My ’07 Pinot Recipe Part 3

September 24th, 2007 → 12:36 pm @ Josh Hermsmeyer


If you’re just joining us, part 1 in this series is here and you can find part 2 here.

Also congrats to my sister Sara and new brother-in-law Ryan Bradley who got hitched last Saturday at Viansa winery! Hope you’re enjoying Rome guys!

Ahh, fermentation. The time when the real winemakers get to do their work.

Choosing a yeast has become quite a process. Local labs and supply houses have pages and pages of yeast strains to pick from, each promising to provide some combination of fruity esters, improved mouthfeel or color extraction. Trial and error is really the only way to know for sure which strains will work best with your particular fruit, and without that experience it can be a bit of a shot in the dark.

Initially I was thinking of going with a natural ferment using indigenous yeast (yeast that hitchhikes in from the vineyard on the skins of the berries). However after talking with Morgan at Bedrock, who went au natural with his ferment of our fruit, I decided against it. According to Morgan there was a heart-attack inducing 2-day lag before the yeast took off, and when it did take off, it really took off.

Fermentation temps quickly reached into the 90s and Morgan had to swiftly add dry ice to cool things off so the potentially heat-sensitive yeast didn’t end up killing themselves. The whole thing was hot and quick, finishing up in 3 or 4 days. While I’m intrigued to see how Morgan’s wine turns out, this wasn’t what I had in mind for our juice. I wanted a long cool ferment to try and preserve any floral and fruity aromas created during the ferment, and that meant going with a reliable commercial yeast strain.

Mein Führer! I can walk!

So, instead of letting the freeloading, carpetbagging yeast have their fun, I went with the tried-and-true Assmanshausen strain. It’s a great yeast for pinot, adds some fruity aromas and is a reliably cool and slow fermenter. But for me the best part of using Assmanshausen is that you can’t say the word without raising your voice and channeling Dr. Strangelove. Try it for yourself. ASS-mans-hau-sen! Sweet.

Most commercial yeast are sent to you sleeping peacefully in a sort of suspended animation, awaiting a bit of moisture to waken them from their slumber. And like a sleeping child the yeast can wake up in a good mood ready to eat and play, or they can wake up cranky and destructive. Your goal is to make sure they are gently prodded awake and cuddled lovingly in a nice warm blanket of nutrients. Then you add a little must, just to give them a taste. They’re still dazed and you don’t want to shock the little fellas. Gradually you bring their environment down to the same temperature as the rest of the must and set them loose. Then you wait and pray.

Assmanshausen has about a 24 hour lag phase where the yeast kind of lounge around doing nothing. Maybe they’re preparing for the hard work ahead, or perhaps they’re just shiftless. In any event, after a day they finally get hungry and start to eat and reproduce.

While I patiently waited for my soldiers to get off their duffs and do their duty, I decided I wanted to experiment with some fermentation tannins.

Tannin Management

I mentioned in a previous post that one of the fermentation decisions I made would probably outrage the purists out there, and this was it. First though, a bit of winemaking theory.

During fermentation a couple interesting things happen that affect the beautiful, velvety skin tannins in pinot.

Pretty early on a bunch of horny little proteins are extracted from the grapes. These beer-goggled frat boys don’t care what kind of tannins they hook up with. They just want to score with whatever’s closest, then drop out of solution with them to a private room at the bottom of the tank. They’re every father’s worst freakin’ nightmare.

To compound the problem, the first tannins released into the wine are the virtuous, perfect skin tannins responsible for pinot’s famous velvety smooth mouthfeel. I mean, you work hard to raise these tannins correctly; to protect them from strangers, birds and mold. And then along come these horn-dog proteins looking to defrock your babies, to completely remove a large portion of them from the wine and to generally defile everything you’ve worked so hard for. It’s a pretty serious situation.

So I decided to do what any good father would do and protect my precious tannins. The best way to do this isn’t to try to beat the proteins, it’s to distract them. You accomplish this by crashing the party with a gaggle of filthy, whorish reactive tannins.

Reactive Tannins (aka Dirty Sluts)

Reactive tannins are the dirty little sluts of the tannin world and are just as horny as the proteins. Throwing them in the mix early is like unleashing an army of platinum blonde, plastic-fantastic strippers on the delighted frat boy proteins.

The proteins end up leaving your wholesome tannins alone and available for more respectable activities, like getting hitched to an anthocyanin and stabilizing color in your wine. Even better, those that don’t marry an anthocyanin will happily stay at home in the wine and provide the luscious mouthfeel that helps make drinking pinot such a pleasurable experience. At least that’s the theory.

The most traditional way to make more tannins available during fermentation is to just ferment in a large oak vessel. Unfortunately I didn’t have one available. Other options include powdered chestnut tannins, which are highly reactive with proteins, and powdered oak tannins. I chose to go with a third option – lightly toasted french oak chips.

What’s that you say? Oak chips??

Yes, blaspheme, I know. Does my spoofulating know no limits? “Oak chips are only for cheap, mass produced wines!”, I can hear you cry.

Yes, that may be true if what you’re trying to accomplish is wine flavoring. But if what you’re attempting to do is to improve the quality of the tannins in your finished wine and are only leaving chips in for 8 or 9 days, flavor isn’t really affected by adding chips.

Because the tannins made available by the chips are precipitated out of solution by the horny proteins, tests show that tannin additions during fermentation don’t show up in the finished wine. All you’re really doing is preventing the natural, soft pinot skin tannins from getting gobbled up and dropping out of solution.

As a quick test I added the chips to our DRC clone but kept them out of the Pommard 4. Tasting the two after ferment completed I noticed just a slight difference in suppleness. I think this is mainly because I was extremely conservative in the amount of chips I added (around 5.5 grams per gallon). I also didn’t detect any oak flavors or aromas.

Ultimately though both wines were tasting fantastic after fermentation, and the 50-50 blend is tasting even better. If adding oak chips wasn’t so darn easy I probably wouldn’t bother. Still, I’ll likely continue to experiment with oak tannins during ferment, whether it be chips, staves or vessels. It’s just too much fun not to.

Check back tomorrow when I’ll wrap up the series with a cool announcement. See you then.