Monday, August 27, 2012

FBV judges the Amateur Wine Makers Contest

The French Broad Vignerons provided the judges for the Asheville Wine and Food Festival Amateur Wine Makers Contest.  We had a table at the festival to display the wines entered and the ribbons won, and there we completed our judging of the entries,  a task which we had started earlier during the week.  Thanks to all the members who turned out to help judge, pour and organize the judging session.
 
The wines with ribbons

Some of the Blethen trained Vignerons judging the sweet white wine category. 

 
There was one gold medal winner.  That was our president, Alan Stanton, who made a very nice sweet blend of viogner and petit manseng. That is Alan in the picture above with wearing the red shirt.
 
The bronze medal winners are listed below.  The number by the name is for ID purposes only and does not indicate place


 
 
1 Tom Mincarelli dry red blend 2011
2 Tom Mincarelli merlot 2010
3 Ken Chrismon dry red muscadine 2011
8 Rick Petrus shiraz 2006
10 alex chambers cab saug 2011
12 Ken Chrismon pear 2011
13 Ken Chrismon blackberry 2011
14 Bill Close peach 2010
17 Ken Chrismon blueberry apple 2011
19 Ken Chrismon blueberry    2010
22 Rick Petrus Reisling Ice wine 2006
26 cornelius Ashe scuppernong 2011
27 Bill Close Sweet blend 2011
29 cornelius Ashe Catabawba 2011
30 Angelo Bianco Golden Muscat 2010
35 Ken Chrismon scuppernong 2010
36 Ken Chrismon scuppernong 2011

                                                 Silver Medal Winners

Tom   Mincarelli
Merlot 2011
John Kinnaird
Bordeaux blend
2011
Ken Chrismon
strawberry
2010
Ken Chrismon
Peach
2011
Cornelius Ashe
blackberry
2011
Cornelius Ashe
strawberry
2012
Alan Stanton
chocolate raspberry port
2011
Alan Stanton
petit manseng
2011
Alan Stanton
niagra honey
2008
Bill Close
La Crosse
2011
Tony Gaddis
Pinot griggio
2011
Ken Chrismon
muscadine
2011
Ken Chrismon
muscadine
2011

Saturday, August 25, 2012

August FBV meeting

 

 
We met at Bob's place.

The meeting was preceded by a 30 minute wine judging of some of the wines entered in the amateur wine making contest. 

The minutes were read and approved,
The treasurer reported that we have $450 in the bank.
In the officer's report Chuck Blethen discussed the herbicide overspray problem.
   Chuck said that he met with the GM of the French Broad Electrical Co-op and discussed the spraydrift problem.  He reports that FBEC will only not spray if surrounding vineyards are certified organic. 
    JD is still requesting some coordinate information from members to help vather information on the overspray problem.
    David Wijewickrama from Waynesville discussed the new vintner program being created at the Tri County Community College.  Surrey College is suspending its program due to lack of funding.
    Money sources for agricultural projects were discussed, including Gold Leaf and ARC funds.  It was suggested that if we had a well defined mission statement and project we could possibly qualify for a grant to fund those projects. 
   David suggested that we hold a meeting in November at his office in Haywood county.  He suggested that we might be able to get some political leverage through his contacts to help with some of our concerns and plans.
   Pete and Alan sugested that we have short term and long term plans before the November meeting.
   Alan wants each member to email him their suggestions for long term and short term goals for the FBV.

After the meeting Alan presented an interesting technique for calculating volumes when blending wines to get a desired alcohol or sugar content.  Its called the pearson's square and it works something like this:

                                      A                                   B



                                                        C

                             
                                     D                                      E

The highest concentration wine goes in A..In this example lets say its a wine with  15% alcohol
The lowest concentraton wine to be blended goes at D.  example 11% alcohol
The question is how much of A and D should be blended to produce a wine with a desired alcohol percentage which will be written at C.  (example perhaps we want 12 percent wine)
So in this example we write 15 at A, 12 at C and 11 at D.  Then we subtract c from a and put the answer at E and subtract C from D and put that answer at B.  (drop the negative sign)
So our square now looks like this:
                                  
                                         15                                     1

                                                       
                                                            12


                                           11                                    3

The square is now telling us that if we blend 3 parts of the 11 percent wine with one part of the 15 percent wine we will hit our target of 12 percent.
Nifty tool

                                         







 
Alan teaching the Pearson's square