It’s the first woman for Jaffurs.
I’d think by using her name you’d be giving her more credit. I think “new winemaker” would have sufficed regardless of first or not.
Marrissa Schoonover
Head Winemaker
Marrissa started with Jaffurs in 2018 and has become an integral part of our daily operations. After graduating from UC Irvine with a degree in Biological Anthropology, a passion for wine (and Syrah in particular) brought her to Santa Barbara with a determination to break into the industry. She soon landed at Jaffurs, taking a position in the tasting room. Marrissa’s inquisitive mind and eagerness to get her hands dirty led to her becoming increasingly more involved in the winemaking, and she was named Cellar Master after a couple short years and Assistant Winemaker not long after that. With an infectious sense of joy and enthusiasm, you may find her pouring wine in the tasting room, topping barrels in the cellar or stomping grapes during harvest.
Most post was made in a positive way. I don’t understand why you are commenting further.
How is the malolactic level on these Chardonnays? I find that I am not a fan of the buttery taste at all but I do enjoy chardonnays that have little to no malo. Some like Kongsgaard is past the limit of malo for me but a Summer dreams is something I enjoy if that helps at all.
Why not ask @Matt_Perry ?
That probably would’ve been a better option. Somehow I completely missed that he posted here.
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Oooh, this is a favorite topic of mine, so prepare for me to spew some nerd all over this thread. The Perry Colin wines go through MLF. One of the reasons we work so closely with our growers is that there are certain things in the vineyard we can do to achieve lower malic at picking. Ideally we are picking with malics closer to 2 g/L than 3 g/L. Some things, like frost, will throw this completely out of wack. 2022 in Oregon was our first major frost event in decades, and some of those malic numbers were 4-5 g/L. When wines go through MLF you convert malic (green apple) to lactic (yogurt) so the pH of your wine will also rise. So starting with lower malic at pick results in a lower pH shift in the wine later. There’s some 2022 Oregon Chards and 2021 white Burgundy that taste overtly yogurty to me, that’s most likely because of high malic at harvest turning into high lactic concentrations in the wine.
Now on to the real nerdy stuff. The buttery taste you find in MLF wines is actually a side reaction that produces a compound called diacetyl. Personally, I hate the stuff. This happens when ML bacteria consume citric acid during the MLF process. This metabolic pathway is accelerated with increased oxygen exposure during MLF. So if you stir your barrels while going through MLF, you are going to have more diacetyl. We definitely don’t do that. There’s two options to avoid having wine go through MLF, but be absent of diacetyl. First option is there are commercially bred bacteria that either produce no or low diacetyl. We don’t inoculate for MLF so that option doesn’t work for us. Second option is that diacetyl is relatively fragile and is re-consumed by yeast and bacteria, but only if you don’t sulfur the wine right away. So once MLF is done, we move the barrels to a cold room and taste them at every topping. Once the diacetyl is gone, I’ll mark the barrel and sulfur it the next time I top.
Here’s a handy article from Scott Labs in case that wasn’t nerdy enough for you.
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Interested to try the Aerika Estate wines.
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Thank you for the great response and education on it all. Looking forward to grabbing some of your wine on berserker day.
I had the opportunity to try them last year - the '23 Wing Canyon and '23 Wildwoods, part of their Prologue wines. They are incredibly special wines, and I’m super excited to support when they release. Julia and Rob are doing some f***ing amazing things up on Mt. Veeder - this is a winery which is going to become the next MOWE, MacDonald, SEagle, Jasud, etc.
P.S. the estate wine has a few more years before release - I believe the inaugural wine will be '26 Estate, and likely to release in 2028 (or perhaps after).
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I’ve been a home brewer for about 30 years and have often done diacetyl rest as part of my conditioning. It had not occurred to me that it would be needed for wine. Keep the nerdy stuff coming!
Cheers,
fred
Here are my notes on the Perry Colin wines.
That’s actually where I first learned about it too!