I’ve scratch out a number of tasting notes where I thought the wine, PN, had stem notes and or some new oak only to find out there was no stems or maybe very old neutral oak.
Is there a clear difference in taste? What should I be looking for?
I think there are a lot of variables in both cases. With wood, it can depend on the tree and what part of the tree your stave came from. Each stave may have different amounts of tannin and aromatics. Then if they’re fired and the sugars are caramelized, you have a whole different set of aromatics and flavors. Also if the wine was fermented in wood, it may have different properties than if it was fermented in steel or concrete because different things are leached out by water and by alcohol and the yeasts also react with the various wood components. So it’s kind of hard to make a general comment about wood.
With stems, I guess it’s the same. It depends on the ripeness of the stems and when they were added - if the grapes were crushed with them or not, etc. And how many were used.
For me, the stems often make the wine feel different in the mouth, maybe a little dustier, and I often get a tarry/rubbery kind of note from them, as well as a kind of spicy qromatic quality. But not always. And then if the wine was partly done with carbonic maceration, it’s a whole different blend of things. They can make the wine seem green and some wines suffered from that, but I think people have learned how to avoid it these days.
So I guess I’m not too helpful but I think it really depends on the wine and if they were handled well, the only way to really identify stems is to taste the same wine made with and without them. I’ve tried a few times - asked a winemaker if he included stems and he said he included about 25 percent and I was all proud of myself. Then I noted similar properties in another wine and confidently asked that winemaker and he said no, those properties were all from the skins and seeds. He felt that he got enough texture and tannin and aroma that way and said that if he’d included stems the wine would be too astringent.
Speaking for oak, higher alcohol/riper wines can often present similar character to newer barrels in a more modest wine.
Stems present some signature in the aromatics but they can be quite diverse: pie spice to kitchen herb to green tea and black tea notes. I generally have cooler ferments, so vegetable/green is not an issue with stems for me. Many of the aromatics I mentioned can come from ferments without stems as well.
However, I think Greg is on the right track with the dusty aspect. Also, my wines tend to be more linear, fruit more restrained in young wines.The stems absorb some pigment during ferment, so whole cluster wines of significant percentage usually are less deeply hued wines as well.
Brig, I’ve been stumped so many times that I’m reluctant to guess about whole cluster content unless there are appreciable overt characteristics. There are also seed/stem/skin tannin characteristics that strike me as “woody”.
There’s a huge spectrum of oak treatments. With young wines I’ve been told a number of times about how there can’t be too much oak because all the barrels were used. All “used” barrels are definitely NOT created equal. If the oak barrels aren’t imparting any flavor or noticeable characteristics to the wine, then why would a winemaker use them? Perhaps there are quantitative controls for oak/wine chemistry but it seems very subjective and quite challenging for winemakers trying to soften/round their wines while avoiding overt wood signatures. The softer and more delicate the wines, the trickier it seems to be…especially in their youth if the wines are intended for a few years of aging (or more).
RT
In Pinot and Syrah, I can basically blindly ID not just whole cluster / no whole cluster, but ballpark percentage (say, 25%/50%/~100%). To me it has a very distinctive aroma, smells vaguely like green beans, that is a dead giveaway. I always marvel at people who can’t smell it because for me it is so strong it is like a fish tail slapping you across the cheek. Goes to show how palates / noses are highly individualized.
With oak, I think much easier to miss, though I strongly believe that older barrels can impart oak signatures and a lot of winemakers lie these days about how much oak they are using given current taste for drinking wines that ostensibly see less new oak (despite palates still being drawn to it, because gosh, humans love vanilla).
Richard,
Old/neutral oak is used because it is a less reductive environment than a stainless steel tank.
You’re drinking the wrong whole cluster wines then.
Brig
When it comes to the impact of stems, the pH of the wine is significant (particularly in Syrah). I find the classic N.Rhone savory nose correlates with a higher pH, usually close to 4.0. A higher acid wine tends to mask the stemmy qualities.
I wait with bated breath for the day when someone can sneak one by me blind. Hell, I’ve even called it in producers that traditionally didn’t use whole cluster, and then next vintage someone goes to visit and the producer reveals they “experimented” with whole cluster in the last vintage. Or vice versa. It’s like a party trick.
(It’s also one of the reasons I’m so skeptical of producers who claim new oak / no oak / etc., because I’ve found so many producers lie in both directions about whole cluster use. Producers (quite rationally) seem to do whatever techniques are optimal to make the best wine in a given vintage, rather than following dogma, but that can lead to a disconnect to what the producers say publicly and what’s in the bottles.)
Alexander Pope once said,“nothing prevents the learning of a thing so much as the already knowing it.”
You’ve made your thoughts on whole cluster abundantly clear, and apparently none of us producing wines are to be trusted in your world?
You’re making some gross generalizations. While my wines are easily identified as whole cluster there is no green bean in them. That’s not my palate’s inability to pick up out, green bean. I know the character you speak of and I made adjustments years ago to move away from it. Also, opening wines that at one point had that character, it evolves away from that after a few years in the cellar, and most WC producers are making wines that need 4+ years to really show their true potential anyway.
You say many winemakers lie about their craft, without a thought to evidence or proof of this. What examples do you have?
In a worldwide craft, it’s unlikely that every single winemaker is 100% truthful, that’s just the odds. However, in my peer group we have a deep respect for how the wines are produced and I don’t see the point in lying to a consumer in order to pander to their desire to drink a type of wine.
Most of all-I work my ass off to make wines that I am damn proud of. Lying about my process would disrespect that process and, in my mid-40s, when I am logging 15-20 hour days at harvest I need to believe 100% in what I am doing in order to find the energy to do the job to the standards I want to achieve.
Perhaps you should approach Trump about his VP position. You have a great body of work that would fit right in his wheelhouse.
Brig-if you’re ever in the Willamette Valley, come by the winery and we can go through some barrels. While whole cluster wines are not always super pleasant in barrel, I can show you a range from 16% up to 100% whole cluster(Whole cluster rather than stem added back into the ferment after de-stemming).
I can also show you a range of neutral to new oak barrels. Our new barrels are all 500L puncheon, but I also buy 1-2 filled barrels from another producer and continue to re-use my better neutral barrels. As noted all barrels are different, cooper, forests, and toast levels all have signatures. Oak treatment is a relatively complicated process to balance correctly. My personal belief is that newer oak integrates into cooler vintage, lower alcohol wines and with warmer vintages I tend to use less new wood overall.
Either way, my cell is (503) 939-1308. Happy to show you through and you can make your own mind up. As well as see the barrel the wine is coming out of to verify that I am not a liar.
Marcus, on the issue of, shall we say, lack of candor about the use of oak, I’ve been persuaded by the suspicions surrounding Elio Grasso’s non-Runcot Barolos. See, e.g., TN: 2011 Barolo (Brovia, Burlotto, E Grasso, G Rinaldi and more) - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers. I doubt there are many, if any, producers of Oregon Pinot Noir who lie about their winemaking techniques. I also think there’s a lot of (possibly intentionally) inaccurate information about winemaking among Old World (particularly Italian) producers. In other words, you could both be right.
Jay-as I said, given the huge amount of wine made world wide there are bound to be producers who are less than truthful. Now more than ever, due to elevated pricing introducing the potential for huge profits, and a more competitive environment than ever.
But winemakers who lie, do so at their own peril. I used to be a huge Tour de France fan, from when Greg Lemond was riding. I don’t watch it anymore. If the riders don’t respect the race enough to follow the rules, why should I care about the race?
The same is true for wine regions. Oregon has only 50 years of wine heritage, but it is who we are and that’s not for sale at my winery. For a number of reasons, but high on the list is that if you lie to people they stop listening to you.
This is correct but it’s more than that.
The oxidative impact of a barrel is less reductive, rounds edges off the wine, and provides the Brownian motion of the “egg” shape for fine lees to stay in suspension aiding texture.
The neutral barrel also still provides smaller amounts oak extract and of tannin for polymerization as well. Many producers consider barrels older than 3 years to be neutral, my feeling is that by the 4th year of fill, your at about 20% of impact. Considerably less, but not zero by any stretch. Add in that tighter grain forests, like Allier & Troncais((IMO), tend to have extended impact because it takes longer for the wines to fully leech out the impact of the barrels.
I agree with pretty much everything Greg T says.
Oak is almost always toasted, which gives the wine distinctive characters. Stem can be green or brown. So when people say green beans, I’m thinking green stems. Unless the grapes were destemmed and added back, there will usually be a limited amount of maceration carbonique, which adds its own flavours.
To me stem maceration with little MC adds wild herby aromas but imparts harsh tannins which need reducing somehow. The other thing is that the hue of the wine changes. Stem wines tend to be dark but opalescent whereas oak reinforces colour and obscurity.
I’ve seen oenologists declare that a wine smells reduced when I know the aroma comes from oak. When you work with wine, you get to know the signs that appear during the making, but stems are tricky.
I’d be happy to take DavidZ up on a bet.
Your wines have green bean in them. I have literally never tasted a whole cluster pinot (this includes multiple bottles of Leroy, DRC, etc., and also every damn bottle of Patty Green) that didn’t. It’s just a question of “thanksgiving side” levels of green bean versus “subtle green bean character that is worth it for the extra florals and spice”. You don’t taste it because your palate is insufficiently sensitive to pick it out. My palate is, for whatever reason, highly sensitive to it. OTOH, I’m not that sensitive to TCA. We all have our personal idiosyncrasies.
Every winemaker thinks that the amount of whole cluster they include doesn’t create a green bean aroma in their wine, because (mostly) no one would intentionally impart that aroma to their wine. So whole cluster percentages are, to a great degree, a representation of how sensitive the winemaker is to “that” green bean aroma, adjusting for differences in concentration, chemistry, etc that can alter how prominently that aroma shows.
I have personally encountered many new world winemakers who lie about their wine for the marketing. Lying is endemic in wine, generally. The only truth is what’s in the bottle, and then not even that, sometimes.
What Marcus said.
I’m always interested in people who make far reaching claims about powers of observation that are almost certainly/highly unlikely to be true or verifiable at the least. We made 19 bottlings of Pinot last vintage and I doubt I could pick them correctly blind. I would be close but odds are against even the person with a vast amount of experience with wines single blinded. The idea that someone double blinded could consistently pick out a single aspect of a wine not knowing region, wine, vintage, producer or level of the characteristic being examined is, let us say, dubious.
Even if that were the case some of the great wines in the world are made with moderate to full on whole cluster inclusion. If they indeed tasted or smelled like green beans there would be an issue with these wines being perceived as they are. It’s fine to not like wines made in this style but to declare they all have a specific and readily identifiable negative characteristic in common is folly of a high order.
I would be quite interested in knowing exactly which bottles of our wines you have tried. We don’t do whole cluster on everything. Please list the wines with the corresponding amount of whole cluster inclusion that was done. I would be fascinated to see this magic trick in action.
The only folly is not recognizing that there is enormous variance in drinkers’ sensitivity to chemicals and how they are perceived. I taste in a blind group with a bunch of berserkers - they’ve seen me do this. I’ve also met other folks at tastings with the same issue. It’s clearly a minority of the drinking population that has stem-sensitivity but it’s not zero. There are lots of great wines of the world that are destemmed and those generally taste better for folks who are stem-sensitive. For example, I stay away from your wines like they are radioactive - plenty of other OR producers who don’t make wines that taste like that smell. Doesn’t mean they are not well-made for folks who share your palate.
As the host of the group to which David Z refers, I can vouch for his nearly unerring ability to pick out wines with stems when tasting blindly.