TN: Ridge '14 East Bench Zin - Why bother to add water?

I picked up a bottle of Ridge '14 East Bench Zinfandel this week. (Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County; 100% zinfandel.) I’d liked earlier vintages – particularly when I found them for $19. (It’s now in the high $20s.) The back label said the vines, planted in 2000, have really come of age and that the '14 is the first year when they included all lots. Indeed, this bottling seems to have hit its stride in’14.

The wine was just what I wanted: a bucketful of blackberries and raspberries. My wife picked some root she scent that she couldn’t put her finger on. We decided it was celery root. In the mouth, it’s very fruity and drinkable and balanced. Not as earthy or serious as a Lytton Springs or Geyserville, but perfect when you need a fruity wine that isn’t soda pop. And, while you can tell this is a big wine (14.9% ABV), the alcohol doesn’t really stand out.

Here’s the twist: The ingredient list includes “0.27% water addition.” (I commend their openness. They also list tartaric acid.)

That reduces the alcohol about 0.40%. In other words, this would have clocked in at 15.3% without the water. [Correction: It lowers the ABV by only 0.04% – see my response to Søren below.]

Do you think the water is what makes this wine balanced? Or is there some other reason to add it – to avoid a stuck fermentation, or something?

I do not know the science here, but many prior vintages of this bottling certainly hit my sweet spot! Nothing terribly sophisticated, just yummy goodness that pairs so well with burgers, pizza and comfort food. Will check out the 2014.

Ha! Our palates so often align, that I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise. I never seen anyone talk about the East Bench, though. I’ve liked it much better than their Three Valleys and Paso Robles zins.

I was thinking the same thing about our palates, and ironically while we prefer the so-called AFWE wines, we both seem to have a soft spot for Ridge. My recollection is that this bottling is 100%.Zin.

Hi John.
I can’t follow the math here.
Example: 100L wine (containing 15.3L alc.) add 0.27% water (0.27L) totals 100.27L wine (still with 15,3L alc.)
Giving new vol. alc. at 15.259%
-10x more water needs to be added : 2.7% (2,7L), to lower the % from 15.3 to 14.9.

Or did I miss something ?

Kind regards, Søren

Ha! You’re right, Søren.

When I set out to write this thread, the heading was going to be “Why bother to add 0.27% water?” It seemed inconsequential. Then I did the math … and did it wrong. I used the alcohol percentage as the divisor. In fact, the water brought the alcohol down from 14.94% to 14.9%.

So … let me return to my original question, before my errant math:
Why bother to add such a fractional amount of water?

I’ll change the subject heading, too.

Hah, John, -I thought exactly the same as You ! And I also can’t see why they do it either (or inform about it). Much more will evaporate anyway during production.

Best, Søren.

Could be to dissolve the acid that was added.

Pure speculation… they may use water to dissolve other additives, like tartaric acid or sulfites, before incorporating them into the wine/must.

Edit - Phillip beat me to it.

Interesting, Phillip and Ryan. Hadn’t thought about that.

Perhaps it is for balance, though. Jamie Goode has written some interesting articles on the effect of changes in ABV on a wine. He participated in taste tests where the ABV was adjusted to a number of a number of different levels – say, 1% gradations between 11% and 15%. He reported that there is a “sweet spot” for each wine, which varies. Some may taste best at 11.5% and others at 14%. As I recall, he said that the sweet spot was generally clearly better than the wines 1% lower or higher. So perhaps the folks at Ridge think that a 0.4% reduction makes a difference to the balance.

Does anyone recall what the water addition levels are for other Ridge wines? They don’t seem to include that on their website.

But 0.04% is well within the margin of error for any sort of trial. And even if they did sweet spot that perfectly, evaporation after the fact would result in a slightly different ABV anyway.

John, it’s 0.04% diff. Just as You wrote, from 14.94% to 14.90%. A very little reduction, hard to discover I think.

I’m going to turn in my calculator and go home.

Respect!.gif
I will go with the additive in water theory.

Per Ridge:


Water: When temperatures during a zinfandel harvest rise significantly, this varietal can overripen quickly before there is time to pick all the blocks. If that occurs we make a small addition of water to those fermentors to rehydrate grapes that lost water to the vine in protecting it from the excessive heat.

Thanks. That is the only legal rationale for adding water under California wine regulations, as I recall, though water is often added in amounts far exceeding any dehydration.

Ridge is very open about “watering back”; the information was volunteered to me a couple of times in the tasting rooms.

Maybe one or a few tanks needed major corrections but many needed none, resulting what appears to be a minimal add but could have been a rather large add to a small lot.

I have no idea what size fermenters Ridge is using or if the East Bench is picked in a single day or in sweeps.

There are seven parcels, according to the back label, and this is the first year they’ve all been included in the final wine. So presumably they had different picking times and different characteristics, which supports your hypothesis.