2022 WM FEBRUARY-MARCH

TECHNIQUES FOR CRAFTING GREAT WINE FROM EXPERTS IN FRANCE, NEW ZEALAND, AND THE UNITED STATES

KEYS TO BLENDING VINIFERAS & HYBRIDS

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

MAKING CHARBONO/ BONARDA/DOUCE NOIR

BACKYARD VINEYARD QUESTIONS ANSWERED

28 THE BEST OF BOTH SPECIES

Vitis vinifera grapes are often thought to be the species used to make wine in the premier wine regions, while French-American hybrid grapes are those used in regions vinifera grapes can’t be grown. However, each species brings something unique to the bottle and it may just be that blending grapes of both species will result in just what your wines need.

by Maureen Macdonald

34 BELLA TOSCANA!

A group of WineMaker readers were recently accompanied by Publisher Brad Ring on a winery and food tour through Tuscany. We share the highlights and photos from Italy’s renowned wine region.

36 OLD WORLD TO NEW

Sauvignon Blanc wines came to fame in France’s Loire region, but they have also achieved success in New Zealand, the U.S., and elsewhere. Four winemakers from these top Sauvignon Blanc-producing regions share their techniques that result in wines of varying character and flavors.

by Danny Wood

42 2022 LABEL CONTEST WINNERS

Hundreds of home wine labels were entered in WineMaker’s 22nd Annual Label Contest. We share all of the winning labels that make the bottles look as good as the wine inside tastes.

Still Only One Original!

Original Alljuice

FORMAT + OPTIONAL = YIELDS READY IN 23 L 4 kg 23 L * 8 WEEKS 6 US gal 8.8 lb 6 * US gal

Experienced winemakers looking to complement their skills will be rewarded with our most popular shelf-stable flagship vinification product. Explore the possibilities with superior quality 100% GRAPE MUST varietals sourced from the finest regions around the world.

The ORIGINAL ALLJUICE will instantly become one of the best additions to your cellar.

NO water has been removed from our 100% GRAPE MUST therefore, NO water needs to be added. Our 23 L/6 US Gal. shelf-stable vinification products are available year-round & produce quality wines unmatched by those from a concentrate product, guaranteed. With a little more patience, watch for the characteristics to develop.

departments

8 MAIL

A reader seeks advice on how to calculate sugar additions for backsweetening. Plus, a former (two-time) Winemaker of the Year winner explains why more expensive is not always better, especially for winemakers just dipping their toes in the hobby.

10

CELLAR DWELLERS

With a range that stretches from Missouri all the way up towards the Hudson River in New York, Vignoles is a popular hybrid white grape varietal. Learn about it along with the basics of pH meters and catch up on the latest news and events.

14 TIPS FROM THE PROS

Hybrid grapes pose certain challenges to winemakers including higher acidity and lower tannins. Three cool-climate winemakers share their advice to create a balanced wine from these grapes.

16 WINE WIZARD

When a winemaker gets their hands on some highly coveted Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, he wants to make sure that the oak quality matches the grape. But he balks at the price tag of a new oak barrel. Get some tips for high-quality oak alternatives and ways to correct a raspberry wine with weird numbers.

20

VARIETAL FOCUS

Grape varietal names can be a confusing world, typically because one grape varietal may have over a dozen names based on location. But in this case, one grape name has an array of grape varietals. Get the scoop on onarda Argentine, one whose history is finally making sense thanks to DNA analysis.

47 TECHNIQUES

What good is having a thermometer or titration kit if the numbers you are getting from them are off? Make sure you are properly calibrating all your wine testing equipment.

50

BACKYARD VINES

The reader letters have been piling up, so Wes decides it’s come that time again to pick up the pen and share some of the most useful questions (and his answers) that readers have sent to him over the past year regarding backyard viticulture.

56

DRY FINISH

Fifty years ago a hobby winemaker decided to “go pro” by opening his own home winemaking supply shop. To attract customers, he started a winemaking club. The Purple Foot Wine Club is still going strong and wants to raise a toast to mark the occasion.

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What type of wine do you like to enjoy on a cold winter night?

Can I say a Cognac . . . ? I mean it is grape-based. Because a Cognac sitting by a crackling fire it sno falling outside seems about my ideal winter night. But a Port wine would be my ne t up. omet ing about the warming sensation and sweetness of Port ma es it t e perfect inter nig tcap.

A cold winter’s night immediately brings to mind sitting comfortably in front of a roaring fireplace fire at home. But what to drink? I believe a nice tawny Port is always a go-to, but what screams the holidays and cold winter night to me is mulled wine. I make this at home with my Concord based offdry wine. To each bottle of wine I add 1 4 cup of sugar and a simple mulling spice tea bag. e spices typically include cinnamon, cloves, all spice and a bit of orange peel. I allo these to simmer in the wine and sugar in a teapot. erve in a clear glass punc cup. ot ing arms the heart and soul more than enjoying this warm wine with your loved ones on a cold winter night.

Salute!

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QBrad Ring

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Plan Your First Vineyard

Planting a vineyard is a lot like deciding to have a baby. When confronted with all the responsibilities and tasks associated with parenthood — or vineyard ownership — you might feel suddenly overwhelmed. Planning is key to success. https:// winemakermag.com/article/559-planyour first vineyard

MEMBERS ONLY

Winemaking Tips From Bordeaux

Bordeaux wine styles are the dreams, the ultimate goal of Cabernet and/or Merlot winemakers. Get some pointers for crafting your own Bordeaux-style red blend. https://winemakermag.com/ technique/bordeaux-winemaking-tips

Blending Red and White

All contents of WineMaker are Copyright © 2022 by Battenkill Communications, unless otherwise noted. WineMaker is a registered trademark owned by Battenkill Communications, a Vermont corporation. Unsolicited manuscripts will not be returned, and no responsibility can be assumed for such material. All “Letters to the Editor” should be sent to the editor at the ermont office address. All rights in letters sent to WineMaker will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and subject to WineMaker’s unrestricted right to edit. Although all reasonable attempts are made to ensure accuracy, the publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions anywhere in the publication. All rights reserved. Reproduction in part or in whole without written permission is strictly prohibited. Printed in the United States of America. Volume 25, Number 1: February-March 2022.

You know from art class that red and white make pink, but is the same true for wine? Often rosés and blush wines are made from red grapes briefly e posed to the skins and then vinified as a white wine. ome pink wines, however, are a different breed. https://winemakermag.com/article/96blending-red-and-white-tips-fromthe-pros

MEMBERS ONLY

O beat Reds

Getting sick of the same old Cabernet or Merlot? Try a red wine that’s more out of the mainstream, like Carménère, Charbono, Dolcetto, Montepulciano, or Tinta Cão. https://winemakermag.com/article/ offbeat-reds

On a cold winter night I love a big glass of Italian Amarone while sitting by a roaring fire and letting the warmth of t e ames open t e avors and aromatics of this classic.

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* For full access to members’ only content and hundreds of pages of winemaking articles, techniques and troubleshooting, sign up for a 14-day free trial membership at winemakermag.com

AND FRUITY STYLES EC1118 ™ THE ORIGINAL “PRISE DE MOUSE”

71B ™ FRUITY AND “NOUVEAU” STYLES D47 ™ FOR COMPLEX CHARDONNAY QA23 ™ FOR COMPLEX SAUVIGNON BLANCS

RC212

FOR PINOT NOIR STYLES

CALCULATING SUGAR ADDITIONS WHEN BACKSWEETENING

I ust finished reading the Tips from the ros article acksweetening Fruit Wines” in the June-July 2021 issue and was wondering if you could clarify Rex Johnston’s statement “. . . we begin with 10% by weight sugar and make additional solutions up to 20% . . .” Ten percent of what weight? The weight of the 5- to 10-gallon (19- to 38-L) batch? The weight of the fruit used? Is the weight of the combined sugar and liquid used to make the sugar solution, or just sugar for the computation?

Thanks for clarifying this; otherwise it’s a good short piece.

Rich Torquemada • Stevensville, Montana

Here is what Rex had to add in order to clarify his statement: “The wine fermented to dryness can be considered to have 0% sugar by weight. If you weigh 90 grams of 0% sugar wine and add 10 grams of sugar, you will have 10% by weight of sugar in the fermented wine. Similarly, you prepare 12% by weight, 14% by weight, 16% by weight, 18% by weight and 20% by weight. Then you get about four friends who each have six glasses with about 15 mL of each solution in front of them. Then you all come to agreement as to which tastes best.”

Now, if you are wondering how to determine the weight of your wine that’s already inside a carboy there are a couple approaches. Since you should be doing these sweetening tests as bench trials where you are drawing samples anyways, you should be able to do some math to figure out how much the entire 5 gallons (19 L) weighs by multiplying the sample to equal 5 gallons (19 L). Or, if you have an empty carboy that is identical to the one you have filled, weigh the empty one and deduct that weight from the full one (and in the future, make note of the weight of each empty carboy so you know).

YOUR FIRST WINE KIT

I was one of four amateur winemakers invited to participate in a recent WineMaker ive Chat a free monthly benefit for digital members) and would like to further explain my thoughts on a topic that was discussed. I was the only winemaker on the panel who recommended buying an inexpensive wine kit to cut your teeth on if you are new to the hobby. The others recommended buying the best kit you can afford and follow the directions to a tee. I

Maureen Macdonald is a University of Vermont graduate with 17 years professional experience in the beverage and wine industry. She has experience in both viticulture and enology as a Field Manager and Head Winemaker for commercial vineyards. After years of working as a consultant to many vineyards, she now is the Head Winemaker for Hawk Ridge Winery in Watertown, Connecticut, where she makes 30 different wines. When she isn’t hard at work in the lab or winery, she is often judging commercial and amateur competitions or making hard cider and beer at home.

Maureen has experience making wines from both hybrid and vinifera grapes in Connecticut. In this issue, she writes about the benefits of blending these two species to create balanced wines, beginning on page 28.

Danny Wood is an Australian-based journalist who lived in Kansas City, Missouri, for a decade before moving home with his family. He’s made wine in his basement, worked in wineries, and is a former editor of Midwest Wine Press. He also studied enology while in the United States and judged the occasional wine competition, but was really smitten by vino (and his American wife) while living in Spain, reporting for BBC News. In past issues of WineMaker, anny has profiled oel Peterson and Ravenswood Winery, written stories on Australian winemaking, fermenting with wild yeast, essential winemaking techniques, the varieties of Chardonnay, Malbec, Tempranillo, and many other topics.

Beginning on page 36, Danny shares the advice from four renowned winemakers across the world to crafting a crisp Sauvignon Blanc.

Wes Hagen is the Consulting Winemaker and Brand Ambassador for J. Wilkes

Wines in Santa Maria, California after 21 years of making and growing wine for Clos Pepe Vineyards in the Santa Rita Hills of California. He does home vineyard consultations, writes AVA petitions, lectures, and writes on wine and viticulture. He is also WineMaker’s longtime “Backyard Vines”columnist, and the author of the 80-page special issue The Best ofWineMaker:Guide to Growing Grapes (https://winemakermag.com/store/special-issues/guideto-growing-grapes). Got grape growing questions? Hit him up on social media at Facebook: Wes Hagen, Twitter: @jwilkeswines, Instagram: J.Wilkes_Wines

Wes answers dozens of grape growing questions from home viticulturists every year, and each year we pull together a collection of some of his best responses. The most recent edition of “Ask Wes” makes up his “Backyard Vines” column beginning on page 50.

disagreed. I did say that if you screw up you wouldn’t feel as bad screwing up with an inexpensive kit, but I never had the chance to further explain my differing opinion. Here is my further explanation on why I suggest new winemakers begin with an inexpensive kit.

I belong to several winemaking groups on acebook. The first thing I have noticed is that people want instant results. Most of the expensive kits need more time before you can actually drink them. Patience is often not something newbies want to deal with. Inexpensive wine kits are good, fun, easy, cheap, and quick. Kind of gets you hooked.

Newbies also often don’t want to invest a lot of money in a new hobby so they try to get by with minimal equipment. Some of the most common issues I’ve seen from new winemakers are:

• Not getting a hydrometer to see when fermentation is complete or not knowing how to read a hydrometer, which can result in a dry wine with residual sweetness. I have seen where people asked how to restart their fermentation because they thought their wine was finished so they added all the finishing packets only to discover later it was still sweet. I looked back at my beginning kits and they did contain potassium sorbate.

• Not knowing how to, or not having the ability to control the temperature of fermentation. I have seen the correct sized buckets that have bubbled over due to a very aggressive fermentation.

• Or how about the famous degassing volcano!? I remember the first time I tried to degas with the drill as the directions said. Yup, lost at least a gallon (4 L) of wine, if not more. I can chuckle

about it now, but I had wine everywhere. They definitely didn’t have that listed on the directions.

• Having too much headspace in their carboy when they are aging it because they don’t have the different sized carboys or ability to gas it or add enough sanitized marbles. I have even seen where people have added a gallon (4 L) of water (diluting it) to try and keep it topped up.

• Then there are the glass carboys that break too easy. They seem thick and tough right? I have dropped a full carboy on my kitchen tile floor and it did not break broke a tile but then again, I’ve also set a full carboy gently on my garage floor, fracturing it causing a loss of all that killer wine I worked so hard on (Petite Pearl).

• I have even seen many posts about how a winemaker started their wine and forgot about it during the aging process. The airlock went dry or they found it a year later. This is the hardest one because they went through all the steps and all the work only to lose their wine later. Life happens.

So, you see, this is why I recommend learning with less expensive kits. Inexpensive kits are great to help you learn the process and get your feet wet. Then you feel more confident being able to move on to the more expensive kits. Most important, you can be drinking those less expensive, tasty kit wines while feeling more confident about spending your hard earned money making those expensive, amazing kits that are out there!

Kathleen Ondrus • Fruita, Colorado

RECENT NEWS

The European Union Approves Hybrid Grape Use

Some of the strict guidelines controlling protected designation of origin (PDO) has recently been modified by the uropean nion to include disease resistant hybrid grapes. Many hybrid grapes were created in France in response to the great phylloxera louse epidemic that began in the mid-nineteenth century and killed roughly 70% of France’s wine grape vines by 1900. The new varietals were a cross of the European Vitis vinifera wine grapes with native American grape species that were resistant to the phylloxera aphid. While the new hybrid varietals were utilized with great success in some parts of Europe, the process of grafting V. vinifera scions onto native American rootstock ended up being the solution most vineyards chose. But a few vineyards, most notably those in cold places, found that the “new” hybrids could outperform V. vinifera grape vines thanks to some cold hardiness from their North American DNA. Pockets of hybrid wine grape producers still exist in continental Europe today and they are especially popular in non-traditional wine grape growing regions like England and Scandinavia.

So while a few vineyards remained entrenched in growing and making wine from hybrid grape varietals surrounding PDOs, the PDOs outlawed the use of any of them in their wines because of the view that they produce inferior quality wines. The recent decision by the EU was based on the continent’s changing climate and the fact that the wine world will need to evolve to meet new challenges, especially those posed by disease pressure. The hybrid grapes are often more resistant to such pressure compared to the native V. vinifera cousins. This also allows vineyards to use less pesticide as well during the growing season. So maybe in a few years you will see Marquette blended in that Burgundian Grand Cru . . . ? Ha! Most likely not . . . but you just never know. Read more at:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2021/2117/oj

4, 2022

Distilling Boot Camp with Aaron Hyde. How to Distill book author Aaron Hyde will walk you through the small-scale distilling process over four hours. You’ll watch a live spirit distillation with cuts for whiskey, and Aaron will also discuss the distillation of most major spirits including moonshine, brandy, rum, whiskey, and gin. He’ll be answering your questions throughout the process as you learn the art of distillation using a small still. This class runs from 2 pm to 6 pm (Eastern).

https://winemakermag.com/product/distilling-online

18, 2022

GaragisteCon Online. A full day of live online seminars and Q&A panels for small-scale wineries and aspiring wineries. All attendees will have access to video recordings of all sessions. There are three learning tracks: Business/Sales, Winery Operations, and Start-Ups as well as Q&A sessions with leading small winery industry suppliers. Get your questions answered live by industry experts. Also attendees get to interact with other small wineries and wineries-in-planning to compare notes.

https://winemakermag.com/garagistecon

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

AWARD-WINNING KITS

Here is a list of medal-winning kits for the White, Red, and Blush Table Wine Blends categories chosen by a blind-tasting judging panel at the 2021 WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition in West Dover, Vermont:

Red Table Wine Blends

SILVER

RJS Craft Winemaking Okanagan

Meritage

Wine pert imited dition acific

Red Quartet

BRONZE

RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur

Italian Super Tuscan

RJS Craft Winemaking RQ Australian

Pinot Noir Shiraz

RJS Craft Winemaking RQ Chilean

Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot Syrah

VineCo Passport Merlot Cabernet

Winexpert Classic Chilean Diablo

Rojo

Winexpert Limited Edition Chilean

Corazon

Winexpert Limited Edition South

African Blend

Winexpert Vintners Reserve Coastal

Sangiovese Syrah Tempranillo

Winexpert World Vineyard Trinity

Red

White Table Wine Blends

GOLD

RJS Craft Winemaking Crush Select acific uartet

SILVER

Wine pert imited dition acifica

White

Winexpert Limited Edition Yolo

White

Blush Table Wine Blends

BRONZE

RJS Craft Winemaking Orchard Breezin’ Blush Crush

Awhite hybrid grape varietal whose parentage is currently unknown in a story of mistaken identity. Thought originally to be a cross between a Pinot Noir clone and one of Albert Seibel’s hybridized grapes, genetic testing has shown that the vines now labeled Vignoles are actually from a different line altogether with neither of these two found in its genes. This white grape is grown primarily in a belt stretching from the Hudson Valley region of New York to Pennsylvania through the lower Midwest; including Missouri, Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky.

In the vineyard, Vignoles breaks bud late allowing it to escape most latespring frost events. On average it is known to take roughly 105 days to get the grape from bloom until harvest. Its thick skin allows some grape growers to leave it hanging long enough to produce ice wines, obtaining upwards of 30 °Brix. Botrytis is a threat with Vignoles, but can also be utilized by the winemaker to obtain a honey-like character in the wine, most notably if going for a Sauternes style of sweet wine.

Vignoles is considered a high-sugar, high-acid hybrid grape. Winemakers will typically need to provide some backsweetening at bottling to counter the acid levels with semi-dry wines being the most common table wine produced from the grape. There are some examples of dry varietal wines being produced. Blending is another common approach to producing wines with Vignoles.

Photo courtesy of Double A Vineyards, Inc.

BEGINNER’S BLOCK

BY DAVE GREEN

pH METERS A

fter some convenience items like a racking cane and a wine thief are added to your winemaking equipment arsenal, a quality pH meter should be one of your next investments. Being able to get an accurate read on where your wine’s pH lands on the spectrum has huge implications not only for flavor and balance, but more importantly its microbial stability and impact on sulfite additions. It is probably the single most important number you can obtain while making wine.

pH METER BASICS

While the exact science of how a pH meter works is not all that important, a basic explanation is that the probe you submerge in your solution (wine) is reading the level of hydrogen ions. Because of the chemistry involved, pH meters are temperature-sensitive and readings can change depending on the temperature of your solution.

pH meters must be calibrated before each use with two solutions designed to specifically read p at a certain level. These are generally referred to as calibration reagents or buffers and the two that winemakers want to always have on hand is one at pH 4.01 and the other at pH 7. These reagents do need to be replaced periodically, so be wary of the expire date. Also be sure to secure the caps back on when finished with each use since evaporation will affect the reagents’ ability to properly calibrate your meter.

Finally, your pH meter’s probe needs to always be stored in one of the calibration reagents or in designated pH electrode storage solution and should never be left to dry out or stored in distilled water. There is a solution inside the probe that once dry will need to either be replaced or the whole pH meter will need replacing, depending on the model pH meter you choose.

CHOOSING A pH METER

While there is the more affordable

option of getting pH test strips, an investment in a decent-grade pH meter is highly recommended for anyone who wants to take their winemaking to the next level. A quality stick-type pH meter will start around $50, but can range up above $100 for the higher-end stick meters. Sticks are easy to use and a small footprint makes them easy to take with you and store away. The higher-end stick pH meters will have a feature called ATC, or automatic temperature correction, as well as enhanced pH precision. The beauty of the ATC feature is that if your juice is cold, it will adjust pH readings to correct the variance. One of the major issues with stick pH meters is that their design is really for handheld, quick readings. More advanced winemaking lab skills will find these shortcomings to be problematic.

Next up are the portable pH meters which, like stick pH meters, are easy to transport, but do have a slightly bigger footprint. These are a good mid-range meter that often will feature ATC and may or may not provide the precision of a stick pH meter. That depends on the models you are looking at. These start around $120 for a quality model with ATC.

A bench-top pH meter is only for beginning winemakers who believe in the “buy once, cry once” philosophy. A top-end, laboratory-grade model can run over $1,000, but more affordable options generally start in the $200 range. These should feature ATC as well as improved accuracy, precision, and the ability to replace the probe in case of failure. Many of these also now offer some sort of technological interactions as well, allowing you to log or chart readings to a computer or app. For those that want their pH meter to grow with their hobby, you’ll want to invest in one. But besides the higher price tag, they

also have a bigger footprint and lack the portability aspect.

Finally, choosing a known manufacturer like Hanna, Milwaukee, or Vinmetrica is a good choice for winemakers since they are well-known in the wine world and folks can easily get advice on them from fellow winemakers. Also, a precision level of ±0.01 is more than enough for even picky home winemakers. Steer clear of meters with more than ±0.1 pH precision as that is not good enough for winemaking.

pH METER USES

Getting a pH read on fresh juice or grapes is going to be key for several possible winemaking additions. Generally white and rosé winemakers are looking for juice to fall in the 3.0–3.4 range while red typically should be between 3.2–3.6. Winemakers can either acidify the juice or de-acidify if the juice falls far outside of its respective range. These are just generalizations though and should not be used as gospel. Other factors such as TA, or titratable acidity, may also be a factor. But if wine pH is too high, there are several potential problems, most notably: The wine is much more susceptible to infections, more sulfites are needed as p rises, and wine often tastes flat lacking any bite). When pH is too low yeast and other microorganisms winemakers want may struggle. It may also be overly harsh/sour on the palate.

A pH meter can offer more for winemakers than just getting a read of a juice or wine’s pH. With a few extra pieces of equipment, most notably a burette, winemakers can also get the TA levels as well (another important measurement for winemakers in tandem with pH). TA readings can be performed without a pH meter using phenolphthalein as a pH indicator, but the problem is that the indicator is pink and therefore does not work well on red wine. For that reason, it’s only suited for TA readings with whites . . . and you are much better off with a pH meter anyway.

Photos courtesy of MoreWine!

TIPS FROM THE PROS

BY DAWSON RASPUZZI

FINDING BALANCE WITH HYBRIDS

When is intervention necessary?

French-American hybrid varieties allow wine grapes to be grown in locations that European varieties cannot succeed. However, hybrids often require extra attention in the winery as they are notorious for higher acidity, lower tannins, and color instability. There are many ways to address these potential shortfalls, and the choices a winemaker makes can really show their talent. We asked three pros who grow hybrids to share their advice for crafting award-winning wines from them.

Giacomo “Jim” Verde retired from teaching biology in 2002 after 38 years. After visiting nearby vineyards in Connecticut he was impressed by the hardiness and quality of hybrids and planted some vines, which in four years produced a very good wine. By 2012 Verde Vineyards became a commercial winery located in Johnston, Rhode Island.

The hybrids we grow in our Rhode Island vineyard off Moswansicut Lake include the red varieties St. Croix and Petite Pearl, as well as the white grapes La Crescent, Itasca, and Cayuga White. Each has its own personality and although they are more resistant to diseases than the vinifera varieties, they still need to be sprayed with fungicides. La Crescent is particularly susceptible to downy mildew and Cayuga to sour rots. We also grow the vinifera varieties Merlot, Cabernet Franc, and Lemberger (also called Blaufränkisch). Of these three, Merlot presents the greatest challenge to grow in our region as it is susceptible to cold damage. The vineyard is about 20 miles from the Atlantic Coast where the winters are milder than much of New England, so we do have success with these varieties. The vinifera varieties need to be sprayed more often than the hybrids. New England weather is quite variable and poses challenges from year-to-year. This past July 2021 was quite rainy and humid and promoted the growth of fungal diseases, especially black rot. And we are always worried about cold spells, which are deadly for the vinifera. The hybrids have withstood many below-zero nights unscathed. While we are primarily talking about creating balance in the winery, it is important to understand the impact that weather and viticulture decisions play in the resulting grapes.

Our St. Croix is picked at 18 °Brix. As the grapes ripen more than that the

berries tend to fall off and of course there is always the danger of getting a “foxiness” to the wine. Foxiness means the wine will have the aromas of a wild grape (Vitis labrusca, called the fox grape) — a mutant of which is the Concord grape, which will give the wine aromas like Welch’s grape uice. The St. Croix hybrid is a genetic mixture of wild grape genes and varieties from Europe. The wild genes give the hybrid variety resistance to cold and indigenous diseases and the European varieties contribute pleasant flavors and aromas. For our other hybrids; Cayuga is picked at 19 °Brix while Petite Pearl, La Crescent, and Itasca are harvested at 24 °Brix. We make dry wines so sugar levels are controlled.

Since the hybrids are on the acidic side, choosing a yeast strain that reduces acidity is important. The addition of sugar also helps fight high acidity. Sometimes we also adjust acidity with a bit of potassium bicarbonate. Tartaric acid is reduced considerably by cold stabilization and by blending the red hybrids with red vinifera varieties. Most of our hybrids are used, however, to make varietal wines. We do not cold stabilize the reds.

The one hybrid/vinifera blend we make is called Surveyor, and is a blend of Cabernet Franc, Lemberger, Merlot, and St. Croix. It is a well-balanced red wine that is a combination of a true blend and field blend.

Tannin additions are uncommon for us as the hybrid grapes we grow actually come through with good balance. Enzymes are only used for the whites.

Since the hybrids are on the acidic side, choosing a yeast strain that reduces acidity is important.

e work with a lot of hybrid grapes including Cayuga White, Seyval Blanc, Vidal Blanc, Corot Noir, and Traminette, as well as a number of vinifera grapes including Chardonnay, Riesling, Cabernet Franc, Saperavi, Dornfelder, Zweigelt, and Lemberger. Corot Noir is the only red hybrid we grow — in a good year I am looking for 19–21 °Brix, 3.4 pH, and a titratable acidity (TA) of 8.0–9.0. Even in those ideal years I’ll usually add some sugar to result in an appropriate alcohol after fermentation (I typically try to make our Corot Noir at 11–12% ABV). Of course, not every vintage is ideal. I have harvested the Corot Noir at 16.5 °Brix, 3.1 pH, and a TA of 9.5. When we get grapes like that I’ll add sugar and do a full malolactic fermentation, as well as use different yeast strains to reduce the acid (usually Lalvin 71B-1122, but I have also

used CSM from Scott Labs and Lalvin ICV-GRE). I prefer that the grapes and growing season dictate the wine. Still, I am consistent with the wine style that Corot Noir makes annually — which is a dry red wine aged in barrels. I don’t normally blend it with a vinifera as we like the varietal character. This past year was wet and I found the grapes were a little behind normal, leading to a slightly later harvest, more sugar added, and more malolactic culture.

To help with the color in the Corot Noir I punch down the cap during fermentation at a high temperature of 85–90 °F (29–32 °C). I also use tannins and enzymes to stabilize the color. I use fermentation tannins from Scott Labs and, if needed, an aging or finishing tannin.

For home winemakers, the best advice is to get the best fruit possible. But even if it isn’t perfect, there are many options available to help you make a good wine.

We grow Marechal Foch and Leon Millot at our estate vineyard, and I also have experience with numerous other French hybrids: Seyval Blanc, Vidal Blanc, DeChaunac, and Geisenheim, to name a few. The only vinifera we buy is Riesling.

We rarely reach full ripeness in our climate so our expectations are a pretty low bar when it comes to the “typical” numbers winemakers in other regions are accustomed to. If we get to 20 °Brix and pH of around 3 or so we are pretty happy. The only adjustments I ever make to our crop is to add sugar to reach an alcohol level that is appropriate for any given wine (which generally range from about 10.5% ABV up to 13% ABV for our red table wines).

In a poor growing year I have had fruit come in with a Brix at 17 and a pH of 2.8 — way green. The only options with fruit like that are to either blend it off into another wine to alleviate the problem or craft a wine from it where those characteristics are an asset. Fruit always determines the wine that it

gets crafted into. There is no point in trying to make a wine out of fruit that doesn’t have what it needs to succeed. No matter what you do, French hybrid is not going to ever magically evolve into vinifera. I run into so many wines where the winemaker thinks that oak will somehow turn a hybrid into Cabernet. Foolish. Make wine where the fruit is at its best. In the case of every hybrid I’ve encountered, that means fruit-forward with a light body — wines that are fresh and easy to drink.

When you have less than ripe fruit, which is very common in Wisconsin, you need to work the fermentation very hard to get everything available. In the case of color, that involves multiple pumpovers/punchdowns on a daily basis and maybe let a little more heat develop than would normally be tolerated.

The best advice I can give any winemaker, home or commercial, is to always start with the best fruit you can get your hands on. If you are a grower as well, concentrate on every best effort to bring in a quality crop. Good fruit is like a Porsche; there is no substitute.

James Baker is the Winemaker and Vineyard Manager at Hopkins Vineyard in Warren, Connecticut, where he has worked for 29 years.

Peter Botham has three years of professional training followed by 32 years of growing grapes and producing wine. He opened Botham Vineyards in Barneveld, Wisconsin in 1989, where he continues to make the wines more than three decades later.

BY ALISON CROWE

WINE WIZARD BARREL ALTERNATIVES

Also: Matching quality grapes with oak and the complexities of raspberry wine

QI MADE TWO BARRELS OF ALEXANDER VALLEY CABERNET SAUVIGNON THIS YEAR, AND THE BARRELS ARE PRETTY OLD, SO I DON’T THINK I’LL GET A LOT OF OAK AROMA OR FLAVOR OUT OF THEM. I REALLY DON’T WANT TO SPEND THE $2,000 (!) TO BUY A NEW BARREL AND AM WONDERING IF YOU COULD RECOMMEND HOW I CAN GET SOME GOOD AGING OAK ON THE WINE IN A WAY THAT’S NOT CHEAP TASTING BUT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO DO THE GRAPES THE CREDIT THEY DESERVE. I GOT THE FRUIT FROM A BUDDY WHO SUPPLIES LOCAL FAMOUS WINERIES AND I’D LIKE TO DO THE WINE JUSTICE . . . JUST NOT THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS WORTH, IF YOU GET MY MEANING.

WILLIAM SCHULTZ WINDSOR, CALIFORNIA

AHey, I see you, I hear you, and I’m so here for you! The average price for a French oak barrel has really become very high in the last couple of years (decades?) and winemaking is an expensive enough undertaking without loading all of that up-front cost into it. A new French barrel can easily cost over $2,000 and, as far as the straight-up oaky aromas and flavors are concerned, only have about three- or four-years’ life in them before they become relatively neutral storage vessels. As an old friend of mine would wryly sniff, “A used barrel is merely medieval Tupperware.” I don’t agree with him 100% but it is indeed true that the hint of vanilla and that kiss of toasty spiciness we love in a well-made wine becomes increasingly difficult to attain as a barrel gets older. While even neutral barrels provide a quality-enhancing dynamic aging environment where tiny bits of oxygen are allowed ingress over time, the aroma and flavor compounds we associate with top-quality wines, especially Cabernet Sauvignon, require at least a small amount of newer, toasted oak.

So, what’s a conscientious but impecunious winemaker to do? You can easily level up by introducing some delicious new non-coopered oak into the equation. What do I mean by “non-coopered oak” you may ask? It’s a term I came up with years ago to describe well-sourced, carefully toasted oak that just didn’t happen to be bent and built into a barrel. ar from the sawdust and factory floor sweepings of 20 years ago, the choice of “non-coopered oak” available to today’s winemaker is truly astounding. Just about every major cooper (barrel maker) I can think of is also offering a line or five of wood from their company, which can be administered in something other than barrel form. From small particles the size of a grain of rice to yard-long staves that can be built into aging stacks in stainless steel tanks or concrete eggs, there are many application types to choose from. Any toast level you’d want in a barrel can be found, from untoasted practically white wood all the way up to the highest, coffee-toffee char. In short, if you can dream it for your wine, you can probably find it.

If I sound like an oak-piece sales rep it’s because I really want to encourage

.

. . the aroma and flavor compounds we associate with top-quality wines, especially Cabernet Sauvignon, require at least a small amount of newer, toasted oak.

Photo courtesy of MoreWine!

New oak barrels can provide a lot of character to wine, but they are a sizable investment.

all home winemakers to give the world of non-coopered oak a spin. Gone are the days when you’d have to “pick-your-own” from a mystery bin of barrel-reject pieces in the back of a home winemaking supply store. Here are a few of the ways you can introduce oak into your winemaking:

• Oak in the red fermenter: I know it’s a little unorthodox but I learned it while I was working for Randall Grahm at Bonny Doon Vineyard (well, he is known as the King of Unorthodox Winemaking, after all . . .) and I’ve been a big fan ever since. The heat and increasing alcohol level of a red fermentation is the ideal time to get a jump on oak extraction and integration, which is why I highly recommend fermenting on about 1–1.75 g/L of small-particle oak.

A good standard item is something like French Medium Toast “pumpable-size” (so called because it’s small enough to go through a pump and hose) but not so small that it’s like fine sawdust. The smaller the particle the faster the e traction, and you can get a lot out of wood this size in the 7–14 days of your average red wine fermentation. There’s no need to “remove” the oak later, you just press it off and settle with the rest of your grape solids. You can also put larger oak pieces into food-grade mesh sacks and then suspend them in your tote or macro-bin. You can then re-use the chips if you want because it’s possible that they won’t have finished e tracting by the time the fermentation is complete. At the fermentation stage, oak can also serve as an antioxidant, a source of sacrificial tannins, and can even help support colored compounds. In my experience, light to medium oak toasts can also help reduce the perception of green and unripe characters if your Cabernet is leaning that way.

• Oak in the barrel: It’s time to bring some new oak back to your barrel! Whether it’s “chips in a sock” (like a tea bag), a cut-wood spiral, chains of pieces hooked together and passed through the bunghole, or even an elaborate internal scaffold; there are so many ways to put new wood into your barrel.

Coopers and oak-supply companies have come up with several inventive ways to get their product into our barrels. Do keep in mind, however, that some methods are easier than others. A metal infusion tube or nylon sock “tea bag” can be easier to remove than complicated, connected sticks. The many-pieced chains of wood sometimes get stuck into the barrel, making the barrel impossible to clean. At this point, you may just be better off doing the tea bag or sock. Some barrel companies offer a service where they remove the barrel head and actually build a scaffold of new wood inside (replacing the barrel head obviously . This way, your wine gets the double benefit of the aging dynamics of the barrel itself along with the new aroma and flavor compounds from the fresh oak.

• Oak Trials: Don’t forget, you can always do bench trials with oak chips. Though doing a bench trial of a large piece of stave wood is impossible, often the same company will sell the same wood (French, three-year aged) and toast level (say, Medium+ with half untoasted) in a chip or bean form so you should be able to get an approximate idea of what it might impart to your wine. It’s always good to have an idea of what such a substantial investment will impart on your wine.

Below is some information about barrel/oak/wood companies I’ve had some luck working with in the past few years. Please note, I do not have any endorsement agreements with anyone, nor is their mention here an indication of any kind of guarantee on my part. These are simply some of the companies I’ve dealt with in a positive way in my professional winemaking life in the last few years and I thought I’d pass on my experience to you. There are other products available in the hobby wine world, like Wine Stix, that I have not used.

Stavin (www.stavin.com): Stavin practically invented high-end, non-coopered oak in the United States and was a first mover in custom toasts and different flavor profiles back in the early 2000s. Their wood is carefully sourced in France, Hungary, or in the U.S. (depending on the origin of oak wanted)

Oak alternatives, or “non-coopered oak,” come in a wide array of formats and different ones can be used at different stages of the wine aging process.

Photo by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus

WINE WIZARD

and then is either fire toasted in a metal hoop ust like a barrel would be or, in some of their newer lines, kiln-toasted. One of their specialties is a product called Barrel Head, which is a very light toast and is great if your Cabernet has any green or unripe character to it.

Their delivery format is either “granular” (good for fermentation at about 1.5 g/L) or “beans,” which are cute little cubes about the si e of the end of my pointer finger. They are small enough to go nicely into a barrel sock type insertion but Stavin also sells perforated metal infusion tubes if you really want to give your barrel a good dose. Stavin also produces an interesting liquid oak additive called “Fire” that needs careful bench trialing to decide if it’s appropriate for your wine. Be careful, a little goes a long way and it’s expensive (but not as expensive as a new barrel!).

Radoux (www.tonnellerieradoux.com): A respected French barrel company, Radoux started working in the non-coopered business about ten years ago. Their Pronektar line offers powders, granules, segments, and staves. Their segments are about 2.5-in. square x 1 3-in. thick or 6-sq. cm x 1-cm thick providing an even toast while the staves are about the size and shape of a yardstick and come in mesh sacks or “fan arrays” held together by food-grade zip ties. These are great for hanging in porta tanks or small fermentation vessels but don’t fit into a barrel. Because the pieces of wood are bigger than a chip or bean, they do take longer to extract. In my experience this is very top-notch oak well worth checking out.

Barrel Mill (www.thebarrelmill.com): This is an unassuming, under the radar company that supplies whiskey barrels and various flavors of oak delivered in spiral form for wine aging. I’ve found their spirals to be quick-extracting, in about two months or so, and the flavors and aromas of the oak are pretty well-integrated in that short amount of time. Their barrel-insert spirals are quite affordable, at fractions of dollars per

gallon rather than tens or hundreds of dollars per gallon for a new or even once-used oak barrel. What’s pretty cool is that you don’t need to use the entire spiral all at once. In other words, if you want a lower oaking rate per gallon you could simply break off a piece of one and hang it in the barrel. Elegant, convenient, affordable, and tasty.

G3/Boise/Vivylis (www.g3enterprises.com): This is a large company that is supplying some innovative products to wine companies large and small. I’ve worked with some of their very quick-extracting chips, which they can provide in a wide range of flavors. These chips e tract to give you some good stuff” in as little as three weeks (though a full 8–10 weeks is preferred) and have less of a “chippy” fake taste than some other “chip-size” oak. Contact the company and request samples for big-bodied red wines. Their SC180XL and Phenesse Lush and Tradition chips do great with Pinot Noir. Cabernet might do better with something like their DC180 or other lines. You can do trials with small volumes before you decide what you’d like to use with your Cabernet (or other wines).

Long story short (and this is for all my readers, and not just our friend who wrote me this letter) — there is a whole new world of non-barrel oak out there that has been a professional wine industry “secret” for far too long. There are so many more sustainable and more environmentally friendly ways we can age our wine that doesn’t include the use of “medieval Tupperware making, transporting, filling, emptying, and cleaning barrels are a leading source of water and energy waste in the wine industry). As my mentor Randall Grahm used to say: “Winemaker, step away from the barrel.” What he usually meant was that we shouldn’t clobber our wines with unnecessary lashings of brand-new oak barrels. What he also meant, because we were living it daily in the cellar, was: “Winemaker, don’t be afraid to use oak that doesn’t come in barrel form.” I encourage you to expand your horizons in similar ways.

I NEED HELP IN SOLVING A RIDDLE WITH A HIGH TITRATABLE ACIDITY ( TA ) AND MEDIUM - HIGH p H RASPBERRY WINE. I AM AGING THIS RASPBERRY WINE CURRENTLY AND THE TA, POSTFERMENTATION IS ABOUT 13.4 WHILE THE p H IS 3.6. THAT SEEMS PRETTY FAR OUT OF LINE WITH WHAT NORMAL WINE SPECS ARE AND I’M NOT SURE HOW TO DEAL WITH IT. ALSO OF NOTE, I ADDED SOME CALCIUM CARBONATE AND THE p H/TA BALANCE DIDN’T REACT LIKE I EXPECTED IT WOULD. WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND FOR CONTINUING TREATING/AGING OF THIS WINE?

HERE’S AN OUTLINE OF WHAT I DID ( EDITED FOR LENGTH ): PRIOR TO FERMENTATION, I ADDED THE CALCIUM CARBONATE AND AFTER TWO HOURS RACKED INTO A FERMENTATION BUCKET. I TOOK A SAMPLE AND MEASURED THE FOLLOWING SPECS: pH 3.54, TA 11.5, BRIX 22.

IT LOOKED LIKE THE CALCIUM CARBONATE HAD WORKED. I STARTED PRIMARY FERMENTATION USING LALVIN 71B AND ADDED YEAST NUTRIENT. AFTER PRIMARY FERMENTATION ENDED, I RACKED THE WINE OFF THE LEES INTO A 6- GALLON (23- L ) CARBOY: pH 3.6, TA 13.25 (??) HOW DID IT GO UP?

ONE WEEK LATER I RACKED AGAIN: p H 3.6, TA 13.5. I PROCEEDED TO DEGAS THE WINE AND ADDED ¼ TSP. OF POTASSIUM METABISULFITE POWDER AND FINALLY PLACED IN A REFRIGERATOR TO COLD STABILIZE. SO HOW WOULD THE WINE WIZARD PROCEED FROM HERE?

JEFF DAVIS MOUNT PLEASANT, SOUTH CAROLINA

I really applaud you for keeping such detailed records and testing regularly. This really helps me when diagnosing issues and coming up with ways to help. I want to start off by saying that raspberries are a really high-acid fruit and that high titratable acidity won’t necessarily track with the pH like it does in wine from grapes.

For background (and to add to the fun of fruit winemaking), there can also be a considerable swing in pH/acidity and Brix depending on raspberry cultivar and growing season. In a study of four varieties in the 1980s and 1990s, a TA swing between 1.5% to 2.64% was observed. Buffering capacities for fruits will be different and we can’t expect a raspberry wine to behave like a grape wine, especially when the inherent chemistries are so different. Grapes are high in tartaric and malic acids especially, with smaller amounts of citric and other acids. Raspberries don’t have tartaric or malic acids and are very high in citric and ascorbic acid. In short, deacidification rules and practices that we may be used to in grapes won’t necessarily apply when producing a raspberry wine.

Since there isn’t any tartaric acid, your cold stability seeding step (seeding with potassium bitartrate crystals) won’t draw out tartrates like you’d expect from a grapebased wine. I am curious, however, if chilling the wine down had any effect of moving the TA down. It would definitely be worth it for you to do another TA and pH measurement

post-chilling to see where that moved your numbers. I’d be curious to see if freezing a small sample (and then measuring the pH and TA of the liquid on top of any precipitate) moved the TA and pH in a direction that you liked. But ultimately, “do you like the wine more?” is the real question. Because pH determines microbial activity (and affects color), I’m not sure I would add any more carbonates (potassium bicarbonate or calcium carbonate) to deacidify any further. Does the wine taste OK to you, even if the numbers are “out of balance” when we’re talking about table wine? If the acid tastes unpleasant to you, one trick is to balance it out with some sweetness and then sterile filter your final product. Can you add some sugar and alcohol like a non-harsh vodka or grappa) to make a sweet, boozy dessert wine? Sugar can cover up a lot of acid and help move a wine towards a more balanced state.

One of my favorite wines I ever had a hand in making was the famous Framboise dessert wine at Bonny Doon Vineyard. To make it (not that I can give away the exact formula), we took fresh raspberries and essentially macerated them in sugar syrup and neutral high-proof grape spirits. After a few weeks we pressed off and separated the solids from the liquids to create a sweet, higher-alcohol nectar. I know that’s not a traditional table wine and it’s very different than your product here, but I do think a lot could be achieved by adding some grape concentrate or sugar syrup and sterile filtering.

VARIETAL FOCUS

BY CHIK BRENNEMAN

BONARDA ARGENTINE

Or Douce Noir or Charbono . . .

What’s in a name? There is a lot in a name, but apparently, there is a considerable amount of subjectivity. As we focus in this issue’s topic, I was approached by the editors about a grape that goes by the name of Bonarda. Honestly, I was surprised that I didn’t know it as it was described to me. Did you know it is Argentina’s second most planted grape varietal after Malbec? So the research continued — surely there must be more information about this grape? But as I dug more into Bonarda, I found the information confusing. Well it turns out the grape I was researching is two, or maybe even seven, unique wine grape varieties depending on the story you want to believe. And the icing on the cake is that the “name” for the most abundant varietal of them, Bonarda, is not its proper name!

A grape varietal named Bonarda exists, but that is not actually the focus of this column. That grape is more properly known in Italy as Bonarda Piemontese, an aromatic, well-colored Italian red with small bunches and soft tannins. The resource goes on to say the name “Bonarda” is a misleading name applied to at least seven distinct varieties in northern Italy. Those varieties are Croatina, Durasa, Neretta Cuneese, Neretto Duro, Refosco Dal Peduncolo Rosso, Uva Rara, and Douce Noir. The last, Douce Noir, is where we will end up focusing our attention today . . . and we will soon see an interesting story unfold.

Until the end of the nineteenth century, Douce Noir was one of the most widely planted grapes of the Savoie region in eastern France. It was widely believed to have originated in the Piemonte region of Italy, where it was

often confused with Dolcetto (Dolcetto Nero). The confusion laid in the fact that the evidence tracing a variety’s origin many moons ago was based on ampelographic, or the morphologic features of the plant. White versus red fruit, leaf shape, hair patterns on the underside of the leaf . . . to name a few key ampelographic characteristics. And also, the written evidence needed to be teased from the journals of scientist and scholars. Some evidence was also contained in the municipal official scrolls. All of which took considerable time and effort for people trying to understand more about this grape.

Then along came science to the rescue. In 2006 and again in 2008, after bringing in A profiling, the research definitely supported the birthplace of Douce Noir to in fact be Savoie in France and not Piemonte of Italy. In Savoie it had many synonyms, and none of them mentioned Bonarda in their name. One of those synonyms was Charbonneau, which had also spread north to the Jura department.

Reading a little further into the name of French origin, it was further determined that a variety now cultivated in California, under the name Charbono, is identical to the Charbonneau/Douce Noir of Savoie. At some point the Charbonneau made it to Piemonte, where its name was Italianized to Charbono and lived out its life until it was no longer commercially cultivated there. The distance is not that far, maybe a couple of hundred kilometers (a little over 100 miles), so this makes a lot of sense, even without the historical records. The story goes on in that Charbono is thought to have been brought to California with Italian immigrants in the 1800s as the other northern Italian varietal, Barbera. But ampelographic evidence

Until the end of the nineteenth century, Douce Noir was one of the most widely planted grapes of the Savoie region in eastern France.

CALIFORNIA-STYLE CHARBONO Yield 5 gallons (19 L)

INGREDIENTS

125 pounds (57 kg) Charbono fruit

Distilled water

10 potassium metabisulfite M solution Weigh 10 grams of M , dissolve into about 50 mL of distilled water. When completely dissolved, make up to 100 mL total with distilled water.)

Tartaric acid

5 g Lallemand EC1118

10 g Diammonium phosphate (DAP)

10 g Go-Ferm

10 g ermaid or e uivalent yeast nutrient)

Malolactic fermentation starter culture (CHR Hansen or equivalent)

EQUIPMENT

15-gallon (57-L) food-grade plastic bucket for fermentation

5-gallon (19-L) carboy

1–2 one-gallon (3.8-L) jugs

Racking hoses

Destemmer/crusher

Wine press

Inert gas (nitrogen, argon, or carbon dioxide)

Ability to maintain a fermentation temperature of 85–90 °F (29–32 °C) TIP: You may have a need to keep it warm, in this case wrapping the fermenter in an electric blanket or other heat-generating source may be necessary.

Thermometer capable of measuring between 40–110 °F (4–43 °C) in one degree increments

Pipettes with the ability to add in increments of 1 milliliter

STEP BY STEP

1. Clean and sanitize all your winemaking tools, supplies, and equipment.

2. Crush and destem the grapes. Transfer the must or juice to your fermenter.

3. During the transfer, add 15 mL of 10 M solution. This addition is the equivalent of 50 ppm SO2

4. Take a sample to test for Brix, acidity, and p . eep the results handy. ayer the headspace with inert gas. eep covered and in a cool place overnight.

5. Go back to those lab results you took yesterday. Typical Brix for this style is 24–25 °Brix. Typical acid levels will be 0.65–0.7%. Adjust as necessary

using tartaric acid. If the acid is higher than 0.7%, don’t panic, this recipe calls for a minimum final acidity of 0.5%. Higher acid won’t hurt here.

6. Prepare yeast. Heat about 50 mL distilled water to 108 °F (42 °C). Mix the Go-Ferm into the water to make a suspension. Take the temperature. Pitch the yeast when the suspension is 104 °F (40 °C). Sprinkle the yeast on the surface and gently mix so that no clumps exist. Let sit for 15 minutes undisturbed. Measure the temperature of the yeast suspension. Measure the temperature of the must. You do not want to add the yeast to your cool juice if the temperature of the yeast and the must temperature difference exceeds 15 °F (8 °C). To avoid temperature shock, you should acclimate your yeast by taking about 10 mL of the must juice and adding it to the yeast suspension. Wait 15 minutes and measure the temperature again. Do this until you are within the specified temperature range. Do not let the yeast sit in the original water suspension for longer than 20 minutes.

7. The next day suspend the Fermaid in a little distilled water usually 0 mL). Add to must or juice and mix well.

8. You should see signs of fermentation within about one to two days. This will appear as some foaming on the must surface and it will appear that the berries are rising out of the container. This is referred to as the cap rise. You need to have on hand the ability to push the grapes back into the juice to promote color and tannin extraction. This is called “punching down” and this should be done three times per day using a clean utensil.

9. Monitor the Brix and temperature twice daily during peak fermentation (10–21 °Brix). Morning and evening is best and more often if the temperature shows any indication of exceeding 90 °F (32 °C). Place frozen water bottles in the fermentation if too warm then mix the must. Wait 15 minutes, mix, and check the temperature again. Do this as often as it takes to keep the temperature between 85–90 °F (29–32 °C). Do not cool off to less than 80 °F (27 °C).

10. At about 19 °Brix, dissolve the DAP

in a small amount of distilled water and mix into the must

11. When the Brix reaches 0 (about 5–7 days) transfer the must to your press. eep the free run wine separate from the press portion for now. Be sure to label your vessels.

12. Transfer the free-run juice to your 5-gal. (19-L) carboy and press fractions into the one-gallon (3.8-L) jugs. Your press fraction should only require 1–2 jugs. Make sure you do not have any headspace in the vessels. Inoculate with your malolactic (ML) bacteria. Check the manufacturer’s instruction on how to prepare and inoculate. Cover the tops with an airlock to allow CO2 gas to escape.

13. Monitor ML fermentation using a thin layer chromatography assay, available from most winemaking suppliers. Follow the manufacturer instructions.

14. When the ML is complete, add m of fresh M 10 solution per gallon (3.8 L) of wine. This is the e uivalent to 0 ppm addition. lace the wine in a cool place to settle

15. Consider adding some French and American oak chips to your press fractions. Do not treat the entire lot.

16. After two weeks, test for pH and SO2, adjust the SO2 as necessary to attain 0.8 ppm molecular SO2. (There is a SO2 calculator at www.winemak ermag.com/sulfitecalculator). Check the SO2 in another two weeks and adjust. Once the free SO2 is adjusted, maintain at this level. You’ll just need to check every two months or so.

17. Rack the wine clean twice over 6–8 months time frame to clarify. Fining and/or filtration are generally not needed if SO2 levels are maintained and if no surface films or indications of subsequent fermentations. Consult www.winemakermag.com for tips on fining and filtration if utilized.

18. Once the wine is cleared (about twelve months after the completion of fermentation) it’s time to organize a blending party to integrate the press/ oak fraction back into the free run. You may not need it all, use your judgement and make what you like.

19. If all has gone well to this point it can be bottled without filtration. Maintain sanitary conditions while bottling.

The Charbonneau/Douce Noir grape made it to Argentina under the name Bonarda.

from UC-Davis provided by Dr. Harold Olmo proved that this “Barbera” was actually Charbono/Douce Noir. Which led to the first labeled vintage of Charbono in California in 1 1, being produced by the famed Napa Valley winery, Inglenook.

Its migration away from Europe continued. The Charbonneau/Douce Noir grape made it to Argentina under the name Bonarda. DNA evidence does not support any similarities to Bonarda Piemontese or any of the six other aforementioned varieties of that Italian region other than the region from which it emigrated. Argentina now reports over 19,000 hectares of the misnamed “Bonarda.” To try to clear up the confusion, in 2011 the name Bonarda Argentine was given to the grape growing in the country. It is mostly cultivated in the Mendoza and San Juan regions where the hotter climates are ideal for it since it requires a long hangtime to get it to fully ripen. High-altitude vineyards can also do well with this vari-

BORDEAUX WINERY TOUR

September

18-23, 2022

Join us in Bordeaux, France as we explore one of the world’s great wine regions first-hand with insider tours and tastings on both the Left and Right Banks. We’ll visit Paulliac and Saint-Emilion with special wine tastings at local winery estates and venture into wine caves. We’ll have fun with a few blind tastings and a wine blending session. Finally, we’ll add to our wine knowledge by visiting a world-class interactive wine museum, La Cite du Vin.

etal with their more intense summer sunshine. This varietal’s second most planted region is in California and there are a few small pockets of vines found in Italy and its native home of France.

What of the wines made from this grape? It is red, deeply colored, and relatively light in tannin considering its color. This becomes the perfect combination for use as a blending wine. This also provides more clues into Bonarda’s importance in a blend, and not as a varietal wine.

What makes a grape varietal good for blending and how is it chosen to be a blending component rather than a varietal? Consider the marketing of commercial wines. The Old World wines were generally blended because of the local knowledge of the indigenous grapes and what was best for the local population. California, where Charbono was concerned, historically has focused on marketing wine from a variety

perspective. Therefore the focus on Charbono was to produce a varietal wine and enhance it over time with oak or oak-adjunct aging. In Argentina the variety plays a secondary role in taming the more noble Malbec, but there are now varietal wines coming out as well. These typically have low to no oak on them and are lower tannin, higher acidity, fruit-forward red wines.

From a winemaking standpoint, how do you decide whether to use Bonarda in a blend or as a varietal? With Bonarda having the ability to be wonderfully fresh and drinkable young red wines, to something that will hold up in a barrel, the blending game over time has been a combination of tradition, science, and the gut feeling and the passion of the people working the land. This is where your artful instinct comes in. Carefully consider your maceration technique (where the color will extract fast). When you move to press, start very light to express the free run, only to follow with a firmer pressing cycle that keeps that press fraction separate for later blending. For attempting a varietal wine, this is the preferable route.

I personally would not recommend an extended maceration as this will extract more potentially bitter compounds from the seeds, and also runs the risk of premature oxidation if the headspace is not adequately protected. Depending on the volume you are making, larger batches can go into a barrel, while smaller volumes should go to glass or stainless where the winemaker can experiment with oak adjuncts such as staves or chips. I just caution to not allow this wine to sit around on oak too long. When you get what you like, rack as you normally would and continue to age a few more months, where you will rack it again and taste to see if it is ready for the bottle.

Finally, in my research on this grape varietal I found out that Bonny Doon Vineyards was one of the few in California producing Charbono wines. nowing fellow WineMaker columnist Alison Crowe (Wine Wizard) worked for a number of years there, I emailed her for some input on working with this grape. Here is her advice:

“How you approach Charbono definitely depends on where you source

it and how you make/blend it. The only Charbono I’ve worked with is from a vineyard in southern Monterey County. We got more blackberry fruit character (without sweetness) rather than red color and red fruits, but there was a bright plum skin quality about it.

“The color was always very dark and one of the challenges tended to be in tannin management as well as in managing reduction (it had a tendency to throw H2S after it went dry). You want

to make sure it gets a lot of oxygen in the fermenter, as well as generous rackings during its life. Our versions could take a very robust oak regimen as well because of their tannin structure.

“I wouldn’t ferment Charbono on any tannin products unless the grapes are lacking the structure. When blending, we found it did well with something ‘sweeter’ like a Zinfandel or a Petite Sirah. On its own our Charbono wines were a little rough and angular.”

ENTER YOUR BEST HOMEMADE WINES IN THE WORLD’S LARGEST COMPETITION FOR HOBBY WINEMAKERS!

LAST CHANCE  SEND YOUR ENTRIES NOW! ENTRY DEADLINE: MARCH 21, 2022

Enter your wines and compete for gold, silver and bronze medals in 50 categories awarded by a panel of experienced wine judges. You can gain international recognition for your winemaking skills and get valuable feedback on your wines from the competition’s judging panel.

Entry Deadline: March 21, 2022 5515 Main Street • Manchester Center, VT 05255 ph: (802) 362-3981 ext. 106 • fax: (802) 362-2377

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18.Other White Vinifera Varietals

19.White Vinifera Bordeaux Style Blends

20.Other White Vinifera Blends

21.Cabernet Franc

34.Red Table Wine Blend (Any Grape Varieties)

35.Blush Table Wine Blend (Any Grape Varieties)

36.Grape & Non-Grape Table Wine Blend

37.Apple or Pear Varietals or Blends

38.Hard Cider or Perry

39.Stone Fruit (Peach, Cherry, Blends, etc.)

40.Berry Fruit (Strawberry, Raspberry, Blends, etc.)

41.Other Fruits

42.Traditional Mead

43.Fruit Mead

Moonlight Meadery

44.Herb and Spice Mead

45.Flower or Vegetable

46.Port Style

47.Sherry Style

48.Other Fortified

49.Sparkling Grape, Dry/Semi-Dry or Sweet

33.White Table Wine Blend (Any Grape Varieties)

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RULES & REGULATIONS

1. Entry deadline for wines to arrive is March 21, 2022

Wines are to be delivered to: Battenkill Communications

5515 Main Street Manchester Center, VT 05255 Ph: (802) 362-3981

2. Send ONE (1) BOTTLE per entry. Still wines must be submitted in standard 750 ml wine bottles. Ice wines or late harvest wines can be submitted in 375 ml bottles. Meads and Hard Ciders can be submitted in 12 oz. or 22 oz. beer bottles. Sparkling wines must be in champagne bottles with proper closure and wire. All bottles must be free of wax, decorative labels and capsules. owever, an identification label will be required on the bottle as detailed in rule #5.

3. Entry fee is $25 U.S. dollars (or $25 Canadian dollars) for each wine entered. Each individual person is allowed up to a total of 15 entries. You may enter in as many categories as you wish. Make checks payable to WineMaker. Only U.S. or Canadian funds will be accepted. On your check write the number of entries (no more than 15 total) and the name of the entrant if different from the name on the check. Entry fees are non-refundable.

4. All shipments should be packaged to withstand considerable handling and must be shipped freight pre-paid. Line the inside of the box with a plastic trash bag and use plenty of packaging material, such as bubble wrap, around the bottles. Bottles shipped in preformed styrofoam cartons have proven reliable in the past. Every reasonable effort will be made to contact entrants whose bottles have broken to make arrangements for sending replacement bottles. Please note it is illegal to ship alcoholic beverages via the U.S. Postal Service. FedEx Air and FedEx Ground will destroy all amateur wine shipments so do not use either of these services. Private shipping companies such as UPS with company policies against individuals shipping alcohol may refuse your shipment if they are informed your package contains alcoholic beverages. Entries mailed internationally are often required by customs to provide proper documentation. It is the entrant’s responsibility to follow all applicable laws and regulations. Packages with postage due or C.O.D. charges will be rejected.

5 Each bottle must be labeled with the following information: Your name, category number, wine ingredients, vintage.

Example: K. Jones, 9, 75% Baco Noir, 25% Foch, 2016. If you are using a wine kit for ingredients please list the brand and product name as the wine ingredients. Example: K. Jones, 22, Winexpert Selection International French Cabernet Sauvignon, 2016. A copy of the entry form, listing each of your wines entered, must accompany entry and payment.

6. It is entirely up to you to decide which of the 50 categories you should enter. You should enter each wine in the category in which you feel it will perform best. Wines must contain a minimum of 75% of designated type if entered as a varietal. Varietals of less than 75% must be entered as blends. To make sure all entries are judged fairly, the WineMaker staff may re-classify an entry that is obviously in the wrong category or has over 5 percentage of a specific varietal but is entered as a blend.

7. Wine kits and concentrate-based wines will compete side-by-side with fresh fruit and juice-based wines in all listed categories.

8. The origin of many Native American grapes is unknown due to spontaneous cross-breeding. For the purposes of this competition, however, the Native American varietal category will include, but is not limited to, the following grape families: Aestivalis, Labrusca, Riparia and Rotundifolia (muscadine).

9. For sparkling wine categories, dry/semidry is defined as residual sugar and sweet as >3% residual sugar.

10. Contest is open to any amateur home winemaker. Your wine must not have been made by a professional commercial winemaker or at any commercial winery. No employee of WineMaker magazine may enter. Persons under freelance contract with Battenkill Communications are eligible. No person employed by a manufacturer of wine kits may enter. Winemaking supply retail store owners and their employees are eligible. Judges may not judge a category they have entered. Applicable entry fees and limitations shall apply.

11. All wines will be judged according to their relative merits within the category. Gold, silver and bronze medals within each category will be awarded on point totals and will not be restricted to the top three wines only (for example, a number of wines may earn enough points to win gold). The Best of Show awards will be those wines clearly superior within those stated catego-

KEY DATES

Entry deadline for wines to arrive in Vermont: March 21, 2022

Wines judged: April 22-24, 2022

Results first announced at the WineMaker Magazine Conference in San Luis Obispo, California June 4, 2022

(Results posted on winemakermag.com)

ries. The Grand Champion award is given to the top overall wine in the entire competition.

12. The Winemakerof the Year award will be given to the individual whose top 5 scoring wine entries have the highest average judging score among all entrants.

13. The Club of the Year, Retailer of the Year and U-Vint of the Year awards will be based on the following point scale: Gold Medal (or any Best of Show medal): 3 points

Silver Medal: 2 points

Bronze Medal: 1 point

The amateur club that accumulates the most overall points from its members’ wine entries will win Club of the Year. The home winemaking retail store that accumulates the most overall points from its customers’ wine entries will win Retailer of the Year. The U-Vint or On-Premise winemaking facility that accumulates the most overall points from its customer’s wine entries will win U-Vint of the Year.

14. The Best of Show Estate Grown award will be given to the top overall scoring wine made with at least 75% fruit grown by the entrant. Both grape and country fruit wines are eligible.

15. All entrants will receive a copy of the judging notes for their wines. Medalists will be listed by category online.

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Example: “Winexpert Selection International French Cabernet Sauvignon.”

Wine 1 Entered:

Category Number__________________________________________________________

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Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 2 Entered:

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Wine 3 Entered:

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ENTRY FORM

Please note that you can also enter online at:

winemakercompetition.com

Remember that each winemaker can enter up to 15 wines. If entering more than eight wines, please photocopy this entry form. Entry shipment includes ONE BOTTLE of wine per entry. 750 ml bottle required for still wines. Ice or late harvest wines can ship in 375 ml bottles. Still meads can ship in 12 oz. or 22 oz. beer bottles. Sparkling wines must ship in champagne bottles with proper closure and wire.

Send entry form and wine to:

Battenkill Communications

5515 Main Street

Manchester Center, VT 05255

Ph: 802-362-3981 • Fax: 802-362-2377

E-mail: competition@winemakermag.com

If entered online at winemakercompetition. com, please print a copy of your entry form and send it along with your wine.

Wine 5 Entered:

Category Number_________________________________________________________

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Wine Ingredients and Percentage

Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 6 Entered:

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Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 7 Entered:

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Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 4 Entered:

Category Number___________________________________________________________

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Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Enter online at: winemakercompetition.com

Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Wine 8 Entered:

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Vintage ______________________________________________________

Are at least 75% of the ingredients grown by you? q yes q no q I feel it necessary to decant this wine_______hours before serving.

Best of Both Species The

Photo illustration by Charles A. Parker/Images Plus

Blending vinifera and hybrid grapes

by Maureen Macdonald

We live in a dichotomous world. Our brains often learn and understand via drawing comparisons and relationships from object-to-object, or from concept-to-concept: Good vs. evil, hot vs. cold, acidic vs. alkaline, bitter vs. sweet, etc. It seems a mental “line in the sand” was drawn between Vitis vinifera grapes and their relatives the French-American hybrids at some point in modern winemaking. French-American hybrids are often less reputed for their winemaking potential due to being higher in acid and lower in tannin content than their cousins in the vinifera species. While they do not have the long-standing winemaking history of the vinifera varieties and more “classic” flavor traits, they have slowly gained popularity amongst many home and professional winemakers.

For the home viticulturist in North America, hybrids o er better disease-resistance, greater cold-tolerance, and higher yields, which are necessary in most of the microclimates of North America. As academic research and hands-on experience lends more data for study of the French-American hybrid varieties, their translation into wine is better understood, therefore improving its quality.

But while the overall quality of hybrid winemaking continues to improve, why is there still such an opposition and perceived quality distinction between the two families of grapes? While Frontenac may never gain the respect of sommeliers, perhaps it and other hybrids will find their niche in the winemaking world as complements to their vinifera counterparts.

Most winemakers who are familiar with both vinifera and hybrid winegrapes will understand the following generalized characteristics of the grapes. Vitisvinifera, specifically red varieties, are generally lower in acid, higher in Brix, and have higher perceived tannin content upon vinification. Vitisvinifera are the genera of what we have come to know as classic European winemaking grapes, such as Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, etc. Whereas hybrids are traditionally deemed as opposite in their traits: High in acids, lower in Brix depending upon growing zones, and lower perceived tannin content upon vinification. French-American hybrid varieties are a new family of grapes that have been derived via cross breeding Vitis vinifera with Vitis riparia, designed specifically to withstand colder growing temperatures of northern North America and to have higher disease tolerance against mildews and molds. These grapes were developed by viticulturists, many at the University of Minnesota and Cornell University, to have strong cold-tolerances in the winter and to have faster ripening to fit with shorter summers and growing seasons. Due to the development of these grapes, it is now possible to grow winemaking grapes successfully in every state in the U.S. While these newer varieties are lesser known than their vinifera counterparts, they are creating their own niche within winery communities in non-traditional growing areas. The hybrid varieties di er in flavor and physical composition than their vinifera cousins.

This author poses the theory that rather than viewing the two families of grapes as adversely di erent, perhaps they are natural complements of one another? From the periphery, one seems to carry what the other lacks in chemical composition and perhaps flavor profile, depending on the goal of the winemaker. We will probe the di erent ways the grape families may complement each other in winemaking; the when, why, and how of blending them.

From professional farmer to home gardener and viticulturist, one un-

derstands that not every year can be a benchmark for yield and quality. For those of us in the Northern third of the U.S., French-American hybrids are the crop of choice to best work within our microclimates. When the produce rolls in from the fields, a winemaker is quick to process and analyze the grape must to gain the metrics of what they are working with. Oftentimes our grapes, both vinifera and hybrid alike, will require adjustments in acidity and sugar content before fermentation begins. Nature varies with growing seasons and our grape acid, phenolic, and sugar content will vary from year-to-year and require the winemaker’s intervention to create optimum fermentation conditions. A common problem amongst viticulturists in non-traditional North American growing regions is lack of proper ripening conditions. Harvest time will approach and the sugar content will be too low and the acid content much too high. While the obvious choice would be to chaptalize the must and increase the fermentable sugar content and then reduce the acidity via potassium bicarbonate or calcium carbonate, this does not account for the phenolic development of the grapes. The rich flavors of cherry, bramble fruits, and earth in a properly ripened Marquette could manifest more as sour cherry and green vegetables in under-ripe Marquette fruit. Sourcing fruit to help ameliorate some of the green notes as well as add ripened phenolic character may be necessary to help balance the wine and contribute to its flavors post fermentation. The aforementioned traditional means of chaptalization via sucrose and acidity reduction via an alkaline source will still be necessary to amend the entire batch once the riper vinifera have been combined, but the addition of the vinifera grapes can make up for lacking phenolics.

As a growing season progresses, a grape grower will see the “writing on the wall” for that vintage of grapes. If weather trends have been poor, without good ripening conditions, they may want to consider blending their fruit with some commercially sourced fruit.

A winemaker must choose a complementary grape variety for the blend at crush. Staying with the example of under-ripe Marquette, if the winemaker is choosing to increase phenolics and add flavor, they must consider a few things: The typical characteristics of the hybrid, the typical characteristics of the vinifera, and the end goal flavor profile of the wine. Within the genetic lineage of Marquette lies Pinot Noir, contributing its rich bramble fruit flavors and softer mouthfeel. This vinifera variety would be a natural complement to Marquette. Working with a reputable grape vendor, the winemaker can get a recommendation for a Pinot Noir from a growing region that develops excellent phenolic ripeness. By the addition of these grapes to the crush, the wine’s phenolic potential will increase and some of the green characters will be reduced. In this particular example, I would recommend sourcing a yeast strain that also is known for reducing green and vegetal characters to help overcome this negative character such as Scott Lab’s CLOS or CSM strains.

This benefit of blending vinifera and hybrid grapes can work the other way too. When working with some white vinifera varietal juices from California and other warm growing regions, the grapes can achieve high ripeness and lower acid levels in hot years. A natural way to increase the acidity could be to add a percentage of juice from white hybrid grapes. In European winemaking, a small amount of white grapes are sometimes used to add acid in red vinifera grapes that lack it such as the Grenache Blanc in Chatenuef du Pape blends.

If you live outside of a major growing region such as the West Coast, visiting local wineries in your area is a great way to get to know the hybrid white varieties and their winemakers. Perhaps helping to harvest some local grapes may get you an opportunity as a winemaker to purchase some to add acidity and complexity to your own blend. To gain insight into the volume of grapes you would need to ameliorate the acidity of your primary varietal you need to know the

titratable acidity. Using this value in the Pearson square mathematical equation can give the winemaker the ratio of grapes needed to achieve the desired titratable acidity. (Learn more about the Pearson square at https://winemakermag.com/article/ the-pearson-square and there are also online calculators that can help compute the values.) The resulting overall batch size should be a consideration when choosing the blending path of amelioration.

NATURAL COMPLEMENTS

There are a myriad of reasons why a winemaker may choose to blend at crush, the most typical two being to help one variety compensate for what another lacks, or for the varieties to complement each other well and increase the complexity and richness of the wine. While the previous two examples have addressed the former reason of naturally compensating for a primary varietal that lacks a key component of wine balance, now we will examine co-fermenting and blending wines that naturally complement one another. Many interesting wines could be formed through the blending of vinifera and hybrid varieties that share similar characteristics. A rich, peppery Syrah with a touch of Marechal Foch could add an interesting earthy flavor to the spice and black fruit of the Syrah. A small introduction of Traminette into a Riesing could add a subtle floral flavor element and increase aroma complexity. A small portion of Frontenac or Sabrevois can add rich color and fresh fruit to the jammy ripeness of a Zinfandel.

The sky is the limit on the possibilities of blending. When to blend really becomes the more important technical question. The idea of the blend is the artistic component; the decision on when to blend, the scientific one.

While the previous discussion has mentioned blending at the point of crush and onset of fermentation, this may not always be the most appropriate timing depending on the desired goal of the winemaker. Due to their varying physical and chemical properties, the two varying fam-

ilies of grapes may have varying reactions when blended, particularly red cultivars. Red French-American hybrids have a significantly higher amount of protein than vinifera varieties. While they have an unfortunate stereotype of lacking in tannin in the finished product, this is not the case of their pre-fermentation physical composition. French-American hybrids do have high amounts of tannins, with some varieties even being comparable to their Vitisvinifera counterparts. Due to the high levels of protein, these natural grape tannins bind with the proteins during the heat of fermentation and can precipitate out, leaving the resulting wine lacking in tannic structure. For this reason, adding in a vinifera at the time of crush to increase the end resulting structure may be futile as the high proteins will bind to the vinifera tannins, lessening their impact. Instead, if the winemaker were to ferment the varietals separately and blend post-fermentation once stability has been achieved, this may prove to be a more rewarding method. When the wines have had some time

to degas, complete malolactic fermentation (MLF), maintain some SO2 binding stability, and are cold stable, they may be a much better candidate for blending. The addition of a vinifera variety to increase the tannin content of a hybrid wine blend would be more appropriate post-fermentation. The tannins would have a greater impact and less opportunity to bind with the proteins within the hybrid variety. The addition of the vinifera to the hybrid may provide the tannic structure in both the mid palate and finish that hybrids can sometimes lack.

Also at this point of stability and aging, the winemaker may see a greater organoleptic e ect of a small addition of a hybrid to a vinifera to increase acidity and fresh fruit quality and balance tannic intensity. A very small addition of hybrid grapes can have their strong, bright fruit flavor profile show through, even with as little as a 5% addition to the primary variety. In bench trials, I have observed a noticeable aroma change with as little as a 3% hybrid varietal addition and a pronounced flavor profile change with a 5% addition. If

Vinifera and hybrid grapes can be natural blending complements to create a balanced wine by compensating in areas where the primary variety lacks.

RECOMMENDED WHITE HYBRID/VINIFERA BLENDS

Traminette with Gewürztraminer or Riesling – Traminette has a genetic parent of Gewürztraminer, which gives it its intense oral nose. This would be a great addition to a lackluster Riesling or Gewürztraminer needing an acidic boost.

Seyval Blanc with Sauvignon Blanc –Both grapes have a strong citrus avor pro le and puckering acidity. Some Sauvignon Blanc could help to bu er a low yield year for locally grown Seyval.

Chardonel with Chardonnay – Chardonel’s genetic ancestors are Chardonnay and Seyval Blanc. The hybrid o ers more direct citrus notes that could complement a abby Chardonnay or one that has dominant stone fruit avor.

Vidal Blanc with Riesling – Vidal Blanc often has avors of apricot, honey, and pear upon fermentation. This would be a delicious addition to a Riesling, creating a very fruitforward wine.

Cayuga with Pinot Grigio – When trying to bu er a low yield year or underripe Cayuga, Pinot Grigio brought in from a warm climate can o er similar fruit avors and a higher sugar content.

RECOMMENDED RED HYBRID/VINIFERA BLENDS

Sabrevois with Merlot – Rich avors of cassis and dried lavender from the Sabrevois, as well as its deep inky pigment, can help to add depth of color and avor to a Merlot.

Noiret withSyrah – With complementary avors of black pepper, bramble fruits, and heavier tannin content, these two seemingly di erent grapes could be a perfect pair.

Frontenac with Cabernet Sauvignon or Zinfandel – Some growing year’s viniferagrapes may have a hot climate, generating jammier, cooked fruit avors rather than fresh fruit avors.

Frontenac has a rich, dark color and bold fresh fruit avor; even a small addition could add an excellent fruit- and pigment-enhancing quality. Chambourcin with Carménère – Carménère, especially when grown in the Southern Hemisphere and young in age, can exhibit a lot of green vegetal character. A post-fermentation addition of some bold Chambourcin can add spicy pepper and intense cherry and cranberry avor.

Marquette with Pinot Noir – Marquette was genetically derived from Pinot Noir, accounting for its medium body tannin content, cherry avors, and lighter brick red hue. If homegrown Marquette has a low yield or ripening year, a crush blend with Pinot Noir may help to harmoniously increase the volume.

vinifera variety. While some vinifera may only require less than a gram of bentonite per gallon (4 L) to achieve stability, bench trials should always be conducted after blending to ensure the new blend is stable. Cold stability is also an incredibly important factor. Hybrid grapes naturally hold much higher levels of tartaric acid. This acid will easily precipitate out with exposure to cold temperatures. If a small amount of a hybrid variety is used to enhance the aroma of a lacking vinifera wine then post blending cold and heat stability trials should be conducted, even if both wines are deemed as stable prior to blending.

the winemaker has access to hybrid varieties, whether they be homegrown or purchased from a local vineyard, these varieties may lend unique fruit character and natural acidity to purchased grapes or kits comprised of vinifera

WHAT ABOUT WHITE BLENDS?

While the mainstay of examples has been red varieties in blending, white varieties would also pose some interesting possibilities for blending. White French-American hybrids often have bold fruit flavors that can bring a very unique flavor to a blended wine. Again, the winemaker must consider the end goal flavor profile of the wine and the base wine that they are working with. Is it a hybrid that needs to be slightly less acidic or needs more sugar pre-fermentation? Or is it a vinifera variety that needs a little added boost of acidity or a par-

ticular flavor profile? These are all questions to be considered before the blend. Similar to the reds, if the winemaker’s homegrown crop is lacking in either sugar content or phenolic development due to a poor growing season, the addition of some commercially grown vinifera may help the base hybrid wine along on its path. This blend would be conducted at crush and co-fermented, in hopes of a natural chaptalization of the sugar and phenolic content. Other chemical inputs may be needed such as white fermentation tannins and an alkaline addition to reduce the acidity.

The same stability factors of blending any white wines will come into play if blending hybrid and vinifera grapes post-fermentation. All wines should be fined for heat/protein stability after blending. A protein-rich hybrid can greatly a ect the heat stability factor of a less proteinaceous

While these factors may seem precarious in terms of stability to the resulting wine, the value of a white hybrid to a blend should not be overlooked. A nice, bright pop of pineapple from La Crescent to a Viognier may enhance the Viognier’s natural tropical attributes. Tart Granny Smith apple characters from a Seyval Blanc could enhance a Chardonnay that has undergone MLF and may be too buttery. A bit of Traminette or Vidal Blanc could add complexity and aromatics to a Riesling in a vintage that the winemaker finds lacking. The blending can be seen as complementary or reparative, depending on the winemaker’s view of the original base wine.

There are a myriad of examples and potential combinations as well as motivations that come to mind when thinking of potential blending candidates of hybrid and vinifera varieties. Rather than viewing the grapes as Old World vs. New World, perhaps focus on the similarities and nuances of the varieties. Getting to know your hybrid grapes may prove useful when trying to grow within your own microclimate and also when amending wines within your cellar. Their higher yields and dynamic flavors can complement a lower yielding vinifera in your home vineyard and can help to bulk up the quantity as well as potential quality of your homemade wines. Understanding what these hybrids’ characteristics are and what their potential contributions could be to a blend will only help your winemaking skills and resulting products.

Bella Toscana!

WineMaker’s Tuscany Wine and Food Tour

WineMaker readers including Publisher Brad Ring recently spent a week exploring one of the world’s great wine regions: Tuscany, Italy. With visits to 12 wineries, the group experienced the incredible wine culture of the region first-hand during WineMaker’s Wine and Food Tour in September, 2021. We visited an amazingly broad spectrum of wineries from the multi-national winemaking powerhouse Antinori to the small Leuta Winery just outside Cortona. All along the way we had the chance to experience that legendary Italian hospitality meeting with friendly local winemakers happy to answer questions from American home winemakers while we enjoyed sampling their wines.

We also made sure to leave time to tour small local food producers including a family-owned olive oil producer,

a chocolatier, and a cheesemaker in Pienza specializing in Tuscany’s famous sheep-milk Pecorino. We walked through beautiful hilltop villages soaking up the views, history, and daily life while building up a thirst for the next winery stop.

We visited in mid-September during the early stages of harvest in the region and were lucky enough to watch just-picked grapes get spread out on drying racks destined to be later pressed in December for special dessert wines. From Chiantis to Vin Santo, it was a special chance to enjoy classic wine styles right at the source. Plus all that wine had plenty of fresh Italian food paired alongside even including a pasta making class before one of our dinners.

It was a treat to watch the sun set over the mountaintop vineyard during

dinner at La Palerna, enjoy a stillwarm piece of bruschetta toasted over olive wood and drizzled with olive oil pressed just feet away, try wine made with the ultra-rare Gratena Nero grape made at a rural winery outside Arrezo, and experience all the di erent winemaking interpretations of Sangiovese wines over the week. And it was a trip made all the more special by sharing it with fellow home winemakers passionate about wine and winemaking while exploring the incredible medieval hilltop villages, stunning countryside, and culture of Tuscany and Umbria.

Our 2022 WineMaker trip will be to Bordeaux, France next September 1823. Details on this 2022 trip can be found at winemakermag.com/trip. We hope you can join us on a future WineMaker adventure. Salud!

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

Sauvignon Blanc’s global spread breeds unique adaptations

by Danny Wood

In recent decades Sauvignon Blanc, the green-skinned grape that originated in France, has spread all over the world. New Zealand’s version is probably the most renowned among the newcomers, but there are also quality bottlings made in the United States, Australia, Chile, and South Africa.

The grape’s taste in the glass varies considerably depending on where it’s grown. In France’s Loire region it can carry delicate aromas of grass, anise, flint, and lemon. In New Zealand’s Marlborough region the wine can display powerfully strong flavors of passion fruit and gooseberry. The organic compounds called thiols that contribute to these tropical aromas also help produce Sauvignon Blanc’s famous but notorious “cat pee” smell.

From the late 1980s, New Zealand’s bottlings became the first time the wine achieved real fame from grapes grown outside France. On the back of that success, during the last 30 years or so, increasing numbers of plantings have appeared in other parts of the New World.

However, France still has the most acres. According to a recent article in Forbes magazine, there are about 300,000 acres of Sauvignon Blanc vines grown worldwide. Of that, 86,000 acres are grown in France, followed by about 57,000 acres in New Zealand.

Chile, the U.S., and Australia account for the other most significant portions.

In the U.S., it’s probably only in the last five years or so that wines made from Sauvignon Blanc have really picked up in popularity. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have helped. According to Nielsen, as the pandemic took hold in early 2020 and alcohol sales went up, Sauvignon Blanc had the fastest growing sales of all wine types during the first months of the year, with a nearly 40% increase. Much of that sales increase came from both New Zealand and locally produced Sauvignon Blancs.

This growing popularity in the U.S. is confirmed by one of our expert winemakers — Je Cichocki, Director of Winemaking at California’s Bonterra Organic Vineyards. “Sauvignon Blanc is a growing variety for us at Bonterra, and it seems there’s a lot of renewed interest in the variety in general. We have a loyal following and expect the variety to keep growing in popularity and demand, which is very exciting,” he says.

With its increasing popularity, now is a good time for the home winemaker to impress their friends with a homemade Sauvignon Blanc.

New to making Sauvignon Blanc? Don’t worry; we’ve assembled a crew of top winemakers to show you how.

First up, from the Old World, the mother and daughter winemaking team of Annick and Marlène Tinel of Domaine Tinel-Blondelet in France’s Loire Valley. This estate grows nearly 40 acres of vines divided between Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, and Chasselas. The Sauvignon Blanc is grown in two appellations: Pouilly Fumé and Sancerre.

Up next, from the New World, we have Je Cichocki of Bonterra Organic Vineyards, located in Hopland, Mendocino County, California. Bonterra’s Sauvignon Blanc is sourced from organically farmed vineyards all over the state.

Also from California, Aron Weinkauf is the Winemaker and Vineyard Manager for Spottswoode Wine Estate in Napa County. His Sauvignon Blanc is sourced from estate vines and vineyards in Napa Valley and Sonoma County. Spottswoode has many adoring fans, including wine critic Robert Parker. On the winery’s website he’s quoted: “When the history of Napa’s great vineyards is written, the 40-acre Spottswoode grand cru vineyard will be counted among the finest grand vineyards in the region.”

And from New Zealand, Nikolai St George is Senior Winemaker for Cloudy Bay Vineyards based in Marlborough. Cloudy Bay was one of the first wineries to set up in Marlborough during the mid-1980s. St George says this year’s 2021 Sauvignon Blanc — which is available in the U.S. — is a perfect example of a classic vintage.

400 YEARS OF WINEMAKING AT DOMAINE TINEL-BLONDELET

To kick o our lesson, let’s first go to France. Annick and Marlène Tinel are 12th and 13th generation winegrowers who can trace their winemaking pedigree all the way back to the late 16th century and a winegrower named Guillaume Blondelet. So Domaine Tinel-Blondelet’s first winemaker was crushing grapes and making wine several decades before those Pilgrims on the Mayflower had even set sail!

Annick Tinel took over the estate from her parents in 1983. Her co-winemaker and daughter, Marlène, says their Sauvignon Blanc

vines in Sancerre are grown in a flinty soil. In the Pouilly Fumé appellation the vines are in kimmeridgian marls, which, she says, is soil dominated by clay and chalk with fossilized oysters and ammonites (extinct marine molluscs).

“We are looking for elegant, fresh, and mineral wine. Our wines are fruity but the aromatic side of Sauvignon Blanc must be well balanced with minerality,” says the younger Tinel, who went on to share many details about the duo’s winemaking style.

Sauvignon Blanc is well known for responding to di erent soils. Tinel says wine made from their Sancerregrown grapes is always drier, more mineral, and with a hint of astringency compared to grapes sourced from Pouilly-Fumé, which grows grapes that make a wine with a rounder mouthfeel and saline aromas.

The mother and daughter team are very serious about their Sauvignon Blanc’s sense of place. “Each tank corresponds to a plot. The goal is really to find in our wines the typicity of our terroirs,” says Tinel.

At harvest time, the Tinel-Blondelet team are considering precise picking times plot-by-plot. For their hand-harvested grapes, they take the usual laboratory measurements, including potential alcohol content using a refractometer and chemical measurements of sugar content and acid levels.

At harvest, Tinel says the grape acidity is generally 6.6–6.9 and the pH is 3.2. However, the precise picking date is determined by a sensory judgment of optimal ripeness and sugar-acid balance in the grapes.

“Analyses and figures are not enough,” says Tinel. She says it is very important to taste the grapes to determine if the grapes are “ripe in terms of aromas” because aromatic maturity is independent of sugars and acids.

“It is often necessary to wait a few days more than the ‘technological’ maturity for the grapes to be ripe to make wine!” she says.

At optimal harvest timing, Tinel says the berries are soft enough to depress and when you burst the berries they should display pleasant

aromatics. She also advises the importance of watching out for green flavors from excessive amounts of pyrazines, which produce flavors that range from grassy to bell peppers.

The French mother and daughter team are particularly careful about handling their harvested grapes very delicately. The grapes are destemmed but not crushed and then sorted into special double-bottom bins that can drain away any juice sitting in the bottom that might otherwise stagnate and cause spoilage issues.

“We try to work the grapes as delicately as possible so as not to crush the grapes until they get to the press to avoid taste defects like unpleasant herbaceous odors,” said Tinel.

Then the grapes go directly into a pneumatic press where they are pressed slowly at low pressure for about three hours.

Gravity moves the juice from the press to tanks located on the lower level of the winery where it settles for 24 to 48 hours and is then racked.

“The clear juice goes to other tanks and the lees, which have fallen to the bottom of the tank, are filtered through a mud filter,” said Tinel.

All the tanks are stainless steel and temperature-controlled. They usually keep the temperature low enough to delay fermentation for 3–5 days. When fermentation takes place it is allowed to ferment a bit warmer than our other winemakers prefer.

“Our fermentations last about three weeks. We control the tempera-

Photo courtesy of Domaine Tinel-Blondelet

Annick & Marlène Tinel, Domaine Tinel-Blondelet

ture at 16 °C (61 °F) then, when the densities become low, almost at the end of the fermentations, we almost stop the temperature control so that the tanks can heat up to 20 to 22 °C (68 to 72 °F).”

One di erentiating characteristic of their Sauv Blanc: They like to keep their wine in contact with the fine lees for as long as possible.

“This enriches the wine and gives it more complexity, fat, and body. This also allows our wines to be kept for several years,” says Tinel.

“Finally, we work our wines in a natural way. There are no additions to our wines except a minimal dose of sulfite for storage,” she says.

A cold stabilization follows the completion of fermentation and then most of the Sauvignon Blanc remains in steel tanks before being filtered just before bottling.

“We use very few barrels. Indeed, what people look for in our wines is the fruity side of Sauvignon,” says Tinel. The one bottling that does go into 160-gallon (600-L) barrels touches only 30% new wood.

Tinel says she and her mother have two important tips for a budding Sauvignon Blanc winegrower:

“The most important thing is to have a beautiful, ripe harvest and then good sanitary conditions. You can’t make a good wine without fine grapes. Then, the cleanliness in the cellar and the tanks must also be impeccable,” she says.

BONTERRA VINEYARD’S ORGANIC SAUVIGNON BLANC

The Sauvignon Blanc made by Je Cichocki at Bonterra Organic Vineyards is quite di erent to the Tinel-Blondelet version.

“At Bonterra, we embrace a New World style for our Sauvignon Blanc and use all stainless steel in our winemaking process. Our wine style focuses on fruit-forward flavors, notably fresh grapefruit,” says Cichocki.

However, much like their French counterparts, Bonterra is very focused on allowing the vineyards to express themselves. “We try not to overcomplicate the winemaking or blending process,” says Cichocki.

The Bonterra winegrower also harvests based on chemistry and taste.

“From a chemistry perspective I look for a Brix range of 21.5 to 23. Additionally, I’d like to see final pH around 3.3–3.4 and acid levels between 6–7 grams,” Cichocki says.

His preferred pH is slightly higher than his French colleagues but he likes his acidity at the same level.

“From a decision making process, tasting the grapes along with the chemistry is important for us. We like to ensure our flavors are not underripe and underdeveloped, or overripe and lacking vibrancy,” says Cichocki.

For California-grown Sauvignon Blanc grapes especially, he said, over ripeness can lead to too much tropical fruit aroma coming through. “At Bonterra, instead, we prefer more citrus and grassy flavors.”

Another factor that influences picking times is the vigor of the vineyard. “If there’s a big canopy with lots of shade, the fruit can stay on the vine longer and develop more slowly. If the vines are receiving a lot of hot California sun, then we’ll often pull those grapes sooner,” says Cichocki.

Unlike our French vignerons who handpick, most of Bonterra’s grapes are harvested by machine and as soon as the grapes arrive at the winery, they are pressed.

“We press immediately upon receiving our grapes and we use a pretty standard press cycle. We yield about 180 gallons (680 L) per ton.”

Cichocki says they centrifuge o the solids, which makes for a nice clean fermentation. “We don’t cold settle. At this stage we hope to achieve a clean juice and get it ready for primary fermentation.”

The fermentation takes place in stainless steel tanks. “I like to ferment at 55 °F (13 °C), which slows down the fermentation. We use some thiol yeast, specifically Vin13 and also X5 yeast,” says Cichocki.

His fermentation, which is cooler than Tinel-Blondelet’s, takes about the same time as the French one; about 2–3 weeks.

“We might see about 1 °Brix drop each day. Sometimes it moves slower. Being organically grown, we don’t

have a lot of yeast nutrition available, therefore it’s always a slower ferment for us. We have to be patient!”

Bonterra doesn’t do a malolactic conversion for their Sauvignon Blanc, which could add buttery flavors to a wine that’s meant to be fresh tasting. “Instead, immediately upon primary fermentation, we add SO2.”

Since Bonterra is organic, Cichocki said they are required to use less than 100 ppm total SO2 and typically release the wines with about 25 ppm free SO2

Bonterra does both a heat and cold stabilization to ensure the wine is stable prior to packaging, and they avoid any oak.

“For our Sauvignon Blanc, we do not use any wood. Our style is to keep the wine fresh and fruit focused and not introduce any flavors or aromas from the wood.”

He said prior to bottling they filter through a crossflow filter. “I have no problem filtering, it’s a necessary part of making wine that doesn’t go through malolactic fermentation. I think it preserves the integrity of the wine over time,” says Cichocki.

Cichocki says any aspiring Sauvignon Blanc winemaker who wants to source grapes from California should look to vineyards in the cooler regions of the state.

“It’s ideal that the grapes have a nice protective canopy from our ample sunlight.”

From there, patience may be the best path forward. “When it comes to the wine, don’t do too much to

Photo courtesy of Bonterra Organic Vineyards

Jeff Cichocki, Bonterra Organic Vineyards

it! Find out what the vineyard gives you before trying to be too manipulative with the wine,” says the Bonterra winemaker.

ROBERT PARKER LOVES THEM: SPOTTSWOODE’S SAUVIGNON BLANC

In a warmer part of California, at Spottswoode Wine Estate in Napa County, Winemaker & Vineyard manager Aron Weinkauf makes a very different Sauvignon Blanc to both Bonterra’s and Tinel-Blondelet’s. It’s partly because of his use of oak.

“We are a fairly warm site for Sauvignon Blanc, so we have the ability to achieve riper fruit. I like to think this is why I say we make a stereotypical California Sauvignon Blanc.”

Weinkauf says his wine is rich in texture, but still delineated by acid. He describes a spectrum of aromatics including boxwood and wheat grass, through to citrus, white and yellow peach, cassis bud, and sometimes even melon.

“That balance of all of those components is what is unique about what we can accomplish and then how we frame that in oak and reduction is what we stylistically strive for.”

Like the others, Weinkauf likes to let his vineyards do the talking.

“I always try to work with vineyards that have great natural balance driven by its soils. Then we seek balance throughout the growing season. We want the plant in sync with the seasonal transitions, so we pick with great balance and ripeness.  Then

if we’ve done our job in the vineyard the winemaking is pretty hands-o .”

For the chemistry side of judging when to harvest, Spottswoode targets 22 to 24 °Brix and likes acidity of 6.0 to 7.5. “We pick according to flavor though, guided by those numbers, and are looking for a complexity and density of character in the fruit when we pick,” Weinkauf says.

When the grapes arrive at the winery, it’s usually straight to a whole cluster press, using an old pneumatic bladder press.

“We may work some with skin contact but this is very variable,” says Weinkauf. “We use a long but fairly aggressive press cycle. We like a little dry extract too.”

Then the must is allowed to settle for 24 hours to separate the juice from the gross lees. Then fermentation of di erent fractions takes place in steel, oak, ceramic, or cement.

“We ferment in a room held at 58 °F (14 °C). Fermentations take about 30 days.”

French and Hungarian oak are used for the oak fraction, but they don’t overdo it. “I Love oak. I think it is great for lots of wines but . . . it only frames or supports the fruit and acidity. We never want the oak to distract from the energy and verve of the wine,” says Weinkauf.

Spottswoode uses lots of di erent white wine yeast strains and is constantly playing with them.

“They are very impactful on Sauvignon Blanc and so we’ve trialed most of them and love what each brings to a blend. We are using over five di erent yeasts each year,” Weinkauf says.

Typically, their Sauvignon Blanc doesn’t go through malolactic fermentation (MLF) but it does go through a heat and cold stabilization.

“We do a modified version of both. We do think the consumer usually appreciates a wine that is not clouded or loaded with small crystals,” he says.

Spottswoode filters all of their wines, including Sauvignon Blanc, usually just before bottling.

“We love the guarantee of a good filtration and find that the polish and precision of the filtration is a great component of the linearity and drive

of the mouth and aromatics, and find that there is no significant change in the body and texture.”

In fact, Weinkauf went on to say he feels the texture and richness of a filtered wine can be better than that of an unfiltered version.

At bottling, total sulfur for Spottswoode’s Sauvignon Blanc is at levels between 60–85 ppm.

As for tips for home winemakers, the Spottswoode winemaker says the key is to work with good fruit. But he has another useful thought: “Winemaking is about intent. Know what you are aiming for.”

CLOUDY BAY: NEW ZEALAND’S CLASSIC SAUVIGNON BLANC

In New Zealand, Nikolai St George is Senior Winemaker for one of the first wineries to set up in the now famous Marlborough region. Cloudy Bay Vineyards opened for business in the 1980s. They make two distinctly di erent Sauvignon Blancs: One that is machine harvested and predominantly fermented in stainless steel tanks, which is the focus for this article, and another that is hand-harvested and fermented in oak.

St George says New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc evolved from a series of fortunate mistakes. Essentially, he says, most of the country’s Sauv Blanc vineyards are descendants of three vines brought over from California in the early 1970s (those vines originated from the legendary Château d’Yquem 150 years prior). These cuttings just happened to make great wine and no other clones imported and grown in New Zealand have been as successful.

As a professional winemaker for 27 years now, St George regards Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc as the flagship wine of New Zealand.

“It encompasses everything about the country: It is fresh, vibrant, aromatic and pure, much like a lot of New Zealand. Very few wineries around the world can even come close to the style and it is New Zealand’s number one exported wine by a long way.”

Interestingly, as New Zealand’s vines mature — as they reach 10 to 15 years old — he’s seen significant changes in the wine.

Photo courtesy of Spottswoode Wine Estate

Aron Weinkauf, Spottswoode Wine Estate

“I have seen a real increase in palate weight and fewer yield fluctuations. We also see less overt fruit as well. A great New Zealand Sauvignon will have texture and weight, which really takes the wine to the next level.”

The vines still produce fruit with the aromatic intensity that made it famous. “It usually displays three to four distinct characteristics to varying degrees: Mineral, tropical, herbal, citrus, and sometimes black/red currant aromas,” says St George.

Tropical notes vary from fresh fruits like pineapple, guava, or passion fruit to baked notes, he says. These aromatics are dictated by the vintage and also where the fruit is grown.

Cloudy Bay sources most of its grapes around the “Golden Mile,” which are some of the older vineyards in Marlborough where the soils are “true alluvial,” meaning born from river deposits with large rocks, gravel, and silt, St George explains. They are also undulating so the fruit ripens faster on the humps and slower in the hollows.

“These sites are warm, low vigor, and early, which means our wines show more mineral, citrus, and tropical aromas and less herbacity,” he says. Canopy management also contributes to boosting tropical and citrus flavors while limiting herbal influences, characteristics Cloudy Bay is after with its Sauvignon Blanc.

“We also crop around 30% less than most wineries so this helps give us extract and body. Our wines are naturally brighter and tighter than a lot of other Marlborough styles, as we only use free run juice. This keeps the pH naturally lower and helps the wines age gracefully,” says St George.

The kiwi winemaker says his approach to winemaking is about purity and producing unique, rather than perfect, wines.

“A wine is more interesting with imperfections. There is nothing worse than a wine that has been worked and polished so much that it becomes perfect and boring,” he says.

When it comes to deciding when to harvest, Cloudy Bay is looking for a riper style than some wineries, says St George.

“So around 13% potential (alcohol), which means 21.5 to 22.5 °Brix. We have the luxury of being able to harvest a lot of our fruit very quickly, which is great as a lot of vineyards are ready at the same time.”

When the grapes arrive at the winery they allow them to have some skin contact and then press to tank.

“We are one of the few wineries that still settle our juices. This has a very large positive influence on aromatics. We have done numerous trials on this and can prove it,” says St George.

Eighty percent of the free run comes out before the membrane press is even turned on. “The press cycle we use has minimal rotations to avoid solids and phenolics and is pretty fast. We then monitor what has been extracted and make a press cut at about 700 L/T.”

Up to fermentation, St George uses a number of di erent techniques.

“We make a press cut and only use the free run, which is cold settled in tank then racked 24–72 hours later. We then warm and inoculate with selected yeast. This is a yeast we have selected over the years and we continually fine-tune the recipe. Some yeast boost aromatics and tropical notes and some are big on mouthfeel.”

Cloudy Bay integrates varying degrees of fine grape lees prior to and also during fermentation. They also integrate oak to help with mouthfeel and texture.

“We ferment mainly in stainless steel and about 5% in oak (foudres) or barrels. Oak maturation is becoming a more important part of what we do. We are also starting to play with more cement as well,” St. George says.

Fermentation temperature plays a significant role with Sauvignon Blanc as even small changes of temperature can have a big influence on the amount of thiols produced and the aromatic intensity. This is an area home winemakers can play around with to find which results they prefer.

Prior to bottling, St George uses a crossflow filter on the wine, which he believes actually helps increase aromatics. “Peynaud (a famous French enologist) said something like ‘fil-

tration never had any negative influence on quality’ and when using crossflow technology properly I tend to agree. Filtration helps bring out aromatic potential, purity of flavor, and stops anything untoward ruining your wine,” says St George.

They use sulfite, but their Sauv Blancs have a naturally low pH — the 2021 vintage is 3.14 — so 25 ppm of free SO2 is enough to maintain stability. “By the time the wine gets to the Northern Hemisphere it will have about 15 ppm of sulfur — just enough to hold its freshness.”

They also do a heat and cold stabilization. “Over 90% of what we sell is internationally to many di erent markets. We cannot a ord instability issues and our consumers will not accept this. If done properly stabilization has very little influence on quality,” says St George.

Much like Spottswoode’s Weinkauf, St George advises the home winemaker to understand what style of Sauv Blanc he or she wants to create and then choose the grapes carefully. “Sauvignon Blanc aromas and texture are heavily influenced by soil type, climate, and vine age,” he says.

With this particularly versatile grape you can aim for a lot of di erent results. But whether it’s the powerful, tropical flavors of some New World Sauvignon Blancs that you seek, a more elegant, tightly structured French style, or something in-between with oak influences — hopefully our four experts have provided inspiration for your next harvest.

Photo courtesy of Cloudy Bay Vineyards

Nikolai St George, Cloudy Bay Vineyards

When gifting a bottle of your homemade wine, nothing shows the recipient how much care went into the contents inside the bottle than the appearance on the outside. For that reason, we have put a value on the design of your homemade labels for the past 22 years with our annual Amateur Label Contest. Each year, the sta at WineMaker gather and debate the merits of whimsical vs. serious labels, colors schemes, fonts, imagery, the weight original artwork should hold, and anything else that a label brings to mind. This year’s contest was full of debate, with top honors going to blueberry mosaic of a loved pet narrowly beating out other crowd favorites. Following are our favorite labels from the hundreds submitted. Lastly, a huge thank you to our sponsors who support this annual contest by donating fantastic home winemaking prizes!

“This label started with the idea the mead I was making was wild, like both the blueberries that went into it and the Labrador retriever for which it (and my home winery) was named,” says Eric. “I wanted the label to be slightly unnerving to match the rough spirit’s sweet, smoky, and surprisingly dry finish. Using Photoshop, I was able to blend the two images while keeping the dog’s eyes clear and bright. To balance the image, I used a honeycomb graphic that I recolored, textured, and embossed.”

PRIZES

Eric Rosenfeld Scottsdale, Arizona

Precision scale from Anvil Brewing Equipment; RJS Craft Winemaking En Primeur Winery Series Italian Super Tuscan wine kit from BSG HandCraft; Full range of Red Star yeast sachets, tin tacker sign, and wine swag from Fermentis by Lesaffre; Gift card from GrogTag; Gift certi cate from Waterloo Container Co.; Yeast coupons from White Labs

GOLD

Gabe

This label was created for a friend who makes wine at their amateur Beartooth Vineyards in Loveland, Ohio. “This artwork was done digitally in Adobe Illustrator and is representative of the Beartooth Mountains in Montana and Wyoming where (my friend) has a home and spends much of his time,” says Gabe.

SILVER

Using art from the internet and leaf stickers from a craft store Laraine created a series of labels that caught the judges’ attention. Laraine has been making wine for 20 years, with half of the attraction being the task of creating labels for each. “I love making the labels to go with each wine almost more than I enjoy making the wine,” she says.

PRIZES

BRONZE

Alen entered multiple labels for various meads he has made, and judges had a di cult time picking a favorite. Ultimately, this traditional mead label won out. Alen tells us he creates labels on his phone using software including Photopea and Adobe Spark.

PRIZES

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Select French Merlot wine kit from BSG HandCraft; Gift card from GrogTag; Vintner’s Best® Fruit Wine Base from Vintner’s Best®

RJS Craft Winemaking Cru Select Pinot Grigio wine kit from BSG HandCraft; Gift card from GrogTag; Yeast coupons from White Labs

PRIZES

Gift card from GrogTag; Yeast coupons from White Labs; Special issues from WineMaker magazine

Laraine Willkie Bellingham, Washington

Collins Loveland, Ohio

Alen RadoševiĆ Romania

Reader’s Choice

Penny Walker San Diego, California

Penny told us she’s been making wine and labels with her daughter, Michelle, for about six years and they have received medals for their wines, but never their labels. That is, until now. This label features art from the internet to illustrate a limited edition Australian Pinot Noir/Shiraz blend.

Mention

- MARCH 2022 WINEMAKER

Fabiola Granados Mexico City, Mexico

Jorge Krapavickas Corrientes, Argentina

Patty Torres Ranchita, California Dean Scott Kutztown, Pennsylvania

Primeur

PRIZES

Kevin Hart Orlando, Florida

Melissa Moseley Los Olivos, California

Robert Outenreath San Rafael, California

Brenda Paul Oak Harbor, Washington

Shanie Mattox Woodstock, Georgia

Merrick Mouton Lafayette, Louisiana

Nikki & Timothy Compton Ridgeway, Virginia

Louis Jones Rock Hill, South Carolina

Mary Haehl East Wenatchee, Washington

Kenneth Mann Grafton Township, Ohio

Risa Wyatt Sonoma, California

Jay Jagodinski DePere, Wisconsin

Joseph Daniel Sonoma, California

Ronald Maddress Bakersfield, California

Hossein Zangeneh Iran

Andrea DiVecchio South Park, Pennsylvania

Michaell Connor Coventry, Connecticut

Hank Armstrong Lake Oswego, Oregon

TUNE UP

Calibrating your wine e uipment

orrelate readings of with a standard.” That simple definition of calibrate from the Concise Oxford Dictionary is often overlooked in home winemaking. Some winemakers rely on guessing or intuition instead of testing and even many who test just assume the answer they get is inherently correct. nfortunately, neither of those approaches is entirely correct. uessing is obviously risky, but why might a testing system or instrument be wrong It is possible that the device was not properly calibrated before it left the factory. Or it may have been correct when new, but calibration can drift over time. In either case, your wine lab results would be false and you could ruin your wine.

Throughout the laboratory career I had before co owning a fermentation supply store, I followed a set pattern for calibration. The first step is to present a synthetic or authentic reference sample of known value to the instrument. Then, you change the instrument reading to match the known value. If the instrument design does not allow such an ad ustment, you record the offset of the true value from the indicated value and apply that correction to future sample readings.

The tests in this column are sugar by refractometer and hydrometer , p by electronic meter, temperature, and titratable acidity TA . or each test, we will look at what it is, what it does, how it works, and how to calibrate it.

SUGAR LEVELS

A refractometer is an analog or digital device that measures the bending of light through a li uid sample. A drop or two of grape uice is placed on the lens or prism, light shines through the sample, and the user records the analog value from an optical scale or

the numerical value if it is digital. or uice we use refractometers graduated in degrees ri which is a measure of percent sucrose by weight.

To calibrate your refractometer, purchase a 0 ri sugar standard. That is a precisely prepared solution of sucrose in distilled water. eep the bottle in the refrigerator to avoid spoilage, but let it come to room temperature before use. ut a drop or two on the lens and, for an analog meter, look through the eyepiece toward a bright sky and note the reading. If it is not e actly 0.0, use the tiny provided screwdriver to turn the ad ustment screw until the line falls e actly on 0.0. inse and dry the prism and you are set to do measurements. Digital models vary with specific calibration routines. sing the same solution, follow the instructions that came with yours.

ince pure water is 0 ri , you can calibrate at ero with that instead of at 0 ri with a reference solution. I prefer to use 0 ri solution because if there is any lack of linearity in the readout, 0 ri is a lot closer to your grape uice reading than ero is. Any linearity error after calibration will be much smaller that way. Note: Alcohol also affects light refraction, so use your refractometer only prior to commencing fermentation. After that, switch to a hydrometer.

A hydrometer is often the first instrument ac uired by a home wine maker. This hollow glass tube has a scale in the stem, usually graduated three ways otential alcohol, ri , and specific gravity. While brewers often use the specific gravity numbers, which display the density of a solution as a ratio to pure water, winemakers more often will use the ri scale. The potential alcohol scale is ust a calculation from the other scales. It esti-

BY BOB PEAK

It is possible that the device was not properly calibrated before it left the factory.

Keeping your equipment properly calibrated is the only way to know that these tools you invested in are providing the right information.

mates how much alcohol might be produced from a given sugar reading.

ince the floating position of the hydrometer is showing only the density of the sample, a sugar reading includes the assumption that the sample is a pure mixture of water and sucrose. Indeed, that is how you can calibrate your hydrometer. ou can purchase a standard sucrose solution as described earlier, measure it, and record any offset correction that may need to be applied to future readings. Alternatively, ust as with the refractometer, you can do a ero calibration. To do this, fill your test cylinder with distilled water at the temperature specified for your hydrometer, float the hydrometer in it, and record the offset from 0.0 ri to apply to future readings.

Although possibly less accurate than a 0 ri standard, it does not require a large volume of standard solution and is probably good enough for monitoring fermentation. o not be concerned if a sugar reading on uice is not e actly the same for the hydrometer and the refractometer, even after both are calibrated. either is truly measuring sugar. One is measuring light refraction and the other is measuring solution density. As fermentation begins, ust switch from the refractometer to the hydrometer and go on.

pH METER

When you are ready to advance your home winemaking lab, p will likely be the ne t number to monitor. Although you can buy little p strips that turn colors on e posure to a sample, they are not accurate enough to be useful in winemaking. Most of them measure 0.5 p . ou will want to look at the better choice, a p meter. These come at many price points and with different features, but basic principles are the same. The electronic part is a high impedance voltmeter that means it resists passage of electrical current through the meter. The millivolts it measures are proportional to the hydrogen ion concentration in the sample and the result is displayed as p . That measurement is carried out by a probe placed in the solution. The probe contains two parts A reference electrode and a glass electrode. The glass electrode’s response changes on contact with a solution while the reference electrode remains constant. The change reports out as p . ecause the measurements reflect relative change, the particular probe and meter must be calibrated prior to use and periodically over time.

Calibration is based on presenting known p solutions to the probe and applying an ad ustment as needed. Those standard solutions are called buffers they are solutions of predictable p that resist p change in the face of small

environmental changes. We commonly use p buffers of p .0 and p .0 or .01 . Once you have your pair of buffers, bring them and the meter to room temperature 0 C . oak your electrode in tap water for at least 0 minutes. Do not use distilled water for this. You want some minerals in this water so you have a mi of calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and hydrogen ions soaking into the surface of the glass electrode. It is displacement of other ions by hydrogen ions that produce p readings. inse the electrode with distilled water, blot dry with absorbent paper, and place in a sample of p buffer.

At this point, follow the specific instructions that came with your meter, probably something like press CA . inse and blot dry again, place in the p buffer, and press CA or maybe O to set the second calibration point. There are two set points because the one you set first ad usts the response of the meter — the strength of the signal in that buffer. The second point sets the slope of the response line the angle at which it proceeds from the first buffer response to the second. ecause wine is nearer p than p , I like to have as the second buffer. If any error has been introduced, it should be smaller there and give you more accurate readings on real winemaking samples. our p meter instructions may recommend p first and then p , which is correct for many general lab purposes. or wine, it is best to do it my way and calibrate first, then if your meter allows.

TEMPERATURE

ou may not give much thought to calibrating a thermometer, but for sensitive tasks like rehydrating yeast it can make a difference. or home winery use, there are three different types of thermometers. luid that e pands with heat fills a calibrated glass tube for conventional thermometers alcohol filled thermometers are safer than mercury filled ones around the winery . A metal coil that e pands with heat drives dial type thermometers. A change in electrical resistance with heat a thermistor — provides the sensing in a digital thermometer. Some digital thermometers have added value with a sensor probe on a cable that can be remote from the meter.

To calibrate any thermometer, boil some distilled water. Immerse your thermometer or probe in the boiling water, and note the reading. ominally, it will be 100 C or 1 at sea level. ou can look up a boiling point correction for altitude here https www.engineeringtoolbo .com boiling points water altitude d 1 .html. Then turn the dial to correct the reading, ad ust the digital readout according to your thermometer’s instructions, or make a note of the offset to apply as a correction to future readings.

Calibration is based on presenting known pH solutions to the probe and applying an adjustment as needed.

TITRATABLE ACIDITY

Our final calibration builds on some of the others. This one is for titratable acidity or TA also sometimes called total acidity . It is the sum of all acids in the sample, titrated as tartaric acid. A titration system consists of a vessel like a beaker, a graduated device to add standardi ed sodium hydro ide titrant like a burette or syringe, and a means to detect the endpoint like phenolphthalein indicator or a p meter. or a TA test, you measure a sample into the beaker and then add measured increments of standard sodium hydro ide to it. When the endpoint of p . is reached, phenolphthalein indicator will turn pink and your p meter will go to p . . ou note the number of m of sodium hydro ide added and calculate the TA. The general formula for this calculation is found in Wine Analysis and Production, by oecklein, ugelsang, et al. In this notation, “N base is the normality of the sodium hydro ide solution you are using. Common values are 0.1 N or 0.0 N, but with this formula you can use any standardi ed solution in a convenient range

Titratable Acidity g tartaric acid m base N base 0.0 5 1,000 m sample

If you purchase a kit for the test, it may include a simplified calculation. TA is also sometimes reported as g 100 m roughly, percent instead of g . To convert, multiply any g 100 m value by ten.

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or the test to be accurate, you must calibrate your p meter as noted earlier. ery ine pensive and rugged p meters for field use may be too slow in response for effective use in titration. Meters with a separate probe, portable or bench top style, usually work very well. Calibrating the burette or syringe for accurate volume delivery is beyond home winemaking, but you can calibrate or standardi e your sodium hydro ide solution. ou need to either buy fresh solution every si months or so, or restandardi e the solution you have, because dilute sodium hydro ide is sub ect to degradation over time that may invalidate your TA results. tandard hydrochloric acid solution is much more stable than sodium hydro ide solution. If you want to restandardi e, purchase standardi ed hydrochloric acid solution of the same molarity as your sodium hydro ide’s normality. Titrate 5.0 m of this standard with your sodium hydro ide. ow calculate your own true standardi ed normality to use in the earlier equation as follows:

tandardi ed normality of your sodium hydro ide abeled normality m hydrochloric acid m sodium hydro ide

se this value in your TA calculation.

o there you have it Calibrations and standardi ations for some of the most important home winemaking tests: ri , p , temperature, and TA.

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BACKYARD VINES

BY WES HAGEN

DEAR WES

A new vintage of backyard Q&As

This column has become an annual tradition of mine since each year I get quite a few great questions from hobby winemakers regarding their backyard vineyards. So without further ado, let’s jump into some of the best ones from this past year.

LEE IN MARYLAND ASKS:

This regards pruning before the winter. Just for fun, I planted about 25 vines in my garden in Maryland just to see if they would grow. They went ballistic. Am I correct in assuming that after the vines fully freeze, I should cut back everything that’s green?

WES RESPONDS:

Timing your pruning is very important for the health and fruitfulness of your vines. You want to wait for two important moments in the vine’s yearly cycle: All leaves should have dropped and when you make test cuts on last year’s cane growth, they will remain dry for five minutes with no li uid weeping. Pruning vines that are not fully dormant robs the vine of nutrients it will use to wake up the following spring.

It sounds like your vines have no lack of nutrients or vigor, so pruning early would likely have less impact on your vines than on vines that struggle to produce growth and a healthy crop. Your issue will be controlling that vigor to keep the vineyard from growing rank and producing shaded, veggie-tasting fruit. A few good snap freezes should be enough to put your vines fully into dormancy, though I would make a few test cuts just to make sure and to stay in good habits of viticulture.

FRED IN SANTA MARIA, CALIFORNIA ASKS:

For yet another drought harvest on the Central Coast of California, we had an amazing quality harvest — a little lower yields, but uality and flavor seem to me the best I’ve tasted in 25 years of home winegrowing and winemaking here in Santa Barbara County. My question today is about the drought. How can I tighten my water management in the vineyard and how will varying levels of deficit irrigation giving the vine less water than it wants/needs) impact growth, canopy, and fruit quality? How do I know if I can get away with dry farming, or zero added irrigation?

WES RESPONDS:

Fred, nice to hear from another Santa Maria grape fanatic. Hope all is well and you enjoyed that amazing 2021 vintage here — perfect weather for a legendary year. Water management in the vineyard is a complicated subject with reams of literature, but I will summarize from my experience what could help growers in drought situations.

First and foremost, my 24 years of vineyard management experience taught me a valuable lesson — that most uropean grapevines the ones we generally use in California to grow wine), and often hybrids and native U.S. vines, are very judicious in their use of water. They have evolved to deal with times of wet and dry soil, and even make it through droughts. Even an abandoned 19th century Mission Grape vineyard was discovered near Lompoc, California and nursed back to health in the 1990s after decades of neglect and severe drought. o the first point is good news it’s difficult to kill a vine,

Timing your pruning is very important for the health and fruitfulness of your vines.

Photo courtesy of Wes Hagen

Properly pruning your vines requires skill and needs to be done with care.

and the vine is dynamic in its ability to find resources or handle some drought and heat.

Vineyard water status can be measured by an in-ground tensionmeter such as an Irrometer , by using a pressure bomb on the fresh, green leaves, or by using a very easy and reliable method The angle of the petiole leaf stem) to the leaf blade. You want to see the stem of the leaf at a 90-degree angle to the leaf for optimal vine water status. If the angle droops acutely , the vine is in some water stress, the more the droop, the worse. If the angle is obtuse or more than 90 degrees, the vines likely have excess water, which can lead to dilute fruit and rampant vegetative growth.

Now that you know what to look for, we start with winter/spring rains. If the vineyard soil was saturated with at least 15 0 in. 51 cm of seasonal dormant season rains, the soil profile should be fully charged with water and you can likely wait until May to water in warmer climates, maybe as late as June in cooler climates like Santa Maria. Of course, monitor the vines’ health and apply water if they seem to be stressed from dry soil. Remember clay holds more water while sand holds close to none.

So practically, if we receive very limited rain again this dormancy only in. cm last year , I would repeat your successful irrigation program from 2021, but cut your irrigation sets by 20% and see what happens. If normally healthy vines lose their balance and vigor, all other cultural practices being the same, move back up to 100% normal. If 0 deficit works for you, try 0 the year after, then 0 , etc. You want to watch for optimal balance: 12–15 leaves per cluster, canes around ft. 0. 1. m , and vines that stay healthy and viable through harvest. Knowing Santa Maria as I do, without serious changes in historical rainfall patterns, dry farming is not recommended. I usually green-light dry farming a vineyard in areas with at least 5 in. cm of average annual rainfall.

As far as canopy, if the bottom leaves the oldest begin to yellow or dry out months before harvest, that

is a good sign you need to increase water to the vines earlier in the season. Yellowing/desiccation of leaves late in the season, or at harvest, is normal, although I like to see green leaves in the vineyard during ripening and up to harvest a few red yellow leaves are normal in fall).

Lastly, on wine quality, allow the vines to dry out right after fruit set as the vine determines berry si e. eficit irrigation after berry set will increase skin-to-juice ratio and will generally improve flavor and concentration in all wines. Hope that helps!

DAVE NEAR JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI WRITES:

Wes, I have a few questions for you. The first two regard pruning style what is the quality difference, if any, between spur pruning and cane pruning? Also, what is the labor difference in time per vine? Lastly, I’ve heard vines can die in very cold temperatures. Is this true, and at what point does a vineyard have to be pruned and buried under soil for survival? Thanks in advance.

WES RESPONDS:

Dave, say hi to Jefferson City for me, I have great memories of that town and the BBQ all over that state). Pruning questions are very popular right now, as most of us are getting into the vineyard to get that vineyard ready for spring! Pruning style is a good subject for debate. Here is a problem that is ubiquitous in viticulture and winemaking: That of tradition vs. anecdote. ibraries are filled with unread books on this subject and winegrowers and makers seem to prefer to use the traditions that they grew up with or were taught by their mentors. That being said, there is a belief in traditional grape growing circles that spur/ cordon pruning systems are easier to teach and faster to complete while cane-pruned systems require more expertise, time, choices, and produces superior fruit — especially in Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. I will agree that spur pruning is faster and easier, but I have no way of determining if fruit grown on fresh canes each year are better for the wine, but I doubt that is the case from my own e perience. The first commer-

cial vineyard I managed started with cane pruning for 10 years and then the last 12 years I was there we used spur/ cordon. I saw better balance and fruit distribution in the canopy using spur and it would be difficult to suggest cane pruning as a consultant. Canes tend to produce a lot of fruit at either end, and tend to have blind positions in the middle that lack crop. All in all, and especially for hobbyists, my suggestion is to go with spur/cordon. One problem with spur training, though, is that improper pruning can lead to very high spur positions, which can mess up the functionality of the trellising system. Keep your spurs as low as you can; always retain the lowest option for your retained spurs or they will creep higher and higher.

Labor time between cane and spur pruning varies by expertise, and I would say an untrained worker should not be allowed to cane prune even if they are careful. Choosing the right sun canes and ones of the right si e and location can be challenging, and it’s easy to break the canes and lose half of a vine’s fruit in a second or less. Spur pruning is like giving a careful haircut, and as long as you keep those spur positions managed and low on the cordon, you should be good. Depending on the age and size of the vine, a good pruner should be able to spur prune a vine in 1–2 minutes, cane pruning could e tend to minutes.

As far as winter kill of grapevines is concerned, most viticulturists would worry about their vineyards’ survival when temperatures fall below or significantly below 0 1 C . Sudden temperature drops can cause even more danger to the vines. Vitis vinifera, the European winegrape that makes the world’s greatest wines, evolved originally between the Black and Caspian seas, and those bodies of water kept the area from getting too cold, even in the last ice age. So vines do have protection against cold, but only to about that temperature. French-American hybrids normally have better cold resistance, and different varietals are impacted differently. or e ample, Merlot can die at 0 1 C , inot oir at 5 1 C , but Concord can generally handle down

to 5 C urying a pruned vine in winter is done commonly in the Northern Tier of the U.S. and other frigid winter climates, and is accomplished by digging a trench on either side of the low-trellised trunk and burying the retained canes, or even hilling over the whole vine. In areas with deep, reliable snow all winter, snow can be used to cover the vine as well. In the Finger Lakes region of New York, it is common to keep two trunks on every vine, so if one has winter kill, the second trunk can be used to keep the vine alive and producing. And before you think it can never happen in Missouri, I see that St. ouis recorded 0 C back in 1 ut in normal conditions, your vines should be fine, especially if they are Norton. Stay warm out there, just writing this made me cold.

BILL NEAR HOUSTON, TEXAS ASKS:

If you had to summarize three ideas in the vineyard that have the greatest impact on improving resulting wine quality, what would they be?

WES PONDERS AND REPLIES:

#1: Leaf-to-cluster ratio counting and fine-tuning. Dr. Richard Smart, in his groundbreaking book Sunlight Into Wine buy it if you haven’t already gave viticulturists all over the world a number of vital and brilliant tools for managing winegrape vineyards. In a grape world where we generally have to deny vanilla advice that applies to everyone, Smart gave us a magic number: All wine vineyards should have 12–15 leaves per cluster at the onset of fruit ripening. Does that mean we

have to count our grape bunches and leaves on every vine, every year? Well, no not exactly, but if you only have 10 vines, why not? I would generally make my interns spooky music count 100 vines in each block of acres, and to choose the vines randomly to give us a decent average that can impact canopy management. This ratio also influences how we handle stunted vines or stunted shoots.

I recommend dropping all fruit from any shoot that does not have at least 10 leaves, but allow it to grow. If a shoot has at least 20 leaves by bloom/ set, I would leave two clusters on that shoot. If the foliage is weak, with too many clusters, thin the clusters down, shoot per shoot, down to around 12 leaves to a cluster. Tweak the ratio a bit for cluster size . . . I’m used to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay bunches that are tiny, so 10:1 works pretty well. With Grenache or other large-clustered varietals, 15:1 is a better ratio. What if you have 0 leaves per cluster, and the imbalance goes the other way? You can leaf-pluck not only in the fruit zone as normal, but also scoop interior leaves that are shaded most of the day, or even hedge the vines’ tops, although that can generate more growth in a week or two.

#2: Sunlight on winegrapes, without burning them, is the single most important element of viticulture. alileo said Wine is sunlight, held together by water, and he was right Never pull so many leaves as to cook or raisin your fruit but constantly test, adjust, and take notes on how open you can get your fruiting zone to sun and wind without burn. All winegrapes

have a compound within the berries called pyra ine’ or metho ypyra ine to be precise) that tastes like green bell peppers. Flecking or direct sun exposure causes chemical bond changes in the pyrazines and almost miraculously shifts them to the ‘terpene’ family, which increases high-toned berry character in red wine and floral honey aroma in white. What a great deal! There is an abundant, free resource that can make your wines better. Now to ust figure out how many leaves to pull around the fruit to balance sound, unburned fruit and allowing the sunshine to make better and better wine.

#3: Many hands make light work, and bigger is usually better. I’m obviously cheating here to get an extra suggestion in. Working in the vineyard is much more efficient, fun, and social with lots of help. ormies people without vineyards) even think working in the vines is romantic . . . at least for 15 minutes tart a wines and vines club and have weekend workdays to do hoeing, canopy management, leaf pulling, pruning, and harvest. Also consider harvesting at night with headlamps. It’s quite comfortable and even magical. The bonus suggestion is to go big with your equipment. If you can afford an ATV with a PTO spray rig, go for it! Machinery, and especially a spray rig for fungicide application, can really make your vineyard work easier and less backbreaking.

That’s our Q&A for another year in the vineyard. Please stay in touch and send any questions you have my way: whagen@millerfamilywinecompany. com. Cheers!

Deficit irrigation after berry set will increase skin-to-juice ratio and will generally improve flavor and concentration in all wines.

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fax: (616) 453-9687

e-mail: sici1@sbcglobal.net

www.sicilianosmkt.com

Largest Wine Making inventory in West Michigan. Now selling beer and winemaking supplies on-line.

TAYLOR RIDGE VINEYARDS

3843 105th Ave.

Allegan 49010 (269) 521-4047

bctaylor@btc-bci.com

www.taylorridgevineyard.com

18 Varieties of Wine Grapes and Juices. Vinifera, New York State, Minnesota and French hybrids. Providing wine grapes and juices for over 30 years.

MISSOURI

HOME BREWERY

1967 West Boat St. Ozark

1-800-321-BREW (2739) brewery@homebrewery.com

www.homebrewery.com

Since 1984, providing excellent Service, Equipment and Ingredients. Beer, Wine, Mead, Soda and Cheese.

NEW YORK

DOC’S HOMEBREW SUPPLIES

451 Court Street Binghamton 13904 (607) 722-2476

www.docsbrew.com

Full-service beer & wine making shop serving NY’s Southern Tier &PA’s Northern Tier since 1991. Extensive line of Winexpert kits, supplies and equipment.

FULKERSON WINERY & JUICE PLANT

5576 State Route 14 Dundee 14837 (607) 243-7883

fax: (607) 243-8337

www.fulkersonw inery.com

Fresh Finger Lakes grape juice available during harvest. Large selection of home winemaking supplies. Visit our website to browse and order supplies. Open year round 10-5, extended seasonal hours. Find us on Facebook and follow us onTwitter @fulkersonwinery.

MAIN STREET WINES & SUPPLIES

249 Main St. Arcade 14009 (585) 492-2739 fax: (585) 492-2777

mainstwines@yahoo.com

Plenty of wine kits available to make your own wine. Full line of winemaking supplies and accessories for your convenience. Tue-Fri 10-6; Sat 10-3 or by appt. Like us on Facebook.

NIAGARA TRADITION

HOMEBREWING SUPPLIES

1296 Sheridan Drive Buffalo 14217 (800) 283-4418 or (716) 877-8767

www.nthomebrew.com

We feature a complete line of supplies for making wine, beer, mead, cider and cheese.

PANTANO’S WINE GRAPES & HOMEBREW

249 Rte 32 S. New Paltz 12561 (845) 255-5201 or (845) 706-5152 (cell) pantanowineandbeer@yahoo.com

www.pantanosbeerwine.com

Find Us On Facebook. Your source for wine & beer making supplies and equipment. Grapes and Juice from California, Italy & Chile in season, wine kits and all juice pails (6 gal) year round. Classes available. We now carry Distilling Products and Stills.

PROSPERO EQUIPMENT CORP.

123 Castleton St. Pleasantville 10570 (914) 769-6252

fax: (914) 769-6786

info@prosperocorp.biz

www.prosperocorp.biz

The source to all your winemaking equipment.

TEN THOUSAND VINES WINERY

8 South Buffalo St. Hamburg 14075 (716) 646-9979

mike@TenThousandVines.com

www.TenThousandVines.com

Wine supplies, juice and advice.

WALKER’S WINE JUICE

2860 N.Y. Route 39 – Since 1955 Forestville (716) 679-1292

www.walkerswinejuice.com

Over 50 varieties of “Hot-Pack”

Grape, Fruit and Berry Juice, Requiring No Refrigeration, shipped by UPS all year. Supplying over 300 wineries in 37 states!

NORTH CAROLINA

ALTERNATIVE BEVERAGE (BELMONT)

1500 River D., Suite 104 Belmont 28012

Advice Line: (704) 825-8400

Order Line: 1-800-365-2739

www.ebrew.com

44 years serving all home winemakers & brewers’ needs! Come visit for a real Homebrew Super Store experience!

ALTERNATIVE BEVERAGE (CHARLOTTE)

3911 South Blvd. Charlotte 28209

Advice Line: (704) 825-8400

Order Line: 1-800-365-2739

www.ebrew.com

44 years serving all home winemakers & brewers’ needs! Visit our stores to learn how we can help you make the best wine you can make.

ALTERNATIVE BEVERAGE (CORNELIUS)

19725 Oak St.

Cornelius 28031

Voice Line: (704) 527-2337

Fax Line: (704) 522-6427

www.ebrew.com

44 years serving all home winemakers & brewers’ needs! Visit our stores to learn how we can help you make the best wine you can make.

AMERICAN BREWMASTER

3021-5 Stony Brook Dr. Raleigh 27604 (919) 850-0095

www.americanbrewmaster.com

Supplying wine makers with the finest wine kits, ingredients and supplies since 1983. Winemaking is fun with American Brewmaster!

ASHEVILLE BREWERS SUPPLY

712-B Merrimon Ave.

Asheville 28804

(828) 358-3536

www.ashevillebrewers.com

Value. Quality. Service. Since 1994.

329 W. Maple St. Yadkinville 27055

(336) 677-6831

fax: (336) 677-1048

www.carolinawinesupply.com

Home Winemaking Supplies & Support.

OHIO

THE GRAPE AND GRANARY 915 Home Ave. Akron 44310 (330) 633-7223

www.grapeandgranary.com

Concentrates, Fresh juice, Wine on Premise.

LABEL PEELERS BEER & WINE MAKING SUPPLIES, INC.

211 Cherry St. Kent 44240 (330) 678-6400

info@labelpeelers.com

www.labelpeelers.com

Specializing in winemaking/ homebrew supplies &equipment. Free monthly classes.

Hours: Mon-Sun 10am-7pm

OKLAHOMA

HIGH GRAVITY 6808 S. Memorial Drive Tulsa 74133

(918) 461-2605

e-mail: store@highgravitybrew.com

www.highgravitybrew.com

Join our Frequent Fermenters Club!

OREGON

F.H. STEINBART CO. 234 SE 12th Ave. Portland 97214 (503) 232-8793

fax: (503) 238-1649

e-mail: info@fhsteinbart.com

www.fhsteinbart.com

Brewing and Wine making supplies since 1918!

HOME FERMENTER

123 Monroe Street Eugene 97402

(541) 485-6238

www.homefermenter.com

Providing equipment, supplies and advice to winemakers and homebrewers for over 40 years.

PENNSYLVANIA

BOOTLEGGERS BREW SHOP, LLC 917 Pleasant Valley Blvd. Altoona 16602

(814) 931-9962

http://bootleggersbrewshop.com

bootleggersbrewshop@gmail.com

Find us on Facebook! Central PA’s

LARGEST homebrew supplies store! We carry seasonal cold pressed wine juices from around the world. Special orders welcome!

NITTANY VALLEY TRUE VALUE

1169 Nittany Valley Drive

Bellefonte

(814) 383-2809

fax: (814) 383-4884

Supplies - Equipment - Classes. Fresh grapes & juice in season.

WINEMAKER DIRECTORY

PRESQUE ISLE WINE CELLARS

9440 W. Main Rd. (US Rte. 20) North East 16428 (800) 488-7492

www.piwine.com

Your one stop shop! Complete service since 1964, helping you make great wines. We specialize in small winery and amateur wine supplies and equipment. Check out our website www.piwine.com or stop by and see us. Fresh grapes and juice at harvest.

SCOTZIN BROTHERS

65 N. Fifth St. Lemoyne 17043 (717) 737-0483 or 800-791-1464

www.scotzinbros.com

email: shop@scotzinbros.com WINE and Beer MAKERS PARADISE!

TEXAS

AUSTIN HOMEBREW SUPPLY 15112 N. Interstate Hwy 35 Austin 78728 (512) 300-BREW

email: hops@austinhomebrew.com

Visit us at www.AustinHomebrew.com

Premium Wine Kits, Fruit, Honey, Fruit Presses, Apple Crushers, and Fermentors. Everything for the beginner and the seasoned winemaker.

HOMEBREW HEADQUARTERS

300 N. Coit Rd., Suite 134

Richardson

Toll free: 1-800-966-4144 or (972) 234-4411

fax: (972) 234-5005

www.homebrewhq.com

Proudly serving the Dallas area for 30+ years!

WASHINGTON

BADER BEER & WINE SUPPLY 711 Grand Blvd. Vancouver, WA 98661

1-800-596-3610

Sign up for our free e-newsletter @ Baderbrewing.com

THE BEER ESSENTIALS

2624 South 112th St. #E-1 Lakewood 98499 (253) 581-4288

www.thebeeressentials.com

Mail order and secure on-line ordering available.

BREHM VINEYARDS®

www.brehmvineyards.com

grapes@brehmvineyards.com

Phone: (510) 527.3675

Fresh grape pick-up in Underwood, WA

Frozen grapes in Portland, OR

Ultra-premium grapes for home winemakers for over 40 years! Sold at harvest or shipped frozen across N. America year-round. Over 30 varieties from Carneros, Napa, Sonoma, Washington and Oregon.

JON’S HOMEBREW AND WINE SUPPLY

1430 E. Main Ave., #1430C Puyallup 98372 (253) 286-7607

jon@jonshomebrew.com jonshomebrew.com

Puyallup’s home for Home Beer and Winemaking supplies!

WISCONSIN

THE CELLAR BREW SHOP

465 N. Washburn St. Oshkosh 54904 (920) 517-1601

www.thecellarhomebrew.com

cellarbrewshop@outlook.com

Beer & Wine ingredients and equipment. Extensive inventory at Competitive prices, bulk discounts. Great service and free advice from experienced staff.

HOUSE OF HOMEBREW

410 Dousman St. Green Bay (920) 435-1007 staff@houseofhomebrew.com www.houseofhomebrew.com

Beer, Wine, Cider, Mead, Soda, Coffee, Tea, Cheese Making.

WINE & HOP SHOP

1919 Monroe St. Madison 53711 (608) 257-0099 www.wineandhop.com wineandhop@gmail.com

Madison, WI’s locally owned homebrewing and winemaking headquarters for over 40 years. Fast, affordable shipping to anywhere. Use promo code WineMaker at checkout for discounts. Free expert advice too!

READER SERVICE

FOR DIRECT LINKS TO ALL OF OUR ADVERTISERS’ WEBSITES, GO TO

BLICHMANN ENGINEERING, LLC .........................11 www.blichmannengineering.com

BREHM VINEYARDS ........................12 510-527-3675

www.brehmvineyards.com grapes@brehmvineyards.com

BSG HANDCRAFT ..................Cover 2 1-800-374-2739

www.bsgcraft.com

www.rjscraftwinemaking.com

BUON VINO MANUFACTURING, INC. ..................33 1-855-522-1166

www.buonvino.com orders@buonvino.com

FINER WINE KITS ...............................9 www.labelpeelers.com

GARAGISTECON .................................1 www.winemakermag.com/ garagistecon

LALLEMAND INC. ...............................7 www.lallemandbrewing.com/wine homebrewing@lallemand.com

CANADA ALBERTA

BREW FOR LESS

10774 - 95th Street

Edmonton T5H 2C9 (708) 422-0488

brewforless.com

info@brewforless.com

Edmonton’s Largest Wine & Beer

Making Supply Store

GRAPES TO GLASS

5308 -17th Ave. SW

Calgary T3E 6S6 (403) 243-5907

www.grapestoglass.com

Calgary’s largest selection of brewing, winemaking & distilling supplies. On-line shopping available with delivery via Canada Post.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

BOSAGRAPE WINERY & BREW SUPPLIES 6908 Palm Ave.

Burnaby V5J 4M3

(604) 473-WINE

fax: (604) 433-2810

info@bosagrape.com

www.bosagrape.com

Ingredients, equipment, labware & supplies for brew & winemaking. Still Spirits, Hanna, Stavin Oak, Brehm Vineyards, Mosti juices, Brewcraft, Marchisio, Accuvin, Chemetrics, Vintner’s Harvest, Lalvin, Buon Vino, Vintage Shop.

MOREWINE! ........................................5 1-800-823-0010 www.morewine.com info@morewinemaking.com

MOSTI MONDIALE ..............................3 450-638-6380 www.mostimondiale.com info@mostimondiale.com

NAPA FERMENTATION SUPPLIES .........................................33 707-255-6372

www.napafermentation.com napafermentation@aol.com

NOONTIME LABELS ........................33 561-699-0413 www.noontimelabels.com customerservice@ noontimelabels.com

PARDO WINE GRAPES ....................33 813-340-3052 www.pardowinegrapes.com vince@pardowinegrapes.com

SPEIDEL TANK....................................7 www.speidel-stainless-steeltanks.com

VINMETRICA ....................................19 760-494-0597 www.vinmetrica.com info@vinmetrica.com

THE VINTAGE SHOP ..............Cover 3 604-590-1911 www.thevintageshop.ca info@thevintageshop.ca

VINTNER’S BEST® ...........................11 1-800-321-0315 www.ldcarlson.com

WALKER’S WINE JUICE ..................49 716-679-1292 www.walkerswinejuice.com

WATERLOO CONTAINER COMPANY ...........................................5 1-888-539-3922 www.waterloocontainer.com

WINEMAKER BOOT CAMP ONLINE..................................49 www.winemakermag.com/ bootcamp

WINEMAKER BORDEAUX TRIP ......22 www.winemakermag.com/trip wm@winemakermag.com

WINEMAKER INTERNATIONAL AMATEUR WINE COMPETITION ...............24–27 802-362-3981 ext. 106 www.winemakermag.com/ competition competition@winemakermag.com

WINEXPERT ...........................Cover 4 www.winexpert.com info@winexpert.com

WYEAST LABORATORIES, INC. ......23 Fermentation Cultures: Beer, Wine, Cider www.wyeastlab.com customerservice@wyeastlab.com

XPRESSFILL.....................................12 805-541-0100 www. pressfill.com

DRY FINISH

BY STEVE KROLL

GOLD ANNIVERSARY

Celebrating 50 years of fine winemaking

The Purple Foot Wine Club was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the fall of 1971 by a young entrepreneur named Tom Lauerman. Lauerman and his wife, Mary, had already been making wine in their basement for a few years. At the time, home winemaking as a hobby was in its infancy but growing quickly. Tom and Mary purchased their supplies from a couple of small hobby shops in the area, but the selection was very limited and Lauerman soon came to the conclusion that this was something he could do better. In April of 1971, he, along with a handful of business partners, opened their own winemaking supply shop on Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis called The Vintner.

One challenge for the fledgling business was finding clientele. Winemaking was indeed growing as a hobby, but its numbers were still small. And so Lauerman set out to grow his customer base by organizing a local winemaking club. After all, it stood to reason that the members of such a club would need a local retailer where they could purchase their supplies.

The first meeting was held August 5, 1971 and Tom and Mary were surprised to have 35 people attend that meeting. From there the club quickly took shape. Lauerman wisely decided that rather

than take an active role in the club, he would simply plant the seeds and allow it to grow on its own.

Shortly after the inaugural meeting the new Purple Foot Club drafted bylaws and elected officers. It was decided the first president would be Ronald Twite, a local rosarian who had already been making wine for 15 years. Ron’s wife, Bonnie, was elected secretary. Under Twite’s governance, membership grew to over 100 within six months and has held steady ever since.

During the early years, members made wine mostly from fruit and commercial grape juice concentrates, although there were a number of people who also picked “wild” grapes. In 1975, the club decided to host its first ever amateur wine competition. Registration was opened to entrants throughout the upper Midwest. In the first year 115 entries were submitted by 80 people. The Purple Foot continues to hold two winemaking contests every year. In 1978 the club was instrumental in compelling the Minnesota State Fair to add a winemaking competition. To this day, members of the Purple Foot continue to judge the preliminary rounds at the State Fair contest.

In addition to the monthly club meetings, there are a number of events held each year to keep members engaged. In July we have an annual picnic in the park, while August is normally reserved for an organized tour of local wineries. Without a doubt, however, the most popular event the club holds is the annual Holiday Banquet in December. This gathering features a multi-course dinner with wine pairings, silent auction, raffle, as well as several fun contests. It’s always well attended.

Although Tom Lauerman’s retail store closed its doors many years ago (and Lauerman himself passed away in 1984), the Purple Foot Club he inspired marches on 50 years later.

During the early years, members made wine mostly from fruit and commercial grape juice concentrates . . .

Photo by Steve Kroll

The Purple Foot Wine Club gather for a photo op during their annual picnic at the park in 2021.