To be or not to be...

I really like dry Rieslings. I try to get a trip into the Michigan southwest and northwest wine countries every year to see what they got new each year. The last couple of years I have stretched the wine-grape budget some and bought a bit of Riesling we could have it in our line-up, even for a few months. We make some as an off-dry, or maybe more of a semi-sweet, somewhere in there sweetness wise. We make some in a dry style and its has been boffo the last few years.

This year I am quite happy with how the semi-sweet is turning out, but less happy with the dry. But mine is only one opinion, I ask my guinea pigs (?) what they think and they say, "Its greeat!" (sorry Tony). So I am going to bottle a little of the dry this week and let the customers feedback whether they like it too.

We will also be releasing a dry Vidal in the next few weeks, its is only nine months old, but seems to be coming along very nicely. A few test-tasters think I should blend it into a semi-sweet due to the nice fruit it shows in the mouth, but I cannot decide.

Another good example is our new (and last) batch of 2007 Bordermen, our cranberry blend wine. I was working alone in the winery, making it up following my recipe for the blend and when I was done, it did not taste right. I messed with it some more, no better. It was darker and tarter then is was supposed to be. I adjusted the sweetness to try to get a balance of the flavor, could not get it right.

It was getting late and I was tired, so I started from scratch, just as if what I now had was what I had to work with, -since it was! I tweaked it a bit and tasted it again, it seemed better. Then the wife came home, I offered her a taste and she said, "Humm, not the same as the last batch, what did you do different?" Duh! If I knew that, --well you know. So I went ahead and bottled some and everyone said "This is great!", so I guess sometimes it just happens and sometimes you make it happen. This the last of the 2007, i takes a good year or more for the cranberry to be ready, so we'll be without Bordermen for a while once the present stock is depleted.