New World Winemaker Blog

“Don’t make a big monkey dance about choosing a yeast, just decide if you want esters or thiols!” This is one of the more memorable sentences that was uttered by Christoph Hammel during my recent harvest stint at his cellar in Germany. Before I put this sentence into context, I should mention that the Hammel Weingut has been in business since 1723. This proud winemaking tradition is continued by veteran and outspoken winemaker, Christoph Hammel. His skills include a combination of modern thinking, creative planning and solid experience based on many years of making wine with a scientific yet artistic touch.

Christoph is such a staunch believer in Anchor Wine Yeast, I guess that you could even call him an Anchorfile. He has repeatedly achieved success on a variety of grape varieties such as Grüner veltliner (fermented with Anchor Exotics and Anchor Alchemy I), Scheurebe (Anchor Alchemy II), Sauvignon blanc (Anchor Alchemy II), Dornfelder + Portugieser Rosé (Anchor Alchemy I and II), Müller-Thurgau (Anchor Alchemy I), Chardonnay + Weissburgunder (Anchor Alchemy I) and Sylvaner (Anchor VIN 2000), Riesling (Anchor VIN 13 and Anchor Exotics). Of special interest will be some the combinations of yeasts that Christoph likes to co-inoculate, such as VIN 13/NT 116 (also Anchor) and VIN 13/NT 116 together with Laffort X5. I have seen that these combinations have a massive effect on floral, fruity and tropical aromas, but no negative effect on fermentation kinetics.

Alex Halberstadt has the following to say about Sylvaner: “Nobody dreams about Sylvaner. Mentioning it in a group of wine people is akin to professing an interest in the finer points of cardboard fabrication. The grape bums people out.”

However, even a neutral grape variety such as Sylvaner stands to gain from these mixtures. For example, I inoculated Sylvaner with NT 116/VIN 7/X5 (as per Christoph’s instructions). Some of the tasting notes that I made over the course of the fermentation were: “tea leaf, fig, apple, floral, banana, grapefruit, spicy, curry, herbal, white pepper, grapefruit, and apricot”. In theory a more complex wine is possible because of the ester and thiol production of these yeasts and this is exactly what you’ll get in real life!

Something else that Christoph does, is oxygenation of the must and water mixture during yeast rehydration. In the photo below, you’ll see the white bin in which yeast is rehydrated and behind the bin you’ll see an oxygen tank.

Typically, the rehydration mixture is cooled down at 5ºC increments (with ample time intervals) until a temperature difference of approximately 5ºC is observed between the rehydration mixture and the must to be inoculated. Note that during all this, the rehydration mixture is continuously oxygenated by adding a steady trickle of oxygen. The rehydrated and happy yeast is then simply pumped to the tank in question. Christoph swears by this method and cannot remember the last time he suffered a stuck ferment. For more information on the science behind this, you are welcome to read my previous blog titled: “Is your yeast on sterols?”

More to follow…

Bernard Mocke is a technical consultant for Oenobrands.

What is a great wine? Is it enough to simply provide naïve pleasure, or must a wine make an eloquent statement?  Wine is art and as Jean Anouilh stated-the object of art is to give life a shape. To many in the wine world, real wines convey a sense of place, a genuine originality. The relativity of experience impacts one’s evaluation. Greatness in wine is much like a profound expression of art or music, depends upon personal experience and is subjective. Even though there is no singularity, definition greatness in art, music, or wine, though difficult to define precisely, enjoys a broad consensus.

Sensory evaluation is subjective. Like many of the finest things in life, however, there is considerable agreement as to what represents high quality. As Robert Parker states “No one should feel forced to feign fondness for a work of Picasso or Beethoven, much less a bottle of 1961 Latour.” Exceptional wines emerge from a philosophy which often includes the following:

Proper varieties planted in the correct climate; expression of the vineyard’s terroir; purity and characteristics of the grape variety or blend to be faithfully represented; and minimalistic winemaking.

Most consider that the world’s finest wines emanate from fruit grown in well-placed vineyards with microclimates favorable to the specific varieties. There is no such thing as the best grape or best clone, simply one well-suited to its growing environment. In the US, consumer’s palates are not tuned to terroir. We want jammy fruit, lasting intensity. Such wines may fool our senses in the same way that our primary physiology responds to the fat in a McDonald’s hamburger. Many of these are “feel good” products, the vinous equivalent of comfort food (Randell Grahm of Bonny Doon Vineyards). Is this bad? No, not as long as they are well made. They can obscure our link to the vineyard, if a host of addition products are employed.  Such obscurity may limit the pace of industry development. Such wines appeal to a certain attitudinally-challenged denominator and may be a key link to our biological predisposition to favor fruit over complexity.

Some equate quality with quantity. This is true, regardless of whether we are talking about degree of ripeness, oakiness, or tannins. Are we making wines that are easy to like, but sometimes difficult to love? Perhaps we need to concentrate on means of adding some texture without deforming the ethereal essential character of a wine. We should not have the illusion that we can or should control everything.  Minimalistic winemaking philosophy, when possible, allows for an intrinsic character, so that what is placed in the bottle represents as natural an expres­sion of the vineyard, variety, and vintage as possible. This requires restraint in the use of adjuvants, cold treatments, and filtrations.

The greatest obstacle to discovering the truth is being convinced that you already know it.

Dr Bruce Zoecklein is a Professor Emeritus, Enology-Grape Chemistry Group Virginia Tech.

His Enology Notes are available at www.vtwines.info.

When in 1939, Rhett Butler quoted the memorable “how fickle is woman…” he obviously did not have any idea how complex consumers can be…But if one thing is true about consumers, it is the fact that they demand top quality for no dollars!

What does the consumer want? I reckon 99% of consumers want drinkability in what ever they may take from the shelve. And “drinkability” is one of those abstract terms with so many meanings and definitions. For me drinkability is a function of how well the winemaker interpreted the phenolic personality of a given block (or cultivar), and how the processing dynamics were being managed early in the life of the wine to obtain a wine which has loads of fruit, and soft and subtle tannins which are protected by complexing factors such as mannoproteins and colloids.

 There are numerous ways to achieve this, and we know what important role oxygen plays not only in achieving this, but also in increasing the viability of yeasts and getting rid of bad flavours like H₂S.  Various winemakers have experience with a number of cap management regimes, but in most instances various levels of oxygen is incorporated in the process. Obviously different strokes for different blokes.

Pulsair is one of these techniques. I stumbled upon this technology at an exhibition almost six years ago. More recently I saw fixed installations and even handheld units at various cellars in Australia. Yalumba has a fixed system on most of their red fermentation tanks.

How does it work?  It works on the sequential release of compressed air or gas at the bottom of a tank for the purpose of creating circulation and mixing. Measured amounts of high pressure air are injected under flat round discs called accumulator plates installed on the tank bottom. It looks just like a creepy crawly. These released bubbles become bigger as they rise to the surface, and bubbles through the cap mixing the fermenting must very efficiently with the pomace.

The result? Soft luscious wines with loads of fruit.

I think winemakers should think a bit more out of the box when it comes to buying expensive oak barrels, and perhaps think more about savings down stream.  The clever application of simple technology can certainly swing the bottom-line.

See pulsair in action on YouTube

Pulsair cap management

Pulsair red winemaking

 Bertus Fourie is a winemaker, turned Enology lecturer and creator of the Barista coffee Pinotage.

The cooperative Vinicola de Villarobledo has been the only winery from La Mancha region to win a Gold award at wine contest – Nuevo Vino 2011 – held in Madrid on the 15^th of June this year. This was the first time the cooperative winery presented a wine to this contest.

Martin Pardin (technical director of the cooperative) explains he wanted to innovate and create a very complex and unique red wine, adapted to modern demand for fruitiness, roundness and complexity in red wine. Grapes from Syrah, Tempranillo and Garnacha were partially destemmed, crushed and barrel fermented separately in 3^rd fill French oak barrels. Martin used an extraction enzyme and a new yeast from Oenobrands, Anchor Exotics SPH, in all barrels. This yeast is an interspecies hybrid between Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces paradoxus. It is the only yeast of its kind worldwide. Fermentation took ten days at temperature range 18-27 °C, with four hand pigeage daily. For yeast nutrition, Biovin (bio-regulator of La Littorale) has been added after density of 1040. Martin was very happy with the results obtained with Anchor Exotics SPH as it satisfied his need to create a “highly fruity and complex red wine, different from a standard red wine of La Mancha region”.

Malolactic fermentation started spontaneously immediately after alcoholic fermentation and was completed within one month. The wines from the three varieties were blended and stored for five months. No fining was applied before bottling and Mannostab (Laffort) was added to secure tartrate stability.

Martin is very happy with the recognition this award gives to his winery and region, since all the other wines awarded came from other prestigious Spanish wine regions. He plans to increase production with his approach and will continue use of Anchor Exotics SPH as “a perfect tool to help him achieve complexity and fruitiness “. At the moment the wine is only available for sale in Spain but an extension of production in 2011 will allow the winery to have the wine available for export markets.

Patrice Pellerin is the technical manager for Oenobrands.