July 9, 2025 · 4 min read
A running list. Most of them are unprintable. The printable ones are still pretty good.
Russ talks while he stirs. He has always talked while he stirs. The fermenter does not care, the wine does not care, and most of the time I am not even in the room — but the talking happens regardless, and over the years I started writing some of it down on a yellow legal pad we keep on the workbench.
What follows is a partial, lightly edited transcript. Names of innocent third parties have been redacted. The wine in question was usually a Cabernet.
On the craft
“Stirring is just sitting down with extra steps.”
“Anyone who says they have a 'stirring technique' is either lying or selling you something.”
“If the airlock isn't bubbling, you have either killed the yeast or invented a new kind of wine. Both are bad.”
On other people's wine
“It's not bad. It just tastes like somebody made it on a deadline.”
“Anything you'd describe as 'jammy' should be on a piece of toast, not in a glass.”
“Two-buck Chuck is fine. Two-buck Chuck has never pretended to be anything other than two-buck Chuck. That's more than I can say for most of the bottles at this dinner party.”
On winemaking philosophy
“The wine knows what it wants to do. Our job is mostly to not screw that up.”
“There are two kinds of patience: the kind where you wait, and the kind where you don't open the carboy at week three to 'check on it.' Most people only have the first kind.”
“Every batch is a conversation with a previous version of yourself. Sometimes that guy was an idiot.”
On me, specifically
“Todd, if you keep hovering I am going to rack this directly into your shirt.”
“You are not helping. You are watching. Those are different verbs.”
“If you tell me one more time that the hydrometer 'looks about right' I am revoking your basement privileges.”
And the one we put on a t-shirt
“Backup wine is the only wine that has never disappointed me. It has only ever shown up.”
There are about two hundred more of these in the notebook. We'll do another round when Russ does another batch, which by the calendar means sometime in the next three weeks.