Lees stirring for red wines and the Lallemand crowd

[VS]

A Spanish university and a Ribera del Duero winery announced yesterday they had completed a project in which specific yeasts from the winery were selected and reproduced for use in on-lees aging of red wines without any of the undesired side effects (i.e., off odors) of this method. This of course meant that extensive b“tonnage is facilitated.

On our web site, elmundovino, we said that this was one more tool for spoofing wines, probably good for supermarket wines since it produces fatter, rounder, more immediately attractive wines. But, we added, it also homogenizes them, cancels terroir characteristics and is therefore not advised for wines from exceptional terroirs. We also pointed out that even in white wines, in which on-lees aging had been all the fashion, this method was being abandoned or restricted by a growing number of producers.

Of course we've been deluged by protests from what I call "the Lallemand crowd", the technological group which loves additives and in-cellar manipulation. They tell me that since these yeasts are of natural origin, there's no harm in using them.

Any comments here? Thanks!

 

[SFJoe]

So Victor, for a little more clarity on the technique, they grow up a bunch of yeast (in various monocultures) outside of the wine fermentation and add it to the aging container for autolysis?

 

[Steve Edmunds]

I have left my red wines on primary lees for the past 28 years, usually until at least January following harvest, and, more often, until March. Typically the lees contain a lot of grape solids that carry, of course, the flavor and aromatic characteristics of the vineyard itself. Separating them from the wine too soon seems self-defeating to me. One of my early mentors said he thought the wine adsorbed the material over that period of time until it was saturated, at which point it became safe to make the separation. My sense its it's quite effective. Never stirred, though.

 

[VS]

originally posted by SFJoe:
So Victor, for a little more clarity on the technique, they grow up a bunch of yeast (in various monocultures) outside of the wine fermentation and add it to the aging container for autolysis?

That seems to be the gist of it. The key, finally, and following Steve's remark, is whether this is geared to making lees stirring safer, as I think it is. (BTW - I also leave my wines on fine lees through the winter - but we don't stir.)

 

[Hank Beckmeyer]

What Steve said. Minus the 28 years.