The Mighty Mighty Basic Juice Crew Red is “en barrique”

Just heard from Aaron Olson today. Aaron is one of my fellow Basic Juice Crew members, and one of a goodly handful who pitched in to adopt a barrel this past winter at Crushpad in San Francisco. The Crew had been invited earlier in the week by Robin Van Vliet, our de facto Crew ramrod, to be involved in the process of combining our Rhone blend components - Grenache, Syrah, and Petite Syrah - from three separate barrels to one barrel (or, as the denizens of the Rhone Valley might say, barrique).

I couldn’t get away to San Francisco today (something about a job, perhaps), and it appears that only Aaron and Robin, being San Francisco residents, were able to get together with Crushpad winemaker Kian Tavakoli on a weekday to perform the actual blending. 

You might recall from a post I wrote in mid-February (see “She Mighty Mighty”: the blending of the Basic Juice Crew Red) that the Crew had assembled back then to determine just what the percentage of each of these three wine components should be in our final blend. After a few tries at honing in on the ultimate blend, we had settled on a ratio of 60% Grenache, 33% Syrah, and 7% Petite Syrah. We’d put together a slightly different proportion for contrast - one that was a close second place - and had sent samples of both to two out-of-town Crew members, Jeff Stai of Twisted Oak Winery and Beau Jarvis of the Basic Juice blog - indeed the guy who had gotten the whole Rhone blend idea rolling. Both Jeff and Beau had agreed with our blend proportion assessments, and so we were good to go to barrel.

And as of today, according to Aaron, the mighty mighty Basic Juice Crew red will now begin its oak transformation. Here’s what Aaron had to say:

hey all,

just a quick note on the blend for those that weren’t there. All is now blended and sitting in one happy BJC zebra barrel. The blend quantities are:

138 Liters EaglePoint Grenache

76 Liters EaglePoint Syrah

16.1 Liters EaglePoint Petite Sirah

The SO2 level was at 17.6ppm so sulfur was added to bring it up to 30ppm. Early June for the next check on how it’s aging, etc…

Cool,

Aaron

Doing a little quick math, it looks like our Crew has hit the mark - the mark of distinctive proportions. Hopefully the rest of the Crew (um, yes, that’s me, too) will make a better showing this June when we’ll taste our Brick House Red again. I’m sure it’ll be mighty mighty good, and especially so when we go to bottle - maybe in September 2008.

~winehiker

This entry was posted on Friday, April 6th, 2007 at 2:49 pm and is filed under grape squeezins. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.