How much intervention do you want in your wine? Is small-scale = artisanal, large scale = industrial a myth?

WINE TALK
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Hey All-

I was just reading an article in SevenFifty Daily about Emidio Pepe, and started to chew on an often discussed topic: what is the “right” amount of intervention in winemaking? In particular, it was this quote from current winemaker Chiara, that got me thinking:

“Grandfather wasn’t growing super quickly, he wasn’t adopting all of the new innovations … he cared about artisanality and details, and that meant resisting and staying small… (other winemakers at the time were growing) so big so fast, which kind of killed details, killed artisanality, [and] killed precision.”

It’s that “killed precision” bit that poked the contrarian in me. When I think of precision in winemaking, I think of a few things:

  1. Intense attention to detail on the part of the winemaking staff. Not cutting corners, paying attention, etc. Much of this is done with your nose, eyes, tongue, etc.

  2. Good knowledge of what you’re doing. All of the attention and care in the world doesn’t mean much if you don’t understand the likely effects of the actions you’re taking (or not taking). Old school experience, or a good brain and good study/learning from experienced hands are the necessary ingredients here.

  3. Tools and technology. It’s not as sexy as an 85 year old 5th generation winemaker making fantastic wines by sight and smell alone, but I think the combination of knowledge and tools is really the most reliable way to make great wine today. Why would you not use inert gas when bottling? Or a dissolved oxygen meter and reliable free SO2 test to inform your SO2 program during elevage and bottling? Sure, the Outback Steakhouse cowboy seems to do a pretty good job shaving with a buck knife by a river, but wouldn’t most people do a way better job with a nice modern razor and a mirror?

I guess my knee-jerk reaction to the end of that quote was, “Who says you have to lose precision when you grow?” In fact, many of the winemaking tools that I don’t love, which are most often used at larger scale wineries to ensure consistency (very fine filtrations, RO, commercial yeasts, precise temperature control, etc.) make wines as precise as it can get. Sometimes too precise, in my opinion. Know what’s not very precise? Pouring every single one of your bottles out of one bottle and into another one, by hand, without gas, at bottling :wink:

The second part of the morning musing session was, how true is this idea that smaller = more hands off, and as a winery grows, it will intervene more? Without making a statement on the value (or consequences) of intervention in winemaking, I’m not so sure the small winery/low intervention trope is holding true today. I think of modern, non-European wineries with a high build out budget who make tiny quantities of wine with the best tech (Rhys is a nice example). Having really nice temp controlled fermenters and an awesome in house lab doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily intervene more, but we’re certainly not talking about bottling by hand out of old mushroomy barrels here. For sure, having a smaller operation means you can more easily do things in a lower tech way (the tradeoff often being more time spent, only possible with more worker hours to wine volume). But it’s not like every small winery embraces that approach. On the other side of the volume spectrum, I can think of a fair few 10,000+ case (and ironically, Emidio Pepe makes around 6,500 cases/yr, not exactly tiny) wineries that have pretty rustic facilities and don’t fuss with their wines much.

To quickly circle back on Pepe’s case, of course, much of the large-scale wine production that took off in Abbruzzo in the 70s and 80s was genuinely pretty industrial. But there are plenty of examples of producers who’ve retained their unique style and many of their traditions, while embracing technological improvements. Felsina has been my most recently consumed example during these fall/winter months :cheers:

For me, most of my favorite winemakers, big or small, use a fair amount of modern tools to at least inform their decision making, and often to conduct their activities as well. Yet they often prefer to do less rather than more, and use traditional practices as their starting point. Is anyone else annoyed by inconsistency in expensive “artisanally produced” wines? Maybe a little proud to enjoy a bigger winery’s delicious wines that use what you consider to be appropriate technology? Or think just the opposite? Just a few thoughts to get a conversation rolling, curious to know where others stand on the relationships between intervention and quality, and the impact of winery size on both.

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You mention Rhys.
The description in this article sounds like anything but low intervention to me.

I understand they weren’t your focus, but throwing that kind of money at “problems” or at least possible ones never equals out to low intervention in my mind.

If you spend and spend to avoid ever even facing a problem and everything is perfect then you have intervened before you even started.

It’s along the lines of the What makes a wine natural? question.
Will be different for everyone at the table usually

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‘Unfortunately ‘intervention’ cannot be defined easily - and that statement is never truer than today.

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Agreed! If my wording was muddy, what I meant was: Rhys is an example of a tiny winery that is definitely not low intervention. Going against the trope of small = some combo of artisanal, rustic, low-tech, low intervention.

Interesting point you raise about preventing problems vs. solving them (with money or technology). To me, there’s a big difference between a wine that is made in a way that greatly reduces the likelihood of problems, and one that has problems and uses tech/tools to “fix” them. I’m way more likely to enjoy the former.

Sounds like you’d prefer your wine to be made in a way that allows for the potential development of flaws or problems (which can be rectified with good winemaking practices later). Say, using native yeast instead of cultured. I tend to agree.

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Yes, it does appear to be a spectrum. At one extreme, grapes don’t simply grow on wild vines and make wonderful wines inside the berries. At the other, I’ve seen wineries that looked like factories, and tasted wine that felt like it came out of one.

There will be intervention, at the very least in selecting vines and rootstocks, planting them, pruning and training them, of harvesting them, crushing them, fermenting them, bottling them. Plenty more that happens that we’d still think of as minimal intervention.

There have been decisions made in the past that appear stupid today e.g. selecting vines for productivity alone (1970s) or the damage that machine harvesting did to Wynns’ vineyards. Some of the decisions from the 1990s era onwards are on their way to being considered misguided e.g. over-oaking, seeking dark colour and intensity to the detriment of the drinking experience. I see in so many fields, a trust in new technology that ends up being misguided.

It can go in cycles (fashion of sorts), with modernists rebelling against the staid wines of their parents, with then a later generation rediscovering what was good that got thrown away.

Above all else, I value those that think deeply about it, and who are brave enough to follow their own informed judgement, rather than following the crowd / latest trend. That might be fighting to retain tradition, or challenging that tradition hard. Then, they don’t just follow it blindly, but look/taste and adapt. I’ve encountered a few winemakers that had that constantly questing attitude, and I have confidence they are learning and adapting every year.

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I don’t really care about size. Love places like Estezargues that are pretty minimal in terms of intervention on the land or in the winery while they turn out ~ 2,000,000 bottles a year.

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I don’t think it’s that there’s so much “intervention” at Rhys, but rather that technology allows tracking everything. The way the article is written obscures that point.

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If you want to stir the pot then asking about cross flow filtration is the way to go.

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“I value those that think deeply about it, and who are brave enough to follow their own informed judgement, rather than following the crowd / latest trend… Then, they don’t just follow it blindly, but look/taste and adapt. I’ve encountered a few winemakers that had that constantly questing attitude, and I have confidence they are learning and adapting every year.”

This! Well described. It’s the non-dogmatic winemakers, people who seem exceptionally reasonable, who I like and trust most. They often tend to not shout loudest about the perfect solution they’ve found, but rather humbly accept that making good wine is a constantly moving target that requires like you said, questing and adapting.

@TGibson Agreed, and I dig Estezargues too. D’Andezon CDR is awesome, and awesomely cheap, every year. Co-ops seem to do well in the Southern Rhone, I was blown away by the quality during a visit to the Cave de Gigondas in 2018.

@David_Bu3ker good defense of Rhys. I shouldn’t have said they’re not low-intervention, merely high tech, and those two things aren’t the same. I think the same goes for JL Chave - having automated punchdown machines is high tech, but not necessarily high intervention.

@Todd_Hamina I almost always want to stir the pot! Where do you stand on cross flow? Some winemakers I really respect have told me it unequivocally removes either “too much flavor and texture,” or “the entire soul of the wine,” depending on personality of the speaker. I’ve never done side by side tasting trials of the same wine, so I’ve got no practical experience to lean on. It does intuitively seem overly interventionist to me in theory. But I can say that one of the best wines (to my taste) I’ve ever had was cross flowed. Laurel Hood Pinot Noir 2015 - one of my least favorite WV vintages no less, but just an amazing wine. Still drinking well as of last Spring. Certainly didn’t lack for flavor or texture!

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May I ask why?

Cheers

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May you ask? Of course! May I be able to explain with clarity? Hmmm, debatable…

As you said earlier, defining “intervention” can be challenging in wine, and it’s correspondingly true to “low-intervention” and “high-intervention.” With that said, let me give it a go from my perspective:

A) Some literal “interventions” in winemaking are so essential to winemaking process, that I think they should be put into a different category. Maybe we could call them “necessities” of winemaking. Harvest, transport, vatting, facilitating the breaking of berries, some form of cap management for reds and draining juice and/or pressing is a decent start for that list.

B) Then, we have optional, common, but technically non-essential interventions which can be done with very simple tools. These could also be called techniques: de-stemming, use of a pied de cuve, debourbage, lees aging/batonnage, racking.

C) Next, techniques which require the use of more advanced technology/tools: flash detente, continuous flotation, micro-ox, RO, and cross flow filtration are all good examples. In general, I’m thinking of expensive machinery that significantly changes the sensory properties of the wine/juice after its use. Compared to techniques in category B, these sensory changes tend to be much more marked.

Obviously, not everything fits neatly into those categories. Where does carbonic maceration fit? Sparging, or inert gas in general? Those are all probably more B than C for me, but it’s clearly not cut and dried.

We could probably list the 40-50 most common levers that winemakers might pull, and place them in one of those three categories. Maybe assign points for a B or C choice, and the higher the wine scores, the higher its “intervention” score would be. Sounds like a weird task for sickos, but I might enjoy it!

Back to your actual point: cross flow and why it strikes me as a clear C, strongly interventionist. Again, I have no direct experience with tasting trials (I imagine you likely have), but from what I’ve read from those who do, there is a clear change in the texture (and to a lesser degree) flavor in wines that have been filtered down to 0.45 microns, vs 1.0. So I guess it’s not just cross flow, but any sterile filtration I’d call strongly interventionist. Anyway, my reasoning would be that this particular choice 1) significantly changes the sensory properties of the wine, 2) is not strictly necessary, and 3) the goals of the intervention can generally be accomplished with simpler, cheaper technology in cases of lower volume wine that doesn’t need to be perfectly standardized. For those three reasons, it’s much more of a “C” intervention than a “B” for me.

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Cross-flow and sterile filtration are not interchangeable terms. Non-sterile cross flow is nominal, not absolute.

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So a few things here:

  1. Newrly all flavor or aroma compounds are smaller than .2 nominal, which is what a cross flow filters to

  2. Wines still ‘change’ and ‘evolve’ after being cross flowed - they are not considered’ ‘dead’

  3. ‘necessary’ is an interesting statement - what truly IS necessary . . . Do you enjoy Brett in your wines? Want to have zero control of whether they bloom or not in bottle? Want to have microbial issues? There is no guarantee that this will happen in a wine - but after cross flow, you can be confident that you won’t have those potential issues.

  4. cheaper technology to accomplish the same? Please advise. And if you say Velcorin, which is oftentimes employed rather than filtration, we will have a whole other conversation.

Just a few more things to consider . . .

Cheers

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Techniques are crucial. What choices are best for one variety vs another, or one clone of Pinot Noir vs another, to make the best wines requires a lot of knowledge, understanding, attention, curiousity and attention.

Many major mistakes in winemaking came from trying to copy what works elsewhere or whatever different circumstances, without really understanding the whys. So much just doesn’t translate so easily.

A higher level of understanding is why people are bringing back once nearly extinct varieties and making better than ever, compelling and uniquely expressive wines from them.

Maybe intervention is the wrong way to frame this.

Choices - techniques, equipment - to get tge best out of each variety, clone, block, etc. That’s in the vineyard, harvesting choices, how to process, fermentation choices and vessels, aging vessels and so forth. Some grapes reward vigorous punchdowns, others need to be gentle. A fair assumption for whatever the devise Chave uses is it allows a high degree of quality control to attain exactly what they want without compromise. Different fermentation vessels of the same type (as in differing by material, dimension, size) can make a huge difference in fermentation dynamics. That on the passive level, so the properties of the fermenter include the degree of heat retention/dissipation. Some wines benefit from barrel aging, others suffer from it.

Just throwing some things out there. There’s a lot you can do to tailor your wines without using additives and industrial techniques. And, with a good level of understanding you can judiciously use additives when necessary.

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What about things like optical sorters? Is it intervening in the wine making? Or just maximizing potential.

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If every grape is exactly the same, that would be minimizing potential in my opinion. Diversity of flavors comes from a diversity of grapes, both in size as well as ripeness level.

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@larry_schaffer To your points 1 and 2, makes sense to me. And those points support my anecdotal finding that, despite hearing from some experienced winemakers who opposed to sterile filtration, some really great wine is made using that technique.

Point 3: “Necessary” would depend on the case. Do you have a 4.0 pH Lake County Cab with some RS or unconsumed nitrogen hanging out? Then sterile filtration sounds necessary to me, for the reasons you stated. But if you have a 3.45 pH Nebbiolo at 14% ABV, tannins through the roof, no signs of microbial problems and nothing unconsumed lurking in solution? I’d say it’s probably not necessary to sterile filter that wine.

Point 4: This one feels a little bit like a “gotcha”! But I could be wrong. What I said was, “the goals of the intervention can generally be accomplished with simpler, cheaper technology in cases of lower volume wine that doesn’t need to be perfectly standardized.” That statement is a little different than “cheaper technology to accomplish the same.”

What I had in mind was using plate and frame filtration down to the polishing level, to get a wine down to sub 1.0 micron, but above 0.45. This is clearly not “the same” as sterile filtration, obviously, which is why I’m clarifying the difference between my statement and the paraphrase (not trying to be nitpicky to be a jerk). It would not fully remove bacteria, etc., and if I were making Moscato d’Asti, I certainly wouldn’t use plate and frame and call it good! But for a stable, dry wine that has gone through full MLF, with no existing microbial problems, “the goals of the intervention” (of sterile filtration) would be to render the finished wine fully microbially stable, clarify the wine, and perhaps lighten the texture. A plate and frame filtration taken down to 0.5-1.0 micron, for a run of the mill dry, stable table wine as described above, would accomplish those same goals more cheaply. Would there be some bacteria in solution still? Sure, but it wouldn’t matter if the conditions aren’t there for them to proliferate and produce undesirable flavors.

@leslie_renaud Good point. In my little world, most winemakers I talk to produce well under 10,000 cases, and I don’t know anyone with a cross flow system in house. Anytime I’ve heard of someone using one, it’s rented and moved at great expense and effort, the kind of thing you only do if you have a fairly large lot of wine that needs to be sterile filtered and you don’t want to use cartridges. So I’ve gotten used to “cross flow” always meaning “we had to sterile filter.” Maybe if I had a little wider experience across different regions, knew some folks who worked for larger wineries, etc., I’d be more used to cross flow systems being used for coarser filtrations.

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I tend to agree with you. Sometimes a “too perfect” wine made of uniformly ripe grapes comes off as boring, one note. And the first guy to turn me onto wine, Aime Guibert of Daumas Gassac, was a big advocate of harvesting a whole bunch of different varieties, at varying levels of ripeness, at the same moment. I always liked that approach to creating complexity, and really like their wines. Obviously it could be taken too far with severely under or overripe grapes in the mix, but within reason, it’s an awesome and simple tool.

@Eric_Ifune raises an interesting philosophical question though. Optical sorters are just the highest tech version of a very basic technique - sorting. I’ve got to imagine the Etruscans sorted out the ugliest, rotting clusters too, and I doubt even the most dogmatic natural wine lover would advocate for no sorting. But at some point, when our development of a technique becomes super precise and involves the use of fancy technology, it often becomes viewed as interventionist. I think this is true of lots of winemaking techniques.

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Agreed, there is a “sliding scale” of different techniques where one end is too interventionist/precise and the other is not enough. The great thing about winemaking is that we get to make those decisions for the wines we want to make. I wouldn’t use optical sorters for my wines, but if that is what somebody wants to use, more power to them.

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Indeed! Winemaking is made more fascinating by its diversity of opinions and methods. And part of the joy of that diversity is, we get to taste wines made by other people who have different approaches and see what we like or don’t like. Gives us a chance to go, “Shit, maybe I should look into that!” and try out something new in the future.