Gooseberry, citrus, wet stones, baked figs, plums, cat’s pee, tobacco boxes, leather, under-ripened pears, asparagus…. How do winemakers do it? It is as if the entire grocery store is in a glass of wine!
To clear up a few misconceptions, in the United States, we don’t chapitalize, or add sugar to wine and we don’t add food flavoring or coloring. At least some of us don’t (look up Mega Purple!).
But there are a few things winemakers can add to increase flavor intensity. Winemakers can acidify wine through adding lactic acid to soften the flavor (creamy, buttery) or even to liven it up a bit (citrus, grapefruit) in warmer climates. Wine can also be inoculated with many different varieties of yeasts.
While there are many, the three central components to emphasize flavor in wine are weather, maturation, and aging. Weather is probably the key component to how a wine will taste. Great grapes create great wine, mediocre grapes can never make great wine no matter how great the winemaker is. Weather dictates the acidity, sugar content and varietal flavor. Weather can also create a complex wine or flat wine. Sun gives grapes that added sweetness and the cool nights give build up the essential acidity. This is why vintages are so important to wine buyers.
Maturation is the time wine sits in either oak or stainless steel to the time it is bottled. Oak provides a tremendous amount of flavor as to the wine. Oak imparts the vanilla, coconut, toasty, and spicy flavors. Different types of oak (French, Hungarian, American) and the way the barrels are toasted and the staves are cut also introduce different flavors. Maceration in Stainless Steel tanks and neutral oak (used oak barrels) may not give off specific flavors, but more lack-there-of in oak influence.
Last, aging either in cask or bottle also can determine flavor. How much time a wine sits in a barrel or age in a bottle can have such an effect on wine. Years can go by and wine can transform to something simple, to something that tastes extraordinary.
By Lindsey Roffey, GM RM Winery, USSA Adv Sommelier
Indeed we are speaking of weather, but soil/terrior is a major contributor as well and often a forgotten one!
ReplyDeleteA common saying is that "the worse the soil, the better the wine." Planting on hillsides, especially those facing south, is most often in an attempt to maximize the amount of sunlight that falls on the vineyard. For this reason some of the best wines come from vineyards planted on quite steep hills, conditions which would make most other agricultural products uneconomic. The stereotypical vineyard site for wine grapes (in the Northern hemisphere) is a hillside in a dry climate with a southern exposure, good drainage to reduce unnecessary water uptake, and balanced pruning to force the vine to put more of its energy into the fruit, rather than foliage.
4 Variables not to be overlooked are: Latitude, season, time of day, cloud cover also are indices
John Lozano (Viticulture Student)
John- that's a very general statement... that sloping aspect is where the very best vineyards are planted. Yes there are definately vines grown on very steep hillsides where workers have to be strapped to a pulley system to harvest grapes. But those vineyards are planted there mostly to attrack the sun. Typically those vines planted in, for example, Germany are planted on the steep slopes next to rivers. Because it is so cold there, the vines need to be planted on those slopes to attract the rays from the river below. This creates a micro climate for the grapes to ripen. But, some of the best vineyard sites in the world are planted on very little slope. Think of Oakville or Oakknoll in Napa. These vineyards are highly prized after. They benefit from the cool morning fog and heat of the afternoon with very little soil. While their neighbors on the slopes like Mt. Veeder or Stag's Leap do well, Oak Knoll and Oakville probably beat them for vineyard quality. Also think of Bordeaux. Not many sloped vineyard sites out there. Just really good soil and climate.
ReplyDelete