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The yeast regard
Regarding "Going Wild In the Cellar" (April 2008): All that any winemaker can say for sure about a "wild" fermentation is that it is simply uninoculated. It is probably a little ambitious to assume a wine was fermented by indigenous yeast unless you have gone through some very sophisticated measures to support this. While indigenous yeasts are found in grape must, their influence--even early on in a fermentation--is far from established.
Anecdotal evidence that wild yeast adds complexity or otherwise enhances a wine suffers from the same wishful thinking that plagues many other "premium" winemaking methods. A winery's best fruit tends to get premium processing. So why give credit to the yeast?
Remember, too, that commercial yeast strains were at one point wild. That (they were) isolated and cloned does not diminish this fact. We make wine from isolated and cloned grapevines, not those grown from seed. I don't know why the rationale for yeast selection would be any different.
Jason Burrus
Winemaker
Rappahannock Cellars, Va.
"Encapsulated Yeast Revisited" (April 2008): An excellent article and informing, but there is an error. (That) the encapsulated yeast easily drops into the neck of the bottle used in sparkling wines, and no riddling is necessary, is correct. But the article seems to say that freezing the neck for disgorging is not necessary. Wouldn't inverting the bottle to disgorge the yeast cause the encapsulated yeast to fall back down and not be disgorged? The neck of the bottle still needs to be frozen, as the bottle is inverted neck down.
John Fischbach
Owner
Rock Bluff Winery, Neb.
Author Tim Patterson responds: Fischbach is right that the article overstates the case for not having to freeze the neck. Some producers--Jeanne Burgess at Lake Ridge Winery is one--do successfully dispense with that step. But Zack Scott of Scott Labs, a supplier of encapsulated yeast, says that complete removal of the beads may depend on a winery's disgorging equipment, and that if a winery is happy with a routine that includes freezing--keep freezing, and be thankful for no more riddling.
Mechanical means
As an Australian viticulturist, I find it strange that this debate, "Moving Toward Mechanical" (March 2008), is relevant enough in America to appear in a magazine. I work in an environment where the process of mechanically harvesting grapes isn't even questioned. In fact, in our case, 0.2 % of our vineyard has to be hand harvested, only because we have fragile, 100-year-old vines on an inappropriate trellis system. We view this not as an opportunity to hand select bunches of grapes for super-premium wines, but instead as an inconvenient, clumsy second cousin to our otherwise efficient production of premium grapes. In the time taken for 16 hand-pickers to harvest 5 tons, two machines have beaten off 50 tons--for a quarter of the cost and a tenth of the effort! All our super-premium blocks are machine harvested.
American vineyards have ample opportunity to manipulate fruit quality long before harvest begins. To believe that a workforce paid solely by weight is going to take the time to drop precious dollars and cents on the ground during harvest is naive.
Having worked a vintage in the United States, I do understand and admire the extensive employment of the immigrant labor forces for which the grape industry is responsible; but unfortunately, if the law governs that access to these hardworking, diligent people is undermined, then America will have no choice but to embrace an infestation of these "praying mantis-like machines," and once they've invaded, I guarantee you there will be no turning back.
I am writing to reassure the nonbelievers out there that these machines are the way into the future, and will be in no way detrimental to production of fine wine. Point the finger at the winemaker if premium, machine-harvested grapes make a bad product.
Sarah Wing
Viticulturist
Langhorne Creek
South Australia
What's really in your bottle?
Bill Nelson's editorial comment ("Viewpoint," (April 2008) on TTB's proposed change for wine labels makes good sense to me, but it does not, as is usual in discussions on this subject, address the simple fact that wineries are not required to accurately tell their customers what the level of alcohol is. Sure, there should be some room to fudge a bit. But it's a lot more than a bit when a label showing alcohol content at 12.5% only means that the alcohol in the bottle is somewhere between 11.0% and 13.9%. About the only thing we can be sure of is whether wine is over or under 14.0%. And then, in these days of a controversial upward leap in red wine alcohol, a wine labeled 14.5% might be 15.4%.
Charles L. Sullivan
Wine writer/historian
Los Gatos, Calif.
Last laugh
To say that Napa Valley's Rudd Winery is the first in the United States "to use a concrete vessel in 40 or 50 years" (Concrete, Plas tic and Steel, April 2008) is great for a laugh.
How about Lodi Vintners, one of the larger custom crush operations in Lodi, which crushes thousands of tons each year into, yes, concrete tanks--tanks that have been in service since before Rudd's winemaker was born.
You've had the wines. Red Truck, Our Daily Red and many others find much of their production at this "antiquated" winery, proving if you're out of fashion long enough, you get back in on the retro phase.
Tony Norskog
Winemaker
Nevada County Wine Guild
Collegeville, Calif.
Editor's note: Of course we know that some older wineries have used concrete fermenters for decades. We should have said Rudd was among the first in many years to use "new" concrete vessels. Rudd winemaker Charles Thomas says that his new, smaller versions "are not your grandfather's concrete tanks."
Regarding "Going Wild In the Cellar" (April 2008): All that any winemaker can say for sure about a "wild" fermentation is that it is simply uninoculated. It is probably a little ambitious to assume a wine was fermented by indigenous yeast unless you have gone through some very sophisticated measures to support this. While indigenous yeasts are found in grape must, their influence--even early on in a fermentation--is far from established.
Anecdotal evidence that wild yeast adds complexity or otherwise enhances a wine suffers from the same wishful thinking that plagues many other "premium" winemaking methods. A winery's best fruit tends to get premium processing. So why give credit to the yeast?
Remember, too, that commercial yeast strains were at one point wild. That (they were) isolated and cloned does not diminish this fact. We make wine from isolated and cloned grapevines, not those grown from seed. I don't know why the rationale for yeast selection would be any different.
Jason Burrus
Winemaker
Rappahannock Cellars, Va.
"Encapsulated Yeast Revisited" (April 2008): An excellent article and informing, but there is an error. (That) the encapsulated yeast easily drops into the neck of the bottle used in sparkling wines, and no riddling is necessary, is correct. But the article seems to say that freezing the neck for disgorging is not necessary. Wouldn't inverting the bottle to disgorge the yeast cause the encapsulated yeast to fall back down and not be disgorged? The neck of the bottle still needs to be frozen, as the bottle is inverted neck down.
John Fischbach
Owner
Rock Bluff Winery, Neb.
Author Tim Patterson responds: Fischbach is right that the article overstates the case for not having to freeze the neck. Some producers--Jeanne Burgess at Lake Ridge Winery is one--do successfully dispense with that step. But Zack Scott of Scott Labs, a supplier of encapsulated yeast, says that complete removal of the beads may depend on a winery's disgorging equipment, and that if a winery is happy with a routine that includes freezing--keep freezing, and be thankful for no more riddling.
Mechanical means
As an Australian viticulturist, I find it strange that this debate, "Moving Toward Mechanical" (March 2008), is relevant enough in America to appear in a magazine. I work in an environment where the process of mechanically harvesting grapes isn't even questioned. In fact, in our case, 0.2 % of our vineyard has to be hand harvested, only because we have fragile, 100-year-old vines on an inappropriate trellis system. We view this not as an opportunity to hand select bunches of grapes for super-premium wines, but instead as an inconvenient, clumsy second cousin to our otherwise efficient production of premium grapes. In the time taken for 16 hand-pickers to harvest 5 tons, two machines have beaten off 50 tons--for a quarter of the cost and a tenth of the effort! All our super-premium blocks are machine harvested.
American vineyards have ample opportunity to manipulate fruit quality long before harvest begins. To believe that a workforce paid solely by weight is going to take the time to drop precious dollars and cents on the ground during harvest is naive.
Having worked a vintage in the United States, I do understand and admire the extensive employment of the immigrant labor forces for which the grape industry is responsible; but unfortunately, if the law governs that access to these hardworking, diligent people is undermined, then America will have no choice but to embrace an infestation of these "praying mantis-like machines," and once they've invaded, I guarantee you there will be no turning back.
I am writing to reassure the nonbelievers out there that these machines are the way into the future, and will be in no way detrimental to production of fine wine. Point the finger at the winemaker if premium, machine-harvested grapes make a bad product.
Sarah Wing
Viticulturist
Langhorne Creek
South Australia
What's really in your bottle?
Bill Nelson's editorial comment ("Viewpoint," (April 2008) on TTB's proposed change for wine labels makes good sense to me, but it does not, as is usual in discussions on this subject, address the simple fact that wineries are not required to accurately tell their customers what the level of alcohol is. Sure, there should be some room to fudge a bit. But it's a lot more than a bit when a label showing alcohol content at 12.5% only means that the alcohol in the bottle is somewhere between 11.0% and 13.9%. About the only thing we can be sure of is whether wine is over or under 14.0%. And then, in these days of a controversial upward leap in red wine alcohol, a wine labeled 14.5% might be 15.4%.
Charles L. Sullivan
Wine writer/historian
Los Gatos, Calif.
Last laugh
To say that Napa Valley's Rudd Winery is the first in the United States "to use a concrete vessel in 40 or 50 years" (Concrete, Plas tic and Steel, April 2008) is great for a laugh.
How about Lodi Vintners, one of the larger custom crush operations in Lodi, which crushes thousands of tons each year into, yes, concrete tanks--tanks that have been in service since before Rudd's winemaker was born.
You've had the wines. Red Truck, Our Daily Red and many others find much of their production at this "antiquated" winery, proving if you're out of fashion long enough, you get back in on the retro phase.
Tony Norskog
Winemaker
Nevada County Wine Guild
Collegeville, Calif.
Editor's note: Of course we know that some older wineries have used concrete fermenters for decades. We should have said Rudd was among the first in many years to use "new" concrete vessels. Rudd winemaker Charles Thomas says that his new, smaller versions "are not your grandfather's concrete tanks."
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