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Postmodern Winemaking CL ARK SMIT h Phenolic Chemistry And Winemaking of phenolic chemistry, at least to open a door to its baffling collection of hexagonal pictograms guaranteed to drive the bravest enologist into fits of terror and ennui. After a year of beating around the bush, T it is time for my loyal readers to join with me and take on red wine's defining process, the peculiar and counterintuitive reaction with which red wine builds structure, in so doing elevating its soulful resonance and graceful longevity. To comprehend why, we must descend Frodo-like into the depths of enology's darkest recesses and attempt to drag its most daunting secrets into the light, hex signs and all. Why have I suddenly turned so cruel? Because an appreciation of phenolic structure is key to the postmodern view of wine. This journey will provide basic tools that will allow us to move beyond the modern approach we all learned in school. Red wine is not a solution; more- over, the extent to which it deviates from solution behavior is a pretty good work- ing definition of quality.1 Phenolics are the principal inhabitants of the non-solution world, which is where soulfulness lives. A grasp of their behavior will empower us to steer the course of wine development. Put another way, red winemaking is a type of cooking related to sauce- making. Good béarnaise doesn't taste like its ingredients (tarragon, shallots, vinegar, chervil); it tastes like, well, bé- arnaise. The structure, not the composi- 54 Wines & Vines APRiL 201 1 his month we confront the great- est fear of modern winemakers. That would be chicken wire. I'm sorry, but it has to be done. Yes, I will now attempt to render palatable the topic tion, determines the flavor. Curdle the sauce and it loses its integrative prop- erties and tastes terrible. Likewise, the shape and size of suspended particles determines the wine's sensory charac- teristics and, more importantly, its aes- thetic impact. (Hint: When I say "aesthetic impact," I'm talking about cash flow.) A 1o F drop in cellar temperature will reduce oxygen uptake by one-third. A clear picture of how wine behaves benefits winemakers of every stripe. I'm not pushing here for micro-ox, lees stirring or any other winemaking tech- nique. No recipes will be forthcoming. But to make wine is to choose a path. Increasingly, great winemakers elect, when they can, to do nothing. But even if the practitioner in no way intervenes, the choice of a wine's structure is still central to the art. The phenols in young wine resemble those of cocoa and may remain dry and harsh, or through pathways similar to chocolate-making may transform into silky, visceral, flavor-carrying textures. The engine of this transformation is that very reductive strength that modern enology calls a defect. This force may be harnessed by the winemaker who is familiar with wine's nature. Are you with me? Then hang on tight and let's get started. What's a "phenolic?" The basic unit of all phenolics is phenol itself, which is simply a ring of six carbons with alternating double bonds (called a benzene ring) attached to oxygen and hydrogen (-OH) atoms. This very stable structure lies in a flat plane, allowing many phenols to be stacked compactly like ping pong paddles. Plants find phenols very handy, and grapes manufacture hundreds of different kinds for various purposes by attaching additional chemical groups to the ring. There's no need to worry about un- derstanding all the details of phenolics in wine. Nobody does. Take the dizzying array of thousands of different phenolic compounds, then start to tack these mo- nomeric units together like Legos, and shortly you end up with many millions of combinations as unique as snowflakes. These polymers go on to form compli- cated structures in wine sometimes as big as a bacterial cell, no two alike. If your eyes are beginning to cross, you're getting the picture. Wine structure does not lend itself to analysis. A full understanding of its diversity is neither possible nor useful. highlights • Vern Singleton did a great job ex- plaining oxygen's role in red wine structure, and it's high time we digest his discovery. • Cellar temperature, lees exposure, SO2 management and many other choices require a firm grasp of oxy- gen's impact. • Study of the peculiar and counterin- tuitive details of phenolic reactivity provides insights that are well worth the headache.