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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING May 2016 WINES&VINES 75 Custom made - Handcrafted Barrels www.walterjelly.com 608.831.1405 whj wine print.indd 1 2/6/13 5:59:47 PM new insights about Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. He said they also "have a nice affinity" for whole clus- ter, and he'll add about 25% of clus- ters to the fermentor. "They just have this synergy; it gives it a little bit of peppermint, little spearmint, and texturally it gives it this kind of umami quality," he said. "It really gives the wine more vibrancy, a little more aromatic intensity." Native fermentation Sullivan said he didn't inoculate anything during the first harvest at the new winery. "Everything was native just this past year," he said. "Sometimes we used to inoculate reds because we didn't have the fermentation capacity. We had seven 6-ton fermentors over there, so we just didn't have the capacity that we now have. We had to turn tanks more aggressively." Those open-top tanks at the old winery are still available if needed, but that wasn't the case in 2015. All of the Benovia Chardonnay is still produced at the original win- ery. Sullivan presses whole clusters and then lets the juice settle in stainless steel tanks before racking to barrels for fermentation. He fer- ments all the Chardonnay in about 20% new, French oak. "Chardon- nay has such a natural affinity to barrel aging and fermentation; I really like the texture that it brings out," he said. "When it's done well and it's integrated, it's not a state- ment. It builds the texture of the wine and gives it additional depth." Sullivan also recently pur- chased a new 80-hectoliter Willmes press for Chardonnay production. The press can handle 5 tons of whole-cluster grapes. "That was a nice addition, a good investment," he said. "That helped us out a lot." During fermentation, Sullivan stirs the Chardonnay barrels twice per month until malolactic fermen- tation to help build mouthfeel. He said the amount of wine that goes through malolactic depends on the vintage. "They have really bright, natural acidity—sometimes even less than 3.2 pH—so at that pH they tend to struggle to go through malo, which is fine." The Pinot Noir sees about 40% new oak, and some of Sullivan's preferred cooperages include Francois Freres, Tonnellerie Rous- seau, Tonnellerie Cavin et Fils, Marcel Cade, Chassin and Seguin Moreau. "We generally work with three-year air-dried staves that have less impact," he said. "We're getting away from sweetness. We don't want it to be this big, sleazy oak bomb. We're really trying to respect the texture of the fruit." 'Old school' bottling Once the wine is ready for bot- tling, Benovia is equipped with its own line. Sullivan admits it's a little old school for a small Pinot winery to have its own bottling equipment, but that's what he's always done. The winery has two 12-spout GAI monoblock fillers from Prospero as well as a corker and pressure-sensitive labeler. Next to the bottling room is the laboratory, which is also well equipped with an OenoFoss ana- lyzer for VA, pH, TA and alcohols as well as a Mettler Toledo auto titra- tor for sulfur dioxide and a Thermo Fisher Scientific spectrometer. "We have a lot of fun lab toys," said as- sistant winemaker Jen Walsh. "For a 7,000-case winery, we're pretty well equipped, which is great." The lab also features a large touch-screen display that presents real-time tank data through RTI's Gen II monitoring system. Sulli- van said the system provides data about the tanks and barrel room and also lets him adjust anything as needed. He can access the sys- tem from his desktop or mobile device, and it will generate text or email alerts if any tank tempera- tures fall out of tolerance. Sullivan said they're working on incorporating Winemakers Da- tabase in to the system to generate even more information, and they could make further adjustments or modifications as needed. "We haven't gotten the Ferrari out of first gear just yet." The winemaker said the oppor- tunity to join Benovia was rare in that he and the other partners could implement their vision of the estate vineyards. "What I like to say about this project is that it's sort of the way wineries were back in the '60s: land and then brand," he said. "Today it's so cost prohibitive to do that, so no one does that. It's kind of fun to have these blank slates in terms of purchasing property and develop- ing these sites, and for me that's what I really enjoy: conceptualizing and bringing it to reality." Now that a new winery and vineyard are a reality, Benovia Win- ery is well positioned to continue to build a reputation for estate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. A new Gen II Super Contol temperature-monitoring and control system pro- vides real-time data that can be accessed from this monitor in the laboratory or from a desktop or mobile device.