Tank Tasting with Nikki Auger, Winemaker at Taylor Brooke Winery

When I map out visits to CT’s wineries, I often like to find unique and interesting activities that are special or not offered all the time, so that I can experience something new when I make my trip to a location I may have been to in the past.

Recently, I noticed that Taylor Brooke Winery, in Woodstock, was offering a “Tank Tasting and Tour” with their winemaker, Nikki Auger every Saturday from 12-3 pm during January.

And, as Taylor Brooke is participating in the CT Winter Wine Trail passport, I couldn’t resist aligning my trip to get a stamp in my passport with such a fun program! So, I signed up online and headed to Taylor Brooke on the third Saturday in January for my 2 pm time slot.

When I arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to see so many others had signed up to participate in the tank tasting as well. While we waited for Nikki to finish with the group before us, I paid for my spot – only $25 to taste the wines and learn more about them, including trying wine that is not even bottled and sold yet – and took some photos and videos of the tasting room, while of course petting Addison, the winery dog.

Once Nikki was done with her previous tour group, she warmly greeted all of us – there were nine of us in total – and we followed her to the tank room.

We were all provided with a wine glass as Nikki began pouring wine for us and explaining that 2022 had been a really good year for CT winemakers; a unicorn year per se. Due to things like rainfall and temperatures, the grapes turned out very well, as opposed to it not being as good a year for farmers who harvest vegetables. Harvest was in September and October of 2022. For those two months, Nikki and her team work 16-hour days.

Nikki told us about MOG – matter other than grapes such as stones, leaves, etc. – that can get into the tanks and affect the flavors and composition of the wine during the winemaking process.

When asked if Taylor Brooke Winery blends grapes, she let us know that blending grapes makes the wine more complex and provides opportunities for interesting flavors.

As we started to sip on each wine that Nikki poured us, we got to learn a bit about the wine and understand the differences in aroma, color and taste from a newer wine – not bottled yet – to a wine that was already bottled and on the shelves.  

Nikki would call it “baby” wine if it was from 2022 vs. “mature” wine if it was older. She had us taste Cayuga (a white wine) from 2021 and also one from 2022 to help us see some of the ways the wine changes as it matures, goes from one stage of fermentation to the next. 

At the winery they have tanks that are 48 gallons, as well as one 1000 gallon tank; 44 tanks in total. She let us know that there are no oak barrels at Taylor Brooke. They can be quite costly and can only really use them three times so that being said, if they had them, it would cost quite a bit to keep replacing them and then they’d have to charge quite a bit of money for their wines to help offset that and… that’s not good for them or their customers! 

So, they use an oak alternative which is a netted bag that has oak logs – they look like Lincoln logs for those who are familiar with the popular kid’s toy --and they help dial in the flavors of the wood while helping soften the reds, which can often have harsh flavors without the offset of the oak. We learned that they use American, French and Hungarian oak. The wood is coarse and it’s an oxygen exchange where the wine sucks in the flavors of the wood to help with the varying levels of oak. French oak has 12 different char levels and can help speed up the process of fermentation which produces distinctive results. Oak is used in both red and white wines at Taylor Brooke. 

In addition to the Cayuga, we tasted “baby foch” a red wine, as well as a more mature version that will be bottled in mid February that has already been oaked; it had cocoa powder, toasty and leathery flavors. We noticed those flavors in the mature version over the “baby” red. The oak had “popped” the hidden flavors. 

We also tasted two roses – one less mature and the other one was older. One was a french style rose made in the Saignee method (to bleed) and one was made from free run juice - both from the St. Croix grape. 

The last wine in our tasting was the Hop Harvest White which is a collaboration between Taylor Brooke Winery and Taylor Brooke Brewery (Nikki’s husband, Ralph, is the owner and Brew Master at Taylor Brooke Brewery) and features Citra hops which gives this wine the aromas of a hoppy beer and the flavors of a dry white wine. 

For the aging process, we learned that typically the white grapes need at least six months in the tanks, but 9-18 months for red wines, and she explained that fruit wines mature quicker. Tanks have to be emptied by August because of the other grapes that will be coming in from harvest.

Another winemaking process we discussed was “cold crashing.” Cold crashing forces tartaric acid to drop out in the tank so that finished wines can be refrigerated without sediment settling to the bottom of the bottle (yeast and other sediment gets fined out earlier in the life of the wine.) Tartaric crystals in bottles means the wine was NOT cold crashed or cold crashed without success (this happens sometimes.) 

The four person staff, including Nikki, Alex Zimmer - Farm Manager/Vineyard Worker, Fraser Davis - Assistant Vineyard Manager/Facilities Maintenance, Matt Schwab - CellarMaster do try to taste the wine once a week, but sitting and tasting is not something this very active wine team likes to do – they prefer to be on the move and on their feet doing the tasks they usually perform on a weekly basis. 

Nikki joked with us that after Harvest and tasting wine so often, that sometimes they want to drink something other than wine. As the industry saying goes, “it takes a lot of beer to make good wine.”  

I’m still dreaming about the wine I tasted and the great time I had on this special tank tasting tour. Thank you to Nikki for sharing your expertise (and wine) with us! And thanks to Linda, Alex and Kali for their help and hospitality when I visited Taylor Brooke Winery. I can’t wait to return soon!  

Have you been to this winery? Let me know in the comments below!