UNITED STATES NEWS

US winery experiments with aging wine in ocean

Feb 20, 2013, 9:07 PM

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) – An experiment in the age-old art of winemaking began on Wednesday as a California winery submerged four cases of Cabernet Sauvignon in Charleston Harbor to see how the ocean affects the aging of the wine.

Mira Winery of St. Helena, Calif., placed the bottles of wine in yellow steel mesh cages and then submerged them offshore in an undisclosed location. In three months, the wine will be removed and subjected to chemical tests and tasting by experts to see what differences it has from wine aged on land. The winery could produce and sell underwater-aged wine in the future if the trial goes well.

While wineries in Europe have experimented in recent years with ocean aging of wine, the idea is novel in the United States, said Jim “Bear” Dyke Jr., the Charleston resident who owns the Napa Valley winery. At least a handful of European wineries have produced underwater-aged wine, some of which has been sold in the U.S.

Winemakers have long known wine recovered from sunken ships has a unique taste and the ocean is thought to have something to do with that.

Dyke and his colleagues expect the water pressure, temperature and gentle swaying from currents to produce unique effects. He would not specify the depth of the water in which the wine will be submerged.

“This is a very exciting thing for me as a winemaker,” said Gustavo Gonzalez, Mira’s winemaker. “When you make wine it’s pretty much the same thing for everybody. You can change it up a bit but and see what happens and your cabernet may taste a little bit different from your neighbor’s cabernet.”

The idea is to find out if ocean aging has the potential to change that, he said.

“We’ll pull it out in late May and see what the effect of the water temperature, the water pressure and, more interesting to me, the swaying motion of the water does to the wine,” he said.

Michael Kaiser, the director of communications for WineAmerica, the National Association of American Wineries, said he had not heard of aging wine in water.

“It’s correct it does change the makeup of the wine. When you store wine it’s not supposed to be stored underwater and especially in salinized water,” he said. “But it’s interesting that someone would experiment with it to see what it’s like.”

He also suggested that wine recovered from sunken ships may simply taste better because the wine is really old, although the water may affect it as well.

The wine that was sunken on Wednesday has additional wax seals and the cages are made of marine steel to withstand the ocean environment. The mesh allows the water to move around the bottles.

The four cages are chained together and equipped with GPS tracking devices so they can be located in case they are moved by the currents or if an unauthorized diver decides to have an early wine and cheese party

Dyke called the experiment “a beginning for us. It’s the beginning of a testing process to see if we can do this in larger quantities for a longer period of time.” The winery was founded last year.

Gonzalez said the wine submerged on Wednesday is a 2009 vintage that has already been aged in a wine cellar. Depending on how the experiment goes, the winery may age some of its 2013 vintage completely in a wine cellar and some of it completely in the ocean.

Once the wine is pulled from the ocean it will be chemically compared to the wine aged in a wine cellar. It will also be tasted and compared by wine experts, Dyke said.

Charleston Harbor was selected for the experiment because Dyke is from Charleston and because the city is increasingly known for its fine dining.

“With our southern roots in Charleston and Charleston being an historic location what better place to do this?” Dyke asked.

______

On the Internet:

Mira Winery:
http://www.miranapa.com/

(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

United States News

Associated Press

Oklahoma man arrested after authorities say he threw a pipe bomb at Satanic Temple in Massachusetts

BOSTON (AP) — An Oklahoma man was arrested Wednesday after authorities accused him of throwing a pipe bomb at the Massachusetts headquarters of a group called The Satanic Temple. The Salem-based group says on its website that it campaigns for secularism and individual liberties, and that its members don’t actually worship Satan. Sean Patrick Palmer, […]

3 minutes ago

Associated Press

Ellen Ash Peters, first female chief justice of Connecticut Supreme Court, dies at 94

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Ellen Ash Peters, who was the first woman to serve as Connecticut’s chief justice and wrote the majority opinion in the state Supreme Court’s landmark school desegregation ruling in 1996, has died. She was 94. Peters, who also was the first female faculty member at Yale Law School, passed away Tuesday, […]

2 hours ago

Associated Press

Vermont farms are still recovering from flooding as they enter the growing season

BERLIN, Vt. (AP) — Hundreds of Vermont farms are still recovering from last July’s catastrophic flooding and other extreme weather as they head into this year’s growing season. Dog River Farm, in Berlin, Vermont, lost nearly all its produce crops in the July flooding. The farm removed truckloads of river silt and sand from the […]

2 hours ago

Associated Press

Appeals court leaves temporary hold on New Jersey’s county line primary ballot design in place

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday affirmed a lower court’s decision to order New Jersey Democrats scrap a ballot design widely viewed as helping candidates with establishment backing. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals considered a slimmed-down appeal brought by the Camden County Democrats after the county clerks — the officials charged […]

3 hours ago

Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas arrives to testify before a Senate subcommittee o...

Associated Press

Senate dismisses two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security secretary, ends trial

The Senate dismissed impeachment charges against Alejandro Mayorkas, ending House Republicans' bid to remove the Homeland Security secretary.

3 hours ago

Associated Press

Tip leads to arrest in cold case killing of off-duty DC police officer in Baltimore

BALTIMORE (AP) — Baltimore prosecutors on Wednesday announced the arrest of a man in the cold case homicide of an off-duty Washington, D.C., police officer in 2017. The officer, Sgt. Tony Anthony Mason Jr., was shot to death while sitting in a parked car with a woman he had been dating, according to police. She […]

4 hours ago

Sponsored Articles

...

DESERT INSTITUTE FOR SPINE CARE

Desert Institute for Spine Care is the place for weekend warriors to fix their back pain

Spring has sprung and nothing is better than March in Arizona. The temperatures are perfect and with the beautiful weather, Arizona has become a hotbed for hikers, runners, golfers, pickleball players and all types of weekend warriors.

...

DISC Desert Institute for Spine Care

Sciatica pain is treatable but surgery may be required

Sciatica pain is one of the most common ailments a person can face, and if not taken seriously, it could become one of the most harmful.

...

Collins Comfort Masters

Avoid a potential emergency and get your home’s heating and furnace safety checked

With the weather getting colder throughout the Valley, the best time to make sure your heating is all up to date is now. 

US winery experiments with aging wine in ocean