And, a first amaro label

The height of self indulgence. Maybe the bitterest herb in the Feb. amaro is centaury - supposedly used by Centaur Chiron to treat his own wound from that nasty poisonous arrow of Hercules. That didn't work out so well, but the herb got named. So, why not, Centaury Amaro. The image is by Donato Creti, "The Education of Achilles by Chiron" 1714 Oil on canvas Musei Civici d'Arte Antica, Bologna.

Oh, hell, later that same afternoon - here's another:

Feb. 2009 Amari, step 2

The grain alcohol has been strained, and the herbs that were in it have been transferred to the vermouth / sugar mixture. The alcohol is a red brown color (lower left of the image). Can't guess whether the vermouth will retain the milkiness that's in the photo here - it did not have that before adding the herbs.

We'll be away next week when the step 3 should happen, so this steeping step will last a day or two longer than called for.

Obama Sauvignon labels for B & L

Okiedoke. B asked if I could cook these up. Took me a while to get my head into it. Here are two variations on a theme, b&w. Might be nice to color the wreaths. Even hand color them after printing. (click for full sized images)

Amaro me, Dr. Memory

Started on the Amaro recipe at about.com. The hard to get herbs all came from Aphrodisia, and the grain alcohol and vermouth from Slope Cellars. Since the recipe is silent on amounts for the roots, I used 5 grams f each, and where I had dried herbs rather than fresh, I used a teaspoon. And where I has leaves instead of root, I winged it. So:

• Lemon balm 1 tsp
• 5 leaves fresh sage
  
• 10 leaves fresh rosemary
• Centaury plant 1 tsp. dried
• 15 juniper berries
• 5 cloves, check
• 1/2 inch cinnamon stick
  
• Orris root 5g.
• Calmus root 5g.
• Gentian root 5 g.
• Blessed thistle I have is dried leaves, not root, and I am using 2 tsp
• Milk thistle 1 tsp dried
  

Step 1 is complete. Sugar is dissolving in vermouth, herbs are steeping in grain alcohol. More work a couple of times in the next week or two, then 8 months of waiting.

2007 labels

B has asked for me to post the 2007 labels. Here are most of them - there are others that it would be hard to imagine fitting onto a bottle. All jpeg or gif, all web-safe colors. When I print these I do them on plain paper, usually from a text document with the images in a table. Word or zoho or whatever.

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Obama Sauvignon

Laura and I bottled the first of our three cboys--yield of 25 bottles. We'll bottle the other two cboys this weekend. We tasted it, and I tasted it before the bottling with Steve and Lori. Pretty good. Great color, and a nice array of notes--chocolate, pepper, and a little bit of plum. I said faint cherry to Laura--who responded correctly, plum. It's intriguing to think of how it will drink in a year or two--at this point it's just a little more than three months old.

Aged of Re-Zin

I've been wanting to do this for a while. Took 3 liters of the 2006 Zin-Alicante, unbottled it, put it together in a jug with a bit more of the Barrel Mill medium toast oak, a bit of meta, and put an airlock on it. Half wanting to just plain experiment with more oaking, and half wanting to have some of that vintage with less fizz. And it'll give me a good reason to make a new label and a bad pun.