Harvest 2008, Merlot Fermentation.

posted by Dan in Snooth, Wine Industry, Wine, Guest Bloggers

It has been a little over one month since we first harvested Sauvignon Blanc on a scorching summer day. In the weeks that followed, the seemingly endless heat wave that hit Northern California from middle August to early September subsided. Since then, we have harvested about 50% of our red wine grapes; starting with Merlot on September 4.

A frightening thing happened when we started harvesting Merlot . When the small, tight, thick-skinned, purple pearls dropped from the destemmer our must pump would not carry the grapes to tank. So, we had to carry 12 tons of Merlot in five gallon buckets (about 40 lbs) up the cat walk and hand dump the grapes into tank. It was fun the first few flights, but when the day waned on, the only thought I had was, if this is a sign of things to come, this is going to be one physically demanding harvest. Thankfully, when we started picking Cabernet last week, the grapes were a bit juicier and the pump was working again.

There was a bright spot in Merlot’s ominous start. Due to the extreme weather conditions in Napa this year, grape cluster weights have been abnormally light and berry sizes intensely small. As we tracked the vineyard’s development throughout the growing season, we anticipated these yields. But the old adage is, if you think you will have a big crop, it will be bigger, if you think you have a small crop, it will be smaller. In the Merlot section of our vineyard, where we typically farm four tons to the acre, we harvested less than two tons an acre. We consoled ourselves with the inherent quality that is expected in a small crop year. Small crops bring out the best in wine grapes - highly concentrated wines with firm structure and power that derive from low juice to skin ratios.

At the time of today’s post, we’ll be pressing off the Merlot and settling the free run before barreling down the young wine to finish fermentation in barrel. In my next post I will outline in pictures the sorting process - the process that gets the grapes to the tank for fermentation. But today, I will talk a little about fermentation management.

With the heavy lifting behind us, it was time to let the Merlot grapes soak for a few days on their skins. Many philosophies and studies have been done about pre-fermentation maceration, i.e. the cold soak. Some winemakers and some grape varieties react differently during this period, but the general consensus is that the optimal cold soak (whether three days or thirty days depending on the winemaker’s style) will enhance color extraction and stability during the pending fermentation process. You can control the duration of the soak with temperature, keeping it cold, to inhibit native fermentation from taking place.

Fermentation occurs when the yeasts present in the fruit come in contact with the sweet juice releasing from the berries in a warm environment. Stick twelve tons of grapes in a closed vessel and I promise it will get warm and sticky pretty quickly. We chose to soak for four days before jump-starting fermentation by inoculating with an un-intrusive yeast strain that allows the fruit to develop its own character during the fermentation process.

After inoculating, there are a couple of different fermentation management processes. In order to facilitate this process we choose to aerate the juice by using a method called pumping-over, a process the French call remontages. With the use of an impellor pump we drain the juice from the tank and sprinkle it over the top of the tank back onto the grapes. As the fermentation progresses we choose to aerate the juice to supply oxygen to the yeast to keep them active. On the front end it is a savage process and on the back end it is soft and subtle. Pictured at right is what we call a tub and screen pump-over. We drain the juice from the tank and it pounds through a screen, a sieve, before we pump the accumulating and aerated juice back onto the skins.

On a daily basis, it is our goal is to have all the available juice come in contact with the grape skins to develop extraction. Think of macerating a tea bag in boiling water. If left to its own device, the tea bag will float on top of the water and produce little flavor. If gently bobbed in the water by the drinker’s hand, color and flavor will fill your cup gradually. This is an easy way to think about why we have to assist the grape juice to come in contact with the skins during this process. As the wine ferments, changing sugars to alcohol, its offshoot is carbon dioxide (CO2) that lifts the skins to the top of the tank. Think of the tiny bubbles in your carbonated water rising to the top of your glass. Add a lemon slice to your Pellegrino and it floats. At this point, it is said the “cap” (the grape skins) has risen, and if you do not continue your pump-overs (or punch-downs, the process of physically submerging the skins in the juice) you will not fully extract the wine’s flavors and structure from the grape skins.

During this chemical process, the grape must heats up naturally, the tough berries soften and begin to release their sugary juice and the yeast strains feed on the sugar converting them to alcohol. We believe that the grape juice is “dry” (containing little or no sugar) at one gram per liter (of liquid). That’s 1/1000 th parts sugar per liter, 33 ounces of liquid. Or a scant amount of sugar in your (750 mL, 24 ounce) bottle of wine. When a wine goes “dry” it is not finished. Secondary fermentation (for red wine) needs to be completed. Secondary, or malolactic, fermentation changes tart malic acid into softer lactic acid. When this process is completed, it is necessary to remove the wine from the sediments (lees) that are formed during the process so the young wine can begin its maturation or development into the wines we drink on a daily basis. Or at least I hope you are drinking on a daily basis. In future, post-harvest, posts I will track the development of our Merlot so you can follow it into its final, bottled package, our Firebelle

Dan Petroski is Assistant Winemaker at Larkmead Vineyards in Napa Valley. Dan has an MBA from New York University and worked as an Ad Exec in New York for several years, before switching it up and trading his suit for a move out west.

Harvest 2008, Post 2: Survival of the fittest

posted by Dan in Snooth, Wine, Guest Bloggers

Winemakers in Napa Valley are breathing a sigh of relief this week.  There has finally been a reprieve in the weather that has been blistering through Northern California.  However, I send my sympathies to our winemaking friends in Sonoma County where “all bets are off” and winegrowers and winemakers have been out picking Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes over the last eight to ten days like it was the last harvest before Armageddon.  So what has happened the last two weeks?  As I mentioned in my previous post, it has been hot.  The weather stations at the vineyard have recorded eight 100+ degree days over the last 14.  The heat has caused many to scramble to irrigate vines and sample grapes for ripeness to determine ideal harvest dates.

Irrigation

What the French call rain, grape growers in Napa and Sonoma call irrigation.  The ability to dose water to vines under strict management is a godsend to grape growers.  Drip irrigation is an expensive prospect when you think about it.  For example, Larkmead has 113 acres under vine, with roughly 1,000 vines per acre. That’s 113,000 vines that require the pictured irrigation system installed.  But this system pays dividends.  It allows us the ability to put as little or as much water at will.  A typical irrigation schedule can call for four, six, eight or more gallons of water per vine throughout different points of the growing season.  With this type of control, we can also add nutrients to the vines during the irrigation process.  This is an efficient and effective method in managing the vine’s growth and development.  During the current heat wave(s) we’ve tried to beat the heat by irrigating to hydrate the vines so they can cope with the pounding intensity of repeated hundred degree days.  One gallon takes about one hour to ‘drip.’ So, in order, to irrigate the whole vineyard, and monitor what gets what, it will take us up to four days working around the clock, turning water pumps and valves on and off.  Our vineyard team has done a fantastic job in managing this process and our vineyard has been holding up very well during this period and not building sugars too fast.  That brings me to sampling.

Sampling

One of the ’sweetest’ things we do in preparation for harvest is sampling our grapes out in the vineyard.   Everyone will say this is the deciding factor of great winemaking - knowing when the fruit is ready.  Adam Lee of Siduri has been blogging about this on the Wine Spectator website with a cast of winemaking characters from all over the world talking about the 2008 harvest.

But as we know, to each his own.  Some people prefer tart acidity over no acidity; bitter tannins before soft, supple ones; subtle fruit instead of jammy explosions in your mouth.  You can definitely make wines of each of these styles by picking your grapes on the same day (the science, I mean art, of winemaking), but if you know what you are looking to create before getting your boots dirty in the vineyard, you’ll have a better understanding of when the grapes are ready to achieve your particular style of wine.

So what has the heat wave been doing to the vines?  It is causing sugars to rise in the grapes at an unbalanced rate with the rest of the fruit’s maturity. When this happens and there is no weather relief in sight, you are stuck with wine grapes that are essentially flavorless behind an overbearing ‘sweetness.’  High sugars equate to high alcohols and very front-end loaded, one-dimensional wines.

During this period we have been sampling the grapes repeatedly to monitor their ripeness, checking sugar and acid levels, canopy health, skin and seed maturity.

When walking the vineyard, the first thing you will notice is canopy health.   Are the leaves remaining green, getting dull or yellowing?  Vines will start yellowing around the fruit zone which means they are telling you they are working overtime and they don’t have much more to give to the development of the fruit.

When you pluck a berry from a cluster of grapes and put it your mouth, the first thing you feel is the texture of the skins followed by the juice explosion.  As you mash the grape around your mouth, is the juice too sweet, or just right?  Are the skins chewy and creamy or dusty and papery?  Are the seeds pliable or crunchy?  You’ll spit the remains in your hand, check out the skins and look at the seeds, are they green, are they still smothered in pulp?  These are all indicators for grape maturation.  But one grape does not make a wine. So, we sample whole clusters, randomly throughout the specific part of the vineyard we designate.  We’ll bring the clusters back to the winery and crush them by hand and let the juice macerate on the skins for up to five hours.  We’ll then decant the juice and check the color.  Mature skins will create darker, richer hues after maturation and this is one more determining factor in how and when we know the grapes are ready.

The picture above is of Cabernet grapes we sampled this week.  The juice is macerating on its skins, which we will leave for up to five hours before decanting the juice and measuring its sugar and acid levels.  We’ll check the color and taste.  And then we’ll decide when to harvest.  Typically we’ll sample a vineyard block in this fashion about three times.  But that doesn’t include the number of times that we’ll walk the vineyard tasting and formulating our readiness decision.  This particular parcel of Cabernet will be harvested next week.  I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out.

Dan Petroski is Assistant Winemaker at Larkmead Vineyards in Napa Valley. Dan has an MBA from New York University and worked as an Ad Exec in New York for several years, before switching it up and trading his suit for a move out west.