Two for thought, one for pleasure

I have no statement on the sulfurization (or lack of same) of the Cornelissen wines because my bank disallowed my taking a third mortgage on my condo to be able to buy a couple of bottles earlier this year but at some point the economy will come bounding back and I'll be able to drink Cornelissen with wild abandon.

No, I came here to mention to Joel that I was in Kyoto in December of 1983 playing on a double bill with Pee Wee Crayton and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson and while taking a walk from the hotel down to an alley filled with food stands, for the first time I experienced snow falling from the sky. It was quite an interesting feeling, as I'd seen it on the ground on hiking trips to the Sierras and on TV, but to actually have it falling down on my was quite interesting. I remain an incontrovertible, one-season-fits-all Californian but it was cool (literally) to see its manufacture.

-Eden (while playing in Lonnie Donegan's band in 1984 I saw snow for the second time, although due to the wind currents in Lake Tahoe at the time, it was falling up and not in the usual direction)(we kinda got snowed in which wreaked havoc on the casino's patron count, but I got to watch "Apocalypse Now" about 18 times on the Ceasar's movie channel)
 
originally posted by SFJoe:

Robinot invents racking!
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I heard somewhere that pre-natural growers might have used it in the '90s or even before!
There is a international archaeological team working on this.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Good thing the lemons are from Etna.
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I may have the story wrong, but some of my more terroirista friends are offended because (CMIIAW) sherry can be fortified with neutral spirit from outside the appellation.

As a chemist, I yawn. There is no terroir juju in everclear.

Lemons, otoh....
 
A couple months ago Frank sent me these. These are his lab test results for what I think are his most current releases. He also sent the Munjebel Rosso and Magma results. These seem to show anidride solforosa levels that would be in line with naturally occurring right?

Contadino_7.png
Munjebel_Bianco_6VA.png
Magma was 17 mg/L
The Rosso 18 mg/L
 
Thanks for that Ned.
SFJoe, I wasn't trying to pass judgment on anyone else nor was I trying to insinuate that local everclear offered a more clear look into the ever elusive terroiriness of things. I was simply describing Frank's process as he explained it to me and thought that someone might find those details interesting.
 
originally posted by Zev Rovine:
Thanks for that Ned.
SFJoe, I wasn't trying to pass judgment on anyone else nor was I trying to insinuate that local everclear offered a more clear look into the ever elusive terroiriness of things. I was simply describing Frank's process as he explained it to me and thought that someone might find those details interesting.
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I appreciate that, Zev. My yawn was for my pals who feel so strongly about Sherry in that context. Frank's practice is not deserving of censure on terroir grounds. I have no idea how successful it is in microbiologic terms. Mostly, his grappa wash will as you note, evaporate, and won't be a big part of the finished wine in any case.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Joel, do the words on the label actually translate as "sulfur added," or could they just mean "contains sulfites"? The latter could just be a reference to endogenous SO2 that the authorities require on the label.
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Oswaldo, that's a good question..one that my lack of language skills (well, also, lack of the bottle in question) can't presently answer. I never noticed the distinction before...are both used with regularity on bottles in the US? In english? (If those two distinctions are also legally required on Italian labels, in Italian, that could be where I made my translative error.)

Maybe Zev or Ned could clarify how the sulfite issue is addressed on the Cornelissen wine labels...

Fwiw, (and the laws may be different here) the few non-sulfite wines I have purchased here in Japan have usually made specific mention of the fact, adding temperature warnings for bottle care..(not necessarily in Japanese, AFAIK, but usually in the mother tongue). None of them have had "contains sulfites" on their labels. That might make a hard sell, I think...
 
originally posted by Eden Mylunsch: I came here to mention to Joel that I was in Kyoto in December of 1983 playing on a double bill with Pee Wee Crayton and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson and while taking a walk from the hotel down to an alley filled with food stands, for the first time I experienced snow falling from the sky. It was quite an interesting feeling, as I'd seen it on the ground on hiking trips to the Sierras and on TV, but to actually have it falling down on my was quite interesting. I remain an incontrovertible, one-season-fits-all Californian but it was cool (literally) to see its manufacture.
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That gig wasn't at the sake warehouse-turned-into-a-nightclub Taku-Taku was it, Eden?
 
originally posted by Joel Stewart:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Joel, do the words on the label actually translate as "sulfur added," or could they just mean "contains sulfites"? The latter could just be a reference to endogenous SO2 that the authorities require on the label.
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Oswaldo, that's a good question..one that my lack of language skills (well, also, lack of the bottle in question) can't presently answer. I never noticed the distinction before...are both used with regularity on bottles in the US? In english? (If those two distinctions are also legally required on Italian labels, in Italian, that could be where I made my translative error.)

Maybe Zev or Ned could clarify how the sulfite issue is addressed on the Cornelissen wine labels...
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I don't have the most recent releases yet, but the bottles I do have are labeled with "contains sulfites".
I'm sure that's to conform to US labeling rules although I don't know the specifics.
 
I never noticed the distinction before...are both used with regularity on bottles in the US? In english?
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Just FYI, the sulfite warning in the U.S. used to be based on a threshold that is assumed to not have been crossed in a no-added-sulfite wine, yet testing regularly suggested that none of the warning-free wines (mostly we're talking about what used to be the organic and often alcohol-free category, which semi-predates the sort of organic wines we would talk about here, and predates them actually became a commercially viable category) legitimately fell below that threshold. I've no idea if that's the current law, but I'd be a little surprised if it had been changed. In any case, that's how a confusion could arise between "I don't add sulfites" and "there are sulfites in this wine," which are not contradictory despite labeling law, and in fact must be at analytical odds barring chemistry of which I'm unaware. (Or am I confusing chemicals again?)

The argument made by one winemaker with a lab in his pocket -- I don't want to add current to a potentially volatile circuit here, so I'll let the potential antagonists speak for themselves -- is that the testable levels of the sulfur family in no-added-sulfur-family wines is much higher than one would expect. Reasons for this one may speculate upon at one's leisure. I can think of several.
 
The current label that I registered with the TTB reads:

This wine is made the old-fashioned way and contains only naturally occurring preservatives. It is not filtered and therefore may develop natural sedimentation. It is strongly recommended to store this wine below 60.8 F (16C)

Sideways along the right side says "CONTAINS SULFITES"

I will get a translation for the Japanese labels which I am guessing as Joel suggested is in Italian.

On the topic, I ran into a lot of trouble registering even this label. The TTB made the argument that "contains only naturally occurring preservatives" insinuates that other products include unnaturally occurring preservatives. Not a great argument, but if we had tried to write, "I don't add sulfites," I think we would have run into a much harder time.
 
Could well have been Taku Taku, but I don't really know. It was 1983 and I'd just seen snow in the air for the first time and the band got a lot of sake and Suntory booze every night and what with me being young and impressionable I don't really recall a lot of the details. In fact, my memories of that trip are a lot like those montages that directors such as Preston Sturges and Frank Capra used to put in their movies to denote all the stuff that happens over a specific length of time. Things like hundreds of taxis lined up in the cold Sapporo night, playing "Four" behind Cleanhead Vinson (the song's real composer) on a radio broadcast at a concert in Tokyo, wandering the cellar-level food departments in department stores in virtually every stop on the tour, seeing Mt Fuji from the window of the bullet train while eating far too many tangerines, all capped off by awakening in Fukuoka at 5 AM to take the train to Narita to catch a jet back home with a stopover in Honolulu to clear customs at the same time that Willie Nelson's band and Manhattan Transfer were clearing customs. Our stuff made it to the inspectors first, and one had seen Cleanhead and Pee Wee Crayton in his youth and waved us through. The entourages from the other two bands wound up undergoing complete searches of persons, bags, and equipment and missed the plane back to the mainland.

-Eden (I'd love to return to Kyoto someday)
 
In any case, I don't think the most important sulfite issue is their level, or even the judicious addition of sulfites at bottling, but the use of sulfites to sterilize the must prior to innoculation with industrial yeasts. Talk of sulfite levels and sulfite additions can distract from the heart of the sulfite issue, the complexity of flavor and sense of locality that one hopes will come from the presence of a rich variety of different local yeasts.
 
Here's an email reply from my friend Masanobu, who runs ethelvine, (probably the only wine shop in Kyoto that would absorb hours of a disorderly's time). Masanobu shared a booth with Frank at a wine fair here in the outskirts of Kyoto earlier this year:

Hi.Joel!

I am fine! Good season has come!!

Frank does not add solfiti to Contadino from 1 to 7. But have to write down
"contiene solfiti".

Because the wine have solfiti. Grape juice make solfiti about 10~30mg/l by
themselves during fermentation.

If the wine have solfiti more than 10mg/l, Have to write down "contiene
solfiti".

It is decided in EU. This is EU MAGIC!!10mg and 200mg are same wines on their
label.

99,9% wines say on their label they had sulfur in EU.

ZANNENN desu....(translation: "it's unfortunate.")


Masanobu

********************

I think I got it now. I mistook "contains" for "added", and got addled.

Oswaldo, I don't quite follow your second sentence. (Personally, my limited experience tells me that I preferred the "contains sulfites" version of the Lapierre Morgon to the non-S02 version, which tasted like so many other vin natural reds. Whether that means I was tasting terroir or not in the former, I don't know, but it was a damn fine bottle.) I don't have much of a stance either way at this point...just trying to get a grip.

Eden - Damn, you get around.
 
originally posted by Joel Stewart:
Oswaldo, I don't quite follow your second sentence.
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Many people focus on SO2 additions at the time of bottling, as if bottling without sulfur were tantamount to sans souffre.

The most important SO2 "malpractice" is, I think, the use of SO2 to kill ambient yeasts prior to innoculating with a single "dependable" yeast. That's what all industrial wineries do. It is, I think, the single most useful rubicon between natural and industrial.

If your fruit is at least organic (so that it comes with yeasts on the skins) and the final product was fermented by whatever skin and cellar yeasts are present, you will have a "natural" wine, which, I believe, can be very sparingly sulfured at bottling without prejudice to its naturalness.

So, what matters most is not whether Frank adds sulfur at bottling but his (non) use of sulfur while harvesting and, principally, at crush time.
 
I really believe that they are two different discussions. In reference to the use of sulfur prior to fermentation, I think that it is perceived on the range of natural as similar to a cultured yeast.
I also agree that a moderate use of sulfur at bottling is perceived as still "natural" and I think that it should be. SO2 is after all a natural natural byproduct of grape fermentation.
That said, Frank's choice to not use SO2 at bottling is rooted not for the purpose of being "natural", but simply in the spirit that he wants to add nothing to the wine in an attempt to limit the amount of influences that effect the flavor of the initial product, the grapes.
There is also a reason that other natural wine producers choose to use SO2 at bottling and the use of it at bottling is another conversation all together than the conversation relating to fermentation.
There is also the conversation about the use of copper sulfate in viticultural practice which is again another conversation to be had.
From a wine drinker's perspective, wines that are claimed to be bottled without SO2 do seem to have different characteristics than wines that are bottled with SO2. They seem to evolve once opened in a more dynamic way. Many people will refer to that as a form of deterioration but I like that dynamic, though am obviously not exclusive to it. They also seem to have a distinctly different mouth feel, though that may be because producers that don't use SO2 at bottling usually don't fine or filter either. I am not trying to say that I prefer or am educated enough to claim that one method is better than the other, I am just saying that the SO2 at bottling conversation is it's very own.
 
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