October 20, 2011 —
In my previous blog, Accelerate the Style and Quality of Your Wine Exponentially , we talked about The Other 46 having relatively very few years to gather and review historical methods and processes to pass down through the generations, but that there was an alternative to making just one wine annually from each lot of grapes and that was through the use of micro-fermentation. New wineries or new winemakers can accelerate the process of crafting better wines each year in pursuit of producing a consistently great wine year after year.
Using micro-fermentation, the winemaker can create and control an environment of multi-procedural experiments to determine the quality and stylist differences that each of those small changes will make on the wine he’s making today. Typical standard procedure for making a red wine: harvest, crush, cold soak (for some), warm them up after a cold soak, pitch the yeast, ferment until most of the sugar is gone, press them off, put it in barrels, age the grapes in barrels for 12 months, rack them into tanks, blend them back together in tanks, clarify, filter, bottle and let the bottles age for 6 or more months, and then sell the wine.
Here are a few ways you can experiment:
1. Separate out a small amount of the grapes before crush – 100lbs. Don’t crush, but do de-stem. Set them aside in a small tank. Put them through carbonic maceration for 3 days, then crush & ferment with the standard process.
2. Take another 100lbs and crush normally. But during fermentation, instead of pressing at the normal point, leave the skins and allow them to ferment with skins for 4 weeks (manage headspace with inert gas to prevent oxidation and microbial activity) before pressing. Follow standard process for everything else.
3. Take another 100 lbs and crush normally, except immediately after the crush, add 4 grams of oak chips per gallon, and follow standard process.
Note, on each of these batches only ONE step has been changed. If done properly, the volume is is small enough that they are not taking up too much additional space and could be stored with the rest of your wine, or in a lab area.
When it’s time to bottle your primary wine, you can go back to these now and compare your control wine (primary) to each experiment separately to see what the impact of each change was. It is best to do this tasting with a group of people to get input. Also taste blind!
Here are a few other experiments to try:
1. Bottle a few cases unfiltered. Set them aside to compare to the filtered in a year.
2. Set aside 3 barrels of wine. Bottle one barrel at 6 months. One after a year and one after 9 months.
3. After 3 months pull a sample and bottle, cork and set aside. Do the same in 6 months and in 9 months.
At the end of the full trial period, compare all four, including your main lot, and see the dramatic impact these differences make. What you are doing is comparing side-by-side. You know exactly what you did to each one.
IMPORTANT: Do not rely on memory! Do not drink at the time you bottle or make your pull and think you will be able to tell the difference when you sample in three months. You must wait to drink them all at the same time to have a true comparison. If you just left it in the barrel and sampled it every three months, you are assuming you can remember your previous tastings accurately. Tons of notes cannot reproduce the taste. Tasting side by side you pick up on subtle nuances and differences that you may not have noticed if they weren’t all right there together.
Separation and Comparison:
Another interesting experiment you can do is in the vineyard. As you are approaching the approximate time of harvest, harvest 100 pounds of grapes a week earlier. Then leave 100 pounds of grapes on the vine AFTER harvest and then pull these a week or a couple of weeks later. Make your wine from each of these batches the same. After the wine has aged, compare the wines to your branded wine.
Use these harvest methods to compare back to previous vineyard practices. In years when the vineyard has challenges (rain, drought, heat, hail, etc) if you do this, you’ll learn more about your vineyard and the significant impact you can make to get the best out of your grapes. This is the kind of historical knowledge old growing regions continue to use to consistently make good wines.
Scientific Experimentation:
Don’t over do it. It’s nothing complex. One change per batch from your standard process. Take copious notes. Also, it makes sense to do this over multiple years. Compare year over year what happens with different harvests. Example: If you determine extended maceration could increase quality in one year, it could also decrease the wine quality if there was too much rain that year. It is not a blanket “change.” It’s about determining what you can learn about your area, the grapes grown and producing better quality wine over time.
Common arguments against micro-fermentation:
1. The batches are too small to actually bottle and sell.
2. 300 lbs of grapes are not being sold and I need to sell as much as I can.
3. I am the only one doing everything in my small winery.
4. I don’t have the space.
5. Is it really worth all of that?
True. I got it. But YES, it IS really worth it! And yes, it may take more time and may cost you more today. But it’s a minor cost you are paying today to accelerate your winemaking knowledge in order to create a consistent, high quality wine year after year, as well as advance the growth and awareness of your winery and wine region. And it will actually save you time in the long run. When challenges arise, you’ll know what to do during those years. You won’t have to fix problems in the winery that may have been prevented in the vineyard. You may be new, but soon, you’ll be whizzing by some of the already established wineries that are stuck in standard operating procedure.
The big guys all did this as new wineries and continue because they can’t afford not to. Names you know such as Martini, Mondavi, and Berenger were pioneering Napa vintners sharing ideas, doing experiments, tackling problems and collaborating to create quality wines and elevate the status of the Napa region. You can do this too!
Even if you only do one experiment per year, you are accelerating your progress exponentially. If you do three per year, you are doing it even faster. And this is also where the difference can be made in making reserva and special release wines, that can be sold at 2-3 times more than your normal wine.
Good is the enemy of Great!
Controlled experimentation is the difference between good and great. The reason many wineries’ wine is only good and not great is because the winemaking process in place is “good enough.” If you are making a good wine now, but want to make a great wine, something has to change to get there, right?
When we think of old world wines that are considered great wines (Eiswein, Tokaji, Port, Champagne, etc.), they are almost always the result of an unplanned change in the winemaking process that made a dramatic improvement in the wine. Once that change was identified, a significant amount of work went into perfecting the process, but the change itself was simple (i.e. re-fermenting in the bottle). Through micro-fermentation, you can find those happy accidents now, instead of waiting for an outside force to cause them.
Think beyond your standard operating process. Experiment. Greatness doesn’t just happen. You have to go after it! Have you used micro-fermentation? If so, please share with us what you learned!
Custom solutions for your winery.
Finely crafted wine blends and consulting
(because you’re not a Napa winery!)
Comments
Write a comment: