about yeast

Not surprising you were confounded, every Montlouis I've seen was Chenin. Was it able to be labeled as Montlouis, or did it need a more general description?

I'm not the guy for tech stuff (Mike, Michael, help!) but lots of makers use isolated strains rather than wild yeast. That's supposedly the reason in Beaujolais for that wierd banana aroma you get from all of G. DuBoeuf's wines.

Dale

Dale Williams Drop "damnspam" to reply

Correct. And try Chidaine's Montlouis, top stuff at a reasonable price with a distinct aroma of ... saffron!

snip

Levures selectionnees, as they call them here. Some are so selectionnee that they are actually chosen to alter the aromas of the wine, and yes you get raspberry and banana for low end beaujolais.

As I move along in my wine appreciation, I have developed a taste for real wine and an aversion to the inevitably "simpler" wines obtained through massive use of technology. I also hang around people, mostly winemakers, that can "taste" the high-techness of a wine.

The fact is that using the indigenous yeasts has never done anyone's wine harm, on the contrary, I have seen vintages ruined by the use of selected yeasts : in Bandol 2001, a year of high alcohol levels, some of the vintners that used selected yeasts ended up with stuck fermentations and wines that were 14 degrees with plenty of residual sugar left unfermented. Those that just left nature do its work had no problems, they had heady wines of well over 16 that they could assemble with wine from the less exposed vineyards and end up with a sellable 14 degree wine.

The high-tech wine machine is driven by the recent breed of enologists, very much like GPs in this country, they just write prescriptions even when they have no idea what the problem is. 2003 was supposedly a difficult year, with many problems, and the enologists wrote their prescriptions. Others just let things happen, taking risks perhaps, but ending up with fab wines...

Mike

Mike Tommasi wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

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Agreed on Chidaine. Notice as well that he has taken over Clos Baudoin. Now that he has top flight vineyards to work with - look out.

John

Frequently, the naturally occurring yeasts will be eliminated and the grape inoculated with a specific yeast. Seen it done in Cal, dunno if the French do it as well. Anyone?

It is pretty common to use commercial yeasts. One reason might be to start a stuck fermentation. More commonly used, there are strains of yeast that can survive in the high-alcohol environment that is much California wine. The trend is towards indigienous yeasts, but California cellars aren't quite as dirty as those old French cellars.

Dimitri

True, but the yeast comes from the grapes, not from the cellar...

Mike

To be specific, they are present on the skins.

Mike

a good example of interesting wine made with indigienous yeasts are the "wild ferment" line by Errazuriz. From what I have tasted, their pinot noir and chardonnay are very "wild" tasting.

..Chris

It lives in the cellar as well. More than a few winemakers have talked to me about cultivating the yeasts in the cellar and mentioned that the first fermentations always took a lot longer than the later ones as the population of yeasts rises. If you think about it, it makes sense since the spores probably get airborne. The wineries that use naive yeasts are also careful not to bleach the floor or get things "too clean".

Dimitri

Although there is not a lot of evidence available, the conventional wisdom of the yeast being on grape skins is, in some cases, turning out to be incorrect. There is some indication that the yeast in the fermentation room and on the equipment is primarily responsible for the fermentation. This is a much more hospitable environment for cultures to survive than in a vineyard which can get quite hot and dry in the summer months and quite cold and dry in the winter. Not a very good environment for the yeasts we want, never mind if you throw in the sprays that a typical vineyard uses to control harmful organisms or the competition for nutrients the other organisms provide.

I wish I could find the references (unfortunately it was of only passing interest to me), but one compared a culture of the organisms found on the grapes, ones found in the fermentation room and the primary yeasts in the wine at the end of fermentation and found the yeasts identified in the fermentation room to be vastly dominant in the wine.

The other reference was to a winery that replaced the roof (open ceiling) of the winery and had a difficult time starting fermentation. It appears that the primary yeasts were living on the wood of the roof and constantly falling into the musts and onto equipment.

And please, let's not forget that commercially available cultures are nothing more than well performing strains that have been isolated from various wine making areas, most commonly famous European areas.

One more thing. Mike, IMO, your earlier example about 2001 in Bandol has more to do with poor wine making than it did with yeast.

Now if someone wants to put forth the argument that using naturally occurring yeasts could potentially add complexity to the wine because more than one yeast strain may contribute to the fermentation, that I could agree with, but it is also more risky. Many winemakers are not willing to bet their livelihood on wild yeast.

Just my 2 cents,

Andy

I think this winery was Magnien.

Not just complexity, but a type of terroir. Native yeasts may produce different flavors than commercial yeasts. Many winemakers are cultivating wild yeast. It's not that risky, since the option to add commercial yeast is always available - or are you referring to Brettanomyces? Who knows what will invade the wine? I think that's the interesting part!

Dimitri

That's what I was thinking, dirty cellars tend to bring Brett. That's why lambic brewers in Belgium preserve those old cobwebs meticulously... they WANT Brett to enter the beer!

I would like to know more about cellar yeasts, if this is true. I have always heard that if the grapes are rinsed, you lose the yeast on thew skins and they wil not ferment in any cellar, no matter how contaminated. OTOH, I hear that bread can be made just with the yeast present in the bakery... Go figure.

Mike

Fermentations that have no yeast added are properly called spontaneous. If the location is a wine region, then the chances are that the yeast that dominate the fermentation have at one time been packaged. One of the main reasons they were originally isolated would be their dominating character. Their organoleptic qualities came second. Wouldn't make much sense to purchase a yeast that would not dominate the fermentation.

The vast majority of (remaining) wild yeast cannot take a fermentation to the higher alcohol levels (12-14%), so it's virtually impossible for a fementation to be completely "wild". Thus the term spontaneous.

The package yeasts that are available to winemakers today have a wide variety of characteristics: some of them organoleptic, others simply mechanical. Pesonally, I choose mechanics for two very specific reasons: slower and thereby cooler fermentations (we use no refrigeration) and the other being consumption of malic acid (a specific strain [71-B] consumes a fair amount of malic without raising the pH of the wine as an ML bacteria will). For me, in my situation, these mechanics will dominate the organoleptic character above any other influence that a strain of yeast might produce.

clyde