Is This How Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire Make Wine ?

Over at Kunde Family Winery in Kenwood, vintners are attempting a relatively new procedure in which a tractor drives through vines with a heat blower that shoots out a quick blast of heat — up to 350-degree air — to hasten the flowering process.

So far, the test project seems to be working. Winemaker Zach Long noted that a merlot block treated with the heat has reached about 90 percent of fruit set, while a similar untreated block is at 60 percent. The winery also is treating two blocks of chardonnay that have mostly reached fruit set. Overall, the winery uses about 2,000 tons of grapes in its wines annually.

“It’s already had a huge difference,” Long said. He noted that problem fruit set is his second biggest worry as a winemaker, right after frost.

The company that performs the service, Agrothermal Systems of Walnut Creek, contends a trial conducted in 2013 in Oregon, Washington and New Zealand showed the treatment increased the number of berries set per bunch by an average of 24 percent compared to those that were untreated.

Pilot tests also have shown that heat-treated grapes result in wine with better color and tannin structure, said Tim Matson, director of operations for Agrothermal Systems.

“We’re giving it a thermal shock instantaneously. Nothing in nature does that,” Matson said.

Last week, when the chardonnay went into bloom at Kunde, there were a few overcast days along with a high threat of mildew, Matson said. He said the extra heat sped up the process.

“Once it gets pollinated, then we bring it to a temperature that we’re not getting (in nature) to set the fruit,” he said.

I get the steroid reference but I don’t see how coaxing a better fruit set will result in more “steroidal” wines…given the poor fruit set we had last year and the corresponding low yields this could be a god-send for growers. Emphasis on “could”

Perhaps this explains why some wines have a cooked fruit profile.

It may well be, but it’s also pretty amusing/amazing.

That’s Thermovinification or Flash Détente :wink:

To me, this is simply another technique aimed and ensuring that fruit develops as it should. With the poor fruit set shoes that happened throughout California last year, I would think this would be a good thing. And I’m not sure what was separated from other techniques done in the vineyard, including shading lines from extreme Sun as is done in Paso Robles and elsewhere. Of course, just my $0.02 :slight_smile:

Ok, so from a Devil’s Advocate point of view, doesn’t this essentially continue to remove the nuance of nature from the resulting wines?
Matson also states it gives wines of deeper color and better tannic structure, so the steroid reference is kind of on target. It just seems like very few agricultural advances are talked about by someone using words like elegant, complex, or precise. Mostly it’s darker color and softer structure, i.e. better tannins.

The hail in Europe and now frost this spring is heartbreaking. I really feel for those wineries and what they are having to deal with. Perhaps seeing wineries dealing with harsher issues like that make this just seems like sacrificing character for consistency.

I think that’s a fair point, but I think what it proves is what most wine customers really want, and how different that is from what is popular here on WB and in other “elite” circles. Most people aren’t looking for a Napa merlot with light colors, bell pepper, earth and higher acids.

I’m not saying one preference is right and the other is wrong, but I think it just explains your observation.

I concur with your thought completely. Particularly that neither preference is right or wrong it just is what it is.

Being in the group preferring the style many/most wineries are leaving behind I am prone to verbally supporting the old-school style. I don’t want to lose it.

I share your hope that the old style does not go extinct. I feel confident that it will not in pinot, syrah and chardonnay, but I’m less sure in California cab/merlot and in Bordeaux, where the number of good wineries not doing the very big style seem to be small and dwindling.

Yeah, I missed that part about structure and color…I would think, though, that a short blast of hot air can only help with fruit set and therefore uniformity within clusters (vs hens and chicks); so, I am venturing to guess, that the statement about added color and structure has more to do with that than some sort of supercharging of fruit.

That would seem to make more sense to me as well, or perhaps the blast pushes the cluster to flower all at once rather than from the bottom to the top and out to the wings last? So shoulders and wings might not be slightly behind as is typical?

Just the first step on the path to GMO. It might not be for a few generations, but sooner or later humans will outlaw nature as we’ll think we can engineer plants and animals better and more consistent in the lab. [wink.gif] Science fiction becomes science fact.