VASCM: From John Schumacher about Tech Session Next Week at Pinot Paradise

[Mary Lindsay]

I am forwarding a letter from John Schumacher about the Tech Session at 
this year's Pinot Paradise, which is about yeast, including native yeast 
in our vineyards.  It includes a tasting of wines made from different 
yeasts. The Tech Session is next weekend, on Sunday the 28th, 9-12 at 
Villa Ragusa in Campbell. Whether or not you are growing (or making) 
Pinot Noir, this promises to be a valuable educational opportunity. We 
hope to see you there.


Dear fellow winemakers and viticulturists,

I have for years wondered after each harvest how a small "boutique" 
winery such as ours can spend several thousand dollars on just yeast and 
bacteria alone.

I have suspected in the bacterial world that there is a conspiracy by 
the single celled unions to lock in the intellectual property of what 
separates our wines from sometimes being just good (i.e. mediocre) to 
being absolutely stellar. 

For $55 (the cost of a half kilogram of Saccharomyces cerevisiae) you 
will now have the opportunity to taste over a dozen wines and a half 
dozen different yeasts used in fermentation trials including:  BM45, 
Montrachet, L2056, T306, FermiRouge, RC212, Assmannhausen, as well as 
the native Saccharomyces Sacagewea side by side at this years Pinot 
Paradise Technical Session.

Keynote speaker Lisa Vanderwater (from Wine Lab fame) will be guiding 
and enlightening you through the millennium of single cell organisms 
cultivating in your microbial soup.  This seminar will save you several 
vintages if not thousands of dollars in nailing down your favorite dance 
partners for this noble grape.

Join us at the 2010 Pinot Paradise Technical Session Sunday March 28 
from 9 to noon for this unique opportunity.  Tickets can be purchased 
through local tasting rooms and from the SCMWA.com website and link to 
Pinot Paradise.  Take the journey through years of research in a single 
morning and unravel the mystery!

 
John Schumacher, Hallcrest Vineyards