-images-0.jpg)
Stephen J. Casscles is a man of many talents. Lawyer. Vineyardist. Winemaker. Hybridizer. Author. The Johnny Appleseed of Hybrid Grapes. He is a published author on two continents, and has spoken at dozens and dozens of colleges, universities, botanical organizations, and clubs, historical associations, as well as wine industry events all across the east coast.
So it is not surprising that he has taken on the vocabulary of wine as well. Below, Casscles himself offers the reasoning behind putting out this new wheel. But to my mind, this is a perfect tool for wine professionals - for sales folks, tasting room associates, to winemakers, to writers, to sommeliers and other wait staff. To my reasoning, it's not as stripped down and bare as some other wheels, which might be more consumer friendly. Instead, it offers a number of other descriptors and suggestions for flavor profiles one might experience. Again, I think it's perfect for folks in the professional space, and uber enthusiasts.
FROM STEPHEN J. CASSCLES:
About 20 years ago, I started to want to seriously evaluate wines in a systemic manner so that I could include those wine/grape descriptions in a book I was starting to write on Cool Climate/Heritage varieties for North America. This book was published in 2015, and contained over 200 different grape varieties. These varieties and the wines that they produced had many different flavor profiles and aspects of balance, body, and mouth feel.. I was searching for a methodology to accurately evaluate wine and include descriptors that readers could use to understand these wines. That book Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Regions was first published in 2015 and sold out in a few years. We are now selling our 2nd edition of that book that has 2 new chapters on grape varieties bred in New England.
There were several charts or aroma wheels that were a model for a good first step to systemically evaluate wines. However, I found that they were deficient in the descriptors to be used for wine and not organized by the kinds of fruits that were being cited as being in the wine. So over the years, I greatly expanded the fruit descriptors I used for my own wine descriptions and started to create my own Wine Evaluation Schematic. More importantly, most evaluators and other wine evaluation systems put too much concentration on aromas/flavors, and not enough on wine texture, and energy on the palate. This Wine Evaluation Schematic brings in considerations such as texture, body, mouth feel, appearance, finesse, and how the wine is integrated into one unified taste experience. Also, most charts did not give guidelines to give a wine an "overall score", so that the evaluator could go back years later to rate that wine to compared to other wines that the evaluator has scored.
I kept revising and adding new categories to my ever evolving Wine Schematic. As I evaluated more wines, I searched for new descriptions for the wines that I was tasting and evaluating. So, this Schematic was a "living document" that I kept changing and improving for many years as I continued to write my books and articles on grape culture, grape varieties, and wines. Recently, I have had a few health scares, and I thought it best to say "pencils up" and to finalize my Wine Evaluation Schematic, obtain a copyright for it and now distribute it to my colleagues.
I would also point out that this Wine Evaluation Schematic is a starting point for each evaluator. It is merely a guide to help other wine writers, wine educators, and those who either want to or do appreciate wine. Please feel free to modify it as you like to fit your needs and please add your own terms and descriptors. It is my intent to have this Wine Evaluation Schematic be a living document that to be revised, modified, or amended as each user sees fit. As I drink and evaluate more wines, I too am thinking of how to revise this Wine Evaluation Schematic to incorporate items and descriptors that I had not thought of before. I hope people like my work and that it will help them in their work be it to help describe a grape variety, a varietal grape or other fruit wine, blended wine or co-fermented beer or cider beverage that has grapes in it.
-images-1.jpg)
Stephen J. Casscles is the author of Grapes of the Hudson Valley and Other Cool Climate Grapes 2nd Edition and The Grapes of Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea. Stephen comes from an old Hudson River Valley fruit growing family and worked at Benmarl Vineyards in Marlboro, NY from 1973 to 1986 where he worked with French-American grape varieties. Stephen has had a long career as an attorney for the NY State Senate and the NY State Department of Health. Stephen wrote 27 laws related to the production, distribution, and sale of wine, spirits, beer, and cider, in addition to laws related to his legal specialty of insurance, health care financing, municipal finance, and racing law.
In 1990, Stephen established Cedar Cliff Vineyards and Nursery in Athens NY where he evaluates 19th century Hudson Valley and Boston’s North Shore heritage grape varieties and other cool climate grapes. Stephen was a winemaker at Hudson-Chatham Winery in Ghent, New York, from 2007 to 2020, where he made wines from French-American & heritage hybrid grape varieties. From 2021 to 2023, he was appointed director/winemaker of Milea Estate Vineyard’s Hudson Valley Heritage Grape Project. He now works at Dear Native Grapes Winery, in Walton, NY.
He is an award-winning winemaker who has been covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, New York Post, Wine Enthusiast, Forbes Magazine, Hugh Johnson’s Pocket Wine Book (2021), the Albany Times-Union, and the Hartford Courant.
Stephen lecturers on wine, grape cultivation, and nineteenth-century American horticulture throughout the East Coast. In addition to his full-length works on grape varieties, grape cultivation, and 19th-century horticulture, he is a contributor to academic and trade journals for UMass Amherst, the New Jersey Horticultural Society, and Arnold Arboretum (Harvard). He also advises and lectures at the Fermentation Sciences Program at SUNY at Cobleskill and has a working relationship with many in the Korean wine industry.
You can read more about the new wheel at WPAWINEWRITE:
Previous profile of Stephen J. Casscles:
Casscles Wins Birchenall Award 2023:
Recent Review from The Cork Report of Dear Native Grapes Wine Made With Casscles: