Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/116287
OAK ALTERNATIVES (Continued from page 41.) Leonardini said he met with a representative from the oak barrel alternative supplier Vivelys (the U.S. arm of the French company Boisé France), who recommended he develop an alternative program to replicate the barrels. He said most oak barrel alternative companies provide sample kits for 750ml bottles and bench-top analysis, but Vivelys set up an extensive trial program with 5-liter test lots. "It blew us away," Leonardini said. For the 2010 vintage, Leonardini has steadily increased his use of oak alterna- Vivelys provides clients with 5-liter bag-inbox kits with oak chips for bench-top trials. tives for Butternut to keep pace with the brand's growth. He said he's been able to match the barrel program with alternatives and has found them to be even more consistent than barrels. Leonardini is such a fan of the products he'd make the full switch if it weren't for the fact that consumers and even the wine-buying trade prefer to see wineries use barrels rather than alternatives. "They still want to see barrels, but there's so much success in this alternative oak; it's so precise," he said. With alternatives, Leonardini said he can rely on regular addition rates, and with the wine mainly staying in tanks there's less risk of contamination from barrels or during racking or filling. It's also easier to modulate oak flavors by adding more alternatives or moving the wine off the oak. Masking green flavors and making teas Caroline Hoogenboom Napa - Sonoma Cell. (707) 364-6334 caroline@ermitageusa.com Amy Lee Oregon - Washington Central coast of California Cell. (509) 995-2771 amy@ermitageusa.com Vincent Garry Sales Director Cell. (707) 225-2105 vincent@ermitageusa.com Office: Tel: (707) 224-2377 Fax: (707) 224-2390 433 Soscol Avenue Suite B151 Napa, California 94559 - USA 44 W in e s & V i ne s AP R I L 2 013 Parc d'activités des Bertranges - 58400 La Charité-sur-Loire - France Tel. + 33 3 86 69 43 79 | FAX + 33 3 86 69 67 47 | www.tonnellerie-ermitage.com french oak dominos Reed Renaudin, winemaker and CEO of Napa Valley's X Winery, said oak alternatives were useful during the 2011 vintage, when he had to deal with several green lots because of the cooler vintage. He said he found that using oak alternatives early in primary and secondary fermentation really helped tone down the green aromatic and green olive flavors. "That's what I found real eye opening: how much we could change the wine," he said. Christianson, with Canyon Wind Cellars, also said the 2011 harvest produced fruit with pronounced pyrazine flavors, but a little bit of micro-oxygenation and oak chips in the tank helped deal with them. "We managed to eliminate that issue—at least from a sensory standpoint," he said. In the past three years, Renaudin said he's been moving away from just using untoasted oak during fermentation to a mix of light and medium toasted chips. The conventional wisdom has been that untoasted oak helps color while not imparting too much oak to the wine. Reanaudin, however, said color has not been much of a factor while the oak integrates well into the overall mouthfeel and aroma. "We certainly have taken a lot more aggressive approach to getting oak in earlier," he said. Renaudin said he has had less success making small 550- and 275-gallon lots of super saturated "oak teas" that he had hoped to add back to wines. He said the idea had been to give wines a shot of oak for blending to enable a quicker turn around to bottling and distribution. The wines, however, often exhibited a rawness that needed time to mellow out, negating the time advantage Renaudin hoped he would gain with the teas. He also cautioned that not all alternatives are equal and said he's found he needs to be as prudent with his pick of alternatives as