Flaherty Wines » Aconcagua winemaking

Restaurant wine lists

jen — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 17:50:34 +0000

Although our exports are growing, the majority of our sales are in Chile, and most of that is off-premise sales through wine shops and wine clubs. Our restaurant presence is growing, however, and we are pleased to be featured on the wine lists of a number of restaurants both in and out of Santiago. Here is a brief list of restaurants currently selling our wine:

Astrid and Gastón
Baco
Casa Lastarria
Da Noi (the photo at right is from Da Noi)
Divino Pecado (Viña del Mar)
H Terrado (Antofagasta)
Hyatt Regency
Kilometro 0
Le Bistrot
Le Flaubert
Le Founil
Macerado (Casablanca)
Mezzanotte
Santa Brasa
Squadrito

Merry Christmas!

jen — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:42:02 +0000

It’s been a very busy week, between work and Christmas preparations. The boys and I spent Wednesday and Thursday making cookies—gingerbread, spritz, chocolate spritz, snowballs, and candy cane chip. It’s only Saturday, and there are shockingly few cookies left. We’re having a seven-fish cioppino for Christmas Eve dinner (corvina, shrimp, calamari, crab, mussels, clams, andmachas, which I think are razor clams) and a summer grill on Christmas day. School’s out, and we’re all enjoying the long days, sleeping in, lazing by the pool. Christmas carols in summer are actually starting to feel normal after all these years.

Exports to UK and Romania

jen — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:14:12 +0000

This week has been absolutely crazy! We’ve sold wine to clients in the UK and Romania, and for some time now we’ve been planning the physical export of the wine. After weeks of waiting and generally being on hold, everything came together this week for both orders. This translated into a lot of running around for me. The customs agent needs documents from the lab, the lab and the customs agent both need information from the forwarding agent, and the forwarding agent speaks a language I don’t understand (I call it shipper-ese). But thanks to our wonderful (and patient) customs agent, our wonderful (and flexible) bottler, and our wonderful (and cooperative) lab tech, the wine is on its way! Now I just need to catch up on everything that was put on the back burner in the meantime.

Wine fair review

jen — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:44 +0000

We had a great time pouring at the Feria Vinos de Chile last week. It was fun to chat with many old friends and also meet people trying our wines for the first time. Both our 2009 blends were very well received. And we’re seeing the first feedback in the press. In his review of the wine fair, Daniel Greve highlighted four MOVI wines, including the Flaherty 2009 Limarí blend. Here’s what he writes (translated from Spanish):

“With a distinctive, elegant style, Flaherty is a 2009 red blend of syrah, cabernet sauvignon, and carmenère. This juicy wine has good depth and a note of hibiscus flower tea, together with a lot of red fruit—it’s exquisite, well-defined, and playful. If you run across any of these gems [note: in addition to Flaherty, the review covers iLatina 2009 Carmenère, Lagar de Bezana 2010 Porfiada, and Polkura 2009 Malbec], don’t think twice about giving them a try. Each one, with its own individual style, is worth the chance.”

Feria Vinos de Chile 2011

jen — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 16:47:25 +0000

Flaherty Wines is scheduled to participate in the Feria Vinos de Chile 2011, to be held in the Hotel Plaza San Francisco in the center of Santiago this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (28–30 September) from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Ed and I will be pouring the just-released 2009 Limarí and 2009 Aconcagua blends. If you are in town, be sure to stop by the MOVI area of the tasting and say hello!

Winter roundup

jen — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:37:27 +0000

Spring has arrived in the Southern Hemisphere. The days are getting longer and the sun brighter, California poppies are blooming along the roadside, and the birds are chattering in the garden again. In the winery, rising temperatures mean the start of malolactic fermentation. During winter, the barrel cellar is too cold for the malolactic bacteria to do its work, so every vintage’s ML fermentation is delayed until spring. Ed reports that our 2011 lots had some pressure in the barrels when he was topping this weekend. That gas build-up is a sure sign that malolactic is well underway. Once it gets going, it should ferment through quickly.

It didn’t rain on 18 September (Chilean folklore has it that there is always rain on Dieciocho, Chile’s independence day ), but we did get a few good storms in August. Even so, Aconcagua has only received around half the rainfall of a typical year. That’s even lower than in 2010, which was a very dry year. The central valley to the south has received more (around two-thirds of normal), and the far south is about on par with normal levels. Unfortunately, it’s looking like another drought year north of Santiago.

Ed pruned the vineyard on 27–28 August. The plants generally look healthy and are responding well to the new head training implemented last year. They are just showing the first signs of bud break, with fuzzy little pussy-willow nodules just starting to form.

The vineyard in August

jen — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:34:14 +0000

Pruning takes place in the winter, when the vines are dormant. So I was a little concerned to realize that we are well into August (that translates into February for you Northern Hemisphere folks), and our vineyard still looks like this:

As it turns out, dormancy is not the best time for pruning. Because the dormant vine doesn’t “feel” the cut, it doesn’t attempt to heal it. The pruning thus essentially leaves an open wound that provides a portal for viruses and bacteria to enter the plant. The result could be a very unhealthy vineyard.

To help protect the plant from that vulnerability, we hold off on pruning until after the sap starts to rise, but before the plant starts to push out new foliage. The plant is then able to respond to the pruning by bleeding sap, which acts as a scab over the wound. This effectively seals out unwanted bacteria. For us, this means we prune toward the end of August.

Made it through harvest

jen — Thu, 26 May 2011 23:45:54 +0000

The last couple of weekends were busy with pressing out fermented lots. Our main cellar worker, don Armando, was unable to work, so pressing became a family affair. Sean was very enthusiastic about helping, while Ben mostly provided entertainment as he skateboarded around the press pad. Our friend Craig generously offered to help out as well, so the work went quite smoothly despite the labor shortage.

On Saturday, the 14th, we pressed out the last two bins of Syrah. We also received one last lot of Cabernet Sauvignon–just a half ton, which fermented smoothly over the course of the week. The following weekend, we pressed out the majority of the Cabernet–the lots that cold macerated for a few days before taking off. They have very nice color and good Cab flavor, though I think the stars this vintage are some of the Syrah lots. At this point, all we have left to go into barrel is that last little Cab lot. It is currently undergoing post-fermentation maceration, and we’ll press it out this weekend.

We are very pleased with how the harvest went this year. We increased production considerably, to about 900 cases (versus 620 last year). Despite that big jump, everything went smoothly. The cement pad we put in last winter vastly improved our workspace, so we had room to maneuver as we worked with fermentations, barrels, crushing, and pressing all in the same day. The freezer was another important factor—none of the fermentations overheated this year. We were able to use the frozen blocks not only to cool fermentations in progress, but also to delay fermentation in some lots so as to stagger the peaks. This all helped lower the stress level and conserve quality.

Cold maceration for the Cabernet

jen — Thu, 05 May 2011 00:41:54 +0000

We received about three tons of Cabernet Sauvignon late Saturday afternoon. To make room for it, we spent the morning beforehand pressing out some of the first Syrah lots, which filled ten barrels. We were then able to crush the Cab early Sunday morning. The fruit was cold when we crushed it, and it hasn’t warmed up despite the nice weather. Daytime temperatures are consistently hitting the high 2os C (low 80s F), but at night they drop to as low as 3 C (37 F). Tuesday morning, two of the Cab lots measured 11 C (52 F) and one 9 C (48C), which is too low for the yeast to grow actively. We have thus been dealing with the unusual problem of trying to warm up the fermentations, whereas normally we work to keep them cool. We moved the bins out into the sun on Tuesday, which raised the temperatures a few degrees. On Wednesday, the forecast was for a rather hot day, so we kept the bins in the shade and used hot water bottles to inch the temps up a bit more. The musts are finally show signs of fermenting–the grapes are being pushed up into a cap and the juice is bubbling gently. The densities aren’t really moving yet, however, and the temperatures are still too low. We’re keeping the hot water bottles in overnight to see if that will get them going by tomorrow. Cold maceration is good for color and flavor extraction, but it’s time to get these fermentations going.

More Syrah, Easter, and Garbanzo Fries

jen — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:34:59 +0000

Tell me again, whose idea was it to double production? I feel like we are being inundated by wave upon wave of wine. Last weekend was a long one, as Good Friday is a holiday in Chile. It is not, however, a holiday for boutique wineries. We spent the day pressing out syrah to make room for the next round, then crushed two and a half tons on Saturday. This was the second batch we’ve received from the Escorial vineyard. It is definitely riper than the first lot we received two weeks ago, with some really yummy dark berry flavors and ripe plum. Excellent color, too. The weather has really turned cold this week, so the fermentations were very slow to take off. The last bin only just got going yesterday.

We had a full house for the Easter weekend, so I was relieved of winemaking duties in order to feed the crew (by far, my preferred role). And they did eat well, if I say so myself: pork and cabbage stew with a raspberry-plum crumble for dessert on Friday, spaghetti carbonara with chocolate-raspberry ice cream for dessert on Saturday, and then roast chicken (pullets–the little ones) with a Moroccan spice rub and garbanzo fries for Easter dinner. The fries are from Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud Cookbook. They were really, really good–and not much work at all. Some friends requested the recipe, so here you go. If you are in Santiago, you can get garbanzo flour at the Tostaduría Talca on Tobalaba (at Pocuro).

Daniel Boulud’s Garbanzo Fries

1 quart milk
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon fennel seeds, roasted
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
2 1/4 cups garbanzo flour, sifted
Oil for deep-frying
Semolina flour or cornmeal for dusting

Line a 9- by 12-inch baking sheet with plastic wrap and keep additional plastic on hand to cover the top. (Note: M. Boulud suggested either parchment or plastic. I used parchment, and the top layer stuck to the porridge, so I would definitely go with plastic here.)

Put the milk, olive oil, butter, and fennel seeds in a medium saucepan, season with salt and pepper, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and add the garbanzo flour in a steady stream. (I whisked the mixture until it was fairly smooth and then switched to a wooden spoon. I also overlooked the part about sifting the garbanzo flour, so my porridge was a little lumpy, but it didn’t show in the final product.) Stir continuously for ten minutes. The mixture will get really thick, so M. Boulud suggests recruiting an assistant if you aren’t into the zen of stirring a stubborn porridge. Pour the finished porridge onto the prepared (lined) baking sheet and smooth it out. Cover with another layer of plastic, then refrigerate for at least a couple of hours or overnight. The mixture needs to be quite cold when you fry it.

When ready to make the fries, heat the oil for deep frying. Remove the top layer of plastic from the garbanzo mixture and slice the paste into logs about three inches long by 1/2 inch wide. Don’t make them too skinny or they will break in while frying. Dredge the logs in the semolina or cornmeal (I used cornmeal), then fry in batches until golden brown (2 to 3 minutes). (I fried mine in fairly shallow oil, so I had to flip the fries mid-way through the cooking.) Remove to a plate lined with paper towels to drain briefly before serving.

These are best served immediately, but you can reheat them on a rack in the oven.