Going Native at Crush Facility

Is it even possible to consider a native fermentation in a custom crush facility that has 50-75 (other winemaking clients) using 1 ton macro bins in active fermentation?
Most of the other wine making clients are using commercial yeasts in this facility.

Brian,
Difficult and maybe, not possible.
But, assuming you can get your fruit into bin, whether whole cluster or destemmed, without getting too close to active ferments, my suggestion is to immediately gas the head space of the bin with argon (heavier than air), cover it and don’t move the bin. Continue to do this periodically until the ferment is rolling.
Technically, yeast is heavier than air but the slightest breeze can make it airborne. Thus, covering it is important and a continuing layer of gas is also.
Once the ferment is rolling, you have to get air to it and, at that point, commercial yeast will probably get to it. But at least, you tried.
Best, Jim

Yes but most likely wont the airborne commercial yeast completely dominate the ferment until completion? If that is the case would it not be prudent to at least choose my own strain as opposed to some other ambient yeast whose parameters will be unknown to me?

I think the term uninoculated would best suit what your describing. Certainly commercial strains will enter the ferment and likely finish it. I managed a winery for 6 vintages that we never inoculated PN at a custom crush facility. The idea was that we would get added complexity in the beginning of fermentation with no fear of a stuck ferment for PN’s in the upper 14’s. You will also get a slower/longer/cooler fermentation with uninoculated tanks as it takes many generations of yeast multiplying to get close to the amount typically inoculated with. Your also likely to have many strains competing potentially adding complexity vs. one singular very dominant hot/fast strain. We were able to do much shorter cold soaks and more active time compared to wines in the same facility that were cold soaked longer due to faster ferments to reach the desired time in tank.

We liked the results and thought is added to the vintage character. Having vintages taste the same was not the goal.

No matter what you’re going to have some s. cerevisiae take over and finish a fermentation. The stuff lives and thrives on your skin. The complexity from “going native” comes early, so you should be fine for that part. If you actually somehow prevented incidental introduction of wine yeast you’d be risking a stuck fermentation. Also, keep in mind that even if you inoculate, that won’t necessarily be the yeast that finishes. Different yeasts have different strengths and weaknesses, so various strains can come (“out of nowhere”) to dominate different phases of the fermentation. Some commercial strains were isolated to dominate, others for various other reasons.

So, you can consider steps that would delay the inevitable, which may or may not have any effect on the wine, anyway. Seems like reasonable effort could be employed, but too much effort for something that may not matter is questionable.

Also, keep in mind that a small percentage of fruit (often consistently from a specific vineyard) doesn’t play well with spontaneous fermentation, for whatever reasons.

Certainly possible, and you’ll find the fermentation kinetics are different. Remember, every “clean” punchdown tool is going to move a little from bin to bin. Despite best efforts, it’s not always possible to isolate from one to another.

I’ve had a few ferments where I’ve had the yeasts isolated at the beginning and end of fermentation- always some S. cerevisiae or S. bayanus at the end, rarely there at the beginning (of an uninoculated bin). The “native” yeast often comes in with the grapes, but Saccharomyces loves to take over… They’re just hardier!

The short answer is no, you won’t have “native” strains at a custom crush facility, unless that facility is old and has its own strains that are “native” to the site.

I believe people who ferment Cabs or most red wines “native” or, probably more accurately, “ambient”, are likely actually finishing fermenting using whatever white wine or other red wine yeasts are wafting around the winery. Joe Davis of Arcadian told me that he believes that yeasts can actually travel all the way down the road from one winery to another. If I were to have a winery all to myself, that would be one thing. But custom crush? I want some say in what ferments my wine. Even if one does not move the bins, the wine is not fully protected. The pumps and hoses and punch down devices carry the yeasts from the previous wines they touched. There is no way to keep them out of the wine you are fermenting unless they are completely sanitized every time they touch everyones wine. No crush facility does that.

Couple of thoughts to keep in mind regarding which yeast finishes the fermentation:

Yeast isn’t airborne…not on it’s own anyways. Active fermentations will thrown yeast around, but they immediately fall to the ground. Fruit flies (etc) that go from fermentation to fermentation are a big yeast contamination offender.

The rest depends on your sanitation procedure. Caustic, scrubbing, acid rinse and then PAA or Mandate or similar and a hot water rinse is an excellent procedure. Scrubbing every surface of the tank is important to eliminate biofilms (biofilms aren’t durable tho, so scrubbing is more than enough). If you do this completely to every piece of equipment the grapes touch I see no reason why you won’t get a ‘native’ fermentation. But your sanitation procedure and how rigorously it’s applied is 90+% of the game here (including how often the sanitation solutions are replaced). I’ve read several studies about which yeast finishes uninoculated fermentations and they didn’t spend a large/most part of the article characterizing the sanitation procedures of the subject wineries, which made me wonder. Maybe there are others out there that do?

Sanitation vs sterile: Assuming there’s a mix of winery and vineyard yeast in the must, the one with the higher population is most likely to win out. The growth rate (and killer factor) of each different yeast matters some, but generally the higher population is going to win…and if your sanitation is good enough, the population of winery yeast should be sufficiently low to make it the smaller initial population.

Also, the other point of ‘native’ fermentations is having a diverse set of yeast (esp non Sacc C yeast) early on. They won’t be very active past about 3% alc, and will all die at around 6% but they have their impact. So starting with tiny tiny populations of Sacc C gives the other guys time to do their stuff.

Anyways, that’s my understanding of this.

A lot of good knowledge in these posts. It’s important to realize that the concepts of ‘native’ and ‘natural’ are so heaped with bullshit that its tough to grasp what they’re really worth. I’ve done every which way and sideways, and we do all kinds of different things in the winery. For years, I worked at an estate winery (Big Basin) that was exclusively native, as in the last two years I was there I didn’t do a single yeast start. You can make a strong case for native enhancing terroir in that situation. However, what I’ve found in my facility is that I ultimately feel that ‘native’ yeasts create a wine that is farther from what I saw in the grape (as a proxy for terroir) than when I inoculated after ~3-5 brix drop (accounting for lag time to get that 3-6% alcohol) because by knowing my selections and selecting carefully, I get to the ferm before the ‘winery strain’ takes over (typically something that’s a complete killer, like a bayanus or variant of PdM, which don’t lend a lot of complexity to the fermentation) with a strain who’s profile and kinetics – and the latter may be the more important of the two – I think suit the expression. The idea that ‘industrial’ or ‘commercial’ yeasts are bad and native are good assumes some sort of genetic manipulation in the industrial yeast, which is a crock. They’re isolates. From a marketing perspective, it makes a lot of sense to do the full native, and you can get a very good wine shepherding the local population. So maybe letting marketing dictate your winemaking makes sense. It all depends what you’re after.

We do have a few vineyards that come into the winery that seem to be carrying their own very powerful variant. Bechthold in Lodi, for instance, always fires up and rages in its own special way from the get go – in fact, once that’s going a lot of things seem to reflect its characteristics if I let them run their course. And its not my favorite yeast. Kind of upended the whole concept of native yeast = terroir for me.

This is awesome. [cheers.gif]

Is this carbonic maceration with Argon ?

I agree with you that kinetics is a important issue. Which is one of the many reasons I do uninoculated/native/wild/etc. ferments. Also whole clusters and tank size have a lot to do with kinetics as well. I built a new building and have never had any commercial/packaged strains on site of yeast or ml. The biggest change to the ferments I have seen on inoculated vs not is the need for temp control to control a huge population of yeast added all at once creating a hot and fast ferment. As well as the need to pre and post cold soaks to get the time on skins your looking for.

I do all t-bin ferments with whole clusters with no temperature adjustment. We get an average of 21 days on the skins (range of 19-24). I have not had any issues with suck ferments and we don’t add nutrients. A slower ferment that won’t overheat occurs with uninoculated ferments done with whole clusters in small lots.

As I mentioned above even the kinetics of an uninoculated ferment in a custom crush facility will be very different than and inoculated ferment. In the end the same yeast may finish it out but the pace and temps will be very different making different wines. I definitely don’t believe every vineyard site will make better wines when left to go on their own. I do believe you get more site out of site specific microfloura/fauna. Vineyards and wineries are often not at the same site and many wineries bring in off site fruit. This is one of the reasons I only make wine from the vineyard that is on the same site as the winery as to not bring in other microfloura/fauna.