Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/172581
winemaking intentioned, seems a bit one-sided on at least two counts. First, it suggests that all you get from white skin contact is phenolics, though in fact the skins of at least some varieties are home to a wide range of aromatic goodies and goodie precursors. And second, it suggests that all the phenolics can add is bitterness and astringency, when in fact they can also add positively to mouthfeel and perceived body. Surely there can be excessive phenolic extraction with white grapes; but then, that can happen with reds, too, and that doesn't stop us, does it? So why the ban on showing some skin? In Wine Science, Canadian researcher/writer Ronald Jackson provides some intriguing historical context for the emergence of grape skin phobia as the introduction to a section about white grape maceration. The shift to light, fruity white wines in the 1970s resulted in minimizing skin contact. —Ronald Jackson "The shift to light, fruity white wines in the 1970s resulted in minimizing skin contact. This trend was encouraged by the widespread adoption of mechanical harvesting. However, depending on the tendency of the grapes to rupture, some inevitable maceration occurred on the way to the winery—its extent depending on the duration separating harvest and crushing/ pressing and the temperature of the grapes. Reduced maceration also diminished the uptake of heat-unstable proteins, decreasing the need for protein stabilization products. "Unfortunately, minimizing or eliminating maceration simultaneously reduces the uptake of varietal flavorants located in the skins, such as S-cysteine conjugates in Sauvignon Blanc. For wines dependent on aromatics extracted from the grapes, this became increasingly important with the adoption of gentler pressing, such as provided by pneumatic presses or whole-grape pressing. To offset this deficiency, use of the first and second press-run fractions increased. This option is often easier to manipulate than maceration, due to the complexities of temperature and duration on extraction, precipitation and degeneration of compounds during maceration. Nevertheless, the addition of press fractions augments the wine's phenolic content."2 Jackson nicely captures what got lost in the transition to hyper-gentle, fruit-fixated white winemaking, and he is on the mark about how pressing techniques help to Win es & Vin es O C TO B ER 20 13 83