I was recently asked to bring a dessert to a gathering of friends and was stumped as to what would be easy to make and would please a crowd with a discerning palate.  Off to Executive Chad Hendrickson I went!  His answer to my delima was cookies!  He shared with me his recipe for Orange Cookies that he created to pair with our Hess Su’skol Vineyard Late Harvest Chardonnay.  Let’s just say my friends couldn’t get enough of these cookies…or the wine!   The combination was such a hit I thought I would share.  Enjoy!

 Orange Cookies
3 oz Unsalted butter, softened                            ½ cup Sugar
1 ea Orange – zest                                              1 Tbsp.Orange – juice
½ tsp. Baking powder                                         1/8 tsp. Salt
1 cup All-purpose flour                                        Sugar as needed 

1.  Preheat the oven to 350°F.
2.  Combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
3.  Combine the butter, sugar and orange zest. Cream together until fluffy.   Add the orange juice, mix until just combined.
4.  Mix in the flour mixture until just combined.
5.  Roll into a 2” wide log. Wrap in plastic wrap. Let chill for 30 minutes.  Slice into ½” wide slices. Place 1” apart on a parchment paper lined sheet pan. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake in the oven until very light brown. Approx.12 minutes.

Recipe makes 2 dozen cookies.

You know it’s almost summer  when our Hess Collector’s Club has their annual clambake.  It was an amazing night under the stars!  Live music, a delicious dinner prepared by our executive chef Chad Hendrickson and of course, fabulous Hess Collection wines!  Is that a bottle of Su’skol Chardonnay I see at each place-setting?  now that’s what I call a party gift!  It looks like everyone had a great time!  Cheers!

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Check out this fan of our Lake County Sauvignon Blanc on Facebook’s Wine Beagles!

http://apps.facebook.com/winebeagles/product.php?pid=411893

While we’re out finishing harvest, click the link below to see a press release on an awesome award that our Visitors Center just received.

Napa Valley Vintners Announces Regional Winners in Great Wine Capitals Competition

http://napavintners.com/trade/tm_3_release_detail.asp?ID_News=35059

I am not sure if you all know this but Hess Collection Winery is one of four wineries in the world which is a part of the Hess family. The wineries in our family span 4 different continents- Colomé is in Argentina, Peter Lehmann in Australia, Glen Carlou in South Africa and, of course, Hess Collection Winery in North America. This definitely brings a world of winemaking knowledge to the proverbial table. Only sometimes the table is not proverbial, like last week. Winemakers from all 4 wineries gathered in Napa last week for our first ever winemaking summit. It was a unique opportunity for all to get to know other techniques used around the world. Not to mention meeting, greeting, and in a few cases reminiscing with fellow family winemakers.

After meeting each other over lunch we started the actual work. Since this was the first time the global summit was held, everyone thought it would be best if we got to know everyone’s wines. This was our afternoon work, tasting through 24 wines from 4 different continents. The winemaking staff from each winery talked about the vineyards, wine making techniques, and particular strategies for each wine.

As we finished our flights of wine, one common theme rang true to me, the Hess family of wines in each continent is doing their best to make sound, quality, hell – great wines! I know I’m an insider, but I think that our portfolio on a whole is awesome. So next time you are at your local store look for one of our family, trust me it will be a great wine.

Julie Murrell
Assistant Winemaker

Unfortunately for me, it doesn’t feel much like summer in Napa, but our activities in the cellar keep on going all year long. We have been following the Su’skol Chardonnay’s journey from barrel to bottle and today we are going to continue along that path. Last we spoke I talked about blending the Su’skol in our cellar. This time we will talk about what we do in the winery to get the bottle ready for enjoyment.

There are two things that wineries need to do to get any variety of white wine ready to put in the bottle. These two activities are making sure that it is both heat and cold stable. These are processes that get rid of excess protein and excess tartrate in the wine.

When you pump out any wine there is a slight haze from lees. Lees are essentially proteins such as yeast cell walls and long chains of certain wine chemicals (like color compounds and tannin compounds). To make a wine heat stable it is necessary to add purified clay which will bind with all of the proteins in the wine. Thus leaving the wine clarified. If there are any remaining proteins in suspension, the wine is susceptible to hazing in extreme heat. The haze does not affect the flavor of the wine, but it is visually unappealing.

Have you ever had a bottle of wine with “glass” in it? Tartrate crystals are commonly mistaken for “glass”. This is one of the main reasons why we cold stabilize our wine prior to bottling. The tartrate crystal that becomes the “glass” comes from one of the main acids in the grape, tartaric acid.  Tartrate typically drops out of wine when there is an abrupt temperature change. These two reasons are why white wines are more susceptible to this process. In the winery, we seed tanks with cream of tartar, which is tartrate crystals that have been purified. In fact it is the same substance you have in your pantry. Chilling and seeding the wine work to push the equilibrium of tartaric acid from suspension to crystallization. This relatively easy process allows us to bottle wine that will not throw crystals while in your refrigerator.

Julie Murrell
Assistant Winemaker

Last time we spoke about what it takes to blend a particular wine while in the tasting room. Today I will explore what it takes to translate that blend, known as “bench top” in the industry, into the actual wine blend that you enjoy.

Two weeks ago the winemaking staff got together and worked out a blend of our Su’skol Chardonnay. This wine is our single vineyard Chardonnay from Napa County. The vineyard site is close to Carneros and with its often foggy summer mornings is a perfect site for Chardonnay. Now it is time to complete the work in the cellar.

First off, we translate our blended smattering of different lots and different oak types into the hard numbers for the cellar. Are we only using 25% of this lot? Is it the new oak portion? Well, the cellar crew better know that. After setting the scene for our crew they begin to prep the barrels, taking out the bungs and possibly moving barrels to an easier working location.

Next is the fun, but necessary, part folks. I smell every barrel that will be pumped into this blend, and the Su’skol blend averages to about 1000 barrels! My preferred method of sampling the barrels is actually using a turkey baster. It is fast, and far more efficient than the cumbersome wine thief that is often used. Smelling barrels when pumping out offers two very important securities. The first is that I can double check the cellar is planning on pumping out the proper barrels that I envisioned going into this blend. The second is that we can screen every barrel for any problem and remove the wine from the blend. From time to time a barrel does go bad and this is the one time we have to weed out our problem.

Next, we carefully extract the wine from the barrel using a nitrogen sparging mechanism known as the Bulldog. As the wine gets pumped out of the barrel we transfer that into a tank that has also been sparged with nitrogen. When that tank gets filled we start on another tank until all 1000 barrels are pumped out. The barrels are then carefully cleaned and stored. To ensure that no “bugs” grow inside the barrel we treat barrels regularly with sulfur gas while they are empty.

Julie Murrell
Assistant Winemaker

As you have read from my co-blogger, spring is a busy time in the vineyard. Our jobs in the winery do not require us to be peeled out of bed at 3am by a phone call (Thank god) but spring is also busy in the winery. I thought I would give you a little insight about what happens when we start getting ready to bottle our wines to make room for the next vintage.

The wine that I will be following is our Su’skol Chardonnay blend. As some of you may know, this wine is our single vineyard Chardonnay from Napa County. The vineyard site is close to Carneros and with its often foggy summer mornings is a perfect site for Chardonnay. This is why a few years ago we decided to make a Chardonnay exclusively from the Su’skol ranch.

Before the winemaking team can blend the Su’skol Chardonnay, our lab samples all of these lots out of our barrels. In order to sample we must first identify all of the oak types and vintage percentage in each lot. When we sample these wines they will all be oak correct and from many different representative barrels from each oak vintage. This method of sampling insures that the wine samples are as close as possible to the overall flavor of each lot. As an extra precaution we will top all of these barrels after sampling to make sure the wine in the barrel does not get overly exposed to air.

On a given morning, again not 3am, the winemaking staff sits down with 10 – 50 samples in front of them.

For the Su’skol ranch we tasted about 30 wines, broken down in flights of 7 wines. After tasting a set of 7 lots we go over our notes, talking about our favorite wines, or maybe some that we need to move out of the program. This often leads into brainstorming talks about what worked in the vineyard or cellar the previous year. After all of the wines are tasted individually we create a table top blend of our favorites and taste that. If this wine is an expression of what we know the Su’skol ranch brings to the bottle, we are done. Often though, we make minute changes to the blend, adding and deleting partial lots to create that vintage’s perfect Su’skol Chardonnay.

Julie Murrell
Assistant Winemaker

Yes, I am a woman and a winemaker. Historically men have dominated this field, but today I interact with many women winemakers. There are even a few visionary women winemakers setting the trends. 

Winemaking requires a combination of art and science, but it has been shown that girls may shy away from the science side of winemaking. In the first grade both boys and girls report to like math and science equally, but by the time they are in eighth grade boys are twice as likely to be interested in these subjects.

To get girls interested in math and science fields of work there is a yearly conference for 7th and 8th grade girls called Expanding Your Horizons. Last weekend I taught at this conference, which is put on by the Sonoma County AAUW (Association of American University Women). This conference is designed to be a fun day out for girls (and boys) where they can relate science and math to their daily lives.

I have been demonstrating winemaking for this event for a few years now. No, we don’t drink wine, but we do have fun. I have had the fortunate experience to meet a fabulous flavor chemist in my career. She has these great kits that I use for the kids. If you got a piece of yellow Jell-O would you assume it was lemon flavored? I bet you would. We teach the kids that our flavor memory uses all five senses, not just taste. It is always interesting to me what the kids use to describe the aromas of rose (grandma anyone?), or toasted oak.

I love giving back to something that I utilized during my youth. And if a few of these girls got excited about making wine that would be great, but the greater victory would be to have boys and girls equally excited about math and science.

Julie Murrell
Assistant Winemaker