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| The Wines: How We Make Wine | ||||
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Winemaking at Clos Pepe Estate
The purpose of this page is to familiarize the wine-drinking community with the cultural practices and enological philosophy of Clos Pepe Estate wines. In other words, we want you to know how we take the grapes we grow (click here to see a tour of the farming of the grape) and turn them into wine. Many wineries don't like to talk about how their wines are made -- they consider some aspect of their winemaking a 'trade secret', and think by divulging their 'recipe' they will diminish the mystery and fascination of the final product. At Clos Pepe we believe farming the Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grape is the lion's share of winemaking labor. As the vineyard manager/winemaker/marketing director/webmaster of Clos Pepe I have a unique perspective on winemaking -- I get to help prune the bare vines in the dead of winter, watch the vines burst into growth each spring, help tend and position the vines to assure the fruit is bathed in coastal sunlight, test the fruit as it gets ripe, and finally harvest the fruit to make wine in late September through early November. Harvest occurs early in the morning, usually under a blanket of cold fog. Once the thousand-pound picking bins are filled with lustrous, cold, ripe clusters they are whisked away to the winery where the ancient practice of winemaking continues....
Chardonnay(click here to lean more about the varietal and to see flavor profiles of Chardonnay) The grapes arrive early at A/K Cellars/Kahn Winery in Lompoc where we share space with many other small wine producers. One nice thing about being both the vineyard manager and the winemaker is that your fruit is never late to the winery, and you never have to wait patiently for your turn to get 'picked out' while the weather warms and the fruit gets hot in the sun. I'm a bit of a freak for early morning picking. The sooner the fruit is out of the field, the colder it will be when it is crushed or pressed. In Chardonnay, this is absolutely vital. Hot grapes can begin spontaneously fermenting and producing volatile acidity, which will negatively impact wine flavor. We press our Chardonnay 'whole-cluster', which means we do not remove the stems before the fruit goes in the press. So after the press is sanitized, bathed in citric acid and rinsed until it is very clean, we open up the doors of 'Babe' the old 1970's classic Willmes bladder press and fill her up with about 1 ton of cold, golden clusters with the help of a forklift (equipped with a 'bin dumper').
The press itself is a long cylinder on wheels, about twelve feet long and maybe four feet wide. It's outside is perforated steel and reinforced steel hoops that keep the press together. The inside of the press is hollow with a very sturdy rubber 'balloon' inside. Once the press is filled with grapes and the doors snapped into place and bolted shut, we turn on the air compressor, open the valve, the rubber 'bladder' fills with air, pushing the grapes against each other and the perforated steel walls. Juice starts running out of the press and into a sanitized stainless-steel pan underneath. The pan is slightly tilted, and at the lower end there is a valve with a hose attached. That hose has a small air-driven diaphragm pump attached, and another hose that goes into an empty barrel or stainless steel tank. So when the press-pan fills, we pump the juice into a tank or into barrel for fermentation. This year we have been pressing two ton lots (about 300 gallons of juice at a pressure of under 1.5 'bars', which is quite gentle) into a chilled stainless tank where it settles overnight. When the tank is about one-third full we make a small sulfite addition to keep the juice stable and free from oxidation, and also add Fermaid, which is basically nutrient for the wine yeast to feed on to keep the fermentation happy and thorough. The next morning we return and 'rack' the clean juice off the sediment (which settles at the bottom of the tank), putting the golden, sweet juice into clean, prepared barrels. At this point we inoculate the barrels with Lalvin CY3079 yeast at the rate of 1 gram per gallon, prepared (attenuated) in warm, distilled water. For more on that specific yeast strain, click here.
There is usually a lag phase in fermentation of up to 48 hours, as the juice is still cold and needs to warm up a little bit before the fermentation really gets 'popping'. Usually on the second day the barrels (which are only three-quarters full at this point so they don't 'foam over' during primary fermentation) begin to 'sizzle' with the sounds of fermentation -- yeasts are consuming natural sugars in the grape juice and manufacturing two main by-products -- alcohol and carbon dioxide gas. The CO2 gas serves a purpose -- it lies on the top of the juice/wine during fermentation so no oxygen comes in contact with the wine, keeping the wine safe from oxidation, which can turn the wine (slowly over months) into vinegar. The wine is very turbid (cloudy) during fermentation -- looking milky as the yeast does its work and the Chardonnay solids are continually mixed into the wine by the strong microbiological activity occurring in the wine. Placing your nose in the bung-hole of the barrel at this point will result in the sharp smell of CO2 gas, mingled with apple, pear, grapefruit, mango, minerals and pineapple. Depending on the temperature in the winery (warm weather will make fermentation faster, cold slows it down) the wine will reach 'dryness' (no measurable sugar left) within a few weeks if all goes well. At this point the barrels are 'topped up' so there is no air space in the barrel. Topping up also occurs every Monday in the winery to assure the wines are always stable and not in contact with air. Religious topping of barrels, in my humble opinion, is one of the most vital practices to keeping a wine healthy, delicious and stable. OK... so the wine is dry, and begins to 'fall out' and clarify, meaning the solids and mannoproteins (dead yeast cells) fall to the bottom of the barrel and form what are called 'lees', a gritty pudding-like substance that continually 'feeds' the wine flavor and complexity. Clean lees are left in contact with Chardonnay as long as possible. If the lees are 'stinky' with excess sulfur from the vineyard the clean wine is 'racked' out of the barrel by gravity (siphoning hose), and the barrel is emptied, cleaned, and refilled with clean wine only. 'Batonage', the process of stirring the barrels to increase lees contact with the wine, is practiced every two weeks in the winery. It is believed that barrel-stirring in Chardonnay increases complex, nutty aromas and can also increase the flavors and complexity of the wine by constantly putting the wine in contact with the mannoproteins, which suspend most of the flavor in young, developing wine. At this point, a few weeks after primary fermentation is complete, we inoculate our Chardonnay with leuconostoc oenos bacteria. This special bacteria eats the tart, apply malic acid in the young Chardonnay and produces smooth, nutty, buttery lactic acid in its stead. This process ('malolactic fermentation') can take up to six months, and again depends on the temperature of the wine in cask. We make our wine in the chilly coastal gloom of Lompoc, CA where temperatures are commonly in the 60's, even during the summer. This helps us enjoy long, cool fermentations without temperature modification in the winery, which help preserve fresh, fruity flavors in both our Chardonnay and Pinot Noir fermentations. The oak barrels I use for Chardonnay (we use mainly stainless steel casks, but will often rack into neutral wood for the mouthfeel) are a minimum of five years old, which adds only a hint of oak flavor to the wine. Most Chardonnay producers like a lot of new wood in their wine, but I prefer the underoaked wines of the Cote de Beaune and Chablis as my blueprint for style. The Clos Pepe fruit has an amazing underlying acidity and minerality that can become overwhelmed by new oak. Quite frankly, I believe that the fruit is so beautiful it doesn't need the added flavors of new oak to be complex, big and delicious. As 'malolactic fermentation' finishes, the wine has evolved from aromas of pineapple, grapefruit, mango and overt fruitiness to a wine filled with mature aromas of pear, apple, hazelnut, wet stones, firm acidity, lime blossom, yet with the rich, opulent sweetness up front in the palate, and bracing acidity, dryness, and minerals in the finish. The wine lives in barrel for up to 12 months, during which it is sent to the laboratory for testing and analysis, to assure there are no microbiological problems brewing invisibly in the wine. When bottling day nears, the clean wine is 'racked' and transferred to a chilled tank, a small amount of sulfite is added to make sure the wine won't get fizzy or oxidize in bottle, and then the wine is pumped directly from the tank to the bottling line without filtration. Once the bottles fill, they are corked and a tin capsule is 'spun' on the neck of the bottle. If the labels are ready at bottling, they are also applied before the bottle comes off the mobile bottling truck. The bottles are then hand-wiped clean and placed upside-down in empty wine cases, which are sealed shut and stacked on a palette. The wine is stored in a cool cellar in Lompoc for four months to get over 'bottling-shock' before it is shipped out to excited clients like you. That's the story of Clos Pepe Estate Chardonnay, from vine to finished product.
Pinot Noir
Making Pinot Noir from Clos Pepe fruit is a joy. We farm the vineyard for an entire year to produce one low-yield crop (usually less than 2 tons per acre, which roughly approximates Burgundian AOC requirements for 'Grand Cru' wine production), so when harvest comes it represents an entire year's work for many of us. Similar to the production of Chardonnay, we spend the months leading up to harvest carefully testing the fruit to see the sugar content (usually measured in degrees 'Brix', or alternately the percentage of potential alcohol that the wine will have after fermentation), the pH of the juice (which is a measure of hydrogen ion activity in the juice which roughly translates into acidity), and the 'titratable acidity' of the wine, which precisely measures how much actual acid exists in the juice, measured in grams per liter. Ripe Chardonnay shows numbers around 24 to 25 Brix (13.5%-14.5% potential alcohol), pH value between 3.2 and 3.4 with a titratable acidity of around 7 to 9 grams per liter. Pinot Noir, our varietal focus here, needs to be a little more ripe to produce the style of wine we enjoy. We like to see Brix levels of around 25 to 25.5 degrees, with pH between 3.35 and 3.5 with titratable acidity above 6 grams per liter. When the grapes are tested in our labs here at Clos Pepe and show these type of ripe numbers, we allow our palates to make the final decision for a picking date -- we taste and taste the grapes out in the field and wait until they taste rich, ripe and delicious, and the seeds show the darkened colors of fully phenolically ripe fruit. When all these conditions are met, we schedule a pre-dawn pick with a large crew to get the fruit out of the field fast and cool. The clusters of Pinot Noir here at Clos Pepe are tiny, velvety and lustrous in the cold fog of the early morning. A good picker can catch five or six in their hand before having to place them in the picking buckets. The buckets are filled to about twenty pounds of fruit (3-5 minutes for a good picker), and then added to the thousand-pound picking bins that are towed behind the tractor. As the bins are filled, they are unloaded via forklift and placed into the shade until the picking is done and the grapes can be driven the few miles into Lompoc. If we get the picking done on schedule, the grapes should be downright chilly when they arrive at the crush platform at the A/K Cellars facility. At that point the grapes are bin-dumped slowly and carefully (with a person checking to make sure nothing unusual is dumped into the machine like picking shears, cel phones or coke cans) into a crusher-destemmer machine. We set the crusher destemmer to completely remove the stems from the clusters. The stems shoot out the side of the machine into an empty bin while the berries and juice drop together into a ton-and-a-half fermenter. A tiny bit of sulfite is added to keep the grapes and juice from oxidizing before fermentation starts. When we're done we have a fermenter filled with lovely Pinot Noir grapes and juice. The pinkish hue of the juice immediately starts to soak up the color from the area between the skin and the vacuoles that hold the juice -- an area of the grape called the hypodermis. Over the next 2-3 days the Pinot Noir grapes and juice are allowed to 'cold soak' without the addition of commercial yeast. There are plenty of native yeasts present in the 'must' (the name for the mix of juice and grapes of red wine before and during fermentation), but the juice is cold enough to retard primary fermentation for at least a few days. Red wine grapes that are brought in warm or hot from the field have little chance of going through the 'cold soak' process, because spontaneous native fermentations begin as soon (or even before) the grapes are crushed and destemmed. Yeast is certainly temperature sensitive, and will increase its activity up to and beyond 90 degrees Fahrenheit, or around 30 degrees C. If the grapes and juice are crushed under 60 degrees F, there is a good chance that cold soak will be a viable option. During this cold soak period the must is 'punched down' two or three times a day to mix the juice with the grape skins and hasten the process of juice contact with the hypodermal layer of the grapes. After only a few hours of cold soak the color of the juice becomes dark plum to purple in color, and begins to smell like blackberry jam with hints of wild cherry, strawberry, clean earth and sticky sweetness.
A few days after the Pinot Noir has been crushed and soaked, the interior edges of the picking bins will become noticeably warmer as the native yeasts begin consuming the natural sugars present in the juice and warming the sides as a result of their activity. When this happens, I know instinctively as a winemaker that the must is perfectly suited for a yeast and yeast-nutrient addition. If the native yeasts are poised to ferment, a carefully chosen commercial strain from Burgundy, RC212 (click here to learn a little more about this yeast strain), will certainly be up to the task of fermenting the wine to dryness, taking over the fermentation from the native strains. In this way we get a complex fermentation that starts with native yeasts, adding indigenous fermentation esters, and then utilizing a commercial, tried-and-tested Pinot Noir yeast that is known for slow, cool fermentation that will take the wine to dryness and promote complex flavors and good color. After 'swelling' or 'attenuating' the dry yeast in warm water for 30 minutes and beating it with a whisk, the yeast is added to a corner of the fermenter so it has the chance to munch sugars, multiply, and form a healthy population in the sweet must. Six hours later the entire fermenter is stirred and the wine begins to ferment in earnest by the next day. At this point the must changes dramatically. Before primary fermentation was 'fired up' the grapes just sat floating in the juice and seemed pretty lifeless. Now the fermentation is throwing off lots of CO2 gas (you remember that yeast eats sugar and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide gas as by-products). The CO2 gets trapped in grape skins and causes them to rise. These gas-charged skins are known as the 'cap' -- there are usually six inches to a foot of these 'floating' grape skins on top of the juice (which has sunk to the bottom of the fermenter via gravity). Because we want to constantly have juice in contact with the skins we 'punch down' the skins back into the fermenting juice/wine at least four times per day to increase the skin to juice contact, to extract flavor and color, and to keep the skins from oxidizing at the top of the fermenter. Mixing the juice and the skins produces an anti-oxidative environment. Get lazy with your 'punch downs' and the wine can quickly turn aldehydic and start to smell like ethyl acetate -- or nail polish remover. A good punch down will mix the juice and the grapes into a consistent mixture, thereby protecting the must from oxidation, and putting the juice back in contact with the skins and the seeds, which lend tannin and phenolic compounds to the final wine.
After about 3 days of cold soak and 7 to 10 days of primary fermentation, the must is ready to be pressed. I choose to press my Pinot Noir a little sweet and allow the last bit of fermenting to occur in the barrel. There's a few reasons for this. First, the wine is still producing CO2, which means that the wine will be protected as it's pressed by its own production of a layer of inert gas. If I pressed the wine totally dry (with no fermentation occurring) the wine would be in contact with more oxygen, and the wine, in my estimation, would suffer from a 'rougher' handling. There is also a widely-held belief, especially in Australia, that pressing a wine sweet into barrel will help protect some of the more delicate fruit aromas in the wine. I also like to know that the wine makes a 'home' in a clean oak barrel while still fermenting. In this manner, the wine makes a bit of CO2 gas in the top of the barrel before the first topping up to guarantee the wine won't start oxidizing. I have used the analogy that Pinot Noir is a lot like a chocolate souffl‚' in an oven. You really don't want to shake it or handle it roughly, lest it will fall and be rendered lifeless. With a wine like Syrah you can beat the hell out of it and it may well make the wine better. Pinot Noir benefits from gentle handling and minimal air contact. These are the reasons I press my Pinot Noir while it still contains about 5% fermentable sugars, at which time the wine has fully absorbed all the flavor, tannin, color and phenolic compounds from the hypodermis and seeds. The fermenters are picked up by a forklift with a hydraulic bin-dumper, the free-run wine is sucked out of the fermenter with a hose, and only then are the skins dumped into 'Babe', the venerable Willmes bladder-press. The doors are shut and bolted shut, the bladder is inflated and the skins are gently pressed until the wine is all in the pan below and the skins are fairly dry. All this wine is pumped gently into a stainless tank so it can settle overnight. At that point the 'racked' wine (cloudy and still fermenting) is moved into clean (medium toast) Francois Frerer French-oak barrels from the Allier forest (about 1/3 of them being new). The barrels are filled almost to the top until fermentation slows down, at which time they are topped weekly to assure there is no air-space in the barrels, which can cause the wine to oxidize. There the wine will finish primary fermentation, which will last a week or two, and then be inoculated for 'ML' or malolactic fermentation, just like the Chardonnay. Malolactic fermentation is a process almost all red wines go through (Beaujolais Nouveau being the only exception I can think of), which makes the wine rich, seamless and more elegant in the midpalate and more satin-smooth in the finish. During it's year in barrel the tannins in the wine (which start out as single molecules that can taste chalky and even astringent) polymerize into chains which will soften their mouth-feel and give the Pinot Noir its famous silky finish. Pinot Noir is an ephemeral beast in barrel -- constantly changing as it matures. The wine can taste wildly different from week to week, month to month. When harvest starts to roll around a year later, the wine is racked clean into a tank for bottling, and a small amount of sulfite is added to stabilize the wine before it is pumped directly to the bottling line without fining or filtration. With the use of two tank-settlings, one before pressing and one before bottling, we never have to rack the wine out of the barrel and back in, which gives the wine a gentle existence that pays off with unspoiled fruit aromas, great purity and concentration in the bottle and in the glass.
Yeasts We Use in FermentationLALVIN CY3079 - S. cerevisiae 500gm. & 10Kg This strain was selected from fermentations in the Burgundy region, with the objective being to isolate a strain that would complement the typical white Burgundy styles of winemaking. A slow steady fermenter, even at cooler temperatures, this strain demonstrates a good alcohol tolerance and low production of volatile acidity and hydrogen sulfides. It is highly recommended for barrel fermented and sur lie aged Chardonnay. The CY3079 releases peptides at the end of fermentation that are believed to enhance many of the aromas such as fresh butter, honey, white flowers and pineapple. Tastings of both tank fermentations in the Chablis region and barrel fermentations in the Montrachet region showed richer, fuller mouthfeel compared to other strains. This strain was isolated and selected by the Bureau Interprofessional des Vins de Bourgogne. 'We use CY3079 for all of our Chardonnay production. It ferments slow and steady for us and really brings out gorgeous aromas and big mouthfeel. We feel this yeast is a perfect match for the complex, taut, minerally, bone-dry, 'Chablis' style of wine that we try to create here at Clos Pepe Estate.' Wes Hagen -- Winemaker, Clos Pepe Estate LALVIN RC212 - S. cerevisiae 500gm. The RC212 is traditionally used for full red wines produced in the Burgundy region. The characteristics of RC212 are good alcohol and high temperature tolerance and excellent color stability. Isolated and selected by the B.I.V.B. 'RC212 is a yeast that I love with all my heart. It has never let me down in my years as a Pinot Noir winemaker. It starts slow, ferments cool and long to maintain wonderful fruit aromatics. In general, we allow our Pinot Noir to soak for 2-5 days without yeast addition, and when the native yeasts begin the fermentation we inoculate with RC212 to take over. This way we have both the complexity of a multi-yeast ferment, but we know the commerical yeast (RC212) is likely to take over and assure the wine goes dry and has excellent color and complexity without the addition of enzymes. We are experimenting with different yeasts for Pinot Noir production starting in 2005, including Barolo isolates and some Swiss yeasts.' Wes Hagen -- Winemaker, Clos Pepe Estate
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