Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/62522
WINEMAKING ers to list all the products and machinery they don't use, I asked what they do use, what they concentrate on and what they think explains their ability to flourish without the usual net. Tony Coturri started with the long view: that people made wine for thousands of years before Pasteur, using yeast before they knew anything about yeast, let alone pectic enzymes. And he's certainly right; there's an analogy here to organic farming, in which all farming was organic from the beginning of cultivation to the mid-20th century, when agrochemicals created what is now "conventional" farming. Coturri thinks grapes are special. "Of all the fruits and berries," he says, "grapes are one of the few with the balance of tannin structure, acid structure and sugar/alcohol that can preserve them. The fear is that without chemicals, wine is defenseless; but in fact it has built-in defenses." He also highlights the evolution of wild yeasts into strains that can complete a fermentation: "Cultured yeasts often come from places where they originated as natural yeasts." The first thing everyone I talked to emphasized was good, healthy, balanced fruit—grapes that do not need superhu- man efforts to rescue them from them- QualityStainless_Apr05 3/9/05 "A lot of the resistance to natural wine- making," says Roberts, "comes from peo- ple who want to use fruit that's too ripe, which means having to use nutrients, color extraction enzymes and so on. If you hang the fruit long enough, the nutrients dimin- ish. You cannot make those big, extracted, high-alcohol wines in a natural way." Every one of my informants empha- Low-intervention winemaker Steve Edmunds of Edmunds St. John sends samples to a service lab before making filtration decisions. 11:12 AM selves. "The main thing," says Nathan Roberts, "is working with fruit that will produce wine that doesn't need messing with." These producers tend to pick on the early side, with relatively lower Brix and pH levels and higher acidity. Page 1 Quality - Value - Experience Quality Stainless Tanks • Professionally crafted • Perfomance guaranteed • Custom designs & features • Quick & competitive pricing • Repairs & modifications • Special application tanks • Stainless winery equipment • Tanks in stock for immediate shipping from 500 to 10,000 gallon capacity Quality Stainless Tanks 510 Caletti Avenue • Windsor, CA 95492 Phone: 707.837.2721 • Fax: 707.837.2733 Toll-Free: 877.598.0672 www.qualitystainless.com winetanks@aol.com 44 Wines & Vines DeCeMBeR 201 1 Fabricated Stainless Cooperage Custom Patent # 7357069 sized cleanliness in the cellar as absolutely indispensable. Every winery in existence endorses cleanliness, but these producers clearly make it Job One, with an attention to detail made easier by relatively small production. (At "5,000 cases in a good year," Coturri is the biggest label in this quartet.) Scrubbing surfaces, sanitizing ev- erything that comes in contact with grapes or juice or wine, topping barrels religious- ly—these seem like mundane things, but they matter. The Brandts emphasize the importance of sheer physical cleaning, getting every speck of every kind of stuff out of the way. Since their fermentations take place in wooden vats, that means ferreting junk out of the slats and crevices with a toothbrush; they also employ "pigs" to traverse their hoses and scour them out. In a more high-tech vein, several of these Inspired Design Our spirals made from Premium, American or French Oak deliver 100% new barrel flavor (8 months) in as little as six weeks. Now you can boast authentic oak flavor using neutral barrels or tanks – with rapid, controllable and predictable results. www.InfusionSpiral.com (800) 201-7125 West Coast–New York–Texas Len Napolitano (805) 712-4471 len@thebarrelmill.com Four toast levels Economical Sustainable Time-saving