and equipment and we shared a bond of our love of wine and the passion making it.

2. The book by Jon Iverson, Home Winemaking Step by Step was a great first read and reference book over the years. This is a great start up book when it comes to equipment and processes and Iverson does a great job discussing what to spend money on and what to skip and things around the house you can use instead of spending a boatload of cash on equipment you really do not need.

3. Get the WineMaker magazine…huge resource for everything and recipes. I liked the very down to earth writing…I like technical writing because it is very specific and gives exact instructions. Super easy to follow.

4. Buy the book The Wine Maker’s Answer Book by Alison Crowe. She was a writer for WineMaker magazine and I think any issue I have ever had she has had a clear and concise answer. She also will tell you if your batch of wine can be saved or should be poured down the drain.

If you are considering making wine, go buy the beginner winemaking kit at WineArt. If you fall in love with making wine you can easily upgrade the beginner equipment, but the starter kit will walk you through the entire process and give you a nice starter wine to try on your friends and family.

Or you know you can write to me and I can help you get started. It is fun and the final result will thrill you and your palette!

Much LOVE and wine,

Tammi

I took the last year of my life and turned it into what I call an “adult internship”. This might sound funny to some, but after a 15 year career finding others their dream opportunities I took the leap of pure faith and said to myself “Well, if you really want to make wine you might as well go for it”. I took a deep breath and called a winemaker I have known for years and said what are you doing the next couple of weeks and can I shadow you? He said yes!

This is not a new concept for me. I was an executive recruiter with a pretty healthy track record of placing some of the top manufacturing talent with the best companies in the world. And I used to tell my candidates during the interview process to ask if they could shadow one of the players on the leadership team they would be working on. I did this for two reasons, if the company was painting a “happier” picture of the situation the candidate would know it and for the company they would be able to tell if the candidate was going to “fit in” with the current team culture. So everybody knew what they would be getting into before committing to anything.

Over the past year I volunteered at 14 different wineries and did everything from running a bottling line, working in a tasting room, working directly for the winemaker helping to blend and create the next great release. I sat in marketing and sales meetings, attended winemakers dinners, poured wines at fundraisers, drove a fork truck, cleaned barrels, tanks and manually worked harder than most would imagine. Many nights I left the place with shriveled toes from having wet feet from hosing the place down, my back was sore from stacking cases of wine manually and sometimes my tongue would be purple from sampling.

I left happy and a little more educated. The most challenging days were the days where we where doing things like figuring out alcohol by volume, acid levels and percentages of the blends. All this fortified that I wanted to do this full time. I owe so many folks for their generous gift of time and knowledge shared with me. I am thrilled to say each job was great and the day I can open my doors and welcome you to come into my tasting room and you say what are you doing next week? I can say we are pruning or bottling or pressing or topping off barrels, you wanna help? When you want to hang out, watch, learn and listen I will give you a big YES come on over!

One thing that might make the cellar at TJR Select different from the other 90% of the cellars I worked at is the ear splitting volume of the country music or really crazy rock music….I am into old R & B, so if you love old Motown we will get along just fine. BTW the best job in the winery is being the winemaker, they get to do everything!

Much Love and wine!
Tammi

Tasting with Merry Edwards Pinot Noir

Good Morning….Welcome to what is happening in my head or the TJR Select blog!

I started journaling years ago and about a year ago someone said, why don’t you post a blog? I didn’t really think I had anything that relevant to say and I honestly thought I would not be consistent and I know how much I hate it when I get hooked on a blog and then the writer just falls off the face of the earth, so I thought no, I will just write to entertain myself.

After an entire year of writing everyday I thought why not go for it. I am launching a new business, I am constantly finding interesting topics and I amuse myself, so if I touch others great, if not I will at least have captured my thoughts and someday write an awesome novel to be made into a Lifetime movie and I will be played by Demi Moore….WHAT? Ok, maybe not Demi, I think I might be played by Kathy Bates, we are kinda shaped the same.

I will not write about the same issues daily. This blog will be about whatever is on my mind. I love wine and I am a winemaker and launching my own wine brand. I am a business person and was an executive recruiter before leaving corporate America to make wine for a living. I was cast on the reality show PBS’s The Winemakers. I am a constant traveler and a HUGE foodie. I am an avid reader of mostly business books and the classics. I am a design engineer by education. I am a sports fan and love pro football and both men and women’s college basketball (my two favorite teams are the Indianapolis Colts and Tennessee Lady Vols). I am a person who asks questions all the time and find something to laugh about nearly everyday.

Mostly I will report on wines I find and share my opinions or how launching the new business is coming along, but I will warn you that there could be times when I have subjects that are about family, friends, travel, money and politics. Whatever is on my mind, I will be posting Monday-Friday missing only if nothing interesting comes to mind. I invite you to come back often and tell your friends about my blog and if you want to respond at anytime, I’d love your feed back.

The one thing I want you to keep in mind is I will try to keep it under 3-4 paragraphs so not to be writing novel and boring you to pieces!
Have a great day!

Much Love and lots of wine, Tammi

Good Morning….

Everyday I try to learn something about wine I did not know before. I know many of you are wine pros and I might be way behind you when it comes to wine knowledge. I try to keep in mind that what I lack in expertise, I make up for in heart and enthusiaum.

So I got in a rut drinking Sauvignon Blanc last summer and I decided it was warm and I really enjoyed light, crisp, cool and refreshing whites by the pool or while sitting on the deck. So I found many whites I could enjoy and would start to subsitute for my dear friend, Sauvignon Blanc.

Here is a list of the whites I discovered and a little about them:

Albarino, This wine is from Spain. I keep finding this wine everywhere. I think this might be one of the best wines to pair with oysters (Unless you have Champagne). The mineral and briny taste of the oysters are complemented by the very citrusy and quick finish, it is a perfect pairing. I have found this very exciting wine from $8-15.

Torrontes, This wine is from Argentina. I LOVE this wine. To me I get all the aromas of peaches and tangerines and it’s very vibrant, crisp wine that’s perfect by the pool. I see this wine all the time now. I was first served this wine at a wedding reception and at first, I thought it was a New Zealand, Sauvignon Blanc. You can find this wine in the grocery store for $10-15.

Vinho Verde, This wine hails from Portugal. I read about this wine in a magazine and I had never hear of it before and now I see it everywhere. It is really a thirst quencher and actually I like it with veggies, even avocados and aspragus and those can be tough to pair with wines. I found this great white in the grocery store for $8.99. Check it out and let me know what brand you like best. This wine surprised me so much. I thought only port came from Portugal.

Txakoli, This wine hails from Spain and it will wake up your mouth. It is a sorta a sparkling wine fizzy experience for me. A cross between 7 UP but it is not sweet. This is hard to pronounce but I am told you can pronounce it like this Choc-OH-Lee. It is a little harder to find than most wines. It will cost around $14-22.

Viognier, This wine is originally from France and it really has the aromas of Hawaii…WTH? Seriously this wine has the aromas of lechee from the islands, light and lovely mouth feel. You can find this wine for under $13-20. I made this wine once out of a kit and my friends really loved this with of all things ribs on the grill in the middle of the summer.

Well, this is some of my research I did last summer and here in the middle of winter, I figure nothing will warm you like thinking about the beach or pool!

It’s Wine O’Clock NOW!

Tammi

I found a book on Amazon.com about Champagne and it had excellent reviews, so I bought it. The book is called The Finest Wines of Champagne, A Guide to the Best Cuv’ees, Houses and Growers. By Michael Edwards. As soon as I opened it I was intimidated. It is 300 plus pages and I have the attention span of a small child and also the size of text is really tiny.

But none the less I started reading it on Friday and have learned about some of the most interesting facts and the rest of the book is about some of the famous producers and vineyards.

The easiest facts are as follows, Champagne can only be called Champagne if it is made in Champagne, France.

Real Champagne is made only with three types of grapes, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Pinto Noir is tricky to grow well, it is a very temperamental grape, conditions have to be just right to make a great Pinot Noir.

Next the Champagne must be made in the Methode Champenoise traditional way to make it. The process is like this. They pick the grapes (a little under ripe for regular still wines), then they make the wine after it is finished fermenting, they blend the different wines together then it is called cuvee’. Then the wines are bottled and a small amount of dosage is added. Dosage is a kinda syrup mixture of sugar, wine and yeast to top off the bottle and then they cap it with what looks like a pop bottle top called a crown cap.

The sugar and yeast create a secondary fermentation in the bottle and that creates carbon dioxide. During the time of the secondary fermentation they bottles are stored on racks that hold the neck at a downward angle and the bottles are riddled, which means they are “jarred” and then rotated every few weeks. Once the yeast all settles in the neck of the bottle and it has finished it’s work of the secondary fermentation. It is time to remove the yeast plug ( I know the term yeast plug is not pretty!

So to remove the yeast plug without losing carbon dioxide, they do the coolest thing, literally. They submerge the neck of the bottle into a mixture that freezes the neck and then they take off the cap and disgorge the yeast plug. Then they top off the bottle with a touch of the base wine and put in the famous mushroom cork and cage and then you have champagne!

As I was reading about this I found out there are 4 different ways a winemaker will prune the vines and it is a labor of love. Tedious hands-on work and many of the great champagne makers have very small lots of land. So the next time I pick up a true bottle of Champagne I will appreciate all the effort that went into it.
Currently my favorites are Taittingger, Henriot, Veuve Clicquot and Mumm. I have bottles of Pommery and Ayala to try soon, so I will keep you posted.