Even Ripening vs. Uneven Ripening???

WINE TALK
1

In the Joy of Zinfandel thread, LarryPiggins made the statement:

I disagree completely. For me, the greatest zin producers are the ones who have the guts to ferment clusters with mixed levels of ripeness, which as you note, is a characteristic of the variety. Clearly if one waits for all the fruit to be ripe, there will be a lot of raisins, but in a mixed cluster, the acidity from the underripe fruit balances the sweetness from the overripe fruit. This is definitely a game to cause ulcers for those accustomed to an evenly-ripening variety like cab, and something that can take a long time to get a feel for.

This is a subject that I’ve sometimes pondered. It’s been stated in some circles/authorities (and most folks know what vast amount of respect I have for wine “authorities”…especially from Monktown)
that one of the benefits of current viticultural practices is that it effects a more even ripening of the grapes. Zinfandel is a notoriously uneven ripener…as Larry alludes to above. Which is probably
why Zinfandel will never make a great wine. [stirthepothal.gif]
So…let’s pose the question(s):

  1. If…somehow or other…you could get ever friggin’ berry, in every friggen’ bunch, to have the same Brix when they’re harvested…would this
    necessarily make a better wine than if the berries vary in ripeness in any bunch??
  2. Suppose you could do some good GMO work on Zinfandel and get the berries to all ripen evenly throughout the bunch so they wouldn’t vary
    from 19Brix to 28 Brix within each bunch (them be just made-up numbers); could you make a vastly superior Zinfandel than much of the
    current crap we get these days??? [stirthepothal.gif]

Just thinkin’ out loud here.
Tom

2

Tom, Primitivo ripens much more evenly than zin, and tends, at least in the Foothills, to make a more “consistent” wine.

But I would argue, too, that the sometime wide variance in ripeness in a zin cluster CAN make for a more interesting wine. Its just a matter of hitting the “harvest” button at…just…the…right…moment!

3

Tom - it’s an interesting question.

In fact, the idea of uneven ripening is interesting.

In Tokaj, for the sweet wines, they harvest a grape at a time because of the uneven ripening, or botryzation (?), of those grapes. I’m not aware of anywhere else in the world where they do that. And no, they don’t do it at d’Yquem, they just charge you as if they did.

They seem to make pretty good wine in Tokaj.

While it’s not Zin, they do have a wine that’s made with the bunches unevenly ripened/botrytized, like your Zins. The wine is called szamorodni, and it’s made pretty much like a Sauternes - the bunches include shriveled, slightly botrytized, ripe but unbotrytized, and even unripe grapes. All squeezed together. That’s usually a sweet wine and higher alc than its more famous sibling, actually much like some Zin.

It can be made dry or sweet, but it’s usually sweet. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting wine, especially if it’s dry.

The dominant grape in the region is Furmint. The “old” type of Furmint has large and small berries, or hen and chick berries, kind of like the Wente clone of Chardonnay that was once common in CA. Thus, it also ripens unevenly.

And that’s one reason they can make the great Tokaji wines.

Under communism, many of the vineyards were planted with a different clone of Furmint, one with bigger berries and maybe more even ripening. Nobody would argue that the wines made under communism were more interesting.

The guys have been making the wine since at least the 1500s and probably earlier, all the while using that messed up uneven Furmint. Popes and kings loved it. But applying the criteria given to Zin, we’d have to say it could never make a great wine. Good thing they didn’t know that back in the day.

I think the idea that Zin can never make a great wine has nothing at all to do with the ripening aspects of it. I think it’s because they didn’t plant it in France, specifically in Bordeaux or Burgundy, in the 1800s. Eh, maybe the Rhone too. And everyone knows that if you want to make great wine, you have to use the grapes planted there.

Now you can get CdPs that have the same alcohol and ripeness and sugar as some of your Zins. But see, those Rhone grapes ripen evenly.

Extrapolating from all that, your idea of getting a Zin that ripens evenly smacks of communism.

Are you anti-American or something?

neener

4

Thanks for the nod Tom and for bringing this interesting question to the fore. I can’t wait to read the responses.

5

Hank, I was going to post about Primativo but you beat me to it.

6

Hank,
That’s pretty much what I’d heard also from growers who have both Zinfandel/Primitivo planted… that it’s
better in the vnyd and a more even ripener. The ones who grow it seem to really like Primitivo.
I would be interested in knowing how much “Zinfandel” that’s out there that’s actually Primitivo.
As long as we have some much crappola Primitivo from Italy out there selling at $10/btl, it would seem
that “Primitivo” on the label wouldn’t have much cachet.
Tom

7

Tom,
I don’t know much about Zinfandel, but we find that picking our Pinot Noir and Chardonnay “massale” or a field blend of clones often leads to our best wines.
FWIW, most of the greatest Burgundies (DRC, Leroy etc) are made from (field blend) grapes that are “unevenly” ripe.

8

Uhhhhhhhh…Greg…that’s about the most convoluted and obtuse line of reasoning I’ve ever done did seen!!! I couldn’t quite tell where your post was going
until I got to the end. [snort.gif]
I’ve had maybe 8-10 Szamorodni in my lifetime. They mostly seemed to be dry to off-dry. And rather variable in character. Some have
been not very good…some have been excellent. It appears to be a genre that has disappeared, though. Ohhhh…for the good ole
days of Communism…when we could build bookoo nuclear weapons with unbridled abandon!!! [snort.gif]
Tom

9

Thanks, Kevin…that’s sorta the anecdotal evidence I was looking for.
I’ve often heard growers/winemakers (sorta) boast at the even ripening they get and attribute that even ripening to the greatness of their wines. When I asked
why one leads to the other, they don’t often have a good answer for me…just a lot of hand-waving.
If “complexity” is something you desire in your wine, then even ripening—>great wine seems a bit counter-intuitive (channeling RandallGrahm…whenever
I listen to Randall give a presentation…I always time him on how soon he can use “counter-intuitive”…record was 17 seconds in SantaFe one time!!).
That’s kinda why I threw out this question.
Tom

10

I think the quest for even ripeness was a bit of enthusiasm gone wild. An over-reaction. People are pulling back now. I’ve seen recent discussions on here and elsewhere about changing vine training methods in vineyards, so it seems there is a bit of a correction about.

The modern standard is to have a narrow fruit zone for even ripening amongst clusters. With a wider zone, the higher clusters will ripen earlier and lower one later. So, even with varieties/clones that ripen evenly within a cluster, you can get (manage) a range in ripeness with a wider fruit zone. I learned this from Jeffrey Patterson. You don’t want the extremes, but the range of ripeness adds a lot of complexity. In my experience, less ripe (but ripe) grapes contribute wonderful aromatics, as well as nice structural elements. Those volatile aromatic compounds dissipate as the grapes ripen. Riper grapes contribute fuller fruit expression. It seems to work well.

I haven’t played with Zin, but I did get some hands on experience with Grenache. The red berries were normally ripe and the green berries in the clusters weren’t harsh at all, just deficient in flavor and a little brighter. They were also few. From my perspective (as a lackey) the picking decision was spot on, as was the decision to not sort them out.

11

Someone in Napa told me recently that some producers were using computerised technology developed in the blueberry business to omit imperfect berries. I think he was talking about Bordeaux.

I find the idea of every berry being perfect sort of creepy, but that’s just an emotional reaction.

12

Oliver, I think this technology has been around for awhile and is being used in the food industry for such things as potato chips french fries. First time that I’ve heard it being used in wine production but it doesn’t surprise me. Mechanical harvesting anyone?

13

Someone in Napa told me recently that some producers were using computerised technology developed in the blueberry business to omit imperfect berries. I think he was talking about Bordeaux.

Optical scanners. They use compressed air to blow out berries which don’t meet the criteria set. I understand they can get very, very uniform ripeness in each piece of fruit.

14

The optical scanner/sorting table set-up has been around for a few years now.
You can see it at work here (notice a couple of poorly colored berries meeting an untimely death around the 1:30 mark):

15

Yeah… we visited Hall winery in Napa a few weeks ago where they had some fabulously expensive machine that analyzed each individual berry and rejected the bad ones. Their Cabs are indeed fabulous, but it’s a Cab, IMHO terroir/complexity is not as important as in Pinot Noir/Zin/more site specific grapes (at least for me).

16

I had no idea this kind of thing existed in the wine business.The wineries I work with sometimes have really nice bottling machines, but that’s as far as it goes.

17

The idea of fermenting with a lot of different ripeness levels isn’t really something I had considered all that much, but I have to imagine it would make the sorting table much more complicated than Bob Cabral’s typical “if you don’t want to eat it, I don’t want to make wine out of it” 1-rule system (people still use sorting tables right?). It would seem to me a very delicate balance and can’t imagine you would want many “green” Zin grapes going into the ferment. They will bring the acidity, yes, but they will also bring pyrazine and all sorts of other unwanted ripe flavors along with, won’t they?

18

Another thing about Zinfandel is that it sets a fairly large 2’nd crop. These are bunches of grapes that lag well behind
in ripening to the main crop. I would guess that modern viticultural practice is to drop this 2’nd crop to the ground.
But I don’t know this for a fact.
I’ve tasted some 3-4 Zins made from 2’nd crop harvest over the yrs, and they’re a little weird. Rather soft & soupy.
But that may just be a function of the winemaking…don’t really know.
Tom

19

The “other” modern practice is to offer it for free to hobbyists.

I’ve tasted some 3-4 Zins made from 2’nd crop harvest over the yrs, and they’re a little weird. Rather soft & soupy.
But that may just be a function of the winemaking…don’t really know.

Yep.

20

On the question of green grapes and Zinfandel, if the winemaker’s philosophy says no green grapes, then yes he or she will try to do whatever is possible to eliminate them. There are clearly a lot of people who think this way. This works great for Cab, but is IMO the Achilles’s Heel of Zin, since this usually means letting the fruit hang, which results in a large proportion of raisins going into the fermenter (and due to very high brix, water and TA going in as well). Wines made with this philosophy reflect this, and there are a lot of them out there, which is why I’m very selective when it comes to buying zin.