Episode Details

Beverage Chronicles Brown Ale Basics, Champlain Valley Wines, and Morning Coffee with Kyle Mozden Gary Monterosso makes the case for brown ale as a gentle entry point to darker beer and looks at when to drink coffee. Robin Shreeves talks with Kyle Mozden, director of winemaking at Rolling Hills Estate Winery, about cold-hardy grapes and building a new wine region in New York's Champlain Valley. A Brown Ale Gateway to Dark Beer Gary Monterosso opens the program with a case for brown ale, aimed at listeners who like the comfort of dark beer but are not ready for a porter or stout. He describes the flavors he has in mind: toasted bread, caramel, toffee, cocoa, and a gentle nuttiness, usually without the intense roast or coffee bitterness people expect from stout. The secret, he says, lies in the malt, which is toasted or kilned rather than heavily roasted, giving a deep amber-to-brown beer that often drinks smoothly with moderate alcohol. Monterosso points to English examples such as Newcastle Brown Ale and Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale, then to American versions like Bell's Best Brown Ale and Cigar City Maduro Brown Ale, which he says usually bring richer chocolate and a firmer finish. He suggests pairing brown ale with roasted chicken, barbecue, burgers, or sharp cheddar, and calls it the middle ground between amber ale and porter. Cold-Hardy Grapes in the Champlain Valley Robin Shreeves takes over from Gary Monterosso for a visit to Rolling Hills Estate Winery in New York's Champlain Valley, where she sits down with Kyle Mozden, the winery's director of winemaking. She asks what grapes he works with, and he lists Marquette, Frontenac, Petite Pearl, Frontenac gris, and La Crescent, plus Sabrevois, a variety Shreeves says she has seen in rosé but had never heard of before her visit. Mozden explains why the winery avoids the vinifera grapes familiar to Cabernet Sauvignon fans, saying they would not survive the region's winters, which can dip to twelve or thirteen degrees below zero and would likely kill vinifera vines in a single season. The crosses of American varieties, he says, were largely developed at the University of Minnesota, with one coming from Wisconsin, and they carry the cold hardiness needed for a northern climate. Mozden adds that the hardiness of these grapes is more indicative of the region in general. From Napa Cabernet to a New Region Shreeves asks what drew Kyle Mozden to leave Napa after more than twenty years, and Mozden, a self-described California kid, admits the region is very cold. He says the winery's vision is about growing the region rather than simply being a winery, and points to the Champlain Valley of New York, an appellation he calls very young, established in 2016. Mozden describes wanting to help build an identity for the area and to support its agricultural community, which he calls salt-of-the-earth people who work hard. After years of making big, fruity, high-alcohol Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, he says he felt he was making the same wine over and over, trying to make it bigger and bolder. Here, he says, the varietals carry no established style, so he is not copying anyone and gets to relearn how to grow grapes and make wine. Shreeves calls it the Wild East, and Mozden agrees. Building a Region and a Winery Visit Mozden says what excites him most is that the Champlain Valley has few wineries and no settled winemaking style, so the story has not yet been written. He compares the moment to Napa in the 1940s, when families were the pioneers defining a region, and says he gets to bring visitors along on the discovery. Asked what people find when they visit Rolling Hills, Mozden describes arriving in February to two feet of fresh snow, and the quiet of an undeveloped landscape which he says is shielded by the Adirondack Preserve, described as more than a million acres of forest. He was surprised to find a high-end winemaking facility with a bottling line, tanks, and barrels inside a building that loo