Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/80303
WINEMAKING TECHNICAL REVIEW The cave is home to barrel storage and a no-frills lab space (top row) at Tres Sabores. The kitchen area in the barn that came with the property doubles as the tasting room and guest room (lower left.) A portion of the whites may be aged or even fermented in "previously inspired" (i.e., 12-month-old) barrels and puncheons. Aging and finishing Reds spend 18 months or more in barrels, nearly all French, a third to a half of them new. Like most wineries, Tres Sabores uses products from a range of cooperages; the list includes Boutes, Demptos, Billon, Tonnellerie d'Aquitaine, Alain Foquet, Sylvain and Francois Freres. About 10% of the barrel stock is American oak, most of it used for the Petite Sirah. Tres Sabores has two barrel areas: one connected to the main office/tasting room/ utility building but dug into the hillside for temperature control, and a separate cave, tunneled further up the hillside by Nordby Construction in 2002. Wines from the cur- rent vintage go under the office, which is cool enough except for the hottest summer days; wines from the previous vintage, headed to bottling, reside in the somewhat cooler and more temperature-stable cave. Both cellar areas have the ability to draw in night air for cooling. 50 WINES & VINES SEPTEMBER 2012 When the cave was built, Johnson wasn't quite happy with the temperature, but as she has planted more and more greenery on top—cover crop between vine rows, olive trees—the temperature has become more stable and a bit lower, averaging in the high 50s. Since the cellar and the cave are work- ing areas, not simply barrel-display zones, both are home to assorted kegs, equipment parts and in the case of the cave, an "elegant hose armoire." Fining is not part of the standard pro- gram at Tres Sabores, but sterile filtration is. Johnson uses a cartridge filter from 3M Purification (formerly CUNO) and Gusmer cartridges, and she doesn't think that tight filtration of her reds takes any- thing away. In fact, she says she has seen her share of pricey cult wines with cloudy appearance and unidentified flotsam, sug- gesting it would have been good if some things had been taken away. In addition, Johnson notes that she has already had to start over once due to the fire; she had just bottled her 2003 vintage when it went up in smoke, leaving her effectively out of the market for almost two years. She's not ready to risk having a vintage go south on her just yet. For moving wine around, Johnson has a somewhat old, less-than-satisfactory pump, and a new one is at the top of her equipment wish list. For moving barrels and bins around, she uses a Nissan pro- pane lift serviced by Accurate Forklift. Using ozone and Cryoclean Sanitation tools include a McClain ozone machine and a Karcher 4.0 pressure wash- er for barrels. She has also been pleased with the results from having older bar- rels thoroughly scrubbed and refurbished through the Cryoclean system, which blasts barrel innards with dry ice crystals, removing tartrates and other gunk but not sanding off toasted oak. All used barrels get the Cryoclean treatment after purchase through their mobile service. Tres Sabores has a small lab setup that doubles as storage space for pet food and other winery necessities. The capacity is limited to basic wine chemistry testing, though she has an Anton Paar portable density meter for checking filterability. BRIDGET WILLIAMS