Wine is a living product
This was my submission for the August 2022 SommJournal essay contest. The prompt was, "How does aging in oak or stainless impact a finished wine?" My entry was not selected as the final award; however, I was happy to incorporate the recent online masterclass I had the pleasure of attending with Olivier Bernard of Domaine de Chevalier.
Wine is a living product. Each vintage is a snapshot of harvest: sugars, acids, and phenolic contents achieve balance dictated by growing conditions. The art of expressing terroir lies in capturing this picture in as short as four months or as long as twenty-four (or longer), and hoping it continues to gracefully develop for decades in bottle. To get from grape to glass, the winemaker’s most impactful decision is the vessel’s material selection, which will either retain characteristics of the fruit or develop them. As climate change alters the conditions in winegrowing regions, warmer vintages will see a shift towards inert vessels like stainless steel or larger oak to retain freshness and balance.
The impact of the vessel on the finished wine ranges from inert (low-impact) like stainless steel or glass-lined cement to oxidative (high-impact) found in small oak barrels. A winemaker wishing to capture acidity and freshness will opt for inert vessels. Here, the tank preserves the balance at harvest and simply allows the wine to clarify. Stainless steel also has the benefit of better temperature control during fermentation, which in the case of youthful wines meant to be consumed within a few years is paramount. That is not to say that it is impossible to control fermentation temperature in oak, but it is more difficult.
If the fruit requires maturing, such as polymerizing of tannins, oxidative vessels are the better choice, such as in Bordeaux and Napa. There is also a unique interaction of oak and ester development during fermentation, which is why many premium red wine producers take on the arduous task of fermenting in open top barrels. Additionally, oak barrels have been shown to reduce vegetative aromas and enhance fruitiness, helping offset negative characters in cooler vintages; however, as understanding of these compounds evolves, growers have more options in vineyard practices to better ripen fruit. As climate change continues, at what point is too ripe?
Today, winemakers have the greatest flexibility in how to age their wines, given local regulations or traditions (I doubt we will ever see Grand Vins of Bordeaux eschewing new barrique nor Barolo lessening aging requirements). As temperatures climb, ensuring wines retain freshness and balance will steer winemakers to using more inert vessels to preserve the acidity of the harvest in the finished wines. That is not to say that all previous oak-aged wines will convert to stainless, but we may begin seeing wines finish their elevage in tank rather than barrel, as Olivier Bernard of Domaine de Chevalier does for his Sauternes. For Bernard, capturing the precision of harvest is paramount. “Precision of the fruit. Precision of the aromatics. That is Sauternes.” Today, he is experimenting with oak casks up to 1500L, more than six times greater than traditional barrique. Other like-minded vignerons around the globe will be looking towards larger format oak and inert vessels to ensure balance of their wines, expression of terroir, and delicious wines to enjoy for years.
Eric Taylor
Advanced Sommelier
July 29th, 2022
Jul 9, 2024 at 7:47 PM
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Be the first to comment on this postEstablishing our Roots
Written and presented for the Southwest Missouri Rotary Annual Winepairing Fundraiser, Feb. 2022
Presented by Eric Taylor, Advanced Sommelier
Antiquity to the New World
Viticulture and winemaking first established in Mesopotamia (epic of Gilgamesh is the first literary mention of wine). Our earliest recorded evidence of domesticated grapevines dates to 6,000 BCE in modern Georgia. However, the first indications of commercial winemaking is found in Armenia, in the Areni caves, dated to 4,000 BCE.
Vitis Vinifera, a wild vine in Europe, was domesticated and spread throughout ancient history by many cultures, but widespread by the Phoenicians and then the Etruscans. It was the Romans (and by default the Greeks) that truly established winemaking practices and records of quality wines. 121 BC was considered the very first “great” vintage. The roman empire also established the first “cru” system – Pliny the Elder mentioned several famed vineyards that produced exceptional wines consistently. At the Roman Empire’s peak, every citizen of Rome was consuming a full bottle of wine per day! (What a time to be alive!)
From Rome and Greece vines spread throughout modern Europe. The acclaimed growing regions of France (the Rhone, Burgundy, even as far north as Champagne), Spain (Priorato and Rioja), Germany (the Mosel and Rhein), and into Austria all were first established by Roman legions, then continued by monk orders (Cistercians and Benedictines) of the Catholic faith.
The modern varieties we are familiar with (Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Riesling), all trace their heritage to vines spread throughout this time. In fact, Cabernet Sauvignon was only bred as recently as the 1700s. (Chambourcin was introduced in the mid-1800s, so it isn’t much younger).
Meanwhile, wild vines also grew in North America. However, cultivation of the vine did not begin until Jamestown in the 1600s – a mere 2000 years after vinifera became widely established in modern Europe. The early pioneers felt the wild vines of America failed to produce quality wines, so they imported vines from Europe. However, it would be 200 years before they discovered why their transplanted vines all perished.
Early america winemaking, Phylloxera, and the rise of hybrids
Europe was insistent that America become an established Colony, but the big question remained: “what will we drink?!” The native vine, though persistent, did not create wines that emulated the taste of Europe’s vines; however, vines brought from France, Spain, and Italy all seemed to fail. During this early period, from 1600 through the early 1800s, wines from Jerez, Madeira, and other non-French regions populated America. Politics, it seems, had as large an influence on what was consumed in the new colonies as did biology. However, in the end, Nature trumps all. As our technology grew, so did our problems. Once steam was utilized to fuel transatlantic travel, a small, microscopic pest found its way from America to Europe – a blight that would bring an industry almost 6,000 years in the making to its knees – phylloxera.
Phylloxera (daktulosphaira vitifoliae) is a microscopic bug that lives in the soil here in the US. However, it found its way to the rest of the world in the 1800s. Phylloxera, though tiny, is a sap-sucking insect that infects, and ultimately kills, grapevines. However, this bug developed in America. While there is no cure for Phylloxera, native American vines developed their own resistance to this bug – a resistance that took early entomologists years to understand, a work that was spearheaded by Charles Valentine Riley – the first State Entomologist of Missouri. Riley’s works, in collaboration with J. E. Planchon (a French botanist from Montpellier), discovered that native american vines (vitis labrusca, vitis aestivalus, and vitis riparia, and vitis rotundifolia). With this discovery, many new crossbreeds (hybrids) began development. Many of these early answers to Phylloxera are still in production today: Chambourcin, Catawba, Vignoles, and Norton.
Today, only a handful of regions exist in which “own-rooted” vines exist – Chile, Ballard Canyon, eastern Santa Barbara, Mount Vesuvius, and Sardinia to name a few.
Missouri’s Role in the World of Wine
As mentioned above, it was discovered that Native American vines were naturally resistant to phylloxera. It was a Missouri scientist, CV Riley, that discovered phylloxera lived in the soil, and our native grapevines’ roots were resistant to this pest. However, he also knew that you could grow a vine, graft a different vine (called the scion) to the rootstock above the soil, then the fruit beared would be characteristic of the scion. So, you could graft Cabernet Sauvignon onto rootstock of Catawba, and the fruit that the vine would bear would taste like Cabernet. However, before this was fact was discovered, crossbreeding different species together, to create vines like Chambourcin and Vignoles, was thought more practical, as the resulting vine benefited not only from the phylloxera resistance but also from resistance to other disease pressure, such as powdery and downy mildew. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, hundreds of hybrid grape varieties were created.
But this is a small jump forward, for there is a reason Missouri was so prominent in helping the greater wine world – we were the leading producer in all of the US.
At its peak, in the late 1800s, Missouri accounted for more wine production than any other state in the Union. In the early 1800s (1830s-40s), the region of Hermann, Missouri was settled by German immigrants. Realizing their soils were too poor for traditional farming, they took a cue from the native vines growing along the bluffs of the Missouri River to begin grape farming. They even created an enticing program to ensure all townsfolk would tend their own vineyards, thus establishing a strong culture in viticulture. Shortly after, Italian immigrants followed this cue developing the area of Knobview, today called Rosati – a small township outside of… St. James.
At Missouri’s peak, it produced over 2 million gallons of wine per year. Missouri wines received top awards from wine festivals as far away as the Vienna Wine Fair…. In Eastern Austria. Quite the feat for lederhosen-wearing judges to pick wines from 10,000 miles away over their German neighbors. (Granted, the majority of the judges at the time were French – a fact that would be repeated over 100 years later, but we’ll get to that). So shortly before 1900, there were over 100 active wineries in Missouri producing over 2 million gallons of wine, spread across between 2,000 to 3,000 acres. At its peak, Knobview alone held 1,400 acres of vines. Today, the entire state of Missouri only holds 1,700 acres of vines. However, Missouri wines are once again on the rise.
Two important families pushed forward the new generation of Missouri winemaking: the Helds at Stone Hill in Hermann and the Hoffers at St. James Winery. Both families fell in love with the history and culture of Missouri winemaking and renovated existing facilities and vineyards to reimagine the future of Missouri viticulture. The Helds in Hermann fixed up the oldest continually operated winemaking facility in Missouri (which once produced up to 1.25 million gallons of wine) to be capable of production again. Today, their Chambourcin and Norton are shining examples of what Missouri wines can attain. The Hoffers developed St. James Winery, a communal winery that brought in fruit from the historic Italian settlements under one roof. Today, you can find St. James wines in Napa Valley.
While these two families were instrumental in redeveloping Missouri’s wine industry, a new generation of vignerons arise. Producers like TerraVox, who highlights the works of Thomas Volney Munson, another American viticulturist who developed countless varieties suitable to our climate, Noboleis, the single family-owned winery holding out against a large corporate buy-out of Augusta, America’s oldest AVA, and hidden gems like Heinrichhaus, a tiny, single-man operated winery that’s continued production since the 1950’s, almost under the radar, but not without his own acknowledgments. Today shows a renewed interest in obscure varieties like Catawba (made into an organic sparkling rose at Double Master [Master Sommelier and Master of Wine] Pascaline Lepeltlier’s winery in New York), low-alcohol Frontenac and Pet-Nat by Master Sommelier David Keck in Vermont, or new interpretations of classic Midwest varieties, like our very own Eagles’ Landing Edg-Clif Chambourcin, a Beaujolais-like presentation of a familiar grape.
So what is in store for Missouri’s future? While American wines hit the international stage 58 years ago with the Judgement of Paris in its rebound from prohibition, Missouri wines were already widely received over 100 years before. Tastes change. Tastes evolve. In 2019, Bordeaux, perhaps one of the most slow-to-change wine regions in the world, adopted several new varieties to be used in production. And while hybrid grapes were not admitted in this recent approval, they were set on the table, and many growers lament the continued disregard of hybrid production. Will you begin to see “Chambourcin de Bordeaux” anytime soon? Not likely. But if you ask whether or not esteemed growers like Stephane Derencourt at Cadet-Bon are dabbling with hybrids, you’ll get a knowing smile followed by a mischievous, “maybe…?”
Post Script adendum added July of 2024.
At the end of 2023, changes were announced to regulations for sparkling wines in England to allow hybrids into previous PDO wines post Brexit for the beginning of 2024, so there are nations looking at the value and feasibility of hybrid varieties in line with their "established" wines.