New World Winemaker Blog

Yesterday my friend Daniel Dycus recounted a conversation he had the other day with a certified sommelier. Daniel told this fellow he thought grape clone was at least as important as site in determining the characteristics of a wine. The somm told Daniel that he would “sound like an idiot if he said that to someone who knows anything about wine.” Well, Daniel was not sounding like an idiot, because this somm doesn’t know diddly about clones, at the very least.

Simply put, in my experience, clone often trumps site—especially when it comes to Pinot Noir. For example we recently had the experience of moving cuttings from a vineyard in Napa Valley (near Coombsville) to our vineyard in Sonoma Valley (near Santa Rosa). Different soil, different climate, different rootstock, different vine spacing, different trellising, different farming—and yet the wine we have made from this block is recognizably more similar to the wine we made from the older Coombsville site than it is to the wine we make from the Dijon clones of Pinot grown at our site. For that matter, there are reproducible differences between the wines we make from the Dijon clones we grow at our site, differences that I recognize in wines made from the same clones grown at other sites.

That Daniel’s somm friend gets it so wrong is emblematic of a larger issue: a total misconstruction by the supposed cognoscenti of what is meant by terroir. This somm along with scads and scads of other “experts” has been taught that terroir is all about location, location, location. It’s not, and never has been, even in Burgundy.

John Kelly is the owner and winemaker of Westwood Wines, Sonoma California. This blog was originally published on his blog: “notes from the winemaker” on the 12 November 2012.

The other day I came across this fact sheet: “Reducing Alcohol Levels In Wine” published by the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI). Directed at the professional winegrower, this is the best agenda-free piece on wine alcohol levels I have read, period. It’s worth the interested reader’s time.

All of my own efforts to manage alcohol levels in our wines are mentioned here. In the vineyard every year we reduce canopy leaf area to balance crop load, and I have found that irrigating to 85% of evapotranspiration demand right up to harvest prevents runaway sugar accumulation. I have always disdained wines with over-ripe flavors, and so have always picked at the earliest date that I find the various components of the grape to be quote-unquote “ripe” – a personal definition, but one that I am happy with.

I found it amusing that the AWRI paper discusses water adds under the heading of “blending.” Adding a “reasonable” amount of water, for one reason or another, is a common practice in winemaking. We just don’t talk much about it.

I was left scratching my head over the mention of glucose oxidase to decrease the level of fermentable sugar in juice or must. I recall reading a few research papers in the 1990s about this, but didn’t think the technology ever made it out of the lab. I honestly don’t know of any winery that uses this enzyme. Nor have I ever come across a commercial preparation for use in wine. So, pace, “natural” wine aficionados.

Fermenter design does make a difference. I prefer to use fermenters with a must depth of 38″ during peak fermentation, regardless of diameter, and seek to achieve peak fermentation temperatures of around 90° F for my red wines. I have empirical evidence that this approach reduces our so-called “conversion ratio” (the percent alcohol immediately after fermentation divided by the Brix before fermentation) by up to 5%.

By contrast, I have found no consistent evidence that yeast selection has any effect on alcohol level. Whether I conduct a ferment without inoculation, or by inoculation with a selected commercial strain, the final alcohol is the same within measurement error. Incidentally, these days I start every fermentation without inoculation. If the initial Brix is high or if the ferment shows evidence of stress, I inoculate with a commercial strain I feel most suited to the variety. In effect, all our ferments are conducted by mixed strains of yeast.

The AWRI paper discusses the most obvious, the most used, and the most discussed (and often reviled) method of alcohol level management: physical removal of alcohol from finished wine by reverse osmosis or vacuum distillation. I have experimented with these methods on a limited basis with mixed—mostly negative—results. My biggest concern with large-scale alcohol removal is that the wine is nearly always rendered “hotter” by the treatment. I speculate that this is due to removal of ethanol at a faster rate than alcohols of three carbons or more by the processes.

The article mentions de-alcoholizing small parcels of wine and blending back. I have had some good results with this approach and I am experimenting with this method on an ongoing basis, because of the next topic discussed in the article: loss of alcohol by evaporation during barrel aging.

In fact, during barrel aging in our cellar the alcohol level of the wine increases by up to 1.2%-1.5% over two years. During barrel aging, the wood of the barrel acts as a semi-permeable membrane. Wine components inside the barrel migrate through the wood at various rates and evaporate from the outside surface. My a priori assumption is that the rates of migration of water and alcohol are dependent on the differences in concentrations between the inside and outside of the barrel.

Let’s say I put a wine to barrel at 13% ABV; this wine is approximately 87% water. In our barrel cellar, the concentration of alcohol in the air is essentially 0%, while the relative humidity averages about 35%. Water leaves the barrel faster than alcohol because 87%-35%=52% is four times greater than 13%-0%=13% (52/13=4); therefore, the thermodynamic drive for water to leave the barrels is 4x the impetus for alcohol to escape.

The AWRI paper discusses how alcohol levels decrease over time when the average relative humidity of the barrel cellar is 70%-90%, but also discusses the negative issue of mold growth in the cellar in this wet environment. Our barrel aging area was not designed to be wet, and we also store cased goods in proximity to our barrels. Humidification of our cellar is not an option.

My intent is to experiment with vacuum distillation of the wine I use to top our barrels. If we decrease the alcohol level of the topping wine, I believe we can slow the rate of alcohol increase in our barrels over time in our dry cellar environment.

John Kelly is the owner and winemaker of Westwood Wines, Sonoma California. This blog was originally published on his blog: “notes from the winemaker” on the 19 July 2012.

There’s little need for me to rehash the back-and-forth in the wine media regarding alcohol levels: in short, the wheel has turned and we are back in the 1980s when it was fashionable to criticize California wine for having high alcohol.

Here we are again. The difference this time around is that there is a hard number on the lips of the critical: 14%. The narrative being pedaled suggests that wines over this level generally are problematic, inferior, out-of-balance, not true-to-type, lacking: terroir, focus, complexity precision, nuance, etc.

I disagree.

And I’ve commented here and elsewhere that I have noted zero interest in the topic among the visitors to our Tasting Salon. But the “over 14% sucks” meme has a life of its own, it’s out there, it won’t die; sort of like “the President is a foreign-born Muslim.”

Because of this persistent media attention, I figured that it was bound to happen—sooner or later—that one of my guests was going to comment on the “high” alcohol levels on the labels of my wines.

It happened like this. Three nice people came in and tasted through the five wines I had on offer: three Pinots, a Châteauneuf-du-Pape-style blend and last, a varietal Syrah. They seemed to be enjoying them. After the Syrah one of the guests asked “What’s the alcohol on these wines?” I answered “between 14.5% and 14.9%” and a couple of them started muttering “oh, that’s high—so-and-so won’t drink it.”

I politely asked them if they could have guessed that the wines had alcohols approaching 15% without being told, and each of them admitted “no” they couldn’t have. One commented that “…these wines don’t taste hot.” I explained that ethanol doesn’t really taste hot, but that other alcohols do—propanols, butanols, pentanols, etc. and their esters and oxidation products, collectively called congeners in the distillation biz.

These fermentation products are more likely to be produced by yeast under stress, and high initial sugar as well as high final ethanol concentrations are potent stressors, as are nutrient and co-factor deficiencies. In my winemaking I go out of my way to minimize the stresses on yeast (though not so far as to throw diammonium phosphate—DAP, a source of ammonia—at every ferment) and so the levels of these congeners are low in my finished wines. No “heat” on the palate.

I further explained that in fact few of my wines finish fermentation much over 13.5%-14% but they pick up as much as 1%-1.5% during barrel aging. This is because we have a dry barrel cellar. Inside the barrel there is 86% water and 14% alcohol, while outside there is an average of 30% water and 0% alcohol. To a first approximation, the thermodynamic drive for water to leave the barrel is over 3x what it is for alcohol, and so over the course of 2+ years aging in barrel the alcohol level of the wine inside actually goes up.

A wine made from grapes harvested at “optimal” ripeness and put to barrel at 13.5%, in our cellar may well end up near 15% when it is ready to go to bottle. This is not the same as harvesting the grapes over-ripe. Not only do these wines not taste hot, they don’t taste raisined.

Anyway, the offshoot was that these folks bought a case of wine, and intended to put some of in front of their “I won’t drink any wine over 14% because wine over 14% all tastes the same” friends and see what they think. Awesome.

John Kelly is the owner and winemaker of Westwood Wines, Sonoma California. This blog was originally published on his blog: “notes from the winemaker” on the 3rd of January 2012 at 14h52 to be precise.

The wines I’ve made have been reviewed infrequently over the years. Different reviewers, different wines but the results have shown a predictable monotony: 84-89 points, nearly every time. Same with competitions: the wines always medal — frequently gold, but never double-gold or best of show. Seems that I show a remarkable consistency.

But hey… I’m used to it. I’ve long reconciled to the fact that my winemaking style does not meet the most common expectations. Scores and medals aside, the wines do very well in ranked blind tastings, but are sometimes a “love it or hate it” proposition. And I’m thankful that they sell well… even without high scores. People taste them, they like them.

That’s not to say a great score would not help my brokers and salespeople sell more wine, and in the current economic downturn better sales would be most welcome. So these days we are sending our releases out for review more frequently. Recently we scored another couple of… no surprise… 89′s. The reviewer had great things to say about the wines, descriptions which I plan to use in upcoming marketing efforts. But I’m not going to mention the scores. Why not?

Because an 89 is really a 63 — mathematically, anyway, when the ranges of scores are normalized. The publication I’m discussing here gives out scores on a scale of 50-100, split into six categories: from “undrinkable” to “superior.” I arrived at a graph (see original blog posting) by assigning the six categories a value of 1 to 6, calculating the fractional values between 0 and 6 represented by the 50-100 point scores, and then normalizing these fractional values back to percentages. So if “above average” is 3-4 out of 6, an 89 is 3.8, or 63% of 6. I’m exploring this particular system just as an example — pretty much every wine ranking publication uses something similar, explicitly or not.

Now if someone wanted to argue that my recalculation is bull, I’d be OK with that — even I think it sort of is. A proper analysis would evaluate the actual frequencies that scores are awarded; Leo McCloskey could probably clarify (though I doubt he would) or perhaps Peter O’Connor has these numbers. Bogus or only partly so, my analysis does point out some funny stuff about 100-point wine scoring systems. Like, that just 30% of the points available in the scoring range are assigned to wines that are below average, and 33% of the points are devoted to wines that are outstanding or better. Talk about grade inflation.

This is unlikely to be the intention of the rankers who employ a 100-point scale — but there it is. Realistically, everybody — from the dewiest newbie to the most experienced and educated palate — is rating wines at just three levels.

The top level is: “According to my taste, this wine is really good. I mean really good. You should spend a lot of money to buy this, because it’s worth it. As an investment, as a date-impressor, or simply as a measuring stick to tell people ‘mine is bigger than yours,’ this wine is the schiznit. About a third of what I write about fits this category.”

The middle level is: “I’ve tasted many, many a wine I have enjoyed more or less as much as I have this specimen. You should not be disappointed even if you have to spend more than the average American’s weekly wine allowance for a bottle of this juice. It’s good. Not ‘blow the kids’ 529s to invest in cases of it’ good, but ‘good enough’ to be right in the middle of the range of wines I would bother to drink. About a third of what I write about fits this category.”

The lowest level of rating is: “Meh. This wine did not impress my palate today. It is OK as these things go — not too overtly flawed, or thin, or hot, or too out of balance — but I’ve tasted better. You should thank me — I just spent an hour of my life tasting this bilge… er, I mean… ‘wine’ so that you don’t have to. Seriously. I mean, what were they thinking, sending me this crap? Yes, I wrote about it but if you have the budget, you will be better served going for something I’ve ranked in the middle tier. About a third of what I write about fits this category.”

There is a fourth level — everything that does not get ranked at all. These wines represent, I’d guess, something like 85%-90% of the total volume of wine sold in the world. For the most part these are wines that are not worthy of review, but some fraction of them are wines that just don’t get reviewed because they are too quirky or too rare or too… something.

This post has been incubating a while and in the meantime we’ve received another set of results from a different publication. News flash! — some 87s and an 84. {yawn} Like I said, it makes no difference to me. I am not driven by any desire for external validation. I’m not going to make these wines differently just to get higher scores — I believe that would be the wrong play in the short term, and I’m positive it would be wrong in the long term.

But still… there’s no doubt — and no denying — that better scores would help our sales. Joseph Heller cribbed this plot.

For comments to this blog see the original posting on John Kelly’s blog: notes from the winemaker.