Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/235941
TIM PATTERSON Inquiring Winemaker Winemakers Rely on Living Equipment W hat's the most important piece of equipment in any winery? Most of the gear buzz in the past few years has been about the nexus of sorting, destemming and (barely if at all) crushing: The quest for perfect, squeaky clean, absolutely intact berries at the start of fermentation. The choice of cooperages and toast levels in a barrel program can make or break a wine. Membranes do magical things. Flash Détente may save the world. Of course, none of these gizmos come close to the most critical machinery in the cellar: the winemaker's taste buds and his or her olfactory bulb. The reason wine is made by people and not computers or 3D printers is that some human has to taste and sniff the stuff all the way along the line and make dozens of decisions based on the mental readouts from these tiny little Highlights • he most important pieces of equipment T in any winery are the tasting and smelling abilities of the winemaker. • aste, not lab analysis or computer T printouts, drives most important winemaking decisions. • ood winemakers are the first to G recognize that their palates have limitations and seek ways to incorporate other input into evaluating wines. 36 W in e s & V i ne s January 20 14 organs. It's the place where art meets science in winemaking. But winemaker organoleptic equipment doesn't get much press or even much attention in the industry. Many of you may be reading this during the annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, which is always accompanied by a huge trade show dispensing endless information about everything from mechanical harvesters to barrel bungs. Ever see a booth devoted to taste buds? How does anyone know whether Winemaker X can taste anything at all, or whether he has a long string of blind spots, or substitutes personal taste quirks for objective evaluation? Do winemakers ever ask anybody else for second or third opinions? Does anybody think about what consumers might taste and might like? Full disclosure: Tim Hanni put me up to this. The roguish Master of Wine and the former Mondavi PR chief—Team Sweet as I refer to them—emailed me about the intriguing phenomenon of winemakers with sweet/ sensitive palates working in an industry that worships big, dry, tannic, oaky, alcoholic reds above all. I thought of writing up this doublebind for Psychology Today, but then realized there was a broader question worth examining: What role do taste buds play in winemaking, and how much attention do they get? Time to call up a bunch of veteran winemakers in different parts of the country working with different styles of wine. Inquiring winemakers want to know… Why buds and bulbs are indispensable While harvest 2013 was in full swing, I managed to track down Marco Cappelli, a consulting winemaker in the Sierra Foothills and the former winemaker at Swanson Vineyards in Napa, Calif.; Jeff Booth, former winemaker at Pine Ridge Vineyards, now consulting and making wine for Goosecross Cellars in Napa; French-born Bernard Cannac at Heron Hill Winery in the New York Finger Lakes; Coby ParkerGarcia at Alsatian-inflected Claiborne & Churchill Vintners in San Luis Obispo, Calif.; Jim Pfeiffer of Turtle Run Winery in southern Indiana; Ondine Chattan at Geyser Peak Winery in Sonoma, Calif.; Harry Peterson-Nedry at Chehalem in the Willamette Valley (Oregon); Phil Steinschriber at Diamond Creek Vineyards in Calistoga, Calif.; and Cathy Corison of Corison in St. Helena, Calif. Some of these names came from Hanni's suggestions, some from their association with wines I happen to like, some out of thin air. I figured that if this group didn't know something about tasting wine, the entire industry would be in serious trouble. And before I got through explaining the reason for my midcrush phone calls, nearly every one of them interrupted me to say that taste buds and noses were the most important things in a winery. "There's a wine inside of me trying to get out, and that's what I'm trying to make." —Cathy Corison The difference between how winemakers taste wine and how consumers taste wine centers on the fact that winemakers taste and re-taste at every stage—from unripe fruit through fermentation and aging and preSee us at Unified booth #5044