New World Winemaker Blog » John Kelly

Clone versus Site: Which is more important?

John Kelly — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 12:17:10 +0000

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.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

Practical Advice On Managing Wine Alcohol Levels

John Kelly — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 09:53:13 +0000

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.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

Consumers finally ask about alcohol levels

John Kelly — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:03:32 +0000

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.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

What’s in a wine score?

John Kelly — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 14:48:37 +0000

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.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

Talking “natural” wines again

John Kelly — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 23:00:27 +0000

Jamie Goode is a trained scientist who today in his blog wrestles with the tension between faith and science implied by “natural” wine. I am also a trained scientist, plus I am deep into my 24th vintage as a winemaker. You might be surprised how infrequently the term “natural” comes up in discussions among professionals. We talk about what works, and what doesn’t. We respect each others’ choices, because the proof of what works is always there right in front of us — in the bottle.

“Natural” only really seems to cause cognitive dissonance among some wine buyers, media types and consumers. I think it is a marketing thing with some people, and a cultish obsession with others. I don’t experience this dissonance. My winegrowing philosophy is “don’t do anything you don’t have to.” Consequently my approach has become more minimalist with each vintage.

I can get away with using less technology because of my scientific training, which has empowered me to take a rational approach to pursuing only what is necessary. Also, our vineyard is small enough (24 acres) that we can farm nearly vine-by-vine, and our production is low enough (2,500 cases max) that I have my own eyes and hands on every drop of wine we make.

Winemaking technology is required to scale up production from these low levels. Technology substitutes for eyes and hands on everything, allows us to make more with the same labor — which is how economists define increased productivity. The tradeoff for increasing productivity through the application of technologies is a loss of the “natural” artisanal character of wines.

Earlier this year, in a post about the role of yeast in artisanal wine production, I noted that Jamie observed a continuum between “natural” and “industrial” winemaking. I believe this view is correct, and that definitions of “natural” wine are purely semantic, and therefore artificial. So how’s that for boxing the compass, folks? “Natural” wine is an artificial construct.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

Water to wine

John Kelly — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 23:00:57 +0000

Most observers would agree that the style of wine which now dominates the high end of the wine rankings and price scale has evolved over the last couple of decades, toward higher alcohol, higher extract, higher pH and higher levels of new oak. One of the consequences of chasing these high scores is that many winemakers have insisted on leaving the fruit on the vine longer before harvest than before, often to the point that the grapes become partially dehydrated.

In many vineyards, grapes are not truly ripe when the sugar level is just above the minimum contract specification. This is because sugar accumulation is only one component of grape maturation. The skins, pulp and seeds, as well as the acids and salts in the juice, each have maturation curves that are not strictly interdependent or coincident. The flavor of the fruit itself changes as the grapes mature. Fruit can be sweet but not taste ripe, and the evolution of the high-scoring style has put a premium on a flavor profile that tends to the over-ripe. Winemakers may be waiting for a physiological indication of ripeness other than sugar, or they may be waiting for a particular flavor, but they are not waiting simply in order to pay the grower a few percent less.

Bringing in fruit with high sugar content creates potential problems for the finished wine. The first is high alcohol: more sugar means more alcohol produced by fermentation. High alcohol in and of itself is not always a problem, but there is the elusive question of balance to be considered — some wines just taste wrong if the alcohol is too high. The second is the effect on yeast. Dan Berger acknowledges that high sugars can lead to stuck fermentations. I have written before on how high sugar and high alcohol can stress yeast to the point of distress, causing them not only to stop fermenting sugar but also causing them to produce toxins that can make the wine taste hot or that lead to allergic reactions or migraines in sensitive individuals. An uncorrected stuck ferment also means the wine is left with some residual sugar — not a bad thing in itself, as many consumers actually prefer their wines slightly off-dry, but a wine with residual sugar must be sterile-filtered or treated with Velcorin™ if the winery wants to avoid the economic disaster of having it re-ferment in the bottle.

Every vintage, Nature and man conspire to deliver us less than perfect grapes. In waiting for seed ripeness — which is my number one criterion for determining when to pick — the tradeoff may be a higher sugar level. It seems to me that adding some water to the tank is a very minor correction, by which one can avoid too-high alcohols, stuck ferments and their attendant negative effects on wine composition, and filtration or other sterilization. I utterly reject the notion that there is anything deceptive, underhanded or unnatural in this practice.

I expect that winemakers in hotter climates have always been adding a little water to their too-ripe tanks before fermentation. That water addition (along with irrigation) is outlawed in most Continental appellations suggests it has been practiced there as well. However, European vineyards receive more rainfall late in the season than we do here in California. Consequently most European appellation regulations allow addition of sugar before and during fermentation (which is prohibited in California) to bring the potential alcohol of the finished wine back into balance if Nature gives washed-out fruit.

This is an edited version of the original blog posted on John Kelly’s blog: notes from the winemaker.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

Long maceration on Pinot noir

John Kelly — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 23:00:25 +0000

Winemakers love to gripe that Pinot Noir is the hardest wine to make. I disagree. It is not that it is difficult to make; Pinot Noir is difficult to get right. First, if you are not starting with good grapes you might as well pack it in. Americans don’t like to be told this, but all vineyards are NOT created equal. And great Pinot vineyards are scarce on the ground, at least as much so in America as in Burgundy (where less than 10% of the Pinot Noir acreage is designated grand cru). Second, not all winemakers are temperamentally suited to make Pinot. During the winemaking process, Pinot Noir punishes ego. Winemakers who must put their personal stamp on every wine they make invariably make bad Pinot, because tinkering with the process or “fixing” what appear to some winemakers as “problems” just does not work with this grape.

I’m not saying that I’m some sort of Pinot genius — far from it. In fact I believe there can be no such thing — the best Pinot winemaker I can hope to be is some sort of zen-state idiot savant. By practicing this approach to making Pinot for the last decade-plus, I have come up with a few do’s and don’ts. Do start with a good vineyard. Don’t pick the grapes overripe. Do pick when the seeds are ripe. Do treat the fruit gently. Don’t do the whole berry/carbonic maceration thing (in my view, a method that makes Beaujolais, not Pinot). Do make any additions the fruit needs at the crusher. Do wait for the cap to rise on its own (some winemakers call this a “cold soak”). Don’t ferment uninoculated – there is nothing more certain to destroy Pinot than having to “fix” a stuck fermentation. Don’t pump the wine over the cap. Do punch down. Don’t punch down too much. Do let the wine “rest” for a while after fermentation before pressing. Don’t do extended maceration.

It is this last point that had me in a state of cognitive dissonance during the 2005 harvest. The protocol I have developed over the years is to maintain the wine in fermenter for a total of 14 days of cuvaison. For reasons related to the timing demands of the 2005 harvest, the move to the new winery, and delays in receiving new equipment, all my ’05 Pinot Noir lots spent substantially longer than 14 days in fermenter: 19, 22, 27, 28 and 29 days to be precise. And I was sorely afraid.

BUT – so far this has not proven to be a disaster. The ’05 wines in fact are marvelous. Whether they are marvelous because of — or in spite of — the long maceration times will never be known. I have no plans to deliberately incorporate long maceration into my Pinot protocols. Perhaps some day in the future I will have the resources to do an experiment on the effects of long maceration on Pinot. Until then I plan to do my best to keep maceration times near two weeks. But at least I have learned that I don’t have to stress out over not getting the Pinot pressed off at exactly fourteen days. That, at least, is a bit of a relief.

This post originally appeared on John Kelly’s blog: “notes from the winemaker.” John Kelly is the owner and winemaker of Westwood wines, Sonoma, California.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

Grape ripeness and wine alcohol

John Kelly — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 23:00:07 +0000

Are you as tired as I am of all the winging over high-alcohol wines?

Yes some, perhaps many (but not most) wines over — what? — like, 14%-14.5% alcohol by volume? — might strike some tasters as “out of balance.” Certainly any “high alcohol” wine is a risk to drink too much of when one has driven to dinner. But then so are wines with less alcohol, or beers, or cocktails. Yesterday Jon Bonné added to the drone of high-alcohol criticism in his posting to the “Thirst” column at SFGate… with the statement:

The high-alcohol drumbeat isn’t new, but it is prompting more of a backlash. Increasingly, a new guard of winemakers is dismissing old saws about “physiological ripeness.” They’re deliberately, even defiantly, picking grapes with less sugar. Ripeness isn’t California’s challenge anymore; now it’s balance. That means farming smarter. (And not simply removing excess alcohol after the fact.)

I have not met Jon Bonné but I have read him for years — IMHO his writing is often smart and to the point. This bit is not. I’m not sure what “new guard of winemakers” he has been talking to, and I’m not sure what “old saws” he is referring to, but picking grapes solely on the basis of “less sugar” — whether deliberately, defiantly, ignorantly or otherwise — without considering physiological ripeness is definitely not likely to result in a better wine.

I wish (as perhaps does Mr. Bonné) that the definition of “physiological ripeness” for wine grapes was simple and concrete. It is neither. In fact physiological ripeness is an ideal, an unrealizable goal: the perfect overlap of the development of many enologically important components of the grape skin, seeds and pulp. When considering whether an individual grape is “ripe” one could consider the sugars, acids, pH and potassium in the pulp or juice, the anthocyanins and tannins in the skin, the tannins in the seeds, and the aromatic compounds present throughout.

During ripening each of these things is changing with time: some are going up, some are going down, some are going up and then down. “Physiological ripeness” is that moment when all of these things are in “perfect balance” — exactly where they must be to yield a wine of complicated and soul-satisfying deliciousness. Except that it never happens.

In most vineyards, most vintages, some part of the equation peaks too early, or too late. In many California vineyards sugar arrives too early, before the other things that make a perfect wine grape reach their optimal concentrations. It takes some seriously smart farming to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Notice so far I’m still dealing with an idealization — a single wine grape. In the real world each grape on a cluster, each cluster on a vine, each vine in the vineyard is pursuing its own course to “physiological ripeness.” Sure they are all going in the same direction at the same time but like a herd of lemmings running to the sea, some get there before the rest. As a winegrower it is my job to slow that herd up, to bunch them together as much as possible, then snatch them off before most of them have a chance to go over the cliff.

Someday I might write a book on what goes in to assessing grape ripeness and what steps I might take to bunch the crop up. I would include all the other factors that go into the decision of when to pick: things like lignification of the rachis, leaf senescence, disease status, insect pressure, weather forecast, and even the mundane logistical things like the availability of labor, trucking, and tank space. But not tonight.

The bottom line is that no winemaker wakes up one morning during harvest and says “uh, duh-oy — I’m going to pick at lower sugar because high-alcohol wines are really icky.”

If tastemakers want to make high-alcohol wines go away they should stop giving them medals and high point scores. Consumers could make them go away if they would just stop buying them. I’m not holding my breath. In the meantime, bashing “the trend toward ever higher alcohols” will continue to be a reliable trope for trade writers to sell a few more column-inches — and to rile up people like me.

This post originally appeared on John Kelly’s blog: “notes from the winemaker.” John Kelly is the owner and winemaker of Westwood wines, Sonoma, California.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

High alcohol and a “hot finish”

John Kelly — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 23:00:07 +0000

Hooo boy – here’s a goody. It is a fact that some wines do show a hot finish; no question. The question is, why. Most people assume the answer is because the alcohol content is high. To a first approximation this is a faulty assumption.

You can do the experiment yourself at home. Go to your wine store and buy five or six different bottles of, say, Chardonnay from different producers, but all with “high” alcohol contents, say, between 14.8% and 15.2%. Taste them blind. I guarantee some will be “hotter” than others.

“Alcohol” in wine is predominantly ethanol: the 2-carbon alcohol which is the primary by-product of the anaerobic metabolism of sugar by yeast. Pure ethanol does not taste “hot” – though it is astringent on the palate (if you were to drink ultra-pure ethanol your mouth would feel dry inside). However, the “alcohol content” of a wine may also include some isomers of higher alcohols – alcohols with 3 carbons or more in their structures – which DO taste very hot. And some of the oxidation products of alcohols (ketones) taste even hotter. In fact, it is the presence of very small quantities of higher alcohols and ketones – which are called “congeners” in distilled spirits – that make a wine taste hot.

So you are wondering why your hot wine has congeners in it. The answer is pretty simple – stressed fermentations. When yeasts are stressed, they start to pump out all sorts of junk, some of which are congeners. Yeasts are neurotic, metabolically speaking – their normal metabolism gets stressed by a whole laundry list of things: extremes of temperature, low nutrients, high sugar, high alcohol, competition with other micro-organisms (including other yeast), natural and man-made toxins, and more, ranging from the increasingly esoteric to the downright speculative.

So here is the indirect link between high alcohol and hot taste: yeast gets stressed out at the beginning of fermentation if the grapes are very ripe (cell biologists call this “substrate inhibition”), and then again at the end of fermentation by the high alcohol produced from high sugar levels (two factors here: end-product inhibition and cell membrane solubilization). Hurt at the beginning and hurt at the end. Double whammy. And if the fermentation sticks (stops before all the sugar is used up) the yeast used to restart the fermentation are stressed from the get-go – leading to a congener production trifecta.

Heaven help us if bacteria start growing at this point. Bacterial growth will further stress the yeast (quadruple toe loop) and the bacteria themselves are capable of churning out all sorts of crud – the very infernal quintessence.

I’m not saying this happens with every high-sugar fermentation, and I’ve already said that not every high-alcohol wine is loaded with congeners. Savvy winemakers can minimize fermentation problems by harvesting before the fruit is over-ripe (or artfully applying the garden hose if the sugar is really high), by inhibiting growth of spoilage organisms with sulfur dioxide at the crusher, by selecting sugar- and alcohol-tolerant yeast, adding vitamins, nutrients and yeast extracts to juice, controlling fermentation temperatures, adding oxygen, and waiting to inoculate with bacteria for malolactic fermentation until after all the sugar is gone.

But there are any number of winemakers out there who are cripplingly limited by their own philosophy. They must wait until the grapes are at 29° Brix to get the flavors they want, and would never use a garden hose. They won’t, or can’t (as in “organic” wine production) add anything to the juice. They live by the cult of “native” fermentation. Or some believe that they have to inoculate for malolactic before the end of primary fermentation to “get it done”.

I’m not being judgy and saying that any of these things is inherently bad, or good. What is certain is that these philosophical predilections can, and frequently do, result in wines with a “hotter” finish.

This blog was originally published July 2006 in John Kelly’s blog: “notes from the winemaker.“

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

Are You Allergic To Sulfites?

John Kelly — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 23:00:58 +0000

Originally published July 2006:

I hear this all the time in the Tasting Salon — “I can’t drink much wine; it gives me a headache. I think I’m allergic to the sulfites.” I don’t know how this myth got started, but I sure would like to dispel it once and for all. You are not allergic to sulfites.

At least, the chances are 100,000 to 1 that you are not. And if you are in that 99.9999th percentile you KNOW it. You knew it when you woke up in the hospital after nearly dying of suffocation from your first trip to a salad bar or your first bite of dried fruit (potentially loaded with metabisulfite, to prevent browning).

People who are allergic to sulfites go into anaphylactic shock when they are exposed to them — they choke to death. So far as I know there is no research to support the existence of a range of reaction to sulfite allergy. “Allergic to sulfites” equals anaphylaxis; no choking — no allergy.

I will allow the possibility that there could be a lesser physiological reaction, but I have not seen any sort of intermediate in myself or any of the hundreds of people I have worked with in all my years in the winery cellar. And in the cellar we not only ingest sulfites, but frequently breathe in clouds of sulfur dioxide — a much harsher test of sensitivity. Reactions may be choking and burning throat and eyes, but never headache.

You can do your own test at home (but only if you know you are not susceptible to anaphylaxis!). Light a kitchen match in a closed space and breathe in the fumes. If you develop a headache similar to the one you get when you drink wine, post a comment and let us know.

And by the way, everything fermented has a small amount of sulfites in it, because yeast produces sulfite as a metabolic by-product. Some wine yeast produce more than others. But every wine — even “organic” wines labeled with “no sulfites” — have some sulfites in them. So other fermented foods (bread, yogurt, kimchee, etc.) should give you a headache as well.

Update March 2009:

This piece has generated a flood of comments along the lines of: “I once ate this and this and this and this, and one of them contained sulfites, and I got a headache.” Some of these comments include the assertion “I have been told I have sulfite allergy.” I have rejected and will continue to reject publication of this line of commentary.

I am not a physician. If I was, I would not venture to make diagnoses online. I am a trained experimental scientist, and as such will say that coincidence is not the same as causation. The continued assertion that “I ate or drank something that contains sulfites and got a headache therefore I am allergic to sulfites” demsonstrates how deeply and unshakably this “sulfites in wine causes heacaches” meme has penetrated popular culture.

I am waiting for one of the “I have been told I am allergic to sulfites” comments to include “…by my physician who did his/her dissertation on sulfite sensitivities at [insert respected medical institution here].” I have not seen any such coda, and frankly don’t expect to.

John Kelly is the owner and winemaker of Westwood Winery in Sonoma, California.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

The truth about “unfiltered and unfined”

John Kelly — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 06:00:00 +0000

It seems like it has been a while since the question of whether unfined and unfiltered wines are “better” than their more processed cousins was the topic du jour in the wine media space. Maybe the topic has been talked to death. Maybe writers and marketers alike have decided there is no “there” there. Maybe consumers have read all there is to read, and tasted enough wines to have made up their own minds.

Nah.

“Fining” is the addition to the wine of a tiny amount of some substance — usually a protein such as that found in gelatin, egg whites, or milk — that binds with something in the wine the winemaker finds objectionable and then falls to the bottom of the tank or barrel, allowing the clear wine to be racked off the fining lees.

“Filtration” is the process of passing the wine under pressure through some medium, in order to directly remove something undesirable to the winemaker. Both of these processes can be employed to improve clarity. Fining (and some types of filtration) can modify the wine’s tannin structure. Filtration can be used to completely remove yeast and bacteria, ensuring that a properly-filtered wine won’t re-ferment in the bottle. Specific types of filtration can remove alcohol or volatile acidity. And oh yeah, there’s more — lots more.

Fining and filtration are tools that the experienced wine craftsman can use judiciously to correct minor flaws in a wine, to make a wine “better.” A non-interventionist demagogue may argue that employing any of these tools invariably makes a wine worse, but I believe this point of view would be demolished in a blind tasting of certain wines by a broad cross section of knowledgeable wine consumers. Simply, some slightly flawed wines are improved by fining and/or filtration.

Now I can hear some passive-aggressive “critics” — with no money tied up in grapes and barrels — saying “so don’t make flawed wines.” To this I say “bite me.” You try this, genius. It ain’t as easy as I make it look.

At Westwood I don’t make any whites, and all my reds have no residual sugar, are 100% ML-complete, and are aged long enough in barrels that they should be stable to microbial activity and precipitation. Except in an experimental setting, I take special care in the fermenter to assure that the wines’ tannins have the structure I want to see in the finished wine. I don’t fine or filter Westwood wines because I don’t have to. And rule number one in my winemaking philosophy is “never do anything to the wine you don’t have to.”

That said, if I think a wine is too cloudy I will filter it. If a wine plates positive for Brettanomyces I will sterile-filter it — I don’t like Brett in the bottle. And if a wine is slightly flawed but in my opinion good enough in every other dimension, I will correct that flaw rather than lose a ton of money trying to sell the wine into a saturated bulk market.

This is an abbreviated version of the original blog that was posted 27 June 2009 by John Kelly on his blog: “notes from the winemaker”.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly

What on earth does ‘non-interventionist winemaking’ really mean?

John Kelly — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 06:00:43 +0000

Where did this term come from? I’m not the first person to ask these questions. Check out Eric Asimov’s piece in the NY times from October 2006. I think it may be that the term was first used in the film “Mondovino” which, for dramatic effect, built its narrative around facile differences between the “…old world and new, simple peasants and billionaires, and between the local and artisanal styles of wine production and the multinational and mass-produced ones.” Award-winning New Zealand winemaker and writer Drew Tuckwell put it as succinctly as such a vague concept might be clarified: “Non interventionist winemaking is not easy to explain. There are no defined or common rules. It is essentially a very natural form of winemaking… where, in general terms, winemakers resist the use of modern technology and simply allow the wines to express the terroir of the vineyard.” (1) My sainted Dallas-bred grandmother had a term for this kind of marketing-speak: “horse-puckey”. The craft of winemaking is the transformation of grapes with alchemist skill. For centuries the French have applied the terms “elevage” and “affinage” to the winemaking process. The winemaker facilitates the birth of the wine, and then raises it and refines it into something which, if not always transcendent and sublime, is at least palatable. I believe the most apt analogy for winemaking is child-rearing. I for one don’t believe that child rearing can be at all non-interventionist. And neither can winemaking be. I shall step on a slightly taller soapbox to proclaim: I believe that ALL wines – artisanal and mass-produced alike – are valid expressions of the grape, and of the winemaker’s craft. There is no way to define a cutoff between these arbitrary classifications; wines are produced along a technological continuum. On the other hand, all wines are not created equal. There are distinctions between the aromas and tastes of wines made by hand and those produced by machine that are no more arbitrary or subtle than the differences between, say, Redwood Hill Farm crottin and processed American cheese spread, or Boont Amber Ale and Bud. But there is no doubt that the makers of the crottin and the ale are interventionist to a fault in crafting their products. I believe that there is not a capital-poor winemaker worth the title that has not wished for a centrifuge (for clarification), a spinning cone (for alcohol reduction), or for ion-exchange (to remove volatile acidity) at some point in their career – I know I have. In my opinion, any winemaker that will claim in print or in person that they are truly and completely “non-interventionist” with a straight face, or at least without a little lurch (perhaps of self-loathing?) in the pit of the stomach, is a charlatan or worse – delusional. I don’t believe I’m a charlatan, or delusional. My wines are hand-made, with all the attention and care I can lavish on them. Many may disagree with my position and tone here, and call me a bombast. Fine with me. Just don’t call me “non-interventionist”.

John Kelly is the winemaker of Westwood Winery in Sonoma, California. This blog was originally posted 14 June 2008.

This NewWorldWinemakerBlog.com post was written by John Kelly