My pal Ray also submitted his 2009 Primitivo and won a Silver medal.  Paul entered the 2009 merlot and petite sirah that we recently bottled, and won a Gold medal for the petite sirah and Bronze medal for the merlot. Mike and Tricia Hoffman won several medals as well, Mike got a Gold medal for his sangiovese and a Silver for his primitivo (from a different source than mine and Ray’s), and Tricia won a Silver medal and Best of Class for an Amarone wine kit! Several other people won awards for wine kits at the fair, too. Congratulations to everyone!

Susanne Hunter won Silver medal and Best of Class with her Pinot Grigio wine kit

Beth Roseman and Gesa Cowell (not shown) won Gold medals for their Riesling wine kits

Tricia won a Silver Medal and Best of Class for her Amarone wine kit

A few more Limited Edition wine kits have come in.  I posted previously about starting the Cellar Craft Chateau du Pays; I’m going to bulk age this wine for while, but I did do an extra racking about a month after stabilizing and clearing to take out the second addition of Hungarian oak cubes, so it wouldn’t overoak.  The Cellar Craft rhone white blend of Marsanne-Viognier-Roussane and Winexpert’s Austrian Gruner Veltliner arrived and will be bottled in a few weeks.

The limited edition I’m most excited about right now is Winexpert’s Spanish Rose, “a blend of red and white varietals, including popular Spanish Tempranillo.”  It has a super-cool bright magenta color and yummy fruit-laden aromas.

In the meantime, we’re thoroughly enjoying the Pacific White Limited Edition from Winexpert.  It’s too bad I only made one of these kits, and now they’re sold out!

My tasting notes for this wine:  Lovely nose of hay, roses, and spice. Flavors have already come together nicely. Crisp, minerally taste of crunchy apples, persimmon, and toasted spice. Really nice!

The judging notes included: “Enjoyable, unique combination of flavors.” “Nice complex balanced flavors.” “Oak, fruit, dry” — this last comment is very interesting;  several other winemakers at the award ceremony commented on the good oak character in this wine, but there was no oak in this wine!  This wine does have a very nice, creamy smoothness and hints of vanilla reminiscent of oak character.  Either way, it is a lovely, tasty wine, and I’m very glad it was recognized for its excellence.

As for the ‘Bahia Belle’ Blend, my average score was pretty decent, and so I think this wine almost got a bronze.  Personally, I think this wine it too young, but we thought it would be interesting to enter several versions of our first fresh grape wines.  I think this one will fare much better next year, or maybe even the year after that.

The Riesling, however, did need some filtering.  It just wasn’t clear, but I didn’t want to wait to let it clear with bulk aging – we’re running out of summer whites!  I set up a 1 micron inline filter, but the last 6 bottles did not seem to filter completely.  I actually uncorked these and tried to refilter, but the gunk would not filter out.  Oh well, another lot of wine to keep for home drinking.

Tasting notes: Nose of slightly unripe peach with spice. Very clear, pale gold in color. Flavors of peach, apricot, banana, and flint, with long, minerally finish. Very dry with light sweetness, very nice.

The SG on the Yakima Synergy is at 0.994, although it’s still bubbling away in there.  After racking, it’s not very pretty!  But, it’s early in the game, there’s still plenty of stirring ahead before it’s expected to clear.

In the meantime, Dave bought a cabernet sauvignon kit last year, at the same time that we started making wine from grapes.  I remembered he still has it sitting at the back of his closet, and offered to make it for him.  I checked everything out, and it seemed fine – it wasn’t quite at its expiration date yet, and the color and aromas were fine.  The starting SG was 1.075, exactly where it should be.  No problems!