Shiraz has left its mark on me.

In addition to working closely with a winemaker in a tiny winery in the Adelaide Hills for the past four vintages, this year I’ve also been working at what could be described as a medium-sized winery that makes use of fruit from across South Australia. While not an especially large winery when compared with names like Penfolds or Casella, it’s been a big step up for me in terms not only of scale and varieties, but in terms of my role in a team.

The first big difference was that I was hired as a casual cellar hand for the vintage and paid an hourly rate – a fairly generous one at that.  I’ve worked as a volunteer in the Adelaide Hills, initially for the experience, and on subsequent vintages because I enjoyed it.  So as someone who ordinarily spends most of his time in front of a computer screen typing, it was strangely pleasing both to be doing a fair amount physical labour and to be paid for it.

Second, I was part of a team that consisted of two winemakers, up to four casual cellar hands, and myself.  The senior winemaker managed the overall operations of the team and the winery, scheduling the delivery of fruit, the movements from fermenters across to tanks and barrels, and the staffing.  The other winemaker was responsible for all the lab work – analysis of sugars, acids levels, temperatures, and progress of fermentations.  The two of them set out the daily work to be done by the cellar hands.  In addition, both were involved at different points in many other activities in the winery alongside cellar hands, from receiving fruit, digging out fermenters, pressing, racking, cleaning, what have you.

So what was so different about the experience?  While I was hired on an “as needed” basis, it’s been pretty much a full time job.  Vintage in the Adelaide Hills this year consisted of a handful of days spread over a couple of weeks, but with this job there has been a full day (and often more) of work to do for the last two months.  So while vintage is generally the busy time of the year for wineries, this year has been much busier for me, and for a longer duration.

Not only has there been more work in general, but many new experiences.  I’ve now worked with Riesling, Pinot Grigio, Colombard, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz, Sangiovese, and even Nebbiolo.  I’ve spent more time on a forklift, stacking and unstacking barrels, moving things on and off trucks, and have tipped 500kg bins of grapes into a receiving unit.  I’ve used a number of unfamiliar types of pumps, fermenters, and tanks, as well as a press so big that you have to climb inside and walk around to properly clean it.  I’ve pumped over Shiraz ferments (as opposed to the gentle plunging when I worked with Pinot Noir), climbed to the top of a catwalk to dip tanks (that is drop a measuring tape into it to see how full it is) and then thrown in chucks of dry ice to lay down a protective buffer of CO₂.  I’ve done the same on a huge tanker truck, which somehow seemed the antithesis of my experiences in a tiny winery, but if you don’t do your own bottling on site, you need to get your wine to the bottling line somehow.  All of that is in addition to jobs that were already familiar from previous vintages, like tipping baskets of grapes by hand, racking off lees, and of course cleaning.

The biggest single difference though has been being an actual cellar hand as opposed to just assisting the winemaker.  As an assistant, I was typically working directly with the winemaker or doing a specific task that he assigned me, and the winery was small enough that we could always see each other.  As a cellar hand, I spent some time working with winemakers or other cellar hands, but equally often I would be given a task (or assign it to myself if I knew it needed doing) and just get on with it independently.  I certainly started the vintage needing to be told what to do, and often needed some supervision in doing it, but these days I typically will know how I’ll be spending my day even as I drive to the winery and can get to work immediately.

Next I’ll try to describe my understanding of the difference between what it means to be a cellar hand and what it means to be a winemaker.

Whole bunches of Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

As with the previous three years, I worked the 2013 vintage at a winery in the Adelaide Hills.  It was a small vintage, not because of yields in the vineyard but rather because the owner / winemaker has been cutting back on his wine production and selling on more of his fruit.  We worked with three crops of grapes:  Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir.

Sauvignon Blanc from the Adelaide Hills is a distinct expression of the variety, distinct from the better known wines of the Loire Valley in France or the now ubiquitous New Zealand interpretation.  It is neither overwhelmingly austere, not especially grassy, but rather has some hint of melon to complement the naturally high acidity.  As with all of our fruit, the grapes were hand picked and arrived at the winery as whole bunches in 20kg baskets.  We tipped the baskets by hand into the destemmer / crusher, pumped the must into the press, and pressed the juice into a tank where it was chilled.  After the clear juice settled, most of it was racked off solids into another temperature controlled tank for fermentation, though some was put into a pair of barrels to produce a small amount of oak influenced wine.  At this point it’s not clear if that will be bottled on its own or blended in with the stainless steel fermented wine.

Chardonnay from the Adelaide Hills is not, to my palate at least, quite so distinct a style of wine, as there are competing views on how best to make it.  When I can identify an example blind, I usually pick out a “lemon butter on toast” character which encapsulates both the citrus and new oak flavours that I find most typically.  We put the Chardonnay whole bunches directly into the press without destemming or crushing and pumped into barrel for fermentation.

I can’t pick Pinot Noir from the Adelaide Hills blind, because I find there is a great range in expression, even across the parcels that make up the wines I’ve helped produce, depending on the site, the clone, the barrel, and the vintage.  The best have very herbaceous notes and some pencil lead in addition to black cherry and raspberry, while some others are nothing but fruit when they are young.  When our grapes arrived, some portion of the bunches went directly into the tubs we use for fermenting, while the other baskets are tipped into the destemmer.  Those grapes were destemmed (but not crushed) into buckets that are then tipped into the fermenter tubs.  After fermentation, the wine and remains of the grapes and bunches are transferred by bucket (which is to say by hand) into the press and the wine is then pumped into barrel.  The point of the soft handling is to avoid having the bunches and grapes go through any sort of pumping.

My role in all of this has been assistant to the winemaker (though I wouldn’t be so bold as to call myself an assistant winemaker).  Tasks like crushing typically involve moving pallets of baskets around with the forklift, tipping baskets, washing and stacking the empty baskets, bucketing must, operating the pump, washing barrels, what have you.  Most can be done by a single person, but are much more efficient with two or three.  Sometimes the tasks I’ve performed have been as simple as standing on the top of a ladder holding a hose and lowering down as a tank is drained, or switching a pump off when a barrel is full of wine.  On the other hand, it can be more complicated in the form of preparing a yeast inoculation and starting a ferment.

What makes working at such a small winery special for me is that I was working with the winemaker on every physical step of winemaking, from washing barrels and cleaning tanks to measuring sugar levels and eventually tasting finishes barrels.  As an assistant, I also brought provided coffee and sometimes doughnuts, both of which were considered essential.

At some point I’ll explain the difference between the physical steps of winemaking as opposed to being a winemaker, but in my next post I’ll talk a bit about the other vintage I worked this year, at a much larger winery, and as part of a team.

Pinot Noir grapes – hand picked whole bunches

I’ve been working vintage this year, which for me is one of the most important aspects of the relationship I have with wine.  It’s my fourth, and I wrote a bit about it last year as a break from writing about wines that I was drinking.  This year it was a much more time intensive process, and so writing has been largely set aside.  However, as vintage draws to a close, I’m going to take a week to write up what this vintage has meant to me while it’s still fresh in my mind.

One thing I’ve not properly discussed is vintage itself.  Vintage is when wine is made.  It’s broadly the period from when grapes are harvested until you only have wine.  While there are some very warm parts of the world that can grow multiple crops of grapes in a year, typically it’s an annual event, occurring in the autumn.  The term can also be used to refer to a specific year of a bottled wine, meaning the year in which the grapes that went into it were harvested, but for my purposes I use it in the winemaking sense of the busy time of the year.

The start depends on the climate  - warmer area of Australia typically have harvests a few weeks before cooler areas, and vintage doesn’t come to cooler parts of New Zealand until later still.  Obviously, vintage is roughly offset by 6 months for the Northern Hemisphere.  Each year is different as well, with cooler summers leading to later vintages.  Grapes ripen at different times depending on the variety, and even within a single variety they can be picked at different levels of ripeness from early picks for sparkling wines, later for table wines, and later still for late harvest or ice wine styles.  For a winery that handles many varieties and styles across many regions, harvesting grapes can stretch over months, while for smaller wineries it can be as short as a week or two.

Defining the end of vintage is somewhat fuzzier, because it’s not simply a matter of when the wine is finished.  Some wines are considered finished only weeks after having been grapes, while others undergo extended contact with skins or lees, further fermentations, cold stabilization, filtering, and/or fining, each of which can add days or weeks to the process, to say nothing of extended ageing which can add months or years.  I generally think of the end of vintage as the point at which the white wines have finished their alcoholic fermentation and red wines have been pressed off their skins.  From a practical point of view, it’s when you can give most of your equipment, that is your receivers, destemmers, crushers, fermenters and presses, a final wash and store them away until next year.  More importantly, there’s typically a dinner or a party to celebrate the end of vintage, and I’m especially looking forward to one this year.

So for me, the 2013 vintage is nearly finished, with only a single white still fermenting – a late harvest Riesling.  Much of the equipment has been washed and stowed, and we’re moving forward to getting the first whites ready for bottling.  There’s plenty of cleaning still to be done, and the normal work of topping up and racking will continue throughout the year, but for now at least the long days are over and thoughts are turning to the vintage dinner.

In my next post, what it was like working this vintage at a very small winery.

So hey, it’s my birthday!  My age is something of a private matter, but let’s just say that even though it wasn’t declared vintage, Port from the year of my birth is drinking nicely right about now.  It was a great year in Champagne and Burgundy, but the Bordeaux vintage was ruined by rain during the harvest.  Given that I’d take a good Pinot Noir or Chardonnay over a Bordeaux blend most days, I’m fine with that.

For some people, birthdays are about looking back over the years, taking stock and being grateful.  For the less mature, such as myself, it’s about getting presents, and I’m especially pleased the gifts from my wife.  Thanks to her, I am now in possession of varietal wines of Ondenc, Petit Meslier, Pinot Meunier, and Clairette.  I’ll give you all the details when we open them up and I write about them, but I haven’t had such a haul since I found a half dozen new varietal wines in Vancouver in September.  I also have Vinodiversity and Wine Grapes to thank, as these wines all feature in both, and I look forward to telling you all about them.

The other day Jamie Goode @jamiegoode, a wine journalist for whom I have a great deal of respect, tweeted ”Why is natural wine so divisive? Lots of people enjoy drinking them. There are many that are profound. No reason to get upset.”  My knee-jerk reaction would have been to reply “There’s no such thing” but rather than try to have a discussion 140 characters at a time, I thought I might put together what I intend to be a more thoughtful response.

[He has since posted an article as well, though I wrote this post before I saw it.]

Let me start by saying that I judge wine first and foremost by what’s in the glass, and I encourage producers to use whatever methods they think will result in the best wine.  When it comes to wines described as “natural”, I have enjoyed some a great deal and others I have enjoyed much less, but that is also true of wines in general, irrespective of how they are made.

When it comes to the term “natural” however, I do have some opinions.  I think it is neither a useful nor appropriate term to adopt for the non-interventionist approach to winemaking.  Even before the term became something of a movement in the context of wine, it had been completely devalued by its use with regards to food in general – see Cheetos for details.  The way the term is used to describe wine is no more useful than with food as there is no definition or regulatory organization.  Anyone can describe their wine as “natural”, irrespective of their viticultural or vinification practices.  Given the proliferation of “natural” on food labels, there is little reason to believe won’t happen with wine should consumers favour wines so labelled.

If that’s why the term “natural” isn’t useful, why is it inappropriate?  Start to finish, wine is not a natural product.  The vineyards where I work contain two types of fruit – blackberries and grapes.  The blackberry bushes appear randomly across the property, grown from seeds dispersed by animals, and producing fruit each season for anyone who braves the prickles.  I think “natural” is a fair description of the bushes and their fruit.

On the other hand, the grapevines are specifically selected clones, grown from clippings, with thousands of genetically identical vines set in neat rows, densely spaced, and carefully pruned over each season.  There is nothing natural about how the vines were cloned, planted, and cultivated.  If blackberries are the equivalent of free range eggs, grapes for wine are the product of battery caged hens.

With regards to the winery, if wine were a “natural” product, there would be no winery, because there would be no need to “make” the wine.  It’s romantically been said that wine is made in the vineyard, but the baskets, bins and trucks that turn up at wineries each vintage contain grapes, not wine.  Even the least interventionist winemaking starts at the harvest and continues through crushing and pressing, none of which could be considered natural processes by any stretch of the imagination.

Am I being too literal, or worse, pedantic, since that is how vines have been cultivated and wine produced for millennia?  For those who think the term “natural” should mean whatever they want it to mean, undoubtedly.  But really, this whole controversy is about terminology.  Winemakers should always be free to make their wines by whatever methods they choose.  However, when they hypocritically label those practices as “natural” they’re not only being dishonest, they’re also disparaging producers not using those methods by establishing the dichotomy of “natural” versus “unnatural”.  That is the root of this issue as far as I’m concerned.  No producer should object if their neighbour refrains from using SO₂ or cultured yeast, because it’s up to consumers to decide which wine they want to drink.  However, it’s unacceptable for anyone to call their practices “natural” when they are so clearly not, and worse to the tar fellow winemakers as “unnatural” by comparison.

There was some buzz last month when Champagne Drappier announced it would be the first house in the region to produce wine in an egg-shaped oak fermenter from Taransaud costing roughly €30,000.  Wine can be fermented in many different types of vessels, from tanks, barrels and amphora to vats of wood, concrete or plastic, with a multitude of other options in between.  The decision as to which vessel can be down to the style of the wine being made, budget, or even just materials at hand.  In some cases the choice is evident in the finished wine.  Barrel fermented Sauvignon Blanc is a very different beast from the same variety tank fermented in temperature controlled stainless steel.

So what would motivate a producer to use an expensive, egg-shaped fermenter?  According to Michel Drappier, “The ‘egg’ proportions represent the Golden Number,” referring to a mathematical ratio evident in a regular pentagon which can be aesthetically pleasing in design but which is thought by some to have deeper, mystical significance.  (There’s a nice animation of this from Nomblot who came up with one of the earliest egg wine vessels, made of concrete.)  Taransaud apparently feel the same, and they mount their oak egg-shaped fermenter on a pentagonal platform to emphasize the connection between its shape and the golden ratio.

What numerology has to do with fermenting wine is less clear, so perhaps we should turn our attention to what science has to say about why eggs are egg-shaped.  Not all eggs are asymmetric tapered ovals which may or may not have come before the chicken. Eggs are often round, as is the case for many reptiles and fish, because a sphere is geometrically the strongest shape for a structure.  A variation on the sphere, bird eggs are tapered for a several reasons.  The more oval an egg, the less distance it will roll, and birds who nest on cliffs where rolling eggs are the most at risk have the most tapered eggs.  A clutch of such eggs also fits snugly in a nest, allowing them to share warmth, and a tapered shape is more easily pushed through a cloaca by a laying hen.

If we apply what science tells us about egg shapes to winemaking, it’s clear that there are some advantages.  If, for instance, the cellarhands at Drappier are especially clumsy, an egg-shaped fermenter has a better chance than most of not breaking when they drop it.  Furthermore, if the pentagonal platform proves especially confounding for a forklift driver, the fermenter shouldn’t roll too far when it gets knocked over.  Unfortunately the platform frustrates the notion of tightly packing multiple fermenters for warmth – a hexagon, as found in honeycombs, would have been ideal – and I don’t think it’s worth considering how the mechanics of egg laying might be utilized in wine production.

Does that mean egg-shaped fermenters have no advantage beyond insurance against clumsiness?  There’s actually a middle ground which I think is very well explained by Darryl Brooker, the winemaker at CedarCreek Estate Winery, whose Ehrenfelser I covered last week.  He’s recently invested somewhere between €3000 and €5000 in a concrete version from Nomblot and as he puts it, “it’s a really cool shape and people just love to see it, but more importantly it makes really great wine.”

The fact that it’s a cool shape needs no explanation but he does say a bit more about winemaking.  As wine ferments, there is natural circulation of the liquid, and to a lesser extent any solids (lees), as carbon dioxide rises to the surface.  The continuously curved interior of the egg-shape allows the contents to flow freely, keeping lees in suspension (as opposed to settling on a flat bottom), giving the finished wine greater texture and mouthfeel.

While certainly a desirable quality in some wines, it must be said that lees stirring (bâtonage, if you prefer the French term) has been practised for centuries to achieve similar results.  So if you factor out the numerology, you are left with a cool shape, some automatic lees stirring, and protection against clumsy cellarhands.  Hardly the greatest innovation in winemaking this century, but absolutely the most entertaining when painted at Easter.

I just walked out of a bottle shop here in Vancouver with a half-dozen bottles of new (to me) varietal wines, all from British Columbia. My excitement is tempered by the arithmetic of so many bottles versus the number of days of holiday remaining here in Canada. That, and the expression of disapproval which is likely to grace the face of my most patient wife when I arrive back at our suite with them. But still, dear readers, every drink I drink, I drink for you, even if it means putting some Bacchus in my checked luggage and hoping for the best.

World Atlas of Wine, Johnson and Robinson, Canada entry, and North American plug for laptop

This has been a bit of a quiet week, and while I have been working on a couple of posts that I hope to finish next week, my thoughts have been elsewhere.  Instead of writing about wine, I’ve been sorting out travel plans and by this time tomorrow I will be approaching Vancouver.  Strictly speaking, this is a family trip and not my preferred wine tourism, but I’m fairly certain that I’ll be able to sneak in some vinous fun.

There are three things on my wine To Do list at the moment.  First, I need to procure and write up some Inniskillin icewine.  Yes, it’s a classic to the point of nearly being a cliché, but still.  Second, I look forward to trying some wine made in British Columbia, ideally while visiting a wine region near Vancouver.  Third, I hope to enjoy more generally wines of North America, as they’re so thin on the ground in Australia, whereas I believe Canada imports wine from all over.

So while I’ll be away from my normal environment and ostensibly enjoying a holiday, I intend to continue to post from Vancouver, though in a leisurely fashion.  And if anyone has any suggestions for wine activities there over the next two weeks, please let me know.