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WINEMAKING and perhaps palate self-abuse to become con- vinced that grippy tannins and spine-tingling acidity are good for you. From softer to sweeter Finding out the details of sweet red wine- making turned out to be harder than I expected. I spend several hours a month talking with winemakers from small- and medium-sized wineries, and 99% of them are happy to talk and fully aware that there are really no secrets in the wine business, just choices. For this piece, I needed to get through to some of the mega-wineries, and in at least two cases, a phalanx of under- assistant brand managers and PR guardians kept me from ever reaching anyone who had actually seen a fermentation in prog- ress. Fortunately, two others came through. Cupcake Vineyards may be the most ambitious and multifaceted entry into the field. Launched by The Wine Group in 2008, Cupcake is overseen by winemaker Adam Richardson, an Australian-born and trained veteran with experience at a number of major brands, most recently Concannon Vineyard in Livermore. Cupcake aims not only to offer a broad range of softer, acces- sible, approachable wines, but also to make them in premium wine regions all over the world. Cupcake's Sauvignon Blanc comes from Marlborough—and tastes like it; the Malbec comes from Mendoza; the Riesling comes from the Mosel, and the Shiraz is from the Barossa Valley in Australia, where I caught Richardson on his cell phone for an interview. Naturally, Cupcake has a Moscato—in this case an actual Moscato d'Asti from the Asti D.O.C.G. Cupcake thus is far from being just a sweet brand. The range of residual sugar levels stretches from an essentially dry 0.35% in the Sauvignon Blanc to 3% in the Riesling and 11% in the Moscato. Cupcake's reds arrive with just a bit of residual sugar—ex- cept for the Red Velvet (a blend of Zinfan- del, Syrah and half a dozen other grapes), which has much more than a bit (the exact amount, alas, another trade secret) and cur- rently sells 150,000 cases per year. Sugar is only one of the elements Richardson and his team use in the deliberate shaping of wines; tannins, oak, alcohol and acidity are managed with equal care. Richardson acknowledges that in the case of Cupcake, "We make winemaking decisions based on the product, not simply on the grapes." Richardson describes himself as "a tex- ture guy," and mouthfeel is an important part of the Cupcake mission. For the reds, the malolactic fermentation is generally conducted along with the primary—some- times with oak adjuncts in the mix as well, in order to get creaminess and fatness into the wines. Fermentation temperatures are on the cooler side, in the fruit-friendly 80°s, not the high-extract 90°s. Red lots are generally pressed a little early (after about 10 days) to limit tannin extract, and finish both the alcoholic and malolactic fermentations in barrel or tank. YOUR CHEMICAL DISTRIBUTOR OF CHOICE acidulants, alkalis, clarifying agents, vitiben, yeast, and other food grade and cleaning chemicals RICHMOND, CALIFORNIA 877/229-6305 Fax: 510/235-4182 FRESNO, CALIFORNIA 559/485-4150 Treasury estates senior winemaker Lee Mi- yamura makes Beringer's Smooth red with 0.6% sugar "to smooth the blend out." For those reds with an important oak el- ement, Cupcake uses a specific protocol— yes, here we do have an actual trade secret— that mixes French and American barrels with oak adjuncts in a precise combination, aimed at achieving oak integration and oak sweetness. The reds have modest alcohol levels, at least by today's blockbuster stan- dards: the Barossa Shiraz, for example, is a demure 13.8%, the Red Velvet 13.5%. For Richardson, acidity "is a structural tool, but we don't need it outside that. For our reds, we want the taste balanced with acidity, but we don't want to taste acid." Of the Cupcake reds I've tasted, only the Red Velvet proclaims itself to be decidedly sweet. None of them tastes hot, sharply acid- ic, distractingly oaky or the least bit tannic. For that matter, Cupcake drinkers can be sure they will find no trace of Brett or VA or hydrogen sulfide, nothing to get in the way of a pleasant, young, fruity, varietal and re- gionally correct wine. Richardson muses that people buying $15 wine (the Cupcake wines sell for a few bucks less than that) often get a more pure, clear expression of a given wine than the people paying $50 per bottle, since the effort to make small-batch, high-extract, age-worthy wines often results in a tannic Wines & Vines JUne 2012 49 Fax: 559/485-0605