The key (at least as I see it) is in fact to crush first, and then do minimal rotations. You can get away with 2-3 with minimal pH jumps if you work this way. That’s what someone like PYCM is doing. Essentially making a pneumatic press function more like a basket press.
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My chemistry is rudimentary, but does that mean you came an you can remove acidity from a thin underripe wine by breaking up the cake?
Yeah, conceivably. In a high acid vintage such as 2021 in Burgundy, you could include more later press fractions and it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. In a vintage such as 2022, however, that would be fatal (at least if you’re looking to produce a wine made from ripe grapes that has terrific tension and cut).
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An excellent reply with enough technical stuff to keep me as a clam! And makes perfectly sense - this is just something one doesn’t really have to think as a non-winemaker that much.
Thank you. You really are one of the gems that makes WB the exquisite wine resource it is. One could find this kind of data in research papers, but I want to enphasize how WB is one of the very few places I know where this level of winemaking geekery finds its way in the middle of the discussion. A big thank you, William.
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All of that said, each fermentation will be unique - and the pH shift one will experience will be different from ferment to ferment.
I’ve seen hard pressed Chardonnay have a .3 - .6 shift, and I’ve seen others more like .1 or .2.
Cheers
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William, how do you crush your fruit before pressing? I’ve heard of folks with a custom fabricated set of roller-crushers that sit over the press doors, and I’ve used foot treading before dumping fruit into the press. What does pre-press crushing look like in Burgundy?
Certainly, like everything in wine…
But as a general rule, fruit with higher levels of potassium (e.g. from drought stressed vineyards, or just after rain) will experience more of a bump.
The traditional way was to have a couple of folks stomping by foot inside the press cage as the press was filled. Then, when must pumps that crushed came along, people used those to fill the presses (by this stage most producers had adopted the Vaslin screw press; and the very high levels of solids created between the must pump plus then the chains of the Vaslin is when people started settlings musts, and later attempting to measure turbidity and clarify with enzymes before fermentation). The rationale was to get a better juice yield and fit more grapes in the press, even if the consequences were arguably good for wine quality. Today, the rapidity of the pneumatic press means that lots of people don’t crush any more, but those that do will indeed let the fruit fall into a roller-crusher as it fills the press from above (e.g. Guffens, Lamy, PYCM etc). Personally, I actually crush by foot in 30kg harvest lugs before filling the press, which results in a more complete crushing than the rollers and probably a long period of skin contact too.
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Many thanks William! I really appreciate the insight.
William, thank you for your comments/insights. Has PYCM always crushed his CH? in '13, I recall him describing a whole cluster pressing protocol involving 5 hours in duration.
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Well you have to adapt to the vintage. In 2013, with botrytis in the picture, I can understand why you might not crush, depending on the sanitary condition of your fruit. PY also didn’t do complete malo in some cuvées in 2013 to stop the wines getting too lactic. But vintages like that are at most once a decade these days.
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I think most high quality Willamette Valley Chardonnays will age 5-10 years easily. Most of mine will evolve and gain from cellaring that long, but if you like acidity there’s no reason you need to wait.
Marcus, last night we drank 2016 Domaine Drouhin Arthur and your 2016 Ribbon Ridge Chardonnay. The DD was quite nice but was blown away by your RR. My guess is that the RR will be even better in five years and should live much longer than that. Is your opinion different?
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That’s helpful and makes sense. I did come away from our discussion that he applied whole cluster in healthy years, too. I must have assumed incorrectly. Thanks so much for the info!
Whole cluster, but often with crushing before pressing. The producers I’ve been citing here are all crushing whole clusters, as opposed to destemming and crushing.
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Hi Bill,
I think 5-10 is the start for most good vintages, and as we’ve watched the Chardonnays age most seem like aging for another 5 years beyond the 10 year mark is quite likely.
Hi Mark,
The answer to that would depend on how much malic acid you have.
Thin under ripe fruit is going to have high levels of malic acid, or else it’s just a thin and acidic vintage. If there are high levels of malic acid present, then breaking up the cake won’t help that much. It would lower the tartaric levels and raise pH but the malic, and resulting lactic acids (post malo) would still be pretty screechy.
If high levels of tartaric are present and a winemaker wanted to drop the acidity levels, then breaking up the cake would be a way to do that.
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