Making Wine 2-Ageing

As I said in my first post on wine technology, there is an ongoing discussion of wine technology and tradition; and now a new factor is in play-so-called truth in labeling laws and regulations. As we continue in the series, many issues will be addressed; for now we’ll talk about how wine ages and techniques traditionelle and techniques moderne.

Texture, taste, color, and sediment deposits are factors in red wine ageing. Pigmented tannins, combinations of tannins and anthocyanins, provide mouthfeel, texture, and color in red wines. These components, called phenolics, are produced, or rather extracted or leeched, when the wine grapes are pressed. Early on the chemical reactions are based on these pheloics’ reactions with acid in the wine. As the wine ages, either in cask or bottle, these reactions are influenced by the presence of oxygen introduced into the wine when pressed, transferred, racked, or bottled. As time goes by, good title for a song, huh?, these different chemicals come together, agglomerate, and eventually get too heavy to stay in suspension in the wine. Hence, we have sediments, changes in color, and changes in taste. This why a fifteen year old fine Bordeaux needs decanting: the sediments are the harsher components of the wine that have dropped out, producing a wine with more integrated flavors, a harmonious texture, mouthfeel, and a slightly brown tinged color from the deep purple where the wine started when it was born.

The traditional method for ageing red wines is in the cask with added time in the bottle, sometimes for decades with potential for a great wine to achieve a century mark. Or more.

Based on the results of this ageing process, if like and kind results can be achieved in a fraction of the time, should modern techniques be used to achieve the desired result? Winemakers have available methods for filtering solids to remove bitter components from the wine. Oak flavor and nuance can be achieved by using oak staves, chips, and, some say, oak saw dust. By a process of micro-oxygenation, winemakers can hasten chemical processes that used to take months or years. This is where a wine is saturated with micron size molecules of oxygen, which filter through the wine to replicate the more traditional ageing in barrels.

Ageing can also be hastened by storage at higher temperatures than in traditional cellars. Again, cellaring was to hold wines at a constant temperature to allow the ageing process to occur. If you cellar your wines for five years, and I micro-oxygenate my wines and store at a higher temperature for one year, and we have almost the same result, is one process authentic and the other dishonest? Is one method old fashioned and the other making use of sound wine making technology?

If I use modern technology, should I be required to say this on my wine label? For example: “This wine was micro-oxygenated for six days, thirteen hours, seven minutes and four seconds before being aged in non-reactive vats with oak staves five cm thick, two meters long, and in a paddle array of five staves for three months, two days, five hours and six minutes?” You get the idea.

If aged traditionally, whatever that means, should producers be required to say like and kind describing in minute detail their processes and cellar environments?

These are not easy questions.

Making Wine, Technology, Taste and Truth in Labeling 1

Making wine, at least the basic process, is the same as it was thousands of years ago. Ripe grapes get trodden, squashed, pressed, whatever, to extract the juice, which is high in sugar, around 20-23% of the total must weight. (Must is winespeak for grape juice to be made into wine.) The wild yeasts on the skins go to work and convert the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Wine!

Needless to say, this basic process evolved across the centuries. Wine making now starts where wine making formerly was complete. What I mean by that is, in the bad old days, there was a minimum of technology, people did not know what fermentation was or what caused it, and if it worked it worked. If it did not work, no vino.

What developed over the centuries is a large body of knowledge about soils, grape varieties, climate, micro-biology, temperature control, and the role many ingredients play in winemaking. This knowledge led to certain techniques which are still evolving. I am speaking here about: the use of wood, in barrels or in other ways; ingredients used in fining or clarifying the wine; micro-oxygenation; speeded up “aging” through temperature control. The list grows and is ever changing.

Many people are familiar with the general processes of wine making: Grapes are pressed, juice collected, fermented, the new wine, sooner or later, is separated from the lees, aged for a time in larger containers, then bottled and either released for sale immediately or cellared for a time until the winemaker determines the wine is ready for release.

Into this basic stream enter many variables. For red wines, one of the most crucial processes is how the winemaker chooses to age the wine. Tradition says that quality reds must be aged for a time in oak barrels, often times new, but generally not more than four seasons old. The reason for this is that oak is a fine grained wood. The barrels allow a certain amount of oxygen into the wine, but not too much, during its barrel aging but prevent excess leakage of the wine out of the barrel. In addition, there are chemicals in the wood that are extracted by the wine which become parts of the consumers perception of taste, texture, and quality.

Now this process, aging in oak, as you may expect, can take a long time. Quality red Bordeaux wines are generally in wood around two years. Rioja Gran Reservas, Chianti Reserva and Barolo and Barbaresco specify different aging requirements in order to achieve the afore mentioned titles. During the time of barrel aging many changes occur which can also be affected by temperature variations.

Some questions now in winemaking are: If an analysis of the specific results of barrel aging can be identified, and they can be replicated with the use of modern technology, can the results be the same? If the taste and texture are the same, is the wine being manipulated and the public being ripped off? Or is the winemaker simply making use of technology that can replace older but perhaps outdated traditional methods? Are the traditional techniques simply moving into a contemporary mode of execution? Are these new techniques simply part of an evolutionary process?

The traditionalists have substantial investments in their way of making wine. One French oak barrel, a barrique used for cellaring, can cost $1000. American white oak can cost $600-$800 per barrel. There is time involved as well. If it takes three or four years before release of a traditionally made wine, and someone can have the same results using modern technology, the cash flow situation has vastly improved. A winemaker who can sell top quality wine after two years certainly has less financial strain than were he or she required to wait four or five years to release the same wine.

For the modern winemaker the investment in technology is also substantial. Food processing equipment is expensive and there are many pitfalls before the finished product is ready.

In the next part of our mini-series we will look at some specific techniques and how they were used traditionally and how they have been modernized.

Do You Know Who’s in Your Family Tree?

When I say “family tree” I am not really referring to your more...interesting (?) distant, or not so distant, relatives. We all know about them! No, what family I am talking about here is the family of the grape; or grapes, actually, as there is more than one family of grapes.

People who make a living from studying vines are called ampelographers, or people who study vines. Vines are climbing plants and what distinguishes them from trees, even old, gnarly vines, is the fact that vines need support to grow. Trees have trunks; vines do not. Grape vines belong to a very large family of climbing plants; included in this large family of climbing plant is Boston ivy. Grapes belong to a genus in this large family; the grape branch of the family tree is known as Vitis.

Within this genus of grapes, there are several species, the most important for wine making being vitis vinifera. Further down the family tree we have individual varieties. These include about one thousand different varieties including cabernet sauvignon, chardonnay, airen, pinot gris, pinot noir, sangiovese and all its clones, etc. Other species of grapes include those native to North America and Asia, none of which, with the possible exception of the Norton, produces wine that is of sufficient quality in taste and aroma to appeal to more than a local audience.

Once we get past the variety, we arrive at the clone level. There are different clones for most grape varieties. These clones are sometimes naturally occurring mutations and sometimes the result of growers working to isolate a set of particular characteristics to develop a clone of a variety that will do well in a certain climate or soil. Clones may exist, or be developed for low rainfall, intense sunshine, arid conditions, and so on.

The vine also has a root or rootstock. This is the part of the vine below the surface. After phylloxera devastated Europe in the 1800’s, vinifera scions, vine tops, were cloned on to American or New World, rootstocks as these rootstocks were already resistant to the mite. The critter was originally from North America. The American vines and phylloxera evolved together. Vitis vinifera had never seen one and had no resistance to its predation.

This was not as simple as it sounds. For a given location a suitable rootstock was needed. Not all rootstocks do well in all kinds of soil. So researchers had to find out what scions, tops, did well on what root stocks. They then needed to find out what soil types were best suited for these rootstocks.

While it is true that wine, or a wine like beverage, can be made from almost any fruit, it is Vitis Vinifera that steals the show for quality wine production around the world.

Chianti and Brunello

What an amazing pair of wines. Chianti everyone knows from endless caricatures of wine bottles wrapped in straw where the straw was worth more than the wine. In this incarnation, the poor SAN GIOVESE grape was subjected to horrendous handling and wine making practices. Rumor has it that the name means “Blood of Jove.” Well, he must have shed lots over the junk that was put in those bottles.

Fortunately, for Jove and all his pals on Mt. Olympus, the condition of Chianti has improved enormously. the growers in Tuscany are now making making quality wines from this wonderful grape, all the way from a simple Chianti to elegant Chianti Classico Riservas.

But hold on a second. Will the real San Giovese step forward? The reason for this is that there are any number of clones of SG thriving in Tuscany. There are so many that a twenty plus year project to identify and name and classify all the clones is still not finished.

So, hop on over to Montalcino for a minute. Anyone heard of Brunello di Montalcino? Brunello is the name of a clone of our old friend San Giovese. He happens to line around the town of Montalcino, hence the name........

It is almost hard to realize that these two wonderful wines are of the same grape. Chianti-medium bodied, fairly acidic, black plums, cherries, black raspberries, tobacco, leather, oak, dirt (this is good), depending on the quality level of the wine tasted.

Brunello-much more full bodied, expensive, redolent of dark cherries, black raspberries, wood, intense plum flavors If one were to taste the two wines side by side, one would notice no more than a passing resemblance between SG and B.

They live in different towns and areas and while they may be first or second cousins, they must be from distant parts of the family. Do a tasting: you buy a couple of Chiantis and have someone else buy a few bottles of Brunello. Do a blind tasting. That way, you get to try the two side by side and your tasting pal gets the big bill!

See what you think.

A Look at Yeast

When you talk to someone about wine, certain items always get top billing: Terroir, grape variety, who the winemaker is, what style of wine is produced, how the grapes are pressed, etc. One topic that rarely makes its appearance is : Yeast. Imagine that. Here we have the very item that is essential for fermentation to occur. Yet most of us rarely, if ever, think about how yeast affects the process itself, what flavors the yeast adds to the wine, and how far the yeast can go in creating the final product. For example: Zins are often more than 15% ABV. This takes a certain type of yeast as most strains are dead when the wine goes past 14.5% ABV.

In the world of Sherry, the FLOR that creates the sometimes years long second fermentation, leaves a taste profile that, once tasted, can rarely be forgotten. In the world of beer, yeast strains used for wheat beers often have a nose of bananas and other tropical fruits. Often the flavors are there as well as the aromas. Imagine, a beer having a tropical profile because of the yeast strain.

Researchers in New Zealand are involved in a years long project in order to learn what exactly it is that contributes to the unique aromas and flavors of New Zealand’s most famous wine, Sauvignon Blanc. Many aspects are under investigation including how to analyze what the flavor components are, canopy management,how to best use information about flavor profiles when making the wine, and, of course, what yeast strains produce the different “flavors and aromas” inherent in Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

Imagine, if you will, being a winemaker. You have a vineyard and produce much wine. It may be possible to vinify several different styles of wine from the same vineyard by using different strains of yeast for the fermentation. If this can be done for SB, can it also be done for other varietals? If so, can ,say, nuance of Bordeaux reds be introduced to Cabernets or Merlots from California or Chile? Can new world producers isolate some yeast strains that will duplicate the taste of yeasts in use in Champagne to create an identical profile? After all, terroir encompasses non-man made conditions in the making of wine. Is yeast considered a part of a wine’s terroir if wild yeasts are used?

Remember, the science behind vinification is quite young. It was not until the mid 1980s that malo-lactic fermentation was identified and scientifically described. What other discoveries are waiting for us?

Exciting stuff.

O Canada

I was lucky enough to spend this past week in Ottawa, Canada. If you have never been to Ottawa you should go. The people are wonderfully friendly and accommodating. In the hotel where I stayed, and the restaurants in which I ate, the level of service was high.

I was there as part of a Le Cordon Bleu International training program where chef instructors from the US are invited to Ottawa to reverse their roles, so to speak. We, the instructors, became the students. We had lectures on learning theory and classical cooking. We were able to experience the process of culinary education from the standpoint of a culinary student rather than as instructor.

We had the opportunity to meet fellow instructors from around the US and work with them for the first time. The instructors were also responsible for doing "teaching demos" where we presented, in teams, to our fellow "students". Nothing like having a dozen or so fellow chefs to critique your food and presentation style!

At the end of the week, we were treated to a formal dinner in the restaurant at the school, Signatures. The restaruant sommelier paired wines with the food.

1st course: Deconstructed Andalusian Gazpacho with Lobster served with a Sancerre, 2005, Chateau du Nozay, Pascal Jolivet. This was a gazpacho presented in a shot glass and then had its component parts featured in individual presentations on the plate. The wine was fruity, rich and with a wonderful undertone of minerality and chalkiness so typical of these wines.

Second course: Seared foie gras poele with a truffled boudin blanc and apple/rhubarb compote. The wine was Canadian, Niagra Escarpment 2006, Indian Summer Riesling. This is a delicious late harvest wine with all the penetrating flavors of a classical Riesling, and almost over ripe notes of apricots, peaches, and honey.

3rd course: Boletus crusted scallops with oxtail ravioli and truffle jus. An unusual combination that was not wholly successful and made the wine pairing somewhat problematical. The wine chosen, a Macon 2000, Les Heretiers du Comtes Lafon did not have the body to stand up to the assertive flavors of the food items. A better quality Burgundy would have worked better, or, my choice, an Alsatian Pinot Gris.


A granite led to the entree course:

Roasted veal medallions with truffle coated sweetbreads and gratinee Swiss chard and pine nuts.
The wine here worked wonderfully well, a 2003 Pommard, Clos de La Platiere, Prince de Merode. It displayed the legendary Pommard nose of earth, mushrooms and barnyard with a vibrant color and fruits flavor that was intense but always elegant.


A votre Sante.