FrederickCooke:
Hello everybody! Welcome to CuisineNet Live. Tonight we will be chatting with Lynn Penner-Ash, winemaker and president of Rex Hill Vineyards. Ask away about winemaking, Oregon wines, matching food and wine, or whatever you like.

FrederickCooke:
We will be giving away three Rex Hill wine openers at the end of the chat. Anyone who entered their email address before entering the chat room is eligible for the random drawing. Good luck!

FridaMepMep:
"Winemaker" sounds sort of vague to me. I imagine that the wine-making process is very complex, involving a lot of people. What exactly does the winemaker do?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
What exactly do I do? Well, in the vineyard year, I start with deciding how the pruning will be done, how many buds on the cane, and that goes all though the season -- what kind of crop we'll leave on the vine. And then we start sampling the vineyard sites, tasting the grapes. Once I feel that the grapes are mature enough, I get the crew in to pick 'em. And then once the grapes are in here, I decide what kind of process, what type of yeast, how long the fermentation will take, the type of barrels the wine eventually goes into, how long it stays in those barrels, and when it's ready to be bottled.

Lynn Penner-Ash:
And you finish up, and you start all over again.

FridaMepMep:
How long does that process take, from vine to bottle?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
White Riesling can take eight weeks; Pinot Noir can take up to 18 months before you finish it up and have it in the bottle.

Kenny:
Hi Lynn, is there a particular kind of wine that Rex Hill specializes in?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
Well, we specialize mostly in Pinot Noir. Over 60% of our production is Pinot Noir.

Gary C:
Hi Lynn -- you have just finished harvesting 630 tons of grapes. Do you have any idea yet how this year's wines will turn out ?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
I have a really good idea how this year's wines will turn out. I mean, something could always change between now and bottling -- I like to think of wine as a living product, so there's always something that can catch you off guard or by surprise. But truly, I'm fairly confident in my abilities and we've got some really nice wines downstairs. I don't think it'll be a reserve year, but there will be some very nice wines.

Frederick:
What do you mean, a "reserve year?"

Lynn Penner-Ash:
Rex Hill has a policy of only producing reserves in truly exceptional years; I think that 1997 will be a good year, but not an exceptional year.

Kevin Staff:
Why did you change your major in college to enology?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
That's a good question! Too bad my dad's logged on! Well, when I was at UC Davis, a friend of mine got me a job at ="http://www.dchandon.com/index.html">Domaine Chandon on the crush deck, graveyard crew, and we just had a blast. We worked all night and got up in the morning and partied, and I thought, "This is a lot of fun."

Lynn Penner-Ash:
I got a job offer after that and moved on and really enjoyed it, and it blossomed from there.

Ender:
How long have you been in the industry? What changes have taken place in the time you have been there?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
Oh boy. I've been in the wine industry -- it was my seventeenth vintage this year. Scary!

Lynn Penner-Ash:
The industry, number one, is much more receptive to women in the position of winemaker, etc. In the beginning, people were hesitant to hire a woman to do this job. They feared I couldn't lift enough.

Lynn Penner-Ash:
And in the ten years I've been here at Rex Hill, it's been amazing to see how people have begun to accept Oregon wine. Before, people wouldn't even taste it; now they're really interested. People are beginning to see that it's a viable industry up here.

Gary C:
How did you get interested in wine-making, and who inspired you ?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
Well, I got interested after spending that first harvest at Domaine-Chandon. A gentleman by the name of Gino Zepponi felt that I had some talent, and he actually found me my next job from Domaine-Chandon and sent me on my way.

Gary C:
Which vintage are you most proud of since joining Rex Hill ?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
Oh, I always like to say the 1992 and the 1995. Those are the years I was pregnant with my children!

Novinha:
My friend's grandmother used to make raisin wine. I was just a girl at the time, but I remember it tasting very, very sweet, delicious, like candy. Is raisin wine really anything one makes, or was that just a crazy grandma recipe? Do you know how I might duplicate it?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
I think that's a crazy grandma recipe. It probably wasn't fermented, as we ferment the grapes here; instead, probably alcohol was added to it.

[editor's note: We found a recipe!]

Kevin Staff:
Are their visual clues that a wine has not been stored correctly when you select it from the store shelf?

Lynn Penner-Ash:
That's a good question! Probably the first visual clue you'd get is seepage from the cork, so much so that it's coming past the capsule, trickling down the side of the bottle. White wines, if they're visibly oxidized, very dark in color even when they're very young in age -- that's a good clue. And with red wines it's more hit or miss. There's really no other visual clue other than the seepage, or if the cork is pushed.