Tim Patterson’s article from Wines and Vines.
We used cold soak for several years in our Pinot and found It did not do a whole lot for us so we stopped.
It depends on the
particular vintage, region and wine style.
A careful cold soak is a great way to get an accurate grasp of buffering capacity through pH, and true sugar.
In less seed ripe vintages/regions it lets you maximize extraction of water soluble phenolics from the skins and shorten the time of alcoholic extraction when the presence of alcohol solublizes the seed husk and can extract undesireable tannins.
Even if the seeds are ripe and have interesting tannin with positive organoleptic contribution, they might not be desireable stylistically.
In all I would say the most important aspect is the ability cold soak provides to get accurate chemistry in case there is something that needs to be adjusted to make better wine.
It is always better to make an adjustment before fermention. The wine tastes better and seems to have better organoleptic character. Adjustments/additions after ferment seem to stick out for some time.
I’m with Peter on this. Here in Niagara Peninsula (from the modest 6 vintages I’ve done) we see it beneficial to our Pinots in those cooler vintages. Anything to avoid hard seed tannins we may get during post-maceration while gaining some complexity during cold soak. Thing to avoid is that overtly jammy note from extended cold soak in our warmer vintages (yes, we get 'em in Niagara). To my palate there’s nothing worse than a cherry bomb Pinot that lacks terroir.
SO… it all comes down to personal style, philosophy, taste, region, mesoclimate, fruit integrity and vintage variation. No small matters.
Out of interest we make more Bordeaux reds than Pinot right now and usually inoculate immediately (still trying to push towards indigenous ferments with BDX reds but last two vintages were challenging for different reasons). Pinot is always a different game, though.
I’m more intrigued by the post-ferment heating-up that you are seeing more of. I find the wines look very awkward young but the ‘philosophy’ out of some Burgundian Domaines is that it provides great longevity to the wines. I tend to see big Ethyl Acetate when the wines are young, though… thoughts on the Post-ferm Maceration Heating?
Makes sense Peter, we certainly have our share of less ripe sed vintages.
Jay, How hot are you talking about with post ferm macerations?
Pros: Get a better handle on your chemistry, perhaps increase color extraction without seed tannin (the studies I have seen indicate that color increases early but not long after pressing, color is not significantly different than non-cold soaked), longer vat times are generally, IMHO, a good thing to a point (not necessarily a “some is good, more is better” situation though).
Cons: longer vat times are not always conducive to running a winery, so your infrastructure may not handle it; not environmentally friendly unless you can pick fruit at 55 degrees (chillers are not minimal energy sinks); if you have 75 degree fruit, your chiller might take a few days to get it there…add on your soak time and then the time to heat it up and you may be looking at quite a long time; the cooling and warming periods are a great time to develop some unwanted microbe activity - this can lead to fermentation problems, biogenic amines, and other similar problems that will nag a wine for its life and can be difficult to get rid of.
I’ve made Pinot both ways (including with Tony, who’s quoted in the article). Both have had good results and bad. When not cold soaking, you can extend vat time for extraction purposes by simply fermenting colder. In all honesty, the jury’s still out…if you can do it right (pick very early, have ample space and refrigeration capacity, have the ability to warm reasonably quickly, have external heat exchangers and are not relying on jackets for the only T control, etc) I don’t see any harm in doing so. If you can’t do it right, I don’t see the point except to shoot yourself in the ass, and I don’t think wine suffers from not doing it. I have made what I consider to be (I’m biased of course) very good Pinot noirs without cold-soaking.
I have a ton of space and refrigeration capacity for our current size now, so I intend to play around with it in Sangiovese, Cabernet and other Bdx varieties this year. I think it could be very positive in Sangiovese, which has some similar problems to Pinot (low color and high tannin potential). Only where it is appropriate, though. Square pegs in round holes are not my bag.
This is a great thread. Thank you.
I am interested in this ending quote from the article:
“Still, it would be nice to have somebody do the study Boulton sketched in the air, and find out exactly what’s going on in those chilly bins. But that would take more than just a grant or two; it would mean doing winemaking in an alternative universe.”
Why wouldn’t it be possible to cold soak one lot and not another, then monitor the difference in chemistry through fermentation? Has no one done this?
j.
Jacki- I have done basic investigations in our own wines…but, if you’ve never met Dr. Boulton or heard him speak, that is not what he means, I’ll guarantee that.
I think the quote refers to a rigorous, publishable-in-a-peer-reviewed-journal study.
Got it. I appreciate reading your thoughts above. Did you run comparative labs when you experimented?
Love Tony. Class act.
Is Wes Hagen over here?
I have the utmost respect for Tony and really enjoyed working for him. Never sure if his impeccable business timing was due to genius or luck, but I’ll bet it was a mix of both. He seems to love it up there.
When I was able to implement experiments, they were very basic due to the nature of crush. Cold-soak vs non, native vs non, etc. I would usually have one lot a year that was big enough to be split identically between two tanks. We would use ETS to measure whatever it was we were interested in…with natives, the question was what was growing there early on (Hanseniaspora largely it turned out), with cold soaks it was what was the color/phenolic difference at pressing (not much it turned out). After that, it was just continual tasting to determine whether there were any preferences.
Of course, this is not Dr. Boulton’s type of investigation. And we were always careful to attribute too much to the conditions introduced. Nonetheless, asking these questions and trying to answer them as best you can through experimentation is very important to me, even if the questions are never fully put to rest.
Personally, I’d love to give Dr. Boulton $1M and see what he could do with a variety of questions we all have. Scientific rigor would certainly not be a problem. It might take him a decade to fully explain what he found, but that’s another story… ![[wow.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/7/7d450e9830889c8943b674446a21b7254cad657e.gif "wow"){kind=small}
There’s actually a more rigorous cold-soak article in the current May/June Practical Winery & Vineyard:
“Risk control and alternatives - Pre-fermentation maceration in red winemaking”
By Charlotte Gourraud and Marie-Laure Murat
Interesting article, but it’s not online, unfortunately.
It discusses a lot of the pros & cons that Nate posted above, and a good deal of the article is devoted to the risks of brett and other microbes growing in a cold-soak environment. It also looked at adding a cultured yeast strain in stages (before and after cold-soak) - the idea being that the inoculated yeast would multiply to some extent even during the cold soak, and out-compete unwanted strains, then adding more immediately following the cold soak would help keep unwanted strains from regaining a foothold.
The article also discussed using specific enzymes as an alternative to cold soaking (and the risks that the article mentioned), to extract color and phenolic compounds, and ended up recommending this to cold-soaking. Although looking carefully at the info presented, it turns out that the enzymes used in the study are sold by the company that the two authors work for - imagine that! [rolleyes.gif]
Thank you, Nate, I appreciate you taking the time to post your observations!
And what in the heck is a decade, in science terms 
Of course, in farming and winemaking terms, that’s 10 vintages and we only get so many in a lifetime…
j.
Ah, gotta track that down. I think my husband nabbed that one…
j.
He’d be able to have a lot of data in a couple years. It’d take him a decade to explain it. inside joke…let’s just say he’s not the guy to call when you’ve got 5 minutes for a quick Q&A. Pack a lunch.
Even though I don’t have that many harvests under my belt, yet, as far as color is concerned, I really don’t think it makes a huge difference, especially over the long run. As a matter of fact, I don’t thing a lot of things make that much of a difference in the long term, as far as enzymes and normal winemaking conditions are concerned. It seems like if you have problems with color in a particular vineyard, not much the winemaker can do will fix it to a great degree.
Now, the other things that Peter and the others can make a difference, especially phenolic extraction.
But color, not so much.
Our winemaker for our 2005 and 2006 PN cold soaked. Beautiful color. Our new winemaker in 2007 did not. Not such beautiful color. I’m not a winemaker, nor do I play one on tv 
, and will have to ask our current guy whether he thinks it was primarily the cold soaking that made such a difference, but I find this conversation fascinating.
Linda, do you do a PN? I was thinking not, but I’m still getting to know the folks here and what you do. Do you think maybe there is a significant difference between PN and other reds as far as cold-soaking goes?
I’m pretty good at asking dumb questions. Feel free to ignore me if I get annoying.
j.
Jacki, while I’ve participated in crush on multiple occasions, some where a cold soak was utilized and some where it was not, forget color in pinot noir. It’s not an indicator of quality - at least not in my book. John Thomas’ wines are almost routinely devoid of color, as are Jacques Seysses’ from Domaine Dujac. Get the point?
Absolutely, although I’m not sure your viewpoint is as common as it should be. But my main point was not one of inherent quality but more that there’s a distinct difference in color between our 2005/06 and our 07, which I think is probably at least partially related to the cold soak. I really need to as Aron what he thinks about how causal it was.
06 and 07 Oregon were dramatically different vintages. 06 had nice fall weather and hang time to develop color and concentration, whereas 07 was shortened by rain. You can’t make the comparison based on cold soak.
I am a fan of cold-soaks, for many of the reasons that Peter mentioned. The ability to get accurate readings on the juice and make adjustments, if necessary, as juice rather than as wine is a major part of it. I do think it provides a different type of extraction as well, which I like.
Two things to keep in mind, however. A 3-5 day “cold soak” while technically a cold soak, would not have historically been called that in many European countries with colder cellars and a tendency to use indigenous yeasts. It would just be the beginning of fermentation. To really do something called a cold soak you would need to do a mini (or maxi) Accad method with higher levels of SO2, purposeful chilling of the must, etc. We need to be careful to recognize the difference in terminology over time.
Second, it is not surprising to me that cold soaking is on the outs…it is expensive to do either via chiller or dry ice. New oak is also becoming decidely unpopular…it to is expensive. And we are in the worst economic times in a generation. One can hardly remove winemaking decisions from the times in which they are made.
Adam Lee
Siduri & Novy
I would have to agree. Californians tend to copy burgundy to the extreme. Burgundians do a cool soak because that is what the conditions provide them. The fruit arrives cool native fermentations have a long lag phase, these are the natural conditions. We took this to an extreme with dry ice and keeping temperatures at 50F for 10 days and we are not even sure if is beneficial. I think most people don’t understand the effects of cold soak. It is supposed to be a gentle extraction in water solution. You can’t do cold soak and extended maceration you are counterbalancing the effects of cold soak. Extended maceration is a harsh extraction in alcohol. I have found that regular fermentation tend to have lower VA’s and longer aging potential. Not everything that is done in Burgundy should be copied, most of all it is what works for you.