Schedule Update and Coupon Codes for Fall

Over the rest of the season you can find us at the following events:

• Plum Creek Valley Farmer’s Market – Castle Rock, CO
  Saturdays, 8 am – Noon (9/1, 9/8, 9/22, 9/29)
  Colorado State University Extension
• Palisade Wine Festival
  Saturday September 15th
  www.coloradowinefest.com
• Winery Open House
  Saturday October 6th, 12 pm – 5 pm
  We’ll have some end of season specials! 🙂

New Stock / Low Stock Items
In other important news, you can now buy out Peach Wine via our website. Also, we’re down to only seven cases of our very popular Bromios and four cases of our Reserve Merlot. We wanted our loyal newsletter recipients to know first!

Fall Coupon Code

Order any of our regular or featured products below and save 15% by ordering online. Use the code FAL2012DW on checkout to redeem your coupon for orders of $30 or more. Also, don’t forget you can always use the CASE12 discount to get a 25% discount on any order of 12 bottles or more at any time.
Even if we don’t see you this season, have a great Fall and Harvest!

Summer Festival and Open House Schedule 2012

Spring is officially here, marked by cherry blossoms, occasional sleet, and yes, festival schedules! Huzzah! We figured you’d like to see ours as well, so you could plan your wine drinking along with your other outings. Mind you, we reserve the right to add to this list at our whimsy, which we have a great deal of, but these are the main events we’re planning.

We hope to see you soon! Cheers! 🙂

• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Saturday, April 29th, 12-5 pm
• 10th Annual Manitou Springs Colorado Wine Festival
  Manitou Springs, CO
  Saturday, June 2th, 11-6pm
  www.manitousprings.org
• 2nd Annual Denver Urban Winefest
  Denver, CO
  Saturday, June 9th
  www.coloradowinefest.com/denver
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Saturday July 7th, 12 pm – 5 pm
• Vino and Notes Wine Festival
  Woodland Park, CO
  Saturday August 4th, 12 pm – 6 pm
  www.vinoandnotes.com
• 3rd Annual Bootstraps Western Winefest
  Evergreen Rodeo Grounds
  Evergreen, CO
  Saturday August 18th, 12 pm – 5 pm
  www.bootstrapswesternwinefest.com
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Sunday August 26th, 12 pm – 5 pm
• 21st Annual Palisade Winefest
  Riverbend Park
  Palisade, CO
  Saturday, September 15th
  www.coloradowinefest.com
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Sunday August 26th, 12 pm – 5 pm

Aging Well

This is from guest blogger Dianne Bailey of the Conditioning Classroom. She recently did a local article for our Walnut Hills Community Newsletter and we wanted to share it with our readers. Enjoy!

* * *

Aging Well

50 years for the Walnut Hills Newsletter . . . Congratulations for an amazing accomplishment!  50 years of doing anything should be celebrated – marriage, running a business, service to the community.  What about living?  Do we celebrate living 50 years?  Do we think of it as an accomplishment?  I turned 51 this past December and aging well is something I think about often because that is the focus of my job.  As I considered writing this article, it occurred to me that we often think of wine when we think about aging well.  So I called Sean Bundy, our local vintner in Walnut Hills.  He and his wife, Candice, operate the Dithyramb Winery (www.dithyrambwinery.com) out of their home on Briarwood Blvd.  As Executive Wine Sommeliers, they have studied the wine-making process extensively.  As a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, I have studied body-making extensively.  (All right . . . not “making” exactly, but maybe “molding.”)  It was fun to see the parallels between creating a fine wine and creating the best body you can live in for many, many years. Are you creating the conditions to allow your body to age like a fine wine?

1.  The raw material must be considered.

The grapes are the very essence of the wine. Sean said he has to do things on the “grape’s schedule.”  When they are ready to be harvested, he has to respond and the winemaking process begins. Body types and personalities are variables that can’t be ignored.  The right kind of exercise on your schedule will keep you active and enjoying each year as it comes and goes.

2.  The process is critical and the guide is key.

As Sean stated, he tries not to “screw up” perfectly good grapes with a bad production process.  He is constantly evaluating and making changes on the way from grape to fine wine.  You also need a guide to create your transformation.  The wrong workouts can not only be counterproductive, but detrimental to your body.  Evaluating and changing your workout routine is an essential part of moving towards your health and fitness goals.

3.  Rest is important.

This is really what we think about when we consider “aging” wine, isn’t it?  And the barrel-time and the bottle-time are important parts of creating a magnificent product. Rest is also part of a healthy exercise regimen.  In fact, you will not age well if you don’t insert the right amounts of rest which includes sleep, regular days off from training and exercise “vacations.”

4.  Uncomfortable, hard work is involved.

“Tortured vines produce the best wines.”  When Sean said that, I started to laugh because one of my nicknames is the “torture queen.” But torture is not my goal.  Challenging your body by introducing the correct exercise, however, is my goal and that involves hard work on your part.  Ah, but the results are an enjoyable, healthy and long life as pleasing as a good glass of wine!

THE CONDITIONING CLASSROOM

9034 E Easter Place Suite 100

Centennial, CO  80112

303-522-9001

www.theconditioningclassroom.com

Dianne Bailey, CSCS

Twitter @Faceofwellness

Of Beer and Braggots

In all my years of mead making, I have made a mead to fit almost every category available.  Notice I said ‘almost’?  There is one group I’d never ventured into: The Braggot.

See, I don’t much care for beer (apparently a flaw in my character that several friends are actively trying to remedy). In my defense, I’ve only been able to drink beer for about the last five years. Before that, even the smallest amount left me colorfully ill.  I have made a tentative friendship with a few micobrews – Hefeweisens and fruity ales (often called ‘girly beers’ by more stalwart beer drinkers.)

What does beer have to do with mead making?  A braggot is a beer-style mead, and a very difficult mead to make if one does not care much for the taste of beer.  The process is rather funny in retrospect, but I was not amused at the time.  As mentioned in previous writings, mead making for me always seems to be an…adventure…so to speak.

It was one of my brew buddies that suggested I give this a try.  There’s actually a whole flock of ’em that have been trying to get me to brew beer for years…Scoundrels, the lot of ’em.  The stumbling block?  See paragraph 2 above.

However, I love a challenge. What better way to test both my brewing abilities and further my tasting skills as a mead judge than to make something I’m probably not going to like the taste of? Fortunately, I had mentors that were willing to keep an eye on me and play guinea pig.

One fine chilly day in February, I load up and head over to my brew buddy’s place to learn about ‘the boil’. Its looks a lot like making any hot cereal, pouring water over the grain in a big pot and boiling it to release the fermentable sugars in the grain. There is sort of an arcane science to the process filled with strange terms and conditions that just make my head spin.  The end product was five gallons of grain induced sugar-water bittered slightly with hops.  (They really did teach me better than this, I’m just being difficult for sport.)

To make this into a mead, it must have the requisite amount of honey or it’s just another beer.  I added twelve (12) pounds (one gallon) to finish out the 6 gallon ‘must’.  Add yeast and the adventure truly begins.

I have always been led to believe that the up side of beer brewing is the turn around time. It is possible to produce a drinkable brew in just a few weeks according to some homebrewers. Yeah, well not me.  Six weeks in, my stuff is still too sweet and mostly tastes like a beer! (Go figure.) I decide to have my mentor taste it: Young, still fermenting, but has promise.

Another two or three weeks go by.  I’ve got a beer loving friend over and offered him a taste, explaining that it’s young but I’d been told it had promise…big mistake.  It was AWFUL! I was crushed! What had gone wrong? A frantic call to my mentor was made and I was advised not to panic or do anything rash. He’d give it a taste again the following week. A week and a half later?  Young, but starting to realize some of its potential… Huh, what?

Two weeks later the same series of events repeated themselves.  Now I am wicked pissed and so discouraged that I put the carboy in a time out.  I wasn’t going to talk to it for three months minimum and if I didn’t see some dramatic improvement I’d chuck the whole mess down the drain.

Well, it was more like four months before I got back around to it but there was a significant change. There were still flaws so I contacted my mentor again and told him I thought my problem was the lack of carbonation. Could sparkling this make that much of a difference?  Yes, yes it could…and it did.

Well, the story isn’t over.  I have to wait a few weeks to know how it ends.  So far, the sparkling of the mead improved it so much that I entered it in the Colorado State Fair Homebrewers Competition. I’ll have to report back on what their judges have to say.

My brew buddies like it, and so do several of my friends.  Maybe there is hope.

Cheers!

Morgan

Ancient Wine Mixing Traditions

{EAV_BLOG_VER:09bd80c35f66f1a2}

This was a workshop that my most awesome friend, Teresa, and I put together. She runs a blog called Sassy Beer Gypsy, (and this blog is cross-posted from there) check her out! Together we found some interesting info on top of some tasty recipes. The ancient Romans and Greeks thought it was barbaric to drink wine undiluted. I found this piece written by Eubulus in his circa 375BC play Semele or Dionysus concerning the consumption of wine:

“Three bowls do I mix for the temperate: one to health, which they empty first, the second to love and pleasure, the third to sleep. When this bowl is drunk up, wise guests go home. The fourth bowl is ours no longer, but belongs to violence; the fifth to uproar, the sixth to drunken revel, the seventh to black eyes, the eight is the policeman’s, the ninth belong to biliousness, and the tenth to madness and hurling the furniture.”

Teresa read this excerpt and it made her wheels spin with the thought of doing a workshop such as this:

WEDDING WINE

from Elizabeth Cunningham’s The Passion of Mary Magdalen

I don’t know exactly what was in the wine.
It tasted fiery and sweet.
I suspect it was red mead: Maeve Rhuad
Mead mixed with red wine.
An intimate joke, a pun made by the Bridegroom
that only the Bride would understand.
Its effect transcended any ingredient.
It was like drinking life itself:
new-turned earth, sun, wind scented with sea,
blossoms opening at first light, the ripe perfection of fruit—
the elements gathered on our tongues, lingering on our breath.
It was like drinking love itself,
the passion of the Bride and Bridegroom distilled,
shared among the guests,
flowing in all our veins, rivers from a single rise.
If we were drunk, we were divinely drunk.
We were in love. In Love. All of us.
None of us could bear to part that night.
The stars were so beautiful. We were so beautiful.
In the end, we all slept together,
no one alone, each one beloved. 

As we shared what we had learned, we passed clay cups (the Greeks used a kylix during symposiums which were “drinking parties” for general socializing) filled with the different concoctions to share with each other. We had fun exploring this alternate world of wine, so for all the peeps who attended the workshop this past week and all you on the inter-webs, here are the recipes:

The Ancient Greek/Roman Way – 3 parts water to 1 part red wine (I find a half n half mix is nice, not too diluted but helps chase off the potential headache in the morning)

Muslum – Mix honey in with red wine, to your taste.

Maeve Rhuad – 1 part red wine to 1 part mead

Mulled Wine – well, I don’t really have a recipe, but I bought the spice mix from a quaint place called Savory. Check them out at http://www.savoryspiceshop.com. After passing this cup around we added some water and mead to the mix and it took alot of bite off.

Turk’s Blood – 3oz champagne, 2oz red wine

French Monkey – 2/3 glass red, 1/2 glass Orangina (I used San Pellegrino Orange)

Seaside Summerbliss – 2 parts red wine, 3 parts sweet apple cider

Red Wine Cooler – 4oz red wine, 2oz lemon/lime soda, 2oz ginger ale (it was mentioned that just ginger ale was better)

If anyone has any other wine mixing recipes/traditions, old world or modern, please feel free to post them!

Cheers!

Recommended Wine Cures

I know we all suffer a variety of health issues from time to time, and my father just recently shared this list with me. It seemed unfair not to, in turn, share it with all of you. Please let me know how the cures below work out for you. Mind you, I’m no doctor, so please use this list with your best judgement. 🙂 Cheers!

DISEASE WINE DAILY DOSE Allergies Médoc/Cabernet Franc 1 glass Anemia Graves/ Merlot 4 glasses Bronchitis Bourgogne or Bordeaux > (+ sugar and cinnamon) 3 glasses Constipation Anjou blanc electricity/Vouvray, Chardonnay 4 glasses Diarrhoea Beaujolais Nouveau 4 glasses Fever Champagne/Amarone /Cabernet Sauvignon 2 glasses Heart Burgundy/Santenay Rouge/Cabernet Sauvignon 2 glasses Uric acid gout Sancerre/Pouilly Fume 4 glasses Hypertension Alsace /Sancerre 4 glasses Menopause Saint Emilion/Syrah 4 glasses Depression Médoc/Amarone 2 – 4 glasses Obesity Burgundy 4 glasses Obesity Rosé de Provence 1 – 2 glasses Rheumatism Champagne 4 glasses Excessive weight loss Côte de Beaune 4 glasses

The Value of Competition

Every year, especially after this last Mazer Cup, I rehash the whole process of  competitions.  I mean, as a homebrewer, why compete? For commercial producers, medals and awards can vouch for the quality of the wine you are purchasing. They add a level of credibility  and aid in the marketing process. But for homebrewers, who cannot sell their wines, what purpose does this serve?

I know several individuals that compete as homebrewers with the intent to one day go commercial. That makes perfect sense to me, especially at the Mazer Cup International level. Building your reputation for fine wines/meads prior to actually going commercial has your public waiting in anticipation. I simply cannot argue that approach to marketing for the future.

The rest of us? Well, we get bragging rights, but how long can you brag before you start loosing friends? Then there are the  lovely awards that act as superb dust catchers once the blush of success wears off.

I have won First Place in two competitions: My very first and my last. There is a decade or more of years between the two, which puts my consistency in question.  Not to mention that both times I won with what I viewed as flawed wines… What’s up with that? Kind of hard to brag when you personally want to question the judges’ reasoning and sense of taste. (No offense intended. This is clearly my issue and is not intended to put anyone’s actual skills in doubt.)

I guess it is for that very reason I enter the competitions: Feedback – the more in depth and gritty as possible. Winning is a lovely side-affect, but it will not make me a better homebrewer in and of itself.  As much as I love and respect my brew buddies, they already like what I make – no need for improvement – so it is very hard to get the bitter, technical critique I need.  They are too kind to risk hurting my feelings with too much truth.

For me? I want to learn to correct the flaws in my wines and create an even better end product. I need to learn if the points I consider flaws are actually attributes I need to be cultivating. It may simply be that my palate needs educating and I am willing to learn.

Now, where did I put those entry forms for the State Fair…

Morgan

Meddle not in the affairs of Mead Makers

For their revenge is carefully crafted and often served chilled.

I have been entering various home brew competitions for about four years.  For three years I received a recurring commentary:  you need to brew something more ‘complex’…

Okay, fine. What exactly does that mean? A little more detail, please?

So, in lieu of proper direction, I plotted my revenge.  I would focus on handing these judges a mead they will never forget. In this frame of mind my penchant for evil knows no restraint and I felt leniency unwarranted.  My starting point? Onions…lots of ’em…and potatoes.

I actually started with an already published and successful onion wine recipe.  I simply substituted sufficient amounts of honey to change it to a mead. Six weeks later, the Frankenmead was born.

In its infancy, the onion was so far over the top it could have easily made the Olympic Pole Vaulting team.  It didn’t help that the overall flavor was unbalanced, very much like a table having one leg too short. It was also highly (!) alcoholic which makes the flavor harsh.  So, I consulted my home brewer support team (whose place in Paradise is assured!)  for suggestions.  Their answers? Aging to mellow the alcohol levels, and for flavor? Vanilla!

Now, gentle reader, I sincerely hope you are cataloging all these flavors and mentally tasting the combination as we go along. This is half the fun!

So vanilla beans were added in and several weeks went by. Again, the onion was still overbearing (The flavor was described as “sugar cookies and old carpet”). No easy solution came to mind. Then I thought, what about lemon?

Lemon was added. Several judicious tablespoons of freshly squeezed juice as well as some of the zest.  Again the weeks of waiting and, voila! balance achieved!  Now, it was all about leaving it alone and letting it age quietly.

Fast forward about sixteen months to April 2011 and this year’s Mazer Cup International .  Although the alcohol levels were still a bit high, I submitted my monster (Now officially named “The Hair of the Dog”) for competition and waited with gleeful anticipation.

The result? The highest numerical score I have ever received (43 out of 50 points possible) and the most beautiful commentary every received by this home brewer: “Very complex”. On the humorous side, “next time, caramelize your onions first.”  Next time? They’re encouraging me to do this again? Go figure!

Despite the high scoring, my entry did not manage to place this year. However, I now have others requesting my recipe for this little horror story. The evil little project grew up to be a more than respectable mead with a rich, brandy-like flavor. Who knew?

Now, for my next diabolical creation!  Any suggestions?

Morgan Wolf

Oh, for the love of…

I routinely volunteer at the Dithyramb Winery’s open house events. I will pour, run to the cellar for purchased bottles of wine – I will even attempt a winery tour if needed.  This last weekend, my assistance there (and at the Mazer Cup the previous weekend) was noted and I playfully quipped to all and sundry that “I work for love…”

There is, however, an intrinsic truth in this statement, and it has a history.

I love being a home brewer. I love mead and I love making mead.  I created my first mead in 1991 and it quickly became a passion.  Then, slightly more than sixteen years ago, two dear friends moved into the townhome two buildings down from my own (Sean and Candice Bundy, of course!) and my passion proved contagious.  Having tasted my meads and enjoying them, they decided to try their hands at it and asked me to teach them how it was done.

So, it begins…. I handed them my love of mead and mead making and off they went.

In 2008, several years ahead of schedule, my friends find themselves the proud owners of a commercial winery and two shipments of grapes that arrived simultaneously instead of the staggered arrival they had planned. There is nothing to compare to one’s first glimpse of 3200 – 3600 pounds of grapes…

Ah, my first crush… Takes on a whole new set of meanings, doesn’t it?  It’s very similar though, this process of falling in love…

So those same dear friends return the favor from fourteen years ago and hand me their love of the grape and the art of winemaking. This too is contagious, which is why I happily schlep buckets of grapes to the crusher (for hours on end), hand pulp pears too ripe to process any other way, and log a 20 hour shift helping transport, then process, 500 pounds of peaches (again, by hand because of the stones)…all for love.

Love of the wine, love of the art in making the wine and love of the friends that allow me to participate wholeheartedly in a passion we share.

And the adventure continues…

Morgan Wolf

Summer Festival and Open House Schedule 2011

Spring is officially here, marked by cherry blossoms, occasional sleet, and yes, festival schedules! Huzzah! We figured you’d like to see ours as well, so you could plan your wine drinking along with your other outings. Mind you, we reserve the right to add to this list at our whimsy, which we have a great deal of, but these are the main events we’re planning.

• 2nd Annual Taste of Pearl
  Pearl Street Mall
  Boulder, CO
  Sunday, May 1st, 2-6 pm
  www.boulderdowntown.com/events/taste-of-pearl
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Saturday, May 14th, 12-4 pm
• 9th Annual Manitou Springs Colorado Wine Festival
  Soda Springs Park
  Manitou Springs, CO
  Saturday, June 4th, 11-6pm
  www.manitousprings.org
• 1st Annual Denver Winefest
  Northfield Mall
  Denver, CO
  Saturday, June 11th
  www.coloradowinefest.com/denver
• Colorado Wine and Cheese Tasting
  May Farms
  Byers, CO
  Saturday, June 25th, 3-6 pm
  www.mayfarms.com
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Sunday, July 24th, 12-4 pm
• 2nd Annual Bootstraps Western Winefest
  Evergreen Rodeo Grounds
  Evergreen, CO
  Saturday, August 20th, 12-6 pm
  www.bootstrapswesternwinefest.com
• Winery Open House
  Centennial, CO
  Saturday, September 3rd, 12-4 pm
• 20th Annual Palisade Winefest
  Riverbend Park
  Palisade, CO
  Saturday, September 17th
  www.coloradowinefest.com