From a viticultural and winemaking perspective, it has thus far been an exceptional year in more ways than we have expected or predicted. Blame it on climate change, El Niño, or star alignment, but many are faced with pre-harvest weather extremes in many parts of North America from downpours to scorching heat and high humidity causing all kinds of challenges in the home winery.

I have already started receiving messages from distraught winemakers asking how to rescue their stuck fermentation, how to deal with mold, or what’s with the fermentation off-odors—the result of grapes starting to ferment prematurely.

If you have not harvested yet and expect heavy or prolonged rainy periods, you should consider harvesting before the rain; you can always adjust sugar and acidity in the winery. Heavy rainfall can cause berries to start splitting, to grow mildew, and possibly indigenous yeasts to kick-start the fermentation resulting in off odors and flavors and quite possibly spoilage.

We’re already into August, andthat can only mean one thing—time to start thinking about and planning for the upcoming winemaking season.

Ah yes! It’s been a wonderful growing season thus far—at least here in the Niagara region—and, before youknow it, grapes or juice will soon be ready for delivery to your home winery. Veraison in many areas has already started, confirmed by black clouds of hungry starlings invading vineyards in search of luscious sweet grapes.

By now, if you have entered your wines into the annual WineMaker International Wine Competition, you probably have received scoresheets with feedback for each of your wines, and perhaps one or more medals.

So now is the time to sit back—glass of wine in hand—and reflect on the feedback and results. Hopefully, you can translate the feedback into actionable fine-tuning as you start to ponder next year’s submissions.

On May 21-22, 460+ amateur winemakers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and wine lovers converged at Skamania Lodge on the Columbia Gorge in Stevenson, Washington for two days of educational and hands-on seminars, keynote addresses from industry experts, wine tastings, and story swapping. And winners of the WineMaker International Amateur Wine Competition were also announced at the sold-out event, all in grand style and fabulous dinner prepared by the culinary hands at the lodge.

This was the third annual conference hosted by WineMaker magazine. It was held in Sonoma County and Napa Valley in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The site for the 2011 conference will be the Fess Parker Doubletree Resort (http://www.fessparkersantabarbarahotel.com/) in Santa Barbara from May 20-21.

If you have never had a chance to attend this conference, you have been missing out on a great experience. As an avid amateur winemaker and commercial winery operator, I derive tremendous value from the seminars and from meeting and chatting with folks. Nowhere else do I get the opportunity to interact with so many fellow amateur winemakers; the experience is both educational and pure fun, and Washington was no different.

Many brought their own homemade wines to share with other wine enthusiasts and get feedback on their winemaking. What a great way to get free advice, and home winemakers are not shy about giving advice. But it’s all fun and done in the spirit of learning.

 

Ah! Those bad sulfites; they’re such an easy target. What else can people blame for headaches after drinking red wine? After all, there is even a regulation that requires the mandatory mention contains sulfites on all wine sold in the U.S. So there must be some health concerns with sulfites. But why is that not indicated on other sulfite-containing food and beverages? Why is wine singled out? All are valid, interesting questions.

Recent research has shed some light on this controversy as only a very small segment of the population, approximately one percent, is actually allergic, exhibiting asthmatic reactions, not headaches. In fact, very few people, if any, actually complain of headaches after drinking white wines, which typically contain higher levels of sulfite as these are more prone to spoilage effects and therefore need added protection.

I get asked this question quite frequently, as of lately, particularly in light of recent studies linking bisphenol-A (BPA)—the plastic used to line beverage containers and tin food cans—to cancer. The latest research from the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec, Canada and published in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology reports that BPA can adversely affect development of the fetus in pregnant women.

 

Until fairly recently, glass carboys were really the only practical containers for fermenting and storing wine available to home winemakers. However, glass carboys are heavy, slippery when wet, and fragile—much wine has been spilled and many people have been injured as the result of accidental breakage.

As I set about to run some trials in disgorging and adding dosage to riddled bubbly—two critical steps in the méthode champenoise (aka traditional method) production of bottled-fermented sparkling wine—I was reminded of an interesting question asked by an attendee at my seminar at the last WineMaker Magazine Conference in Napa Valley: “Why not simply place bottles upside down in carton boxes instead of having to riddle each bottle every day for 21 days?”

Tough question to answer without looking at the physics of what is actually happening during riddling—the process of channeling bottle-fermentation lees down to the neck portion of the upside-down bottle to allow the lees to be expelled by disgorgement and produce a crystal-clear bubbly. A poorly riddled bottle can spell disaster, and turning bottles over to let the lees flocculate without proper riddling simply won’t work.

If bottles are turned over in a case, yes, most of the lees volume will find its way to the neck; but “most” is not good enough. The problem is that some lees particles will cling to the glass—just hold up the bottle against a strong light source and you will see what I mean. These fine lees particles now become nucleation sites for the dissolved carbon dioxide gas. Once the bottle is disgorged and the lees are removed, microbubbles will rapidly form and nucleate at these sites, and then quickly rush up to the surface of the wine in the bottle, and cause the wine to gush out uncontrollably. This is further exacerbated when adding the dosage.

Let’s look at this phenomenon a little closer.

 

In June, I wrote about my frustration with natural corks and the seemingly increasing occurrence of corked wine resulting from TCA (2,4,6-trichloroanisole) taint. It has become so frustrating that I have been seriously considering switching to screwcaps for wines produced at Maleta Winery. I have even my closest colleagues wondering if I have lost it, so to speak.

As I was researching for alternative closures, I had come upon a glass closure invented by the German division of Alcoa and commercialized in 2004 under the brand name Vino-Lok. It’s a closure manufactured entirely of glass and includes an O-ring to ensure an airtight seal with the bottle. A short aluminum capsule over the Vino-Lok completes the packaging for a cool, classy finish.

But I had not been able to source a wine bottle with a Vino-Lok closure for evaluation purposes.

Well, I now have, and I must admit, I am very impressed. The closure looks very classy and is very easy to open. The Germans have been using it now for several years with much success, albeit acceptance is hard to come by with traditional natural corks still leading and screwcaps gaining much momentum even with premium wines.

Can this be the closure of the future? Time will tell. But I certainly see the Vino-Lok as the perfect closure for home winemakers. Glass closures are easily inserted, and are reusable and recyclable, and are inert and therefore there is no risk of contamination.

How perfect a closure is that?

As I was helping out my Italian buddy make wine last evening, I was reminded of the days when my dad would warn me against interfering with wine on a full moon.

Ah yes! Leave it to the older-generation Italian home winemakers to add a dash of their “scientific knowledge” to winemaking: Some of it borders on the paranormal. And last time I checked, none were familiar with the work of Rudolf Steiner (Austrian philosopher and esotericist who founded biodynamic agriculture).

As the son of an Italian immigrant, a home winemaker too (of course), the fall season in Montreal was exciting for me—exciting for many reasons, but mainly because it was the start of winemaking season. I always enjoyed trekking to the local Italian market to buy what now seems like it was always Alicante (Alicante Bouschet) for red wine and Moscato (Muscat) or Thompson Seedless for white wine. There was something fun about buying grapes; perhaps it was because I knew that it would soon be transformed by some kind of magic into wine after I would develop blisters from working the hand-operated crusher, and the fact that I did not know the chemistry—and neither did my father—made the whole experience intriguing. And of course we would have friends and family over, and that meant party, food and wine, well, soft-drinks for us younger ones. But I digress.

While attending a wine appreciation class, an inquisitive student asked if wine could be manufactured in the lab. “Yeah, sure,” said the teacher without missing a beat, but offered no further explanation. Quite a disappointing response it was; one which seemingly reduced wine to a simple, matter-of-fact drink. What a great missed opportunity to educate!

The teacher was nonetheless correct—you could theoretically make wine in a lab, but, practically, an almost impossible task.

Wine is a very complex beverage; it consists of thousands of simple and complex organic compounds, many of which have not yet been identified although Ted Rieger states in the May–June 2009 issue of Vineyard and Winery Management that “[r]esearchers believe that most of the chemical compounds in grapes and wines that contribute to aroma and flavor have now been identified.” Organic compounds include alcohol, acids, phenols, sugars, esters, amines and aromatic compounds, which all contribute to the positive aromas and flavors found in wine, as well as other organic compounds such as aldehydes and thiols that impart off-flavors or cause spoilage. These compounds are synthesized in the grapes during the growing and ripening cycle, and can be created during fermentation from selected yeast as well as from winemaking operations such as barrel aging. And there are inorganic compounds derived from soil and nutrients therein.

And these compounds all exist in varying concentrations from the measurable to trace amounts, and in countless combinations and permutations, all a function of the plethora of grape varieties, differences in viticultural practices and factors such as soil and climate, and kinds of yeasts, making the concocting of wine in the lab an impossible task.

An interesting question indeed; but why try and reduce such a mystical beverage to some lab-concocted solution?

Um, I think I’ll go have a glass of wine to explore this further.