A fascinating tasting with less oak
- Thread starter BJ
- Start date
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
Condolences. Have you laid down a half-case of anything else for 10 years?
Jonathan Loesberg
Jonathan Loesberg
New oak occurs in CdP but it isn't state of the art spoof there. I'm not sure what the mode of getting gelatin like body and slushy tannins that give the preferred mouth feel is but it lives happily with foudres and/or beton. I remember Brezeme talking about getting absurd alcohol contents in the vineyard and then reducing it by watering, which I think he said makes tannins slushy, but he'll have to comment.
watering AND acidifying AND extremely complex and costy yeasts program AND very smart use of daily tiny additions of sulfur to get the yeasts produce more glycerol than usual. Ask SF Joe, he knows the science for the last point.
Making spoofy chateauneuf is not as easy as making no sulfur, mousy, bubbly -not really intentionally though - natural stuff...
Making spoofy chateauneuf is not as easy as making no sulfur, mousy, bubbly -not really intentionally though - natural stuff...
Depends how you conduct your fermentation, and how imaginative you are about your biochemistry:
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barrelmonkeys.blogspot.com
Quoting from the above:
On 11/18:
Rajiv,
That is fantastic that you said that you are a chemical engineer as I will be able to use some of the technical terms that I tend not to use when I am normally talking about our wines.
In terms of the Cabernet, you hit the nail right on the head with your comment about glycerol. Early on in my career as winemaker, I found while studying the glycolytic pathway (the use of sugar by yeast to produce alcohol) that there was a particular side shunt to the pathway that produced glycerol. This site shunt can only be activated by the build up of NAD which is normally produced and then used in the complete glycolytic pathway.
In the latter stages of the glycolytic pathway after the glucose is broken down into 2x glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate the process is then:
1. GA3P to Acetaldehyde
2. Acetaldehyde + NAD (+ alcohol dehydrogenase) produces Alcohol + NADH2 +CO2
The NADH2 is used in the early stage of the split of Glucose to GA3P.
What we found was that if we bound the Acetaldehyde a build up of NAD occurred and that the side shunt to produce glycerol would be activated. We experimented with the use of SO2 (which is a preferential binder onto Acetaldehyde) and found that if we add SO2 to the ferment when the alcohol was being produced, that we could arrest the ferment momentarily and consequently produce glycerol. Our aim then was to produce enough glycerol to eliminate the “hole” typical in the mid palette of Cabernet. After quite some experimentation we found that adding 15ppm SO2 at each of 3%, 4% and 5% alcohol produced the amount of glycerol that we needed so that the glycerol on the palette mimics fruit sweetness. Glycerol per se, is not a natural byproduct of the production of alcohol and so 99% of other winemakers never get this benefit in their Cabernet.
Post fermentation we then work on the structural balance of the Cabernets, so that the underlying acid, alcohol and tannin (both grape and oak) compliment the palette weight produced by both the fruit and the glycerol.
Hope this helps and we look for the catching up with you soon.
Sparky Marquis
Sarah's Husband/CEO/Winemaker
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
In a way, it's marvelous and very nearly genius.
Jeff Grossman
Jeff Grossman
It's not about the genius; it's about aesthetics: He's not happy with the wine until it grabs you by the lapels and shakes you into a fruit/alcohol daze. But a man of keener sensibilities might only dose with sulfur once, instead of three times, to provide a hint of mid-palate strength without being obliged to pick so very ripe. It becomes the 'house style' and not 'spoof', then?
Of course, a man of more broadly mistrustful sensibilities might say that there's no reason to believe this hocus-pocus just because it appears on someone's blog.
Kay Bixler
Kay Bixler
Full-interventionalist winemaking.
Ian Fitzsimmons
Ian Fitzsimmons
If it's an unintended consequence of the winemaker's normal so3 treatment, is it still spoof? Must intent be shown in order to convict?
??
Did you read the passage?
No one adds SO2 in the ordinary course at 2,3,4% abv during fermentation, 15 ppm each. It isn't done.
He pats himself on the back for his cleverness, which he's entitled to do IMO. But your suggestion of indadvertence flummoxes me.
It's SO2 in this case, btw.
Florida Jim
Florida Jim
Why the SO3/SO2 difference?
Best, Jim
They are very different compounds. SO3 dissolves in water to make sulfuric acid.
SO2 dissolves in water to make bisulfite in its various forms.
Sulfuric acid is just a strong acid. It will drop pH, depending on how much you add.
SO2 does a couple of interesting things. In Sparky's playbook above, it's a nucleophile that reacts with aldehydes, like acetaldehyde, and converts them into something that can't participate in the downstream metabolism. It's also a reducing agent, slowly reacting with oxygen and more rapidly reacting with other things.
You will be shocked to learn that the product you get by oxidizing SO2 is SO3.