(upbeat music) - My name is Alphonse de Klerk.

I'm the owner, founder and winemaker at Rolling Bay Winery.

We're located in Kitsap Peninsula on Bainbridge island.

Bainbridge is a cool little place.

Just relax, slow down a little bit and enjoy yourself.

I feel very privileged to be able to go to a second act.

I'm really glad that I did.

In other words, I could have said, oh I'm done with this whole wine making business, but there was something still inside of me that kind, we gotta take it to the next level.

I started making wine in my basement in west Seattle.

I did that for 20 years.

Found out they were teaching wine making classes at south Seattle Community College at the Wine Academy, I said at that's for me.

So I did that for two years and bonded Rolling Bay Winery in 2007.

I made whites from 86, but they're so difficult to make, because the role of a white winemaker is to preserve aromas and fruit flavors and protect from oxidation.

So there's nothing in a white wine, right?

There's nothing there.

The red wines, you can slap those around all you want to, you can have little nuances of things that happen to that wine that they may be not flawed would then distract from the wine.

Role of a red wine maker is extraction, extraction, extraction.

Phenolic extraction using again heat solvent as, a solvent would be the alcohol to grab that during fermentation.

And of course, you know you got the oak influence as well, and a micro oxidation during that period of time.

We don't bottle as much in spring as we do in August.

But it's still fun.

(cheerful music) So we'll all be in position.

One person is gonna empty bottles of wine onto the table.

That's all they do.

Empty those boxes, boom, boom.

Somebody else loads in the carousel, which turns around in a circle.

Somebody else will put a carousel, just fills the bottles up.

And then somebody takes it off the carousel.

And as soon as you pop it into the corking machine, pops the cork in then the carousel will rotate around one.

From there, it goes to Martha.

She'll wipe it off.

From there, it goes into the labeling machine.

Somebody pops it in the label, puts the label on there.

And then you go to shipping and receiving, somebody pops it into a box, right?

And then you got the pallet, somebody's building the pallet.

From the pallet, this is my job we're done with the pallet, we'll shrink wrap it and we'll market with pallet A, B, C, or D whatever, and what's on it, and then we park it somewhere.

Not a scientist, obviously, but it's kind of, no matter what your job is to kind put on a different set of brains for part of the time.

There are some things that you have to, as a winemaker you have to know.

The last few years have been really hot.

In 2015 was a record heat wave in Washington state.

And it went way up above everything else.

2020, 21, it went actually above the 2015, which is scary.

Everything was light and tonnage.

What happens is that the moisture that's in the berry actually respires out, sometimes goes back into the leaves or back into the plant.

Straight the alcohol levels go up 'cause the sugars remain the same.

The berry to moisture ratio has changed.

So it's gonna be an interesting evolution.

(bright music) Here are three basic ideas to think about when you're hosting a wine tasting, this is done by most sommeliers.

Down to the very basic is sight, smell and taste.

Let's start with sight.

You can see that three glasses are different colored wines.

Let's pull up a Grenache.

It's a little bit lighter in color.

Pull up this Cabernet Sauvignon, it's a little bit medium to medium plus in color.

And this is a 2021 Malbec, look at how opaque that is.

So the next thing we do is smell the wine.

A lot of times you wanna smell it before you swirl.

It changes it.

A couple of things we wanna make sure it's sound, but we also want to experience the fruit coming out of the wine.

It's gotta lot light berry notes, little cherry notes, and a little bit of what we call leather tobacco.

And now we're gonna talk about taste.

We're looking for, is it acidic?

Is it tannic?

Is it stringent?

So other things that are connected to your tongue that will give you feedback as to, is it youthful?

Does it have a long finish?

So try this at home, invite your friends, have 'em bring a bottle and maybe a snack 'cause you always wanna eat something with your wine tasting.

So have fun.

When people come in, and everybody's having this wonderful time, for me that's the reason why I make wine.

That really does a lot for me when I, I tell people that too, that when they come in, and they enjoy themselves, it's like, this is so cool.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Made There is made possible by the generous support of viewers like you and Visit Kitsap Peninsula.

Thank you to Made There supporting sponsor, the Greater Kitsap Chamber.