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November 2018 WINES&VINES 75 WINEMAKING and cordon or cane pruning most popular. Harvest Brix typically fall from 17° to 22°, har- vest pH 3.0 to 3.33, and TA from 7.7 to 12. To keep sugars down, acids up, and allow flavors to develop appropriately, Stuart said he rarely crops above 2 tons per acre. "This is a key point, in that many United States produc- ers try to lower the sugar in their base wines by cropping at high levels like 4 to 5 tons per acre," he said. "This just dilutes the flavor. Or they try to pick early so that the sugar is lower and the acid is higher to match French num- bers. This also doesn't work. You end up with underripe flavors." Traditional sparkling wine production in- cludes pressing the fruit, base wine production, assemblage, secondary fermentation, bottle aging, collecting the sediment, riddling, dé- gorgement, dosage, sealing and cellaring. Pressing Most of those interviewed perform two presses, with yields for the first press of 100 to 130 gallons per ton, and 20 to 25 gallons per ton for the second. Equinox uses the taille (final press juice) for still wine production. William Heritage presses and then co-fer- ments the Pinot Noir and Chardonnay blend. "We only make one sparkling wine each year and utilize this technique throughout," Comninos said. "This is sometimes due to tank space issues but is really just related to the small volumes we're producing. At the time, the tanks we were settling and fermenting in were tall 2,100-liter SK tanks from Slovenia with the cooling jacket at center. Unless I had enough volume, we would not make it up to the jacket height. That's why they weren't fermented separately, and (then) blended. I continue to use this technique. I feel the wine is better balanced this way, by treating all the components as a whole." Comninos uses an SK Group PST 8 800- liter pneumatic bladder press to perform a standard Champagne pressing, a series of three squeezes with gradually increasing pres- sures up to 1.2 bar, totaling 1.25 hours for the cuvée. An additional set of three more gradu- ated squeezes for the taille, up to 1.6 bar with three or four rotations between, adds an ad- ditional hour to the process. After pressing, the juice is cold-stabilized and allowed to settle before the must is racked off and moved to steel tanks or bar- rels for inoculation with cultured yeasts to initiate fermentation. Darren Michaels, technical consultant at Laffort USA, advises many sparkling wine producers, and recommends a set of best prac- tices. He finds the most-used yeast strains are DV10, EC1118 and Spark, especially for tirage. Michaels advises cold-stabilizing with Man- nostab and Celstab, instead of traditional stabilizing, because testing has shown that both instantly cold-stabilize when used. Man- nostab is a mannoprotein-based product, and Celstab is a CMC (carboxymethyl cellulose) based product. "A lot of my clients use combi- nation products like Polylact (casein and poly- vinylpolypyrrolidone, or PVPP) and Argilact (casein and enological bentonite) to remove some of the bitter phenolics," Michaels said. He added that these are best when utilized on juice, rather than wine. He also notes that in Europe, many producers are moving away from animal-based products toward Vegecoll, a plant- based fining agent, which, when mixed with bentonite and PVPP, is called Polymust Press. Primary fermentation In his experience, Michaels said he typically finds that even though base wine primary fermentations don't require as much added nitrogen because of the lower potential alco- hol, most producers use at least a small amount of complex nutrients that are a mix of DAP (diammonium phosphate) and purified yeast components. "More and more are using or- ganic nitrogen sources (as opposed to DAP) like Nutristart ORG for better aromatics," he said. "Sometimes with DAP-based nutrition you will get a 'vitamin' aroma." Artesa, R. Stuart and Scharffenberger use YAN (yeast assimilable nitrogen), prefer ranges of 200 to 350 parts per million (ppm); R. Stuart prefers 140 ppm. Scharffenberger adds DAP as needed with thiamine at 58 milligrams per hectoliter; R. Stuart with Fermaid K if necessary to reach 140 ppm YAN; and William Heritage uses 0.24 grams per liter of DAP with Spring- Ferm at the start of fermentation, and again at one-third depletion. Maximum primary fermen- tation temperatures range from 51° F to 88° F. About half the winemakers use fining agents during primary fermentation. Artesa prefers PVPP, while R. Stuart & Co. and Wil- liam Heritage use bentonite. Racking is gener- ally performed, typically at least once, and juice cold-stabilized. Most wines do not undergo full malolactic fermentation, with a few exceptions. Artesa uses full malolactic fermentation for the 2016 Codorníu Napa Grand Reserve BARRICA and partial malolactic fermentation for the 2015 Codorníu Napa Grand Reserve Rosé. Approxi- mately 80% of Scharffenberger's non-vintage Brut Excellence undergoes malolactic fermen- tation, depending upon the vintage acid pro- file. Jindra notes, "The 'malo' style is very characteristic of the Scharffenberger Brut." Scharffenberger and William Heritage do not leave their wines on lees, nor does R. Stu- art for its non-vintage Bubbly. Only Artesa stirs the lees for all of its wines, and R. Stuart for its non-vintage Rosé d'Or. Assemblage The assembly (assemblage) of base wines into blends takes place after completion of primary fermentation. All single-vintage wines used base Jeffrey Jindra (left) is the winemaker at Scharffenberger Cellars in the Anderson Valley of California. Ana Diogo-Draper (center) is the director of winemaking at Artesa Vineyards & Winery. Barry Jackson (right) produces his own sparkling wine for the Equinox brand and consults as well. LUCILLE LAWRENCE PHOTOGRAPHY L.M. ARCHER L.M. ARCHER