Sponti

M

Marc D

Marc Davis
In a mailer this am from Chambers St they mentioned a sponti note in several of the wines.
What does this mean?
Thanks.
 
It seems to be a German usage. To me it means something like, "aromas associated with indigenous fermentations, especially thiols." See, for instance, young Prum.
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
It seems to be a German usage. To me it means something like, "aromas associated with indigenous fermentations, especially thiols." See, for instance, young Prum.
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exactly that

People there say Spontistinker, sponti for spontaneous fermentation and stinker as in stink.
 
Lots of use of "sponti" aromas in riesling tasting notes these days. I really have to take people at their word when they say they can tell the difference just from a whiff. I know I can't.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Lots of use of "sponti" aromas in riesling tasting notes these days. I really have to take people at their word when they say they can tell the difference just from a whiff. I know I can't.
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Well, I certainly can't either. And it is always fun when people on German wineboards, who claim they can, get corrected because they mixed up an AP number or because a winemaker confesses that this was the one barrel he had to inoculate....
 
I have smelled plenty of wines that I understand (from sources other than my sniffer) were spontaneously fermented. These days, that is true of most wines I drink. Still, I have never really been able to isolate and identify the specific aromas that people associate with spontaneous fermentation. Saying thiols does not really help me much (although I appreciate knowing the technical term), as a cursory search of the world wide intertube tells me that thiols can smell like anything from garlic to grapefruit to gas and even stuff that doesn't begin with the letter 'g' like, say, sulphur and skunk and petroleum.

If a chemist like SFjoe or Dr. Lipton were to put his nose in the glass and say "Ahh, thiols...this is teh sponti shitz" [to borrow a mode of expression fb might use] then fine, I suppose. But what if a layperson like me puts his nose in the glass and it smells like sulphur? How do I know that the winemaker did not just thwack the wine with a good dose of sulphur at bottling after inoculating the must? If it smells like grapefruit, maybe it is just some industrial swill made from Sauvignon Blanc grown in New Zealand? Petroleum? I get that in plenty of Riesling, especially after a few years.

Does anyone want to take a shot at explaining how to distinguish the smells of spontaneously fermented wine from inoculated wine, accounting for these types of variables?
 
originally posted by SFJoe:
It seems to be a German usage. To me it means something like, "aromas associated with indigenous fermentations, especially thiols." See, for instance, young Prum.
Click to expand...

And this, in particular, is interesting because I always thought young Prum smelled that way due to the dose of sulphur, even though it is also (usually, I understand) spontaneously fermented.
 
It used to be spontan back in the '90s but hipsters have taken over the scene. The joke when I worked the harvest in Wehlen one year was that Manfred was letting the grapes ferment on the vine as he was picking way after everyone else. I believe he was getting 90+ oechsle in early December (in a very ripe year). I was weeding near the same sites the following summer and the pruning was spectacularly merciful (more so for the closely planted vines, which he had many of). I always chortle when winzers boast about their low yields.

Spontaneous ferments don't always take, especially for late-harvested wines as the grapes come in too cold. And with gentler pneumatic presses, the juice never gets warm enough. Usually we would try inoculating from a particularly vigorous barrel or a demi-john that was left up in the (warmer) kitchen, but when that failed the packet of yeast was always within reach. So I also chortle when some young winzer boasts about only ever doing spontan ferments.

The helicopters still spray at least twice every summer over the more expensive vineyards. Etc etc
 
"Sponti" is hipster for "Spontan," meaning spontaneous fermentation, as others have assumed above. It's cool to be "sponti" these days, although there are still plenty of great producers who are not sponti.

In my experience, there is no typical aroma that goes with sponti, but there is one that goes with extended lees contact, and that, I think and have always understood, is what people perceive in the wines of Prüm, more recent versions of Schäfer-Fröhlich, etc. But many sponti producers do not do extended lees contact.
 
originally posted by Yixin:
It used to be spontan back in the '90s but hipsters have taken over the scene. The joke when I worked the harvest in Wehlen one year was that Manfred was letting the grapes ferment on the vine as he was picking way after everyone else. I believe he was getting 90+ oechsle in early December (in a very ripe year). I was weeding near the same sites the following summer and the pruning was spectacularly merciful (more so for the closely planted vines, which he had many of). I always chortle when winzers boast about their low yields.

Spontaneous ferments don't always take, especially for late-harvested wines as the grapes come in too cold. And with gentler pneumatic presses, the juice never gets warm enough. Usually we would try inoculating from a particularly vigorous barrel or a demi-john that was left up in the (warmer) kitchen, but when that failed the packet of yeast was always within reach. So I also chortle when some young winzer boasts about only ever doing spontan ferments.

The helicopters still spray at least twice every summer over the more expensive vineyards. Etc etc
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Yes, chortle.
 
originally posted by Kay Bixler:
Spontistinker.

That is so great. Would make a great label.
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label2.jpg
 
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