Welcome

Welcome to Gowden's Wines blog.


I am a very amateur winemaker; have been one for 3 years now. There is nothing about it I don't love, and want to share my perspectives on wine with everyone. I want to talk about the process of making it; tasting the grapes, adjusting the must (the juice that will become wine), fermenting, racking, and the always enjoyable bottling. I want to talk about drinking wine, my own, my friends' and the stuff you buy at the store, winery, wherever.

I'm not a snob. I ask one thing of the wine that passes my lips: that it tastes good. I think wine is a singularly unique substance. If you sit with friends and open a bottle of wine, it will get emptied. The time spent sipping it usually involves conversation, laughter and often fond memories. If the bottle can provide that, then I am satisfied with its quality.

I began making wine about 4 years ago. Started with a must made of sugar and grape juice concentrate. I'd made beer in the past, and the two processes share much of the same equipment (carboy's, airlocks, racking hoses...) and mistakenly believed that their fermentation timelines were similar. I fermented for about a week, saw the fermentation slow (wasn't done, it was 'stuck' as they call it) and bottled it. I used leftover beer bottles from when I made beer, filled about 2 (beer) cases worth of bottles.

It tasted okay, but I wasn't drinking much wine for some reason. The wine sat in the cellar for a few months. I'd noticed, but thought nothing of the fact that the bottles I opened were somewhat effervescent. Oscar night, 2004, a few of us are watching the presentations and I hear a loud pop. I walk downstairs to the cellar to find total darkness when I had left the fluorescent lights on. I stepped into the darkness and something went crunch under my feet.

I had 48 bottle bombs on my hands. One had exploded and taken out the lights. There was sticky, green glass pieces all over. There was sticky white fluorescent tube glass everywhere. I had to don some heavy leather gauntlets, lab goggles, and bottle opener, over a metal sink, and pray none exploded in my hands.

Over the next 15 minutes I found little wine, but lots of foam. Every bottle I opened was like a Mentos in Diet Pepsi, and several actually propelled themselves from my grasp.

I returned to the group with a few cuts, pretty sticky from the sprays, and convinced I'd never make wine again. About a year later my friend Tony came over with a jug of his (delicious) homemade wine; sangiovese if I remember correctly, and I was determined to try again.

That fall I made apple wine (Gowden Winery's Apple of my Eye) and a more informed attempt at the Concord grape juice wine (Gowden Winery's Love Potion #1). In 2005, Tony showed me how to make wine from grapes; the result was Bella Giada Zinfandel (given away to celebrate the birth of my lovely daughter, Giada). Since then I've tried Sangiovese, Strawberry (Gowden Winery's Strawberry Stupor), Chardonnay, Thompson, Shiraz, Ruby Cabernet and even a few honey wines that are currently aging.

It's Spring here. That means warm nights on the deck with a glass of sweeter wine (Bully Hill's Banty Red perhaps?) and maybe pizza. Family cookouts; a great opportunity to bring a hearty red (Zinfandel, Shiraz and any table red you like) or fruity white (you CANNOT go wrong with Gewurtztraminer!!!!!) There's been a flurry of activity locally in the form of wine tastings, and an upcoming wine festival. So while there's not much to do with the wine that's aging in my cellar (other than rack it and bottle it), there's more then enough 'research' to do.

I've taken up enough of your time. Thanks for reading, now go share some wine, and drink responsibly at all times.