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WINEMAKING than Gabby Douglas' dismounts in the London Olympics. An abundance of caution would sug- gest that sequential inoculations and fermentations are safer; the bummer is, that way you lose all the advantages of doing both forms of fermentation early and entwined. A little history How winemakers perceive this dilemma gets compounded by some rocky—even quirky—history in which largely extrane- ous factors barge in on the dance between these two critical processes. Fifty years ago, winemakers knew next to nothing about malolactic fermenta- tion at all—let alone about how to handle the timing. They knew that something or other happened in the spring that got their wines bubbling again, and when it modern, direct addition product (Chr. Hansen's Vinaflora) only reached the U.S. market in 1996. A few wineries had bio- chemists on staff to gin up starters—and The Wine Lab offered liquid cultures— but lots of wineries simply "inoculated" by adding lees from one successful malo ferment to another tank, a practice close- ly resembling the sharing of needles by drug addicts. Pinot Noir may require a bit more time for color stabilization between the end of alco- holic and malolactic fermentations. was done the wines tasted better. For that matter, notes Petersen, hardly any wine- makers in Europe knew what pH was as late as 15 years ago. As to bacteria, it was known that they could do really bad things, which did not encourage enthu- siasm about intentionally adding any of them at any point. This is more or less the sea of conventional winemaking wisdom in which the leading microbe suppliers (almost all of them French-based) oper- ated until 20 years ago. Gradually, researchers and informed winemakers gained an understanding of how malolactic fermentation worked, what it needed for success and what bac- teria executed it well (and badly.) But reliable cultures were hard to build up and not widely available; the first simple, Research dating back to the 1970s, in- cluding work Van de Water did as an ex- perimental enologist at Robert Mondavi Winery, seemed to indicate that co-fermen- tation, with the malolactic inoculate added right after the yeast got up to speed, was not only possible but a good idea—the oe- nies could take advantage of the heat and moderate ethanol levels, and everybody could come out ahead. But as the years passed, the juice and wine into which these products were be- ing added was steadily changing in a way that altered the game for yeast, bacteria and the question of timing. Van de Water sets the tipping point in 1997—the hot- test and earliest vintage up to that point, and the occasion for a veritable festival of stuck fermentations. In that high-sugar/ high-alcohol/high-failure-rate context, struggling to get the primary done was paramount, and anything that might get in the way (like a simultaneous malo) was microbia non grata. The unpleasant les- sons from the early days of ultra-high al- cohols still reverberate around the indus- try in California. Across the pond, winemakers were worried about Brett, not high alcohol (which they had not yet figured out how to produce.) After grasping the distinc- tion between Brett and terroir, the French realized that the best way to restrain that unfortunate microbe was to shorten the time from the end of alcoholic fermenta- tion (and the resultant binding of initial SO2 which Brett can best take root. And the simplest way to shut that window was co-fermentation, a practice increasingly adopted by European winemakers in re- cent years and validated repeatedly in the lab by the France-based purveyors of yeast and bacteria. ) to the end of malolactic (and the addition of fresh SO2 See why this whole thing got confusing? Playing the odds As in most of winemaking, there is no universal rule for deciding between co- fermentation and sequential fermenta- tion. Instead there are a series of con- LAFFORT U.S.A. 1460 Cader Lane, Suite C Petaluma, CA 94954 laffortusa@laffort.com - (707) 775-4530 www.laffortusa.com WINES & VINES OCTOBER 2012 53 ), the window in LACTOENOS® LACTIC ACID BACTERIA: A successful ML fermentation LACTOENOS® 450 PreAc Red wine and high alcohol concentration A particularly robust Oenococcus oeni strain, combined with an exclusive production process. 450 PreAc is the ideal preparation for the efficient malolactic fermentation of premium wines. LACTOENOS® 350 PreAc White wine and extreme malic Pre-acclimatisation Oenococcus oeni strain, selected for its resistance to low pH and very high tolerance to medium chain fatty acids (C8 and C10). This provides high efficiency even under the most extreme conditions. LACTOENOS® SB3 Instant Available in barrel dosage An Oenococcus oeni strain for direct inoculation, even in wines with undesirable physiochemical and microbiological characteristics. SB3 is also suitable for the co-inoculation technique and barrel fermentation. SB3 Instant Bactéries Préacclimatées à inoculation directe MARIE RICHIE