I feel as you do, I like tannins and aim for more tannins, seeking tannins that aren’t clunky or overtly bitter.
I also generally am happier with more tannin than less. That came about from routinely seeing and often tasting great old world wines from Burgundy, Bordeaux, and Piedmont, and realizng that the common thread for these regions was the tannins (pre-global warming and pre-Michelle Rolland). All three regions really had sigificant tannin requiring cellar aging to get the best expressions. They also had the most multi-layered set of components and when aged often produced such an amazing aromatic expression of tertiary non fruit qualities matched only by a few other areas like the Northern Rhone and a few great Rioja producers (again tannins).
There are many great white wines and leas tannic reds that do not have big tannins and are monstrously good and complex, so it’s by no means a black and white issue.
But to achieve our goals, we start with site. I look for windier, more exposed sites. Soils that have more limited moisture retention capability. We expose fruit to the sun, which increases the quanity of tannins in the fruit (along with some other changes).
In Oregon, being northerly at the 45th parallel, the plants get a strong message of winter’s approach due to the shortening length of daylight hours and stems harden off well up here regardless of heat or lack thereof at Harvest. So I use a bunch of stems.
At fermentation, we generally have cooler ferment temps and I believe that if you want to avoid clunky tannins, then don’t use enzymes, longer and cooler is better, and a post-fermentation maceration period is useful. Long and slow…
Punchdowns, I’ve heard them worried about for over extraction but don’t really agree. Maybe in a destemmed ferment, but in a 100% stem ferment you’re lucky if you can punch it at all for the first 7-8 days and even after that it’s just physically harder.
We do pumpover in the am (to get air into the juice), and pigeage at night for a week. Then 2 punchdowns a day, maybe 3 during the peak of ferment, and cut to one as the fuice gets to 0 Brix. We’re in fermenter for 30-50 days. Tannins are usually pretty well set by then, but we do use some new 500L puncheons which usually has a bit of tannin, those vary by vineyard though.
In barrel, I almost never fine. It always seems to remove “life” from the wines. Even if fining cleans up what I want it to in the wines it usually takes something good too. I’d prefer just to wait longer.
We do a full 18-20 months of barrel age which helps, IMO, to refine the tannins before bottling.
Off th cuff, so my apologies for typos.
