Pinot Winemaking

The main issues in fermenting Pinot Noir are to be selective in what you extract from the grapes, to keep the pace of fermentation under control and to treat these thin skinned grapes gently. You try to extract all the color and flavor you can without getting a lot of the accompanying tannins -- assuming you feel, as I do, that Pinot is meant to be a silky, feminine wine rather something more muscular. You must also contend with the fact that microbes love Pinot. This can be good, in that I don't feel any need to add nutrients for either primary or secondary fermentation. It can also be bad in that the yeast tend to race through the early stages of Pinot fermentations. This can cause poor extraction and unhappy yeast at the end of fermentation which tend to produce unpleasant sulfide aromas and to fail to complete the process to dryness. Every bad bug in the world also seems to find Pinot a pretty congenial host after fermentation. Finally, you have to handle Pinot with kid gloves in order to prevent the skins from falling apart and coarsening the wine.

In 2005 the clones ripened at very different paces, and they were picked and fermented separately. The clusters were destemmed but not crushed, chilled with dry ice and cold soaked for four to five days in macro bins. Because the active fermentation tends to be quick and because Pinot shouldn't stay on the skins long after fermentation (when alcohol tends to extract seed tannin), cold soaking before alcohol starts building up is important to allow sufficient skin contact for flavor and color extraction. After letting the fermentors warm up, they were inoculated with Assmunshausen yeast. This is very slow fermenting yeast which tends to play up a wine's spicy characteristics. During both cold soak and active fermentation, the fermentors were punched down 1-2 times a day. I used dry ice to check the pace of fermentation during the first 10 brix drop. After that, I'll let it go at its own pace as the alcohol level starts to become inhibitory. 

With the 2005 vintage, I moved the bulk of the Pinot lots toward shorter, hotter fermentations with fewer punch downs and generally less handling in an effort to improve mouth feel. It just seems to me that Pinot can't stay in the fermentor more than about 9 or 10 days without starting to fall apart. By pressing earlier, I've kept the skins more intact, gotten a silkier wine, and gotten all the extraction from higher temperatures that I used to get with time on the skins. The higher temperatures seem to produce darker flavors and more bass notes in the wine. I expect this to be my main protocol going forward, but I'll also keep a bin or two to a cooler fermentation regime in an effort to pick up some livelier fruit aromatics.

After a light pressing, free run and press fractions were separated and settled for 12 hours before going into 7 French oak barrels, three of which were new. The duration of settling determines the volume of lees that go into barrel with the wine. Shorter settling times yield more lees with the potential for a more rounded mouth feel contributed by the products of dead yeast cells. More lees also increase the potential for reductive sulfide odors. I'm usually trying to skate along the edge of reduction during both fermentation and barrel aging in an effort to pick up some bacon, mocha or a host of other interesting sulfide derived aromas. Of course, you have to be careful because you can also get rotten egg, onion or armpit. I've been moving toward less settling and more lees, and in 2006 I found that 4 hours was perhaps too little settling. If the resulting sulfides start down a path I don't like, I deal with them with extra lees stirring, a little copper fining or cutting back the lees with a barrel to barrel racking.

The 2005 spent 5 months on the lees with regular stirring before being racked. In all, it spent 16 months in barrel before being bottled in February 2007. This is toward the long end of barrel aging for Pinot, and it reflects the fact that I am aiming to highlight the wine's spicier and earthier elements rather than preserve its primary fruit flavors. These fruit flavors tend to recede with time in barrel, and a style that emphasizes this flavor profile (or cash flow or rational barrel use) will normally be bottled before the next vintage's harvest. The press fraction was given a light egg white fining to smooth it out before adding it to the rest of the wine. I usually feel that the press wine rounds out the middle of the blend, sometimes adding a chocolate note.

The final numbers for the 2005 Pinot were 13.6% alcohol, less than 0.02% residual sugar, 6.0 grams per liter titratable acidity, 3.76 pH, and 0.57 grams per liter volatile acidity. Only 160 cases were produced.

TASTING NOTES

This is a Pinot on the spicy/dusky end of the spectrum and featuring tea, tobacco, mace, cardamom, dried rose, sandalwood, plum and boysenberry notes. A supple, harmonious palate, with restrained alcohol and balanced acidity make this a fine food partner.