Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/45785
WINERY WINE TECH Building a I f you look back several decades, what were we doing then as winemakers? In many cases, we were producing wines from compromised fruit and with pro- cesses which yielded wines with flaws. Our challenge then was to find ways to remove these flaws, yet today, thanks to experience and know-how, few wines are seri- ously faulty, and suppliers have reacted to help us build our wines rather than tear them down. We now have the ability to dress up our wines, and not necessarily to strip or mask some part of them. Some winemakers still use fin- ing in the fashion that they always have, yet rote use of fining agents should be reviewed very seriously to see if they can be eliminated. Just because a fining was used one year to remove something from a wine doesn't mean that every year the same need exists. Continue to review each block or vineyard source to make sure finings are jus- tified each harvest; no matter how careful you are in fining away nega- tive components in a wine, there is risk of stripping away positive ele- ments as well. Instead, embrace a mindset of building your wines. See if tan- nin additions, mannoproteins and polysaccharides can make posi- tive adjustments in such areas as stability, tartrate crystal formation, precipitation, aroma enhancement and mouthfeel, and help overcome negative nuances, so that the sum becomes greater than the parts. Trials to determine which additions may or may not work are becoming easier to conduct and take roughly WWW.VWM-ONLINE.COM TOM PAYETTE Better Wine New products replace stripping for dealing with flaws the same amount of time as fining trials. Use these new tools to learn how to build complexity in your wines, rather than taking some- thing away. Tom Payette consults with established wineries to improve their products and sys- tems and assists in new winery startups. products used in the cellar actually reacted the way they did in your lab trials. Make sure the positive traits you've given the wine stand the test of time. Little data exist on how these new products will per- form over time – knowledge that is of great importance to those pro- ducing wines meant to improve in the cellar. Winemakers must discover this for themselves, creating a long-term knowledge bank of how newly introduced products affect their wines over time. Controls will always be our anchor, the tool we use to be certain that how we han- dled a wine was appropriate or not. MAKE EARLY ADJUSTMENTS Making additions to wine always carries the risk of changing that wine so much that the overall base chemistry shifts. With large chang- es, instability or sediment forma- tion could result. Agents used to Winemaking tools can help build com- plexity in your wines. I'm not saying that tannins and polysaccharides deserve across- the-board support, yet I am sug- gesting that they be looked at additional implements for the tool- box. TAKE CONTROL Always have a control before you start additions trials. This applies both in the lab and the cel- lar. Confirm for yourself that the SHORT COURSE Shift your winemaking mindset from removing things to building wines. Do numerous trials, with aging experiments, to fully examine results. Rush to experiment with addi- tions, yet be slow to decide which to use. Ensure vineyard conditions are optimal before considering prod- uct additions. NOV - DEC 2011 VINEYARD & WINERY MANAGEMENT 33