Andis Partners with Junior Achievement of Sacramento

We're offering $5 meatball plates to guests throughout the month of February as an endeavor to support the Junior Achievement of Sacramento.

This is an extension from our January efforts to raise funds when guests could enjoy a bowl of soup for $5. All soup and meatball sales will be donated to the nonprofit.

Junior Achievement is the nation’s largest organization (with more than 103 operations across the nation!) dedicated to giving young people the skills they need to make wise career decisions. Many of their alumni earn college degrees and even go on to start their own businesses as adults.

Junior Acheivement depends on volunteers to mentor young people. They come from all walks of life, including business professionals, college students, parents and retirees. 

We love this program's vision and believe every little bit helps. Even a $5 plate of meatballs. 

To learn more about this program, visit JASAC.org. Please stop by for a plate so we can donate!

What is Smoke Taint?

What is smoke taint? And why are winemakers concerned?

All of us in California are aware of major fires that typically occur in the Fall when conditions are the driest and winds prevail. We all wish fires would not occur but lately, every Fall, the sky appears hazy and the air smells like smoke. We heard someone just off the plane smelling the smoky air say, “ Wow, it smells like California!”.

The concern for vineyards and wineries is the damage smoke can cause to grapes. When vineyards and grapes are exposed to smoke, the results in wines can be undesirable sensory characters. These undesirable sensory characteristics are known as smoke taint with descriptive flavors of “ashtray”, “medicinal”, “campfire”, “smoky”, or “bacon”.

The cause of and impact of smoke taint isn’t always cut and dry. The freshness of the smoke and proximity to the fires are factors. Even certain grape varieties can be more prone to smoke damage. To further complicate matters, similar vineyard sites that have similar smoke exposures may not equally be affected.

Smoke taint is caused by a wide range of compounds found in wildfire smoke, which once absorbed by vines and accumulated in berries, will remain there through processing. One can’t predict which grapes may have suffered damage based on anything intuitive, such as sight, smell or even the flavor of fresh grapes.

There are several options for wineries that fear smoke-damaged fruit. The first is to sample grape berries and have them tested. Since this process is not very accurate, the second option is for wineries to carry out small scale fermentations. Once fermentation is finished a chemical analysis can help predict the likelihood of smoke taint in the wine. However, tasting and sensory evaluations on the wine are even more important.

If a wine has been fermented and it has been determined through lab analysis and sensory evaluation to have smoke damage, there are a couple of options to treat the wine. The first is to pass the wine across a membrane that releases the smoke bound molecules from the wine. The second is to treat the wine with enzymes then use reverse osmosis to remove the smoke molecule. Both of these processes have been shown to help and in some cases make a positive difference. However, whether one is successful depends on the wine.

On August 14, 2021, in the Sierra Foothills, the Caldor Fires started and expanded quickly burning thousands of acres, destroying a community and causing evacuations in many others. Andis Wines and others in the Shenandoah Valley got lucky as we experienced no smoke damage and harvested grapes that showed no smoke taint. Our wines for the 2021 vintage were unscathed and we expect another excellent vintage.

Cheers!
Mark Fowler, Estate Winemaker, Andis Wines
Janis Akuna, Executive Winemaker, Andis Wines

Was Harvest 2021 A Good One?

 

Let’s talk bad news first. Given was the pandemic with new variants and greater contagion. Moving on to Andis Wines, let’s focus on grape farming and wine making. While 2021 started with normal rainfall, it soon became apparent very early in the growing season that we would see drought conditions, which adversely affected the grapes. First, flowering and fruit set was drawn out over several weeks compared to the normal time frame of about a week. Later in July and early August during the time we would see veraison occurring over a week or so, it too was drawn out to several weeks. Grapes and clusters that are normally somewhat uniform were not. Ripe berries were next to unripe berries, mature clusters were next to clusters that barely went through veraison. As a result, maturity monitoring and sampling was difficult, and a lot of extra time was spent in the vineyards. Moreover, there were a couple of significant  heat waves. With the heat and lack of water, crop load was reduced with many vineyards showing a 50% reduction.

The heat and dry conditions had us starting harvest about a week to 10 days earlier than normal, with our first pick of our estate Sauvignon blanc on August 9th. Other varieties started to show early elevated sugar levels giving us major concern. Then there was more bad news. On August 14th, the Caldor fires started and within two days had exploded to over 60,000 acres in the Sierras and Foothills. While we were put on evacuation notice, our vineyards were fortunate to not be affected – no evacuation, and thankfully, no smoke taint. Unfortunately, many of our friends and growers were affected with fire and/or smoke damage to their grapes, and we were unable to harvest several vineyards. To help our 2021 harvest, we ended up buying fruit from several other regions including Clarksburg in the delta, Linden Hills east of Lodi, and the Murphy area. Once we were through the worst of the fire and the heat of late August and early September, temperatures cooled, and our harvest pace, thankfully, slowed down to normal.

So, with drought, fires, heat waves, and a smaller crop load, you are probably wondering where the good news is! Through all of that, we were rewarded with some very beautiful wines. The white wines are bright with great structure and depth. The reds are deep in color and aromatic, rich in character, have complexity and are well structured. Yes, despite the struggles of 2021, the results turned out with an abundance of good news! Cheers!

Janis Akuna - Founder
Mark Fowler - Winemaker

 

The Curse of Knowledge

Meridith May, SOMM Journal

ANDIS WINES’ LORENZO MUSLIA MUSES ON ITS NEWEST RELEASE, CURSE OF KNOWLEDGE, AND WHY WINES FROM THE SIERRA FOOTHILLS CAN BE A CHALLENGING SELL

It was 2014 when I left Italy and ventured into a “New World.”

To say I was culture-shocked at the start is an understatement. I went from walking out of my apartment in Florence and simply asking for an espresso to driving for 2 miles to engage in a three-minute interrogation with a barista: “What size, 16-ounce or 8-ounce? How many shots do you want? Do you need room for cream?”

Dinnertime used to be at 9 p.m., but now that’s bedtime. I used to make five stops at local grocery stores on the way home, and now everything is delivered to my doorstep.

But if I had to pick the thing that shocked me most, it was unquestionably the wines. I grew up drinking Old World wines that were the perfect complement to food; they weren’t better or worse than those from California, just a different style.

In 2015, I joined Andis Wines in the Sierra Foothills. My ultimate goal was to use those memories to close the bridge between what I used to drink and what we’re able to make here. It’s not easy, and it never will be, but we’ve gotten closer and closer year after year as we continue to pursue perfection.

I have visited locales in over 35 states over the past several years, from northern Michigan and Houston to Honolulu and Richmond, Virginia. I’ve ventured into hundreds of restaurants and wine bars with the purpose of selling Andis Wines, and it has been a journey! Almost every time I sat down with a potential buyer or exchanged a phone call or email, it seemed as though there was a preconceived perception of our wine, and it made me feel like I had something to prove. I wondered, “Why are people so skeptical and scared to try our wines from this region?”

It took me years to understand that the answer was in the history of what we used to be. We were “cursed by the knowledge” they had about our region, and the only way to break that spell was to make extraordinary wines. Opinions are hard to change in a short time, but it can be done.

So here it is the result of our dedication to five years of vineyard research to thwart the curse and equip people with new knowledge of the beautifully balanced, high-quality wines emerging from the Sierra Foothills. Painted Fields Curse of Knowledge is not just another red blend from another winery—it contains the authentic fruit of our labor.

Made in partnership with Philippe Melka and Maayan Koschitzky, two industry heavyweights, the wine is our first Bordeaux-style red blend; it comprises 45% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Cabernet Franc, 18% Malbec, and 7% Merlot and aged 18 months in 20% new French oak barrels to create the perfect harmony between fruit and oak.
—Lorenzo Muslia

Andis Wines 2019 Painted Fields Curse of Knowledge, Sierra Foothills ($25)
A powerhouse wine that effortlessly releases red and blue fruit into a stream of violets and mountain brush. Fine acidity leans into an inner meatiness that keeps it as fresh as it is bold and complex. Floral and fruit aromatics persist through the finish.
93 points —Meridith May, SOMM Journal

Owl Boxes

 

When visiting Andis Wines, do you notice the white boxes sitting on poles positioned throughout the vineyards? Part of our sustainability program involves using birds of prey to control the rodent population.

As you walk through the vineyards, you will notice small holes in the ground, typically caused by gophers and voles. Voles will eat roots and bark and can be harmful to grape vines, and controlling their populating is critical as a pair can produce 100 baby voles in a year.

As you view the Andis Estate Vineyard, you will see owl boxes, those white boxes perched on tall poles. Owls will find these boxes, create a nest, usually in winter and early spring, and have their young. All four boxes on the property have been used. A family of owls can hunt as much as 3,000 moles a year. By May, the baby owls are gone, and the boxes remain empty until the following year. Eating so many voles, gophers, and even rabbits create quite a mess with bones stacking up, so we must clean the boxes out after harvest in preparation for the next season.

Janis Akuna, Vintner