But when is the last time you dipped your tea bag in the hot water just 2 times and then left 80% of the bag out of the water during the seeping?
Don’t get me wrong, Ray and I get along great and I am not saying he has messed up. If his wines are getting 92+ from Meadows then the results speak for themselves. I am just saying that, having been involved in the fermentation of hundreds of lots of wine and knowing the science of it quite well, and knowing what most good winemakers do as their protocol, it seems scary to me to leave a cap un-immersed for days on end. It also seems like a possible missed opportunity.
I agree that for Pinot color is not correlated to quality (see anything off Rosella’s Vineyard or Keefer,) but those skins that leech that color also hold much of the yummy stuff and the idea that much of it is not getting extracted makes me wonder what might happen if Ray took a small tank of the good, fully ripe stuff and punched down 2x/day in the cold soak. 3x a day in the ferment down to 5 brix or so, then press off and go to barrel “warm.” Might be nectar of the gods good. The worst that happens is that he gets to see directly the effects of more extraction.
In looking at his pics on his site I see his tanks are a bit conical in shape and this probably means the cap is more extended and more in contact with the juice, but I would still highly recommend taking a few gallons of juice at least once a day and pouring it over the top to keep the cap “wet.” I think he is dodging a bullet by not doing this. But I have not had his wines yet, and others tell me they are great, so the proof is in the pudding.
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In all seriousness, the tea bag analogy is the right one. Loose leaf naturally immerses in the water, sinking to the bottom. The cap does not, just like tea bags naturally float the top unless you immerse them.
Whilst I will admit to knowing less of the technicalities than yourself. It was interesting to see and to hear of how many unbroken berries were in the tanks at the bottom when punching down. Which makes me think that there is enough contact between what juice has leached out and skins… Of course, technically this all may be wrong but whatever is happening… Ray is making wines that are very very good with great poise.
Which to cut a long story short makes me think that Ray is getting the loose leaf affect without really working for it perhaps, but I will leave it at that, before I make a fool of myself!!
J
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Hey Roy
as you said, we do get along well, despite your love for cabs and such. I agree that there is certainly a missed opportunity to get more extraction, more intensity… more color, more tannin and reduce some risk. That said, most of these things align fairly well with what I am interested in personally. And, while I am Very happy to have people enjoy the wines today and to receive excellent praise from people that I respect and admire, wine is a constantly moving target. To taste something is to witness just a snapshot. So, it can be a mistake, but it is fun nonetheless and it drives me intellectually. Lets be clear, I truly enjoy wines of producers that do things which are the opposite of what I do, and I have had discussions with them on these topics. Everyone does what they prefer and there is never one size that fits all when taste is considered.
I will say that looking at the results of the punch down regime in 09 and 10 that I don’t want for any increased extraction. It may be appealing or ‘the right thing to do’ to many, most or some, but it wouldn’t be interesting to me.
My guess is he is not crushing the berries before going to tank. Not uncommon. Many employ this method, including myself. Often the juice will ferment in the berry and the juice will burst out on it’s own. Also, it leads to a sweeter press wine, as often some of those berries still have some sugar fermenting in them. Has nothing to do with the cap itself. Also, the cap does sink once fermentation comes to an end and before it ferments there is no cap, so it may appear that the berries are immersed depending on when you are watching the process.
Note to the board watchers… this is essentially what we would be talking about off the boards in private and in this case everyone is seeing it “in the open” instead. Don’t mistake all of this for a rant/disagreement. Comparing notes, discussing options is what we all do.
Ray, the level of extraction should be geared for the nature of the vintage, as you know, so I trust you have some instinct on what is right for your ferments. But if you get the chance to do a more extractive experiment with a portion of a vintage, I highly recommend giving it a shot. We are not talking a Cab level here, but simply what people like Ted Lemon and many others with a nod to Burgundy. Nothing to lose, much to potentially gain. At the worst some intellectual edification one way or the other and even more confidence in your own path. I think you did more working of the cap in Somoma, correct? Also, do you ferment with stems or de-stem? Often, fermenting with stems leads to the berries being immersed more since the stems keep a more homogeneous structure to the contents of the tank/bin.
Roy, thanks for the info… Very interesting.
Of course, wine is about discussion and this one is becoming more informative by the minute.
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As a consumer who buys these types of wines I would reject the axiom that one should always extract as much as a particular vintage allows. That kind of thinking is predicated upon the assumption that more extraction is always better and one would only back off if the vintage wasn’t allowing more. I would very strongly but respectfully disagree with that.
So you are disagreeing with my quote that you should gear the level of extraction to the vintage… how? Where did I say “more extraction is always better?” My very quote obviously states the opposite.
Nope, not true. Everyone, this is a classic Roy rant! Just kidding.
First off, I completely agree that I may be leaving something on the table. I don’t need an experiment for that. Its true. But, what that ‘something’ comes with are things that I am not interested in. I’d take the intensity, but I may lose nuance. I’d have to take darker color perhaps along with increased skin based tannin. The results may taste wonderful but it backs in to another one of my choices on doing things the same year over year without prejudice to the vintage. This is a LONG opinion, so I will just say that I am again leaving things on the table in years that Clearly present opportunities with regard to stems, extraction, etc. It is not interesting to me to make adjustments based upon biases for a vintage or consumer base. The wines are as I think they are most interesting to me. If I make assumptions for what a vintage or vineyard or consumer base wants, I will most surely lose by a large margin since I have let go of my core intentions which are to have excellent fruit and to be fair,careful, conscious and even in my methods in the hope that the resulting wines will taste more like their place of origin than what general biases may suggest, be they mine or other’s.
There is something to ‘gain’, but it comes at the cost of knowing what it would be like to remain neutral year over year to see what happens. Knowing exactly how these climats respond to different vintages is more important than maximizing or taking advantage of something. Besides, for every move left, I move further away from those on the right. It makes more sense to be even in my methods so that there are biases, but dealed evenly.
I do de-stem everything. Only one wine was not 100% de-stemmed and that is another story for another night.
I felt that you were implying that but clearly I was wrong. I apologize.
I do believe in more extraction and also more heat during the fermentation of Bordeaux varietals than Pinot. But even I will back off on Cab if ripeness levels are not optimum or if I source off a high-tannin vineyard like Howell Mtn. It depends on what you are trying to extract out. You extract and taste, extract and taste. After doing it many, many times you start to project where the fermentation is going and make some kind of guess where to start backing off. But sometimes you have such a perfect lot from such a perfect vineyard and with such beautiful tannin, that you want to leave nothing left in the grape. The key is knowing the difference between the two.
Pinot, by its nature, requires even more careful consideration. Burgundy probably even more so. My guess (and that is all it is) is that if I had a Musigny, I would be careful about extracting too much and if I had a Chambertin, I might be willing to extract more. But even that depends on the vintage and the block and the kind of wine you like to drink. If I was sourcing from Rosella’s, I might be more careful but if from Pisoni, I could be interested in more extraction. This is the kind of question I plan to ask when I make my way back down to the Central Coast in Jan/Feb. I am always up for learning more.
Ray, somehow I think that with your meticulous sorting regime… 
that in a difficult vintage where ripening was a problem or where tannins are green your wines may end up being the same, but just in tiny quantities…
The mention of Ted Lemon as a reference point for fine Pinot has me worried. I tasted his Burn Cottage Otago wine and IMHO it is a overworked disaster, a Pinot made as Cali Cabernet… nothing at all what I like about Pinot and certainly nothing to do with what Pinot, let alone Burgundy, should be like.
Ted’s wines are too big and ripe to my subjective tastes. The wines are vey well made but very far from what I’m looking for.
Forget names! Okay, lets look at Josh Jensen at Calera…
“We punch down twice a day for 14 days in fermentors.”
So that is 28 turns of the juice, 14x what we are talking about here. You people are missing the point. I don’t care who you are talking about, Ray is doing it different than anyone I know. It seems to be working, cool. I am just saying, no one else I know does this. In the end, what matters is the final result and if Ray’s result is awesome juice… well… great! I just got off the phone with Ray and if next year is as far apart for harvest as Burgundy and Napa is this year, I might well go an do a week-long internship for him and see this in action myself.
Its easy to understand where you are coming from with your opinion, but I am quite specific in what I am looking for which is to not impose my preferences on the grapes…which is specifically to mean that I will treat them Exactly the same. In Napa, or other cellars in Burgundy, it is fine. I will even buy wines like this myself where people look at the fruit and make decisions that will change depending on the lot. For me, I am not interested in doing this.
Here is why:
I imagine that at times you may do something hoping that your actions will result in what you want them to. Sure, sometimes it won’t work, but in the best cases, you get what you want. This is a rarity, but it does happen that you do something hoping for a result and then it happens. The problem to me is that the result is not only what you hope it will be. You often find other items which are coupled within (more extraction, more intensity, more color, more tannin, etc). The other wrinkle is that when you are artistically aiming for a result such as ‘finesse’ or ‘complexity’ or any of those other words that are supposed to be pleasant in a wine, you are shooting at an impossible target since wine is such an intimate thing.
What is one person’s extracted is another’s elegant. It just strikes me as a bit too much trying to taste and guess how the wine will respond to your inputs in one wine over another or feeling as though a decision in year one will yield similar results in year two.
This is not to say that my thoughts are ‘right’ or ‘best’ but I am only working with a handful of grapes so there are decisions that I need to make, just as everyone else does. You think it through and do your best.
The thing is that there might well be others doing things exactly like I do. We all could be making a huge mistake. I don’t know, but it feels right. Thats all that I care about.
Also, no one mentioned remontage/pumpovers, don’t do those either.