One path of wine history could follow the developments and science of grape growing and wine production; another might trace the spread of wine commerce through civilization, but there would be many crossovers and detours between them.
Fossil vines, 60-million-years-old, are the earliest scientific evidence of grapes. The earliest written account of viniculture is in the Old Testament of the Bible which tells us that Noah planted a vineyard and made wine. As cultivated fermentable crops, honey and grain are older than grapes, although neither mead nor beer has had anywhere near the social impact of wine over recorded time. Wine and history have greatly influenced one another.
MIDDLE EASTERN ORIGINS
An ancient Persian fable credits a lady of the court with the discovery of wine. This Princess, having lost favor with the King, attempted to poison herself by eating some table grapes that had "spoiled" in a jar. She became intoxicated and giddy and fell asleep. When she awoke, she found the stresses that had made her life intolerable had dispersed. Returning to the source of her relief, her subsequent conduct changed so remarkably that she regained the King's favor. He shared his daughter's discovery with his court and decreed an increase in the production of "spoiled" grapes...
Certainly wine, as a natural phase of grape spoilage, was "discovered" by accident, unlike beer and bread, which are human inventions. It is established that grape cultivation and wine drinking had started by about 4000 BC and possibly as early as 6000 BC. The first developments were around the Caspian Sea and in Mesopotamia, near present-day Iran. Texts from tombs in ancient Egypt prove that wine was in use there around 2700 to 2500 BC. Priests and royalty were using wine, while beer was drunk by the workers. The Egyptians recognized differences in wine quality and developed the first arbors and pruning methods. Archeological excavations have uncovered many sites with sunken jars, so the effects of temperature on stored wine were probably known.
GRECO-ROMAN CONTRIBUTIONS
Wine came to Europe with the spread of the Greek civilization around 1600 BC. Homer's Odyssey and Iliad both contain excellent and detailed descriptions of wine. Wine was an important article of Greek commerce and Greek doctors, including Hippocrates, were among the first to prescribe it. The Greeks also learned to add herbs and spices to mask spoilage.
The foundation and strength of viniculture in Western Europe are primarily due, however, to the influence of the Romans. Starting about 1000 BC, the Romans made major contributions in classifying grape varieties and colors, observing and charting ripening characteristics, identifying diseases and recognizing soil-type preferences. They became skilled at pruning and increasing yields through irrigation and fertilization techniques.
Unearthed during excavation for building a house in a vineyard near the town of Speyer, Germany, it was inside one of two Roman stone sarcophaguses that were dug up. The bottle dates from approximately 325 A.D. and was found in 1867.
The greenish-yellow glass amphora has handles formed in the shape of dolphins. One of several bottles discovered, it is the only one with the contents still preserved.
The ancient liquid has much silty sediment. About two-thirds of the contents are a thicker, hazy mixture. This is most probably olive oil, which the Romans commonly used to "float" atop wine to preserve it from oxidation. Cork closures, although known to exist at the time, were quite uncommon. Their oil method of preservation was apparently effective enough to keep the wine from evaporation up to modern day.
The bottle is on permanent display, along with other wine antiquities, at the Historisches Museum der Pfalz (History Museum of the Pfalz), worth a visit if traveling near the area of Speyer, Germany.
The Romans also adapted wooden cooperage, an invention they acquired with the spoils of conquering Germanic tribes, to wine storage and transportation. This was a great advance for operations previously accomplished in skins or clay jars (amphora). They may also have been the first to use glass bottles, as glassblowing became more common during this era.
ECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND RELIGION
By the first century AD, wine was being exported in barrels from the Empire (Italy) to Spain, Germany, England and Gaul (France). It wasn't long before these regions began developing their own vineyards and the Roman Emperor forbid the import of French wines to eliminate competition with the local wines. Over the next few centuries, France would become dominant on the world wine market. Monastic wineries were responsible for establishing vineyards in Burgundy, Champagne and the Rhine Valley. Sacramental usage preserved wine industry methods and traditions through the dark ages.
By 1152, during the reign of Henry II, Britain had become the principal customer of Bordeaux. The end of the Hundred Years War in 1453 left the city of Calais as the only French territory still under British control and trade between England and France nearly cut off. Political conflicts between England and France ultimately benefitted competition in the export wine market. From 1703 until 1860, tariffs restricted French wine imports and encouraged those from Portugal, so the English "discovered" and developed a great love of Port.
Exploration, conquest and settlement brought wine to Mexico, Argentina and South Africa in the 1500s and 1600s. Although there were many attempts during this period to plant European wine vines along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts of North America and in the Mississippi River basin valleys, none were successful. Each vineyard planted would die off within two or three seasons. No one apparently sought to determine why, even though little difficulty was encountered in Mexico or California vineyards. In the late 1800s, one answer to this mystery would ultimately prove fatal for nearly all the vineyards of Europe.
WINE MISSION FOR CALIFORNIA
Hernando Cortez, as Governor of Mexico in 1525, ordered the planting of grapes. The success was such that the King of Spain forbid new plantings or vineyard replacements in Mexico after 1595, fearing his colony would become self-sufficient in wine. This edict was enforced for 150 years, effectively preventing a commercial wine industry from forming.
As in Europe, however, vineyards survived under the auspices of the church and the care of the missions. In 1769, Franciscan missionary Father Junipero Serra planted the first California vineyard at Mission San Diego. Father Serra continued to establish eight more missions and vineyards until his death in 1784 and has been called the "Father of California Wine". The variety he planted, presumably descended from the original Mexican plantings, became known as the Mission grape and dominated California wine production until about 1880.
California's first documented imported European wine vines were planted in Los Angeles in 1833 by Jean-Louis Vignes. In the 1850s and '60s, the colorful Agoston Harazsthy, a Hungarian soldier, merchant and promoter, made several trips to import cuttings from 165 of the greatest European vineyards to California. Some of this endeavor was at his personal expense and some through grants from the state. Overall, he introduced about 300 different grape varieties, although some were lost prior to testing, due to difficulties in preserving and handling.
Considered the Founder of the California Wine Industry, Harazsthy contributed his enthusiasm and optimism for the future of wine, along with considerable personal effort and risk. He founded Buena Vista winery and promoted vine planting over much of Northern California. He dug extensive caves for cellaring, promoted hillside planting, fostered the idea of non-irrigated vineyards and suggested Redwood for casks when oak supplies ran low.
BLINDED WINE WITH SCIENCE
For centuries wine was produced and enjoyed with little thought for and no true understanding of its underlying science, wine evolved through "spontaneous generation," as far as anyone knew. French chemist Louis Pasteur, among many discoveries relating to his germ theory of diseases, first proposed and proved, in 1857, that wine is made by microscopic organisms, yeasts. This led to the discovery and development of different yeast types and properties and ultimately to better hygiene, less spoilage, and greater efficiency in wine production.
In 1860, Dr. Jules Guyot published the first of three treatises describing regional traditional vinicultural and viticultural practices as well as his own observations and arguments on the economy of grape growing. Before these documents, viniculture was a practice that had been apprenticed from generation to generation for over 5000 years, without written records or formal instruction.
YANKEE VINE-KILLER BUG
In 1863, species of native American grapes were taken to Botanical Gardens in England. These cuttings carried a species of root louse called phylloxera vastatrix which attacks and feeds on the vine roots and leaves. Phylloxera is indigenous to the Mississippi River Valley and was unknown outside North America at the time. Powdery mildew, a fungal disease, also indigenous to North America, had previously migrated to Europe and caused problems in some areas. No one, however, had any idea of the wide-reaching destructive potential of Phylloxera.
Native American varieties developed resistance to phylloxera by evolving a thick and tough root bark, so that they were relatively immune to damage. The vinifera vines had no such evolutionary protection and phylloxera ate away at their roots, causing them to rot and the plant to die and driving the pests to seek other nearby live hosts, spreading inexorably through entire vineyards and on to others.
By 1865, phylloxera had spread to vines in Provence. Over the next 20 years, it inhabited and decimated nearly all the vineyards of Europe. Many methods were attempted to eradicate phylloxera: flooding, where possible, and injecting the soil with carbon bisulfide, had some success in checking the louse, but were costly and the pests came back as soon as the treatments stopped.
Finally Thomas Munson, a horticulturist from Dennison, Texas, realized that native American vines were resistant and suggested grafting the vinifera vines onto riparia hybrid rootsocks. So, there began a long, laborious process of grafting every wine vine in Europe over to American rootstocks. It was only in this manner that the European wine industry could be retrieved from extinction. Downy mildew, another fungal disease in American grapevines, unfortunately probably migrated to Europe on some of the rootstocks imported for grafting. One tragic consequence of the Phylloxera devastation is that many of the native species indigenous to Europe, since they were of negligible commercial value, were not perpetuated by grafting and became extinct.
There was some debate generated by this replanting that the quality declined in "post-phylloxera" wines. Whether this was indeed the case and whether this was due to the rootstocks themselves or to the relatively sudden and nearly universal youth of the vines, or to changes in vinification techniques, or to some other concurrent factor or variable, is unknown. Undoubtedly, it will remain a matter of theory and opinion and provide animated conversation at wine tastings, but ultimately never be proven.
The blight resulted in shortages of wine for many years, so that fraud and adulteration became problems, eventually leading French wine growers to the form the system of Appellation Controlée, which has become the model for all wine producing countries to both protect wine trade reputations and authenticate products for consumers.
During the period when the Europeans were contending with phylloxera, the American wine industry was ironically flourishing. By 1900, America had a fully developed and proud commercial wine producing business. Leading brands from California, New York, Ohio, Missouri and New Jersey were appearing on many of the best restaurant wine lists alongside French, German and Italian listings. Barrels of California wine were being regularly exported to Australia, Canada, Central America, England, Germany, Mexico and the Orient.
VINE-KILLER POLITICS
The destruction of the American wine industry would come not from an entomological pest, but from a political one. While it took a hundred years instead of 20 to complete its course, the results were even more devastating. It didn't spread from vineyard to vineyard, but from town to county to state to the entire nation.
Alcohol abuse and alcoholism and their related problems were much more widespread and affected a radically larger share of America's population in the early and mid-1800s than they do at present day. Excessive use, rather than moderate use, was the norm in an era of fewer entertainments and diversions.
The first Prohibition law went on the books in Indiana in 1816, forbidding the sale of any alcohol on Sunday (still enforced to this day). By the 1840s, towns and counties in Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York and Ohio had gone legally "dry". In 1851, Maine enacted the first statewide law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of liquor and, by 1855, thirteen of the thirty-one United States had followed suit.
The Industrial Revolution led from local to large-scale brewing and mass marketing, with intense competition. A proliferation of saloons drove owners to seek side profits by pursuing illegal and unsavory vices such as gambling and prostitution. As another beverage containing alcohol, wine began to suffer the successful excesses of beer.
In 1880, Kansas became the first entirely "dry" state, followed by Iowa, Georgia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia. Although the laws allowed winemaking to continue for sale elsewhere, few wineries in these states could compete without selling their wines locally. Most closed their doors and abandoned their vineyards.
The Drys went so far as to have any mention of wine expunged from school and college texts, including Greek and Roman classic literature. Medicinal wines were dropped from the United States Pharmacopoeia. They even tried to prove that praises for wine in the Bible were actually referring to unfermented grape juice. Thirty-three states had gone dry at the outbreak of World War I. While the Doughboys were fighting in Europe, Wartime Prohibition was enacted in 1919.
Over President Wilson's veto, Congress passed the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, known as the Volstead National Prohibition Act, named after Minnesota Republican Andrew Volstead, teetotaller and primary proponent. After midnight on January 16, 1920, the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors," as well as the exporting or importing of same was forbidden and became a Federal crime.
Through a provision that made penalites not applicable1 to "a person manufacturing noninoxicating cider and fruit juice exclusively for use in his home," thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens became home winemaking hobbyists and quasi-bootleggers. This poorly-constructed clause eliminated consequence without strictly legalizing either home brewing or winemaking, yet the obvious difficulty of intepreting and applying its intent led to new pasttimes for many households.
Explosive demand for fresh grapes and a shortage of refrigerated railroad cars in which to ship them caused prices to skyrocket. Growers began replanting their vineyards from fine wine varieties over to table or juice grape varieties that shipped better. Planted acreage nearly doubled from 1919 to 1926. Vineyard land prices climbed from $200 an acre in 1918 to $2,500 an acre in 1923. Prosperity for the growers lasted barely five years. In 1925, the railroads finally had enough cars, too much fruit was shipped and it rotted on the Eastern docks. In 1926, vineyard land fell back to $250 per acre. The massive plantings produced a constant surplus of California grapes that persisted until 1971.
By the time of National Repeal, effective December 5, 1933, the industry was in ruins. Although some wineries managed to survive by obtaining permits to make wines used for medicinal, sacramental and non-beverage additive purposes, production dropped 94% from 1919 to 1925.
REPEAL WITHOUT RECOVERY
Even after Repeal, several states stayed dry: Kansas until 1948, Oklahoma until 1957, and Mississippi until 1966. Seventeen states chose to obliterate free-market capitalism by establishing monopoly liquor stores with limited selections and plain-as-dirt merchandising that discourages respectable housewives from shopping.
There remain local prohibitions that are arbitrary, inconsistent and niggling, with such manifest foolishness as streets lined door-to-door on one side with taverns and "package stores" and nary a one on the opposite side where the dry boundary runs down the middle of the roadway. Today 10 percent of the nation's area and 6 percent of the population remain dry.
Anticipating Repeal, speculators and quick-buck artists soon flooded the legal market with quickly and poorly made wine. Dilettantes published books and articles warning Americans about rigid rules that must be followed to serve the proper wine with the proper food from the proper glass at the proper temperature. Faced with bad-tasting products with which to risk committing social blunders and while remaining uncertain about the social acceptance of any alcohol, most Americans stayed away. Hard drinkers stuck to hard liquor. For decades, moderate wine drinking in a social context survived almost exclusively in households that made their own.
The only group of wines that sold well following Repeal were the fortified dessert wines. Taxed at the lower rate of wine as opposed to distilled spirits, but with 20 percent alcohol, this group made the cheapest intoxicant available for derelicts and winos. Before 1920, there were more than 2,500 commercial wineries in the United States. Less than 100 survived as winemaking operations to 1933. By 1960, that number had grown to only 271. California had 713 bonded wineries before Prohibition; it took more than half a century, until 1986, before that many were again operating.
Before 1920, table wines accounted for 3 of every 4 gallons shipped. After 1933, fortified wines were 3 of every 4 gallons shipped. It wasn't until 1968 that table wines sales finally overtook fortified wines, regaining the status of most popular wine category.
Prohibition left a legacy of distorting the role of alcohol in American life, ruining a fledgling world-class wine industry, weakening the U.S. Constitution, and boosting the success and profitability of Organized Crime (the price of whiskey rose over 500% during the 1920s). The maze of confusing and conflicting laws that currently vary widely between states impedes commerce, sustains distribution monopolies, casts aspersions of greed on tax coffers, and mocks the American sense of fair competition.
More police officers were killed during the decade of the 1920s than in any decade in history. The "Grand Experiment" implanted moral ambiguity and disrespect for authority in an entire generation of Americans, while it deprived them of potential social and health benefits, and brought the character and term "wino" into the streets and the lexicon.
The one positive remainder is the lingering Congressional hesitance to pass Constitutional Amendments, especially regarding restrictions on individual liberty and personal moral choice. We can only hope for the future that our representatives don't commit such folly when powerful special interests clash with the shared individual freedoms that make up the public interest.
The forces of prohibition are not dead yet. They are more insidious, combining moralist and monopolist factions, pursuing an agenda of obstructionist legislation, that includes preventing or encumbering direct sales of wine to consumers, preventing health information from being printed on wine labels and spreading disinformation about potential benefits and studies related to wine and health.
WORK IN PROGRESS
In spite of the political workings, table wine has grown in popularity in America. U.S. per-capita consumption of wine still lags far behind most countries of the Western Hemisphere. Although America wine-consuming growth is on pace to become the number one wine consuming nation within this decade, until now more than 85% of the volume of wine America is drunk by less than 8% of the total population.
Research in the past thirty years has led to developments in both agriculture and technology that have greatly improved overall wine quality. The quality and stature of California and American wine has never been better and worldwide demand continues to grow. The attractions of the "gentleman farming" lifestyle and the increasing demand have driven the industry to swell to a total of 4,383 bonded US wineries in 2006.
In America's Bicentennial Year of 1976, the world of wine was shocked when two Napa Valley wines (Stag's Leap 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon and Chateau Montelena 1973 Chardonnay) bested the top French wine counterparts in Paris, at a blind tasting2 judged entirely by Frenchmen, all experts in wine! More than three decades later, it is now only surprising when French wines win at similar events.
Winemaking ... nurturing the natural process...
By definition, wine is a drink made by the partial or complete fermentation of the juice of fresh grapes. Grapes are the only fruit with a high enough level of sugar and with the proper balance of acid and nutrients to sustain a natural fermentation to dryness with stable results. Other fruits or berries may be fermented, but without additions of sugar, acid, or various yeast nutrients, they may readily spoil.
ANCIENT AND MYSTERIOUS
Although the biochemistry of fermentation was a mystery until the late nineteenth century, the results of the process have been known to man for over 5000 years. Fermentation was thought to be a spontaneous act of Nature, merely set in motion by man. The grapes were crushed to release the juice (must) into a fermentation vessel. When the fermentation was complete, the wine was pressed by some mechanical means to separate the liquid from the stems, skins, pips and pulp. It was then stored to age and clarify until it was drunk. While modern technology and methods may have refined and enhanced it, this is still the basic process today.
Fermentation is a natural process. Left alone, a grape would ripen until the skin broke and the juice fermented. The intervention of man is only necessary to increase the clarity and stability of the end product. "Making" wine is mostly a matter of the choices and decisions of the winemaker during each phase of production, from growing the raw material grapes to bottling the finished wine. These choices determine the wine's style, flavors, and aromas to a great extent.
Yeast is the microscopic, single-celled fungi which causes fermentation. Yeast cell populations are present in the air, especially in and around vineyards. This indigenous demographic is known as "wild" or "ambient" yeast. At one time, the bloom, that hazy film that covers ripe grape berries, was thought to mostly consist of yeast cells but this has been proven incorrect. Instead, cells are concentrated around the berry stem (peduncle) and much fewer in concentration than thought, in the dozens rather than the thousands.
When yeast comes in contact with the grape juice, it begins to feed on it, grow and reproduce. There are approximately 6000 yeast cells per ounce of actively fermenting must. An enzyme (zymase) within them converts sugar in the grape juice into roughly equal parts of alcohol and carbon dioxide and also releases energy in the form of heat.
C6H12O6>ZYMASE>2C2H5OH + 2CO2 + HEAT
Theoretically, this process could continue naturally until the sugar is used up, which is most often the case. Occasionally, fermentation continues only until the yeast cells are no longer able to tolerate the level of their waste products: alcohol, carbon dioxide and/or heat, thus leaving very small amounts of residual sugar.
It is noteworthy there were no significant changes in the methods and practices of viticulture and enology from about 1000 BC until about 1860 AD. Other than small improvements such as using more metal and less wooden parts in presses and equipment, the French vignerons of 1850 knew little more of the scientific principals involved than did the ancient Romans.
Certain events did occur, primarily regarding wine storage, which together marked the beginnings of serious wine collecting. An English print from 1778 is the first known evidence of a corkscrew. In 1797, it was first noticed at Chateau LaFite that wine that aged in bottles improved. A few years later, in 1815, came the first documented Declared Vintage of Port.
Although theorized by German chemist Georg Stahl in 1697, the scientific basis of fermentation was first proven and explained by Louis Pasteur, in 1857. Pasteur demonstrated fermentation was caused by living organisms and he developed a germ theory of fermentation in 1861. He was the first to isolate and distinguish types of yeast (saccharomyces apiculatus and saccharomyces elipsoideus). Pasteur found that some yeasts are efficient converters of sugar to alcohol and some are not. Some yeast will stop at about six percent alcohol and some continue until a level of sixteen or seventeen percent. Even among efficient types, there are several different strains and each viticultural region seems to have a specific native strain. He also noted that high temperature kills off yeast.
Pasteur's discovery made it possible to sterilize the must, killing off the wild strains by heating it to below the boiling point and then inoculating the Pasteurized must with the best strain, so that it has no competition. Modern wine techniques do not use Pasteurization, but may add a small amount of sulfur to prevent the wild yeast from starting up (see "Related Links" below).
Modern cultured strains of wine yeast give predictable and dependable results and come in many versions specialized for different puposes. In addition to various tolerances to temperature and alcohol, there are strains that produce aromas with a range of characterisitcs, strains that produce more body and texture, those that end up with finer and more compact lees, etc. Ambient or feral yeasts became in vogue in the past decade, but the risk of failure or spoilage is enough that most volume producers use only cultured yeasts.
Like all living things, yeast cells have a primary drive to reproduce. In the first and most vigorous stage of fermentation (2 to 4 days), the yeast action mainly produces more yeast. This is the aerobic (contact with air) fermentation. The anaerobic (without air) fermentation follows and produces most of the alcohol. Under optimum conditions, a wine fermentation will last approximately three weeks, but this may take as much as several months, sometimes for no apparent reason.
Fermentation can continue until the wine is dry (without residual sugar), or be stopped at some mid-point to make wines at levels of sweetness ranging from the barest hint to extremely sweet. Stopping fermentation can be accomplished by killing or removing the yeast cells by one of several methods: adding alcohol to raise the level to 15% or more (as in port or sherry), adding sulfur dioxide or sorbate (sorbic acid - not considered a good practice and illegal in many countries), chilling the must, or by simply filtering out the yeast cells using a sterile filter. Wines with residual sugar risk re-fermentation unless filtered to remove any remaining yeast.
With a very few exceptions, grapes have clear juice, whether the skins are white (green) or black (purple). Pigmentation (anthocyanin) comes from the skins. White wine can be made from black grapes by simply pressing the grapes and separating the clear juice from the pigmented skins before fermentation. This is the basis of "White Zinfandel" table wines and "Blanc de Noirs" sparkling wines. The longer the contact between skins and must, the more color is extracted from the skins into the must.
To make most white wines, winemakers crush and press the juice from the grapes and add sulphite (75-150 parts per million) to the must to kill the wild yeast and bacteria and prevent oxidation. The stems, skins, pips and pulp are separated from the juice. One variation has the fruit go directly into the press, without going through the crusher, to avoid some degree of oxidation. In another variation the grapes, after crushing, go into a settling tank where they are chilled and may sit for up to 24 hours of skin contact before being pressed.
Juice separated before the press is called free-run. It is of higher quality, with less bitterness and oxidation. The leftover skins, pips and pulp is called the marc, pommace, or cake. The resulting juice usually has a lower fixed acidity, but higher volatile acidity, as well as higher tannin than the free-run. Both the speed and the pressure of the press affect the quality. Sometimes the marc is pressed first with a modern bladder-type cylindrical press and then with a traditional basket press. Some portion of the pressed wine may be added back to the free-run, but it most often is used for bulk wine production or distillation. Note that whites are pressed as unfermented must, while reds are pressed after the fermentation has begun or completed. One ton of grapes will yield 155 to 195 gallons of must, with 120 to 160 gallons being free-run juice. The leftover solids are often returned to the vineyard and ploughed back into the soil.
Pressing the grapes extracts juice as well as additional color and tannins. Too much pressure will also begin leaching bitter tannins from the seeds, so care must be taken. Modern presses use rubber compound bladders inflated by air pressure as a way to avoid the bitterness.
After inoculating with a selected yeast culture, the must is allowed to ferment for from 2 to 45 days at a temperature usually between 45° and 65° F.
The lower the temperature, the longer the fermentation continues and the more fruitiness in the resulting wine. A fermentation allowed to get too hot produces off flavors and can get stuck. Over the years, temperature control was accomplished by either fermenting small batches in a cooled environment, pumping the must through a heat-exchanger, or inserting refrigerated coils in the tanks.
Casks of oak, vats of concrete, or tanks made of stainless steel are the most common fermentation vessels. Smaller containers of plastic or fibreglass resin are also common. In the 1960s, science began having a greater impact upon commercial winemaking and much more attention was paid to hygiene, especially keeping vats and tanks spotlessly clean. Materials such as concrete and wood are not as easy to clean or to temperature control, but are still in use at many wineries.
Wood allows a small exchange between the oxygen outside and the wine inside the cask or barrel, which some winemakers feel helps to round and soften tannin and astringency. Wood can also be coopered into many sizes, but expensive, perishable and requires a great deal of labor to clean and maintain.
Concrete is inexpensive, easier to clean and maintain than wood, holds temperature well, and can be custom-fitted into square shapes and rows that share common walls and occupy less space than individual casks or tanks. Many are lined with ceramic tile, enamel, or food-grade epoxy. The walls may also contain built-in pipes or conduits for regulating temperature.
Stainless steel equipment has major advantages over wood and concrete. Chemically neutral, stainless steel neither adds nor takes away flavors in wine. Second, it is easily fitted with temperature controls, including jackets through which refrigerant can be pumped, thermostats, internal stirring components and computerized controls that can maintain the temperature of the must within one or two degrees. Third and most significant, stainless does not provide a medium for bacterial growth and can be easily cleaned and sterilized to avoid contamination. Fourth, stainless steel provides both more durability and more portability than the other materials.
RED, RED WINE
For most red wines, winemakers crush, sulphite and inoculate the grapes and allow the juice to ferment in contact with the skins and pulp for 2 to 5 days at temperatures between 70° and 80° F (pinot noir is often allowed to go to 95° F). During this initial period, color is extracted from the skins as more sugar is converted to ethanol.
The skins and solids in the must will float to the top of the fermenter, forming a cake that the carbon dioxide cannot escape from. This leaves only the portion of juice underneath the cake in contact with the skins. Methods used to break up this cake and insure more color extraction include punching down by hand several times a day, pumping-over the juice to the top of the cake using a must pump, or stirring by some other mechanical means, including the relatively new roto-tanks that turn the entire contents over, like a cement mixer. After enough color and tannin are extracted, the must is pressed and the juice separated for clarification, finishing and aging.
I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT BUTTER
A secondary fermentation, called malolactic fermentation, takes place in most wine. This is the conversion by bacteria (oenococcus oeni) of some of the malic acid naturally present in grapes into lactic acid, along with the bi-product of carbon dioxide.
Malolactic fermentation has the effect of "1softening" the wine, taking some of the sharp edge off, often imparting a "creamy" texture and leaving a "buttery" aroma. This is desirable with certain wines, undesirable with others.
Malolactic fermentation is natural, but does not always occur. Sometimes wineries inoculate new wine with a malolactic culture and may also heat up the wine slightly to encourage it. Some wineries do all they can to avoid it, keeping the white wine operation completely separate from the red, where malolactic fermentation is more likely to occur due to the normally extended aging of red wines.
Before the arrival of modern sterile filtration (in the 1980s), an occasional wine would wait until after it was in the bottle to begin "ML." The bottled wine would become cloudy and fizzy, sometimes developing enough pressure to blow the cork or break the bottles, and developing a flavor like sour milk. Long before they understood the science of ML, traditional vintners knew to wait to bottle their wines until after Spring when the wine would warm up and ML would often occur naturally.
With modern methods and equipment, winemakers can control the degree of malolactic they desire. Prior to the 1980s, it was essentially and all-or-nothing proposition.
ROLL OUT THE BARREL
Wine can be aged in barrels of oak or other woods to impart and mature flavors. Wooden barrels leech tannins into wine and can also impart "smoky" flavors if the barrels have been toasted, short of actual charring. Different wood species from different forests impart differing flavors and to a degree of strength depending upon the age of the barrel, relative to how much use it has seen. The average barrel will add wood flavor to wine for three years. As long as they remain watertight and uncontaminated by spoilage bacteria or yeast (such as TCA or brettanomyces), older barrels are "neutral" in terms of imparting flavors, although the porosity of the wood does allow a slow exchange of oxygen that mellows wine to some degree.
The newer the barrel, the stronger the oak flavor. Flavor can also vary, depending on the manner of cooperage, or barrel-making. Wooden barrels also allow a degree of oxidation that can mellow a wine. Some loss occurs through evaporation and wine in barrels, even when kept in a relatively humid environment, must be topped occasionally with more wine.
LET'S MAKE THIS PERFECTLY CLEAR
As wine ages, natural settling and clarification will occur to some degree, although it is inefficient and inconsistent. The public, however, is usually unwilling to accept cloudy wine or wine with crystals or other particles in it, so various methods are used for "cleaning-up" and finishing wine after fermentation, either before, during, or after aging. These processes also insure a level of stability or shelf-life for wines shipped to retail or restaurant outlets where the bottles may spend some time "on the shelf" before purchase and consumption.
Clarification methods are similar for both white and red wines. All methods of clarification remove unsightly particles from wine, but may also strip wine of pleasant aroma and flavor elements, body, and color.
Racking is the oldest technique of clarification that is just one step beyond natural settling. This is simply siphoning off the relatively clear wine after the lees have settled to the bottom, leaving them behind to discard. The lees are the insoluble matter including dirt and dust, cellulose, dead yeast cells, bacteria, tartrates and pectin. Racking may be done only once or several times before a wine is bottled. Red wines, especially those barrel-aged, are sometimes bottled after racking without further processing.
Cold stabilization may be considered an adjunct or enhancement to racking. This process removes excess tartaric acid that, if untreated, might later form potassium bitartrate crystals, which can show up in wine bottles or on corks. Although these tartrates dissolve easily and are edible (cream of tartar, commonly used in cooking) and harmless, they can alarm the uninformed consumer who thinks there is "broken glass" in his wine. Cold stabilization is accomplished by allowing the wine to warm up to "room temperature" and then chilling it down to about 40° F. The tartaric acid crystallizes in the tank and the wine drawn off by racking.
Fining is a method of clarifying or chemically stabilizing wine. The procedure begins by stirring into the container of wine a fining agent that is heavier than both water and alcohol and does not dissolve in either. The agent ultimately settles to the bottom of the vessel (tank or barrel), causing small suspended particles to precipitate out along with the agent. The clarified wine is then separated by siphoning (racking) off the settlings (lees).
Fining can lower high levels of tannin, remove haze, and reduce color. Care needs to be taken to chose the proper fining level that conforms the wine style that winemaker wants to achieve. Over-fining can result in thin wines that lack aroma complexity, flavor depth, viscosity, and aging potential.
Physical agents work by absorbing tiny particles and dragging them. Chemical agents work by forming chemical bonds with hydrogen elements in the undesired particles. Fining agents include egg white, milk, blood, gelatin, carbon, casein (the principal protein constituent of milk and cheese) and isinglass (an extract of sturgeon bladders). Heat stabilization is a fining process that uses bentonite (a clay of hydrated magnesium silicates) to remove protein, which may cloud a wine.
Filtering means passing the wine through a filter small enough to remove undesirable elements. Various filtering technologies allow great flexibility to winemakers to make stable wines of varying styles. As with fining, filtering can also remove elements that contribute to flavors and aromas, so winemakers need to be judicious and conservative with this technique to avoid "collateral damage" that leaves their wine clean but lifeless.
Depth or sheet filtration uses a relatively thick layer of fine material (diatomaceous earth, cellulose powder, perlite, etc.) to trap and remove small particles. Surface or membrane filtration passes wine through a thin film of plastic polymer with uniformly-sized holes that are smaller than the particles.
Sterile filtration uses micropore filters, which are fine enough to remove yeast cells, to prevent further fermentation. This is especially significant when residual sugar is allowed to remain in the wine at low levels. Prior to the advent of modern micropore filtration, slightly sweet wines were endangered by the possibility of revived fermentation in the bottle.
Although most wineries have either their own mechanized bottling line or hire a portable bottler do the chore, the steps are still nearly the same: sterilizing, filling, corking, foiling, labeling and casing the bottles. Sterility methods have greatly improved in the past three decades.
BOTTLE OF WINE
Although the Romans invented glass blowing and, in 1821, an English company patented a machine to mold bottles that were uniform in size and shape, selling wine in bottles was illegal in England until 1860. Wine was sold by the measure and then bottled, with the customer providing the bottles which were often identified with a personal seal. Paper labels identifying the contents developed in the late 1800s. Until the 1970s, wine bottle sizes varied from about 650 to 850 mililiters. A world standard size wine bottle is now 750 mililiters (26.7 oz.).
Bottling equipment can vary from the primitive, using siphon hoses, funnels, hand corking and labeling machines, to the modern, very sophisticated, sterile "hospital conditions" of a totally automated bottling line. Either process must include methods for sterilizing the bottles, standardizing the fill level, inserting the corks, covering them with capsules or foils, attaching the labels and boxing the bottles for storage or shipment.
Before bottling, the winemaker conducts blending trials, combining small samples of cuvées or batches of wine from different grape varieties, or vineyards, or of different vintages, in varying combinations until the wine tastes best. When the final blend is determined, the "recipe" is made and the wine is blended accordingly and bottled.
Wines that are intended for early consumption, where freshness and fruity, floral characteristics are of prime importance, may be kept for extended periods in large refrigerated tanks where these qualities are best preserved. The wine is bottled in batches at various points during the year, as needed to replenish depleted store shelves or restaurant stocks.
BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY
Among the most dynamic and civilization-altering changes of the 20th Century are the methods of preserving and packaging foodstuffs. At the turn of the 19th Century, a typical general store's shelves might have a stock of dried or canned goods, bulk grain and flour. Meat and poultry, fish, dairy, produce and baked goods all came from specialty stores or straight from the production source. Food shopping was an errand run several times per week.
A modern market has a wide variety and large inventory of fresh, packaged, prepared and frozen foods and many shoppers go but once a week or even less. Treatments, additives and refrigeration have made it possible to preserve food in an edible state for greater periods of time and therefore, to cultivate and harvest higher volumes of perishable goods.
Some of these methods also can be applied to winemaking. We have already mentioned the role of refrigeration in temperature control during fermentation. There are also additives, besides yeast and fining agents, that can be used to "doctor" wines. The most common are acids such as citric, tartaric or tannic, used to adjust the balance of wine. Oak chips and powdered oak can add flavor and added tannins can improve color and balance. These treatments and additives are very unusual for fine wine grown in the best appellations, but may be common in attempting to coax palatable wine from grapes grown in marginal climates.
YANKEE INGENUITY
Until late in the Industrial Revolution, the growth of the wine industry was almost entirely territorial and hardly at all technical. Wine making methods were passed on from mostly European traditions. In 1957, Industrialist-Diplomat James D. Zellerbach opened a new winery in Sonoma, dedicated to and named after his wife Hana and modeled in great detail after the architecture and methods of Clos de Vougeot in Burgogne ("Burgundy"), France. Mixing innovation with tradition, Hanzell was the first winery to use stainless steel tanks (of his own design) for fermentation, to import French oak barrels, and to have a laboratory on the premises for monitoring and analysis, all of which are common elements of modern wineries.
CONTROL AND CONSISTENCY
Mechanical advances such as field crushers, bladder and roto presses, stainless steel tanks, micropore filters, refrigeration, vacuum-bottling and other devices and methods have all evolved in the past four decades. The latest innovation is the Foss Winescan Analyzer which projects a beam of infrared light through wine or juice and quantifies up to 18 different components, based on the way they absorb the light. Conventional chemistry would take hours to perform the same tests.
These inventions have primarily had the effect of allowing the winemaker to have more control over the process and to gain a measure of consistency. This control has stimulated the industry to examine, experiment and perfect their techniques and methods.
"Modern" methods are often simply extensions of circumstances that have occurred naturally over the history of "primitive" wine making, such as inducing malolactic fermentation. One fairly recent technique is cold-soaking the fruit in tanks chilled to 45° or below for several hours or days to postpone the start of alcoholic fermentation. This technique mimics what may happen during particularly cold harvest seasons. The chilling seems to enhance color and preserve more of the fruit character in the wine before the alcohol reaches a level that causes a high extraction of tannin.
It may be that the finest wines are produced with the natural or wild yeast that balances the various alcohols, which may be more desirable. Natural yeast fermentation also carries the risk that the fermentation will not continue to a stable level of alcohol (above 11%) or that the vinegar yeast will take the process beyond wine and into salad dressing. In any case, man is rediscovering Nature to be the greatest wine maker of all.
Wine Grape and Varietal Profiles
The interdependent factors that affect wine flavor are the variety or varieties of grape used, the location where the grapes are grown (appellation), the treatment of those vineyards and skills of the vineyardist and the equipment and techniques used by the winemaker, as well as his skills in applying them.
Arguably, the type(s) of grape used is the dominant factor in wine flavor. Take any World Famous Vineyard (or even an entire Appellation), plant it with a different variety and the wine from there would become unrecognizable, even if treated in the same way and processed by the same hands.
Different varieties of grape have differing aroma and flavor characteristics. Varietal character, however, while somewhat predictable, is not precise; variations occur, since virtually all vines are propagated by cloning. Some grape types are more prone to clonal variation, than others. The name of a particular variety, therefore, should be considered a "surname" for vines that share a genetic history. Each varietal "family" may, in turn, include only a few or very many individual "sibling" clones, each with its own particular traits and its clonal name or number considered its "given" name.
Red Grapes Alicante Bouschet Barbera Cabernet Franc Cabernet Sauvignon Carignan Carmenere Cinsault Duriff Gamay Noir Grenache Grignolino Malbec Merlot Mission Mourvedré Nebbiolo Petit Verdot Petite Sirah Pinot Meunier Pinot Noir Pinotage Primativo Sangiovese Syrah Tempranillo Valdiguié Zinfandel
White Grapes Albarino Chardonnay Chenin Blanc Gewürztraminer Gruner Veltliner Marsanne Muscat (family) Pinot Blanc Pinot Gris (Grigio) Riesling Roussanne Sauvignon Blanc Semillon Steen Viognier
There are over 10,000 documented varieties within species Vitis vinifera (the "European" or "true" wine grapes). Of these, on a commercial scale, primarily three are used for raisin production and less than a dozen for table grapes, while about 230 have some prominence in the world of fine wines and hundreds more are used for wine in limited or local areas. The wine consuming public, however, tends to focus on only a hand full of these.
One explanation why so many wine drinkers don't expand their choices beyond Chardonnay, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon is that they know little about any of the dozens of other wine grapes available. The profiles here describe some of the history and cultivation characteristics of different wine grape varieties and the typical aromas and flavors in the varietal and blended wines they produce.
We have limited our selections to the 80-odd that are of most importance or interest to American consumers and those approved by the TTB for use by American wineries. "White" grapes are listed in GREEN, "black" (red) grapes are in PURPLE; not all of the varieties listed are yet profiled/linked. For additional information,
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Vitis Vinifera
WHITE GRAPES
Albariño
Aligoté
Arneis
Bourboulenc
Chardonnay
Chenin Blanc
Clairette Blanche
Colombard
Fiano
Friulano
Furmint
Garganega
Gewürztraminer
Grenache Blanc
Grenache Gris
Grüner Veltliner
Kerner
Maccabéo
Marsanne
Melon
Morio-Muskat
Müller-Thurgau
Muscadelle
Muscat
Neuburger
Picpoul Blanc
Pinot Blanc
Pinot Gris
Riesling
Rousanne
Sauvignon Blanc
Scheurebe
Semillon
Steen
Terret Blanc
Terret Gris
Torrontes
Ugni Blanc/Trebbiano
Verdelho
Verdicchio
Vernaccia
Viognier
BLACK (RED) GRAPES
Alicante Bouschet
Aramon
Barbera
Black Corinth
Cabernet Franc
Cabernet Sauvignon
Carignan
Carmenère
Carnelian
Charbono
Cinsault
Corvina
Counoise
Duriff
Gamay Noir
Grenache
Grignolino
Gros Verdot
Malbec
Merlot
Meunier
Mission
Mourvédre/Mataro
Muscardin
Negrette
Nebbiolo
Petit Verdot
Petite Sirah
Picpoul
Pinot Noir
Pinot Meunier
Pinot St. George
Pinotage
Primitivo
Rubired
Ruby Cabernet
St. Laurent
Sangiovese
Souzão
Syrah/Shiraz
Tannat
Tempranillo
Terret Noir
Tinta Barroca
Tinta Cão
Tinta Negra Mole
Vaccarese/Camarese
Valdepeñas
Valdiguié
Zinfandel
Hybrids (interspecies)
Niagra
Seyval Blanc
Vidal Blanc
Baco Noir
Chancellor
Chelois
Maréchal Foch
Proprietary Names with Varietal Significance
Fumé Blanc
Meritage
Well, I hope you have enjoyed the reading.
Best wishes from The Shaker
Other links:
Wine Service
Syrah Vs. Shiraz
Pinot Grigio Vs. Pinot Gris
