Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/62409
Winemaker F Costs and Benefits of Additives Inquiring TIM P A T TERSON or last month's column, I talked to and wrote about sev- eral practitioners of more or less "natural" winemak- ing—advocates of skipping the sulfites and letting the ambient yeasts fall where they may. Whatever else they do, these naturalistas are definitely not steady custom- ers of the many eager suppliers of packaged enzymes, microbes, boosters and sure-fire wine enhancements. Somehow, even while taking a pass on the latest aromatic yeast strains and secret nutrient sauces, a plucky band of them manage to make good wine, year after year, relying mainly on the virtues of great fruit and rigorous sanitation. My survey was hardly ex- haustive, but it did suggest that top-notch wine can indeed be produced without an ingredient list that reads like the ingredients box on the back of a can of pork and beans—"Grapes, selected yeast strains, diammonium phosphate, N-acetylmuramide glycan- hydrolase, pectinases, hydrolysable ellagitannins, teinturier distil- late, diatomaceous earth, inert gases." "If you do things the same way all the time, you lose the chance to make something great or learn something important." —Kirk Venge, Venge Vineyards The vast majority of commercial wineries, however, use some or all of the above ingredients—and quite a few others as well. It can't be that 99% of the winemakers are idiots, or have been taken for a ride by additive reps with charming French accents, or were brainwashed by demonic instructors at UC Davis. More likely, they have their own good reasons. But from time to time, it's good to examine exactly why wineries invest in trainloads of these products, how much they invest and whether some products are indispensable. I did two rounds of phone interviews to explore these issues, first to a quartet of major fermentation products suppliers, which have both an overview of and a vested interest in this market, and then to a quintet of veteran winemakers who have picked and chosen among the bewildering number of offerings over the years, asking them what they use and why. 132 Wines & Vines JAnUARY 2012 Highlights • Since good wine can be made without the array of additives on the market, why is that market so big? • Motivations for using processing aids vary by market sector. • Winemaking choices reflect a range of concerns, from preven- tion of spoilage to stylistic control, and generally get made for conscious reasons. Pennies per gallon But first, what do all these packaged picker-uppers cost? Are they a significant factor in any winery's budgeting? Are the nature-lov- ers just spending their money on grapes and laughing all the way to the bank? I looked through the catalogs and price lists from Scott Labo- ratories, Gusmer, Laffort and Enartis Vinquiry, all major sup- pliers to the industry. Yeast prices range widely, reflecting the different costs of production of standard, generic strains and specialized, niche strains; a kilogram might cost anywhere from about $35 to just under $200. Malolactic bacteria cultures are the priciest ingredient, somewhere around $550 for enough freeze-dried starter to convert 6,500 gallons of wine. Enzymes for clarification, extraction, maceration and other purposes are all over the map, from $30 to $250 per kilo. Even lowly benton- ite might cost $20 for a 50-pound sack, and wineries often go through lots and lots of sacks. By the bag or box, some of these prices are a bit daunting, and when harvest is on the horizon and the order for processing aids comes to several thousand dollars, it can be enough to give pause before signing the check. But when the price tag is broken down into cost per ton of grapes or per bottle or gallon of wine, the fig- ures aren't that alarming. The fanciest yeasts come in well under 20 cents per gallon, and the basic strains work out to around 3 or 4 cents. That $600 sachet of malolactic bacteria does its thing for about two cents per bottle; enzymes might run between $2 and $8 per ton—meanwhile the grapes themselves could cost up to a thousand times as much.