- The final rounds -
In this issue we continue our look at winemaking and the application of technology in the winery, further examining the contrasting notions of 'natural' 'non-interventionist' winemaking vs 'modern' winemaking via an old fashioned death match - Old World vs New World, Man vs Machine, Tradition vs Science in a battle for supremacy. (To understand more about this contest, read the first instalment)
In these final rounds we will see the two opposing sides battle it out on the issues of maturation vessels, filtration & closures, with the 'natural' approach fighting against the big guns of technology.
Round 4 of this fight is all about maturation and the rise of the now ubiquitous stainless steel tank
Traditionally, all wine was matured in oak - white, red, rose everything, all would see the inside of an oak barrel at one time or another, if only for a short period, as this was the main way to store & mature wine. In traditional winemaking, these barrels where usually old as to impart minimal oak flavour on the finished wine and allow the terroir to shine. The barrels themselves also allow a small amount of oxygen to permeate through the staves, with the resultant low level oxidation serving to soften the wine, with the oak barrels also giving structure. The problem is that oak maturation & aromatic intense don't always go hand in hand, with the light, delicate fragrance of wines like Riesling or Gewurtztraminer not benefiting from any oak influence.
In a modern winery, the same maturation can take place in a sterile stainless steel tank - a sealed vessel that has only a very limited ingress of oxygen and can be cleaned to the point of food grade sterility. The wines that are produced in stainless steel tank end up with much more pronounced 'crisper' flavours, no 'off' aromas and often show more 'fresh fruit' characters than those produced using oak barrels, but can conversely lack the complexity & inherent structure.
The introduction of stainless steel as a fermentation, maturation & storage vessel has been a boon for the producers of crisp dry white styles, particularly those who are looking for heightened aromatics and maximum freshness. Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, Clare Valley Riesling & Hunter Valley Semillon may not have scaled the heights of popularity without stainless steel tanks. Stainless steel tanks have also helped preserve the freshness of Unwooded Chardonnay & revitalised Rose, not to mention brighten up many early drinking red wines.
Round 4 Results - Score the win to technology here. Any winery that wants fresh whites, roses or light reds needs a stainless tank simply to compete. Red wine producers need not apply.
Winner: Technology
Round 5 and its smackdown time for technology, with some highly controversial aces up the sleeve to take this round. But the traditions of 'natural' winemaking make a comeback in this round, and the main proponents aren't who you would expect....
We could roughly call this round 'filtration' as these techniques fall under the banner of serving to remove certain elements from a solution, but it goes a little deeper than that.
Traditionally winemakers used (amongst other things) cheese cloth to filter their wines - allowing for the removal of seeds, stems and other residue. Filtration, even in this basic form, has been part of the winemaking process for a considerable time, mainly attempting to remove solids from the final product.
In a modern winery however, filtration has taken on a whole different form, with the wine industry now having to conform to the strictly controlled hygiene & sanity standards found in the food industry, with the expectation of quality product that is implied by these standards. Filtration in a modern winery serves two purposes then - clarification & microbial stabilization. In clarification, larger particles are removed to enhance the appearance of the wine, whilst microbial stabilisation serves to remove yeast & bacterial organisms which, if left in the wine, could lead to spoilage or, at the very worst, re-fermentation (and the odd exploding bottle!)
Clarification is de-reguer for white wines & openly embraced by many more 'traditional' winemakers, allowing for any cloudiness to be effectively removed, often with the use of very natural products (like egg whites or Isinglass - A derivative of fish swim bladders) however it must be noted that most young wines, if left for long enough, may reach the same levels of clarity naturally.
Microbial stabilization though is particularly intensive (and invasive), as it requires a filtration of at least 0.65 micrometers to be effective. The trade off is that at this size, there is considerable chance that colour, tannin & flavour can be removed in the process. Thus modern wineries invest considerable amounts into filtration devices in an attempt to create stable wines that haven't been stripped of their goodies in the process.
Interestingly the main push against filtration of this nature has actually come from a very unlikely source - the beating heart of the new world wine industry: Super premium red winemakers of the Napa Valley in California & the Barossa Valley in Australia. It is these cutting edge 'cult' producers who have picked up on the sentiment that filtration can strip flavours and colours & whom now label their wines as 'unfiltered'. This perhaps serves to instil some 'natural' winemaking credibility to some wines which are very 'modern' in their winemaking approaches (lavish new oak, considerable winemaking influence etc..).
The evolution of filtration though has taken an entirely different tact, with some of the latest technology in the winery rewriting the rules. In this case, it is reverse osmosis and spinning cone column processes: Two very exotic gadgets that use specialise membranes or high tech 'spinners' to separate wine into its various components - water, alcohol, juice etc.., then remove what they don't want before putting the wine back together again.
Some of the ways these technologies have been used is to concentrate grape juices (by removing water) and make more intense wines; to remove excess alcohol (if the grapes got too ripe) or even to remove the flavour and aromas of 'smoke taint' (as experienced in a few bushfire prone Victorian regions over recent vintages).
This ability - to break wine down to a molecular component level is arguably a phenomenal scientific advance, as is argued by the modern winemaker, or is conversely a horrible Frankenstein-like attempt to fiddle with nature, as argued by the 'natural', 'non interventionist' winemaker.
The argument for and against intensive filtration is muddy and complicated - on one hand, there is the desire to produce clean, rich, full flavoured stable wines, on the other there is a desire to produce a wine that is as its maker intends it. What's more is that a small amount of filtration goes a long way... and even the most 'natural' winemaker uses a little.
Round 5 Results - This is a draw, the arguments for both sides are strong and both sides have been known to 'dabble' with the application (or lack of) filtration technology.
Winner: Draw!
Round 6 This final round has been done to death by all and sundry, but we can't have a modern vs traditional winemaking death match without exploring the issue of closures.
A wine closure serves two purposes - as both a containment (keep the wine in) and preservation (keep everything else out) device.
Traditionally, wine bottles were sealed exclusively with cork. sourced solely from Portugal. The cork used in the production of wine corks is actually a product from the bark of the cork tree, with the production of wine corks a rather lengthy process - the tree itself must be a minimum of 25 yrs old for cork production, with the harvested cork requiring 8-12 months of seasoning before it is even considered for use. Cork was used as a closure as it naturally expands to form an air tight closure that both preserves and contains the wine in the bottle.
There are however a few problems with cork. Firstly, the big one: TCA or 2,4,6 - Trichloranisole, a compound that is produced by a reaction between the chlorine used to sterilise natural cork & a mould found in wood products. TCA affects a wine by giving it a mouldy, wet hessian type aroma and flattening the flavours on the palate. This cork taint is generally thought to affect somewhere between 2-5% of all wines sealed with cork seals, although that figure varies wildly according to which source you are quoting.
Another, less recognised problem is what is known as random oxidation - where the cork fails in its job as a preserver, letting oxygen into the wine and prematurely ageing the contents. When you add these two faults together (Random oxidation is estimated to run at between 1-3%) we have a significant problem with cork closures.
The modern winery (and plenty of traditional producers are taking the plunge now too) have comprehensibly embraced alternative closures. The most predominant of these is the screwcap - a screw on, metal cap that is already used in many other adaptations - from Tomato sauce to Vodka bottles. The advantage of a screwcap is that it is a manufactured, consistent preserver and containment device, with none of the possible taints associated with cork.
Another seal that has arisen as a potential premium closure is the glass stopper, which has already been adopted by some German producers as it seems a quite natural addition to 'glass' wine bottles (looks good too).
Perhaps the only major drawback to screwcaps is that they don't 'pop' like corks do, removing some of the romance associated with the popping of corks. But with even some of the top Bordeaux Château's (producing expensive 'old world' wines) confirming that they are trialling screwcaps, it looks like the days of cork are numbered. The only real retort from the cork loving, 'natural' winemakers has been that screwcaps are such an efficient seal, that wine cannot mature in the bottle like cork sealed examples, as there is no natural, minute oxygen ingress (as experienced with corks).
This writer can attest to the redundant nature of this theory, with a recent tasting of two 1998 Richmond Grove Clare Valley Rieslings confirming that wine will mature as steadily under 'screw' as it does under its cork sealed brothers (the screwcapped wine was much 'fresher' too).
Round 6 Results - Consider this: If 3-5% of our milk went off because of a dodgy lid, and there was a more effective lid that was almost a dollar cheaper and worked every time, what would the logical move be?
Winner: Technology
Andrew Graham
For another perspective on this debate, read this excellent article by Ric Einstein
(The Other Red Bigot)
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