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TE CHNOL OG Y Winemaker Interview RICk JONES Early adopter of cellar technology favors more innovation By Laurie Daniel good at science. The combination of wine and science led him to the University of California, Davis, where he earned bachelor's (1982) and master's (1984) degrees. After making wine at the San Martin Winery in Santa Clara County and Jepson Vineyards in Mendocino County (where he also made brandy), he ran into his old friend and fellow UC Da- vis grad Clark Smith (now a Wines & Vines columnist), who had an idea for removing volatile acidity (VA) from wine. In 1992 the duo ended up co-founding Vinovation, where they developed the use of reverse osmosis to remove VA and alcohol. Since 2004, Jones has been a consulting winemaker, working with both wineries and technology providers. His clients include Della Toffola, Oenodev and some of California's largest winer- ies. Jones has introduced Flash Détente technology to the United States, helped spread the use of micro-oxygenation in California and developed a proprietary process for removing atypical rose aromas in red wines. He describes himself as a "catalyst" who advances new technologies. Wines & Vines: You're the guy who brought flash extraction to the United States. How were you able to convince your winery clients (big and small) of its potential? Rick Jones: Well, it certainly helped that I came with a track record. I founded Vinovation with Clark Smith in 1992, when we innovated techniques for removing volatile acidity and alco- hol, and we did a lot of good for people. We used to joke that we gave our clients $10 in value for every $1 we took in fees, and it wasn't far from the truth, because we worked on some pretty high-end wines in the early days. I followed my 10 years with Vinovation with a four-year stint with Oenodev, working with Patrick Ducournau and Thierry Lemaire to help circulate the knowledge and use of micro- oxygenation (See "Using Micro-Ox To Improve Wine Quality" on page 30.) in California. Again, the value of the technique was fairly self-evident. R After leaving Oenodev in January 2009, I initially was going to take a sabbatical year and do something completely unrelated to wine. The recession quickly disabused me of such romantic notions, however, and I began to look for a new project. I had tasted some samples of flash a few years before and thought someone should take the project in hand, so I just started the conversation and things took off from there. 36 Wines & Vines JULY 2012 ick Jones didn't set out to be a technical winemaker. His first love was music. But after a three-month tour of Europe as part of Ohio's Antioch College choral group, Jones gained an interest in wine. He moved to California, started studying chemistry at City College of San Francisco and discovered he was Rick Jones has been a key figure in introducing flash extraction tech- nology to winemakers in the United States. My reputation got me a hearing, at a minimum. No one threw me out of their office. Even if they thought I was nuts, they were polite about it, and they'd hear me out. At the time I was working for Pera, the French company that made the first flash machine installed in the U.S. at Monterey Wine Co. in King City. (Later, I went to work for Della Toffola, which makes a similar type of unit that was subsequently installed in Lodi.) Most winemakers knew nothing of flash, not even the name, so I'd have to start by explaining that you heat grapes very quickly to about 180°F then immediately pass them into a vacuum chamber. The resulting détente, or depressurizing of the fruit, causes the vacuoles in the grape skins to rupture, leading to greater (and immediate) extraction of color and tannin. It also creates a steam of "flash water," which contains pyrazines and other vegetal and off-characters. In the U.S. we can discard the water, eliminating these undesirables.