Exactly. And I think you’d be interested and surprised to see what both “artisinal” and “industrial” winemakers do with their wines, and especially interested to see which techniques are and are not used by both. It’s certainly not cut and dry.
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Almost afraid to throw this oar in the water, but I touched a bit on intervention in this topic. I’m still thinking about it!
Thinking About, Part 2 – IPA – In Pursuit of…Authenticity - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers
Terrific discussion so far, enjoying the read.
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The intervention topics are interesting to debate and I can’t add too much more on that. But I just want to be sure that everyone knows that there is way, way more that separates large-scale wine making vs artisanal than intervention. I make my cider and vermouth at a relatively large scale facility (for Willamette Valley) and visited many more. I make my wines at a small scale artisanal winery. (The small winery doesn’t have space or care for vermouth or cider in their space : (
Here are just some of the issues/differences I have seen at larger facilities:
No fruit sorting; and all must be destemmed and pumped into large tanks for fermentation (no opportunity for whole cluster fermentation or for ferments of individual, smaller blocks on the vineyard). A propensity to use mechanical harvest (not always for sure, and also the harvesters have improved over time, but still, I notice more leaves and other non-grape plant material). Larger-scale tank ferments are just difficult to control for temperature (even glycol-cooled tanks) so this provides higher extraction of tannin, polyphenols, etc. Hey, some winemakers love high extraction. Not judging here, but just noticing that it would be difficult to do otherwise. More acetic acid (VA) issues. As work tasks are backlogged due to staffing, logistics and scheduling issues (etc) these wines in tank can quickly become flawed and I have seen the RO contract truck at the facility, many, many times. There’s a fair amount of head space in a large tank (post-ferment) and I remember UC Davis researchers telling us that tanks need to be topped with inert gas every two days (Nitrogen mixes with air). This is expensive, and at best I see this being done once a week. Once the wine is in barrel, these folks are perhaps not topping barrels as frequently as needed. They have thousands of barrels and it’s pretty easy for other tasks or employee availability issues to intervene. I use a fair amount of old, neutral barrels, and I can tell you that some require topping every two weeks. I think to head this off the larger winery sulfurs at a very high rate. But still. And this can blunt aromatic and flavor expression IMHO. There are more issues with cellar hands that are not as engaged and vested in the end product, make mistakes, etc., but let’s end with racking from barrel, filtering and bottling. Some larger facilities that I am familiar with have their own (very old) bottling lines that just are not state-of-the-art equipment (to limit O2/oxidation).
I’m sure a well-financed, well-managed larger producer can overcome all these issues, but they are substantial in my opinion. One last note. Most larger facilities will have more than a few SKUs at entry-level pricing and will need to be sure their cost-of-goods are very low for these. This kind of cost control mentality can permeate the entire culture at the winery. It would be hard not to really.
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If the idea is to somehow make a ‘perfect’ wine in someone’s opinion - removing anything that’s ’less than perfect’ to whomever making the decision - then in their mind, they are not intervening at all . . .
To me, it removes the ‘highs and lows’ that make wine more ‘analog’ and less ‘auto-tuned’ . . .
Cheers
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Can’t you adjust the parameters and sensitivity of the sorting to get some of those “highs and lows?”