A natural quandry - what would Alice say?

Rosé is the thorn in our side these days.  Our first year we seemingly quite easily made a stellar rosé, naturally. It had about 3 grams of residual sugar, barely detectable but it gave it a luscious mouthfeel that many people said reminded them of a top Tavel.  Then came 2006, it fermented along just fine and then started slowing down, 22 grams of sugar, 17 grams, 15 grams, until it completely stopped at 7 grams.  That's still a fair amount of sugar, but that's not all, it was at 14.8 alcohol.  Hmm rosé at 15 degrees?? Too hot, undrinkable in fact.  There were probably things we could have done to change the results, first and foremost would have been to harvest the grapes for the rosé in mid-August.   Many people told us that we should have added water!  Completely illegal here in France, but it seems it's more common than one would think.  Another thing that is illegal here is reverse osmosis, so that was pretty much the end of our rosé in 2006.  If we only had high yields and some other varietals like cinsault or carignan, that might help too.

So here we are in 2007, thinking we were going to be sure to make a great rosé, the first grapes we brought in were used to make it, all grenache, then we added the mourvèdre to it.  It seemed to be going well with the sugars dropping, we even put some fermenting red into it to give it a kick start, then boom, it stops  - nothing,  it's not happy.  Still clinging to the idea of a rosé fermented on it's natural yeasts we waited a few days, but nothing.  So in the end we had to inoculate it with commercial yeast, something I truly didn't want to do, but in the end we had no choice.

I find this really frustrating though, over here, many many wineries don't use commercial yeasts, it's not a question of organic, biodynamic or even "natural" winemaking, it's just a question of philosophy in winemaking.  It makes me nuts that some people are able to do it and we haven't been for the past two years!  Just go have a look at Alice Feiring's wonderful blog.  She's really been on  a roll lately, writing some great posts on people who make "natural" wines.  When I met her last spring in Bordeaux, one of my burning questions for her was to know her definition of  "natural" wines.  Here in France the "natural" wine movement tends to mean that there is no SO2 added, but isn't at all a guarantee that the wines are organic, or even fermented naturally without the addition of yeasts, enzymes or other additives to help the juice ferment properly.  Alice told me that her definition of a natural wine is one that is farmed organically or biodynamically, fermented with the naturally occuring yeasts, without the addition of any "extras" and finally with low amounts of,  if any SO2.  She explained that,  of course, if there was a problem,  it would be foolish to let the wine spoil, and that the winemaker must do what is necessary to save it.  Sounds like exactly the category I would like to fit into!!! Unfortunately for our rosé, that isn't the case this year.  Thankfully we had no troubles with the reds, they happily fermented to dryness and then did their malo-lactic fermentation right away!  We are going to some of it into our old double barrels to experiment with wood, hoping that the slight oxygen exchange will soften up the tannins and round it out a bit.  We'll see what happens.

It's funny, I've been following a couple of wine blogs written by Americans, and the idea of not using commercial yeast seems to be completely unheard of.  Blogger after blogger seem to talk about their "recipes" for winemaking and for this year's wine.  Pictures of them proudly adding yeast and enzymes to the grape juice.  I found those pictures almost shocking since I, myself felt like I should hide the package of yeast and not tell anyone! Does anyone in the US use the natural yeasts?  Or all they all graduates of some big-name enology program?  Am I from Mars?  or just being completely irresponsible in their minds?  I would imagine that they would think so.

Comments

[farley]

I'm no winemaker, but I remember something one once told me about natural yeasts. Do you think the issue might be that you were making the rose' from the first grapes that were brought in and that you typically get more naturally-occurring yeasts further into the harvest? Just a thought.

[lagramiere]

Farley, I'm really not sure, it could be that, but if we had waited any longer, we would have ended up with another 15 degree rosé!! I think we'll try to make a starter (levain) in 2008. Meaning that we'll pick some grapes at least a week in advance and get them fermenting so that we can add it to the rosé juice right when we bleed it off... Thanks for your ideas!!! Amy

[farley]

No problem. That sounds like a good idea.

I'm new to the blog. It sounds like you guys are fairly small, so I'm thinking your wines probably don't make it over here?

[Even]

Great post with interesting questions!

Concerning no yeast addition in California...there are plenty, as in many, who do not add yeast including some of the who's who... Helen Turley, David Ramey, John Kongsgaard, Ted Lemon, for example.

Also, it's worth noting that a majority of the yeast companies are European. Laffort and IVC are French and Lallemand was started by a Frenchman who moved to Canada.

Plenty of the new guard Pinot producers are using all the tools available and in my opinion, making a wine that does not resemble Pinot!!

[Domenico]

I think Alice is great, sort of the Maureen Dowd of wine. Hm.

Anyhow, I don't know about California but in Italy there is a similar movement afoot, no doubt inspired my France, to use natural yeasts only. At least there are many professions of such purity and so forth. I'll take them with my usual grains of salt and a couple of Advil.

[Domenico]

BY France, I meant. God, I need a proofreader. One who doesn't drink wine with dinner.

[Steve L.]

Wow--what honesty. A lot of us boobs out here who just drink wine (like me) can forget how hard it can be to make it, and that things can go terribly wrong for no apparent reason. How many winemakers faced with your conundrum would manipulate the wine or, worse, just bottle it or sell it off.

During 30 days in France I tasted about 40 'natural wines.' That's 'natural' as defined in your report: organic, no additives, low sulphur (except that at one shop NO sulphur is the mandate). Many were lowly vin de tables. I was flabbergasted by the overall quality--several bottles had me so hooked I found it difficult to stop tasting. Your post helps me better appreciate the effort and skill that goes into crafting such elixirs.

[wineguy]

Here in Santa Barbara: Babcock, Santa Barbara Winery, J. Wilkes, Whitcraft, Benjamin Silver all use natural yeasts, just to name a few.

[Alice]

Hi Amy, Thanks for the kind words. There are people who use natural yeasts in the New World but MOST then throw in 'super food' (urea)to 'feed' the yeasts. Which given the propensity to pick at such high brix, is kind of needed so the yeasts don't peter out. The yeast is important but it's got to be in synchronicity with the wine making.

Your rosé account, by the way, is brilliant. And beautifully honest.

[EL]

My colleagues in the US almost all use commercial yeasts. In the US we are taught that natural yeasts are dangerous and can yield off flavors. A professor at the University in Bordeaux told me last year that if anyone in France says they use natural yeasts, they are lying. I'd like to here him say that to Olivier Humbrecht or Lalou Bise-Leroy.

In Burgundy it is quite common to use natural yeasts. Commercial yeasts are killer yeasts. They are designed to overwhelm and kill all the other yeasts. Very effective but just another element that brings homogeneity to wines, i.e. another way to lose terroir. With reds though it is easier to use natural yeasts, the juice/wine macerates on the skins where much of the yeasts reside. Whites (and I imagine rosés) can be tougher because you press off the skins early in vinification. There are many producers who systematically inoculate whites but not reds.

That all being said, if a cuve of La Tache stopped fermenting, I'm sure without a doubt it would be inoculated immediately. The winegrower's first responsibility is to save the wine. You gave the natural yeast their chance and they did a good job but they are too exhausted to finish the task. Using commercial yeast to ferment 7 grams of 200+ grams of sugar is nothing really.

However, unless I was legally constrained, I would leave the sugar. At 14.8 degrees, the alcohol is already going to compete with the fruit flavors. The sugar on the other hand will give the fruit a boost. Further, I believe that roughly 50% of the population can perceive sugar at 5 grams/liter and more than 90% at 10 grams/liter. 7 grams is really on the edge of perceptibility and isn't that really what a natural wine is?