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| (Left to Right): Lars Petersen, Todd Ziemann and Steve MacRostie |
Lars Petersen worked one year for an ultra-premium Italian Barolo producer where he learned how to make great wine with grapes, a few barrels and a bucket. Then he went to work as the bacterial manager for Christian Hansen. He got to see the world and how everyone else made wine. For the last five years he's been with Gusmer in charge of biological product development.
Todd Ziemann was raised in a viticultural family in Lodi, California where his grandfather grew grapes. He got a degree at University of California at Davis and his first job was at Mirassou working as a cellar rat. He moved to Sebastiani Winery in Sonoma, and eventually he was tabbed to run their Lodi facility. In 2001, Constellation purchased Sebastiani, and Ziemann continued with the brand. When Constellation acquired Robert Mondavi in 2005, Ziemann became winemaker for their Woodbridge brand.
Steve MacRostie is the owner and former winemaker of MacRostie Winery. He's a UC Davis graduate with a Master's degree in enology. He has more than 30 years of experience making premium wines in Sonoma County and currently runs MacRostie Winery, producing 35,000 cases a year. What exactly are enzymes?
Lars: Enzymes are active proteins and are the key ingredient in the functionality of any cell.
Steve: It's a three-dimensional complex protein that facilitates a bio-chemical reaction. It causes molecules to be joined, to create more complex ones or to take them apart. A proteinase is an example of something that breaks up protein molecules. As a broad category, that's what enzymes are.
Lars: Cellulase, for example, is a group of enzymes that break up the structure of the grape skin. You add this enzyme, and it can break up pectin and cellulose, which are the structure of the grape skin. Other enzymes can break up flavor components or flavor precursors. Some newer enzymes help release aromatics, particularly in white wines.
What are additives and why do we use them?
Lars: I like to call them processing aids. This discussion is about the art of using the best help you have available to make the best wine possible. It's all about the quality versus the dollar. These are the tricks you have in the bag to give you the best possible wine. These include the whole groups of yeasts, bacteria, tannin enzymes and fining agents.
Todd: We try to enhance the wines, looking for smoothness and richness. We focus on oaks and tannin enzymes in the juice or later in the wine. I prefer to do most of it in the juice stage to give a kind of balance to the wine and improve upon what the grape may provide. Even if you have great grapes, you can always make them better. We focus on oak and tannins, whether they are seed tannin enzymes or oak tannins.
Steve: In general, we don't use additives as they are described here. We are more focused on viticultural excellence, focusing on terroir, specific vineyards and a small area of enterprise to create wines from grapes that are properly balanced and have excellent qualities to begin with. So, we usually are not looking to make up for deficiencies in our fruit.
That being said, there are a number of things that can be done to enhance what you already have, but our philosophy is to not make use of anything other than judicious amounts of enzymes for extraction. We might use color-extracting enzymes in certain lots of our Pinot Noir, and that's as far as we go.
Do you ever use these additives as corrective measures?
Todd: We use them to enhance the grapes. You might be correcting a tannin imbalance. We do that. We also do quite a bit of micro-ox. I really like the effects of oxygen as an additive in red wine fermentations. It goes along with what we are doing with oak or tannins or enzymes or yeast mano-proteins to build fatness into the mouth texture of the wine. For us, the main point is to enhance the richness and flavor of the wine.
Lars: From my point of view, Steve does whatever he can in the vineyard to produce the best possible grape. That's the classic high-end producer model. Large industrial manufacturers receive a lot of fruit that may not be optimum. Pinot Noir winemakers, for example, are often focused on color and want the maximum extraction of color possible. I like to say that once the grapes arrive at the winery, you can't grow them any better. Sometimes they need help: the color is there, but you need help to extract it. These aids allow the winemaker to get the wine as good as possible.
Steve: Now, I don't know if this counts as an additive or not, but there is always the issue of acid and pH balance. As we pick grapes riper these days, this is becoming an issue. We sometimes see pretty high pHs and then see those pHs rising dramatically during fermentation. That's not good. We do not hide that fact that we add acid. We use a pretty sophisticated formula to make sure that we have balanced pH at the end of malolactic fermentation. This does powerful things in terms of color intensity, brightness of color and making the wine look fresher in the glass. If we think we need help with color, we'd add a small dose of enzyme. That's it.
Lars: This process is fairly simple to explain. The color is trapped in the skin, and you have to break up that structure to maximize the color extraction. You can separate the structure mechanically or enzymatically. A lot of the enzymes are present naturally to break down the structure, but by adding a purified commercial enzyme you are adding specific activities that are desirable. That's the tricky part of using enzymes. You want to add something to extract the color but you don't necessarily want to get everything else out. All of the enzymes will extract color, but will they give you other things you don't want?
They do have to be added as early as possible while there is contact with the skin, so juice additions are preferable. It's all about getting the color out of the skin. Then your next step is to stabilize that color. Lowering the pH is a great example. Micro-ox is another. An option that a lot of winemakers don't use is the addition of oak to red wine fermentation. That's where I think the Central Valley is ahead of everyone else. Very few people there do red wine fermentations without the addition of oak.
Todd: What we do to a must comes first from what we know about the vineyard. If I don't have history with a vineyard, then I'm very cautious there. Typically, we use enzymes primarily with Merlot because we are turning the fermenters over. I want soft Merlots with dark extraction, but there is not a lot of time on the skins because we're pressing sweet. We use enzymes to help extract color. The trick is to capture that color, or the extraction doesn't really matter. So you have to combine that extraction with tannins or aldehydes to keep it and not let it drop out.
For me, that's where I use oak, and I use oxygen in those parts of the red fermenters. I use oak chips to bind the aldehydes, color and tannin together. This combination seems to help with retaining more color. You're only as good as your grapes. You want to retain color and not lose a lot as you would with these kinds of fermentations. Across the board we will add oak unless I don't know the vineyard. I've used untoasted as well as toasted oak chips, but have moved toward untoasted. I get a good tannic structure from the untoasted oak that I like in the wines.
Lars: It is very common practice, even with wineries making $30 bottles of wine. More people are moving toward untoasted or minimum toasted product so you get the structure and color extraction out of it, but you don't have a wine that after fermentation is loaded with all the sweet, rich toasted oak flavors.
Our most popular product is minimally toasted. You can use it in this application, and you cannot taste it in the wine afterwards, but the astringency is gone and the color is stable. That's being used at wineries selling wine in all price ranges.
How can these additives hurt wine?
Lars: The longer you keep the skins and seeds together, the more structure you get in the wine. When that is maximized, that's when people press. The enzymes that you are adding have multiple functionalities. They will break up a lot of different bindings. As you produce the enzymes, you want to sort out the good activities and remove the bad activities, but it is like using an ax, so it's not a very precise way of doing it. Some products are a bit cruder while some are more refined. That's where price is involved.
Todd: I think winemakers dial it in to their own conditions. Certain manufacturers' rates don't add any character to the wines. The rates determine how much you add, so you have to adapt to each lot of grapes.
Steve: I've tried oak chips once, many years ago. I just didn't think it made much difference with the fruit that we get. The winemaker's job is to determine how best to approach his fruit. Tannins I've never used, but I don't think it makes a big difference with the fruit from around here.
I'd like to make another comment about winemakers working with fruit. Vintages vary. Those variations affect how readily the fruit extracts. Sometimes we have years, which are ferociously difficult to extract and to get the essence of what makes good wine. That's one incidence where you can employ all of the traditional winemaking possible, but it may still fall short of the best possible wine. In most cases, you're unaware of the problem until late in the fermentation, and it may be too late to correct anyway.
Lars: Working with poorer vintages, or even working with good vintages and excellent vineyards, there are products available to help you guide your wines in the desired direction. These things can work very well used in a general basis, but the person who tries to use them to fix things is less successful. Very few things can be fixed with these additives. These products can prevent problems or help you move in a certain direction, but they rarely fix things in finished wine.
Todd: The biggest push for me is to enhance early, depending on where you are going with the fruit. You've got to know your fruit. That is the key to using alternatives. If you don't do that, you really shouldn't be messing around because it really can undo the balance of that wine. There are times when you need to fix a wine, and occasionally some of these additives will help with the way the wine presents in the mouth or with aroma. Usually, you need to add aids early if you want to adjust fermentations, and that affects the grape more than anything else.
How does the micro-ox interact with these materials?
Steve: We do things the old-fashioned way. For example, we barrel ferment our Chardonnay. We don't like to use the combination of oak adjuncts in tanks with micro-oxygenation to replicate what a barrel does because I don't believe it can be done that way. I think the best possible way to make good high-quality Chardonnay is to spend the money to buy the right barrels and get the flavors nicely integrated with barrel fermentation.
Todd: In general, it really tends to soften the oak. We do a lot of winemaking in stainless and a lot in barrel. I agree that micro-ox cannot duplicate what you get in a barrel. It can be close, but the barrel is the ultimate environment for slow oxidation with the oak. You get a concentration in a barrel that you will not get in a tank. When we apply micro-ox and oak in a tank, we get some nice development and integration characters and flavors with the fruit, but we can't get the concentration of a barrel. Micro-oxygenation has its biggest effect on the oak additives.
Steve: To speak up one more time for the traditional way: Our bottle prices support the labor and time it takes to perform rackings to aerate our red wines, so we don't need or use micro-oxygenation.
Lars: I used to work at this high-end Italian winery. They were very conservative, but I still think that with all the effort they put into the wine, if they had used a little bit of enzyme or a bit of oak in their fermentations I think they could have achieved the desired results in a less brutal way with the wine. The winemaker used long, extended barrel aging and vigorous handling of the wine when these additives can be very gentle on the wine.
No one just picks the fruit, throws it into a tank and comes back on a random basis to press it off, then leaves it in a wood cask and randomly bottle. People are guiding their wine all the time. It's just about the tools they are using.
Steve: That's true, and the most important thing is when you pick. We all pick later now. If you ask what we do today as an industry compared to what we did 10 years ago, you find a huge change and I think a vast improvement in wine quality. It makes more interesting, softer, lusher, fruitier red wine.
What about fining agents. What do you use and how do they work?
Todd: We use fining agents primarily, if needed, on white wine. We will run trials on all types of fining agents, casein or milk, pvpp and isinglass. Most of our fining is focused toward flavor and palate feel. We'll also add cream of tartar to the white wines as needed. It depends on how quickly we need to cold-stabilize the wine. We do all the work at one time so we can get the wine settled, rack off and do one filtration.
Steve: With properly cropped, well maintained vineyards and grapes picked at optimal ripeness, with ripe seed tannins and pressed at the right time, there's not a lot that we have to get rid of. We don't want to take anything positive out of the wine.
In white wines, we use bentonite for protein stability and for clarification prior to filtration. We do a series of trials to be sure we have the right combination of things. We use a proteinaceous agent, when fining white wine, for extra clarification with the bentonite to really make the lees settle tightly.
Lars: It's interesting to me that winemakers, especially on high-end winemaking, feel more comfortable talking about fining wines than, let's say, using oak alternatives. Some of these newer additives seem to have some negative value associated with them. You would be comfortable talking to the public about fining your wines, right?
Steve: Sure, but fining is not really an additive because it doesn't stay in the wine.
Lars: That's where tannins kind of stick out. You add the tannins, and they stay in the wine, and they are also one of the few additives that you use late in the process on a frequent basis. Bacteria and enzymes do not stay in the wine. They will do their thing and disappear. Tannins and SO2 are the only things I can think of that stay in the wine all the way to the final product.
What new additives are coming down the pike?
Lars: Definitely skin and seed tannins. Wineries sitting with wine that needs some structural help seem very happy with skin tannins. These are used as a supplement to oak tannins. This is pressed pomace that goes directly from a winery to a plant. Using pure ethanol and SO2, the tannins are extracted, the alcohol and SO2 are removed and the extract is dried. These tannins might provide the best of two worlds. You don't have to go into extended maceration, but you still get the structural benefits by adding purified skin tannin.
Steve: It's always about making the best product and what your customers want in line with your own vision as a winemaker. Speaking for myself, I don't think I need these products to produce the wine I need and want to make. It's just my personal philosophy.
Do you ever worry that more and more science will compromise the natural goodness of wine?
Lars: My main drive when talking to winemakers is to ask, "How can you improve what you have?" Winemakers are some of the most conservative people in the world. I'm not pushing technology for the sake of technology. We have products that will help people make better wine. I believe that in 30 years from now, many of these products will be used normally by all winemakers.
Bacteria are a great example. Most wineries are now using freeze-dried malolactic bacteria to induce malolactic fermentation. People add it regularly now. It is quicker with less oxidation.
Steve: I have to agree. It is much easier. It makes wine stable quickly. The wine is safe and can sit through the winter without danger of oxidation or spoilage. To heck with a year-long malolactic. I don't think that's a safe place to go. These are useful tools.
Todd: I think most winemakers go back to the natural sense. The grape is what it is about. If we can go in and enhance that character for the style, then using technology is very beneficial. Most people do the minimum. We are conservative. We are tentative about going in new directions until we see it enhances our ability to get to our goal.
What's the next hot additive?
Todd: I don't think it will be tannins. They just have a little niche here and there for specific issues.
Lars: The safe bet is oak alternatives, but that's a little retrospective because it has already peaked. It's already happening.
Todd: Micro-ox has expanded quite heavily. It's like an additive tool, and it's widely used, but not for all wines.
Lars: It's a tool primarily focused on people making products for early drinkability. I don't think micro-ox will be used by everyone the way we all use SO2 or malolactic bacteria. I think enzymes and nutrients for fermentation will be used by everyone.
What is your general comment about additives and their place in winemaking?
Todd: I think if they are used in the right context you can really enhance what you want to do with your style. You have to be very careful. You need knowledge about your grapes and knowledge about what you are doing, but I think we should always be looking to improve what we do. The additives are something you can use in a winery setting to do that.
Steve: Winemaking technological tools are useful and helpful; however, I strongly believe in improved viticultural technique and focusing on the excellence of the fruit as being more important to fine wine production.
Lars: There are two sides of it. There is determining how you get the best grapes, and then from there on. The fruit is crucial, but then there is more after that. The list of tools is long, and it is expanding rapidly. I don't think it is cheating to use these tools if it allows you to make the wine you like drinking.
A 30-year perspective
This year marks my 30th harvest as a professional winemaker. I admit that I am not on the cutting edge of technology. In my winemaking, I have always leaned toward the "less is more" style of winemaking. Still, I've learned to use SO2 in the crusher and my wine. I use malolactic bacteria to rapidly achieve stability. I prefer aging my wine in oak barrels, but I've come to appreciate why winemakers might opt for oak alternatives.
Enzymes and tannins are new additives for me, ones with which I have no personal experience. Clearly they can help with color extraction and mouthfeel in certain situations. If a winemaker feels that using these additives will improve his wines, then I say go ahead.
Whatever the situation, whether a winemaker is making 100 cases or a million, his goal should be to produce the best wine he can. The only way a winemaker can do that is to follow his heart. My heart is comfortable following a more traditional path. I am excited by other winemakers who are more open to technology, and I eagerly seek information about their results. If, over time, they convince us that these new additives help make better wine, then those of us with a more conservative bent will surely follow their lead. In the meantime, many of us will proceed slowly. When it comes to winemaking, perhaps slow will win the race. It certainly won't hurt. wbm
Lance Cutler is currently the winemaker for Relentless Vineyards. He is also the author of The Tequila Lover's Guide to Mexico and two volumes under his Jake Lorenzo pseudonym. Previously Lance spent 18 years as winemaker/general manager for the historic Gundlach Bundschu Winery in Sonoma. It was during that tenure that he gained his reputation as one of the great funny men in the wine business, organizing the hijacking of the Wine Train and developing a series of posters that are now legendary.
