Ojai Vineyard moves toward lower alcohol levels

When I hear about "moving to" higher or lower levels of alcohol, one might think that one has control over such things. If you are in a good climate, the only way to lower alcohol level is to dilute, irrigate, treat physically or chemically, harvest extremely early, or raise yields. In all cases, the wine will not be good, and in most, illegal.

Sugar, and therefore alcohol is mostly a result of a place's particular conditions, and changing it up or down significantly requires procedures or methods that do not improve quality.

Right?

Perhaps in the Old World but in California, especially since the mid

1990's, there has been a move towards higher alcohol wines (Parkerization) by vineyard manipulation, spacing, trellising(sp), canopy management, green harvesting, irrigation, clonal selection, fertilization, etc. along with winery techniques, spinning cones, mico- oxygneation, new yeast strains, cold stabilization and harvesting very, very late almost to the point of raisin to pump up sugar levels and the resulting alcohol. I recently tasted a Brewer Clifton Chardonnay that was over 16% alcohol and that doesn't happen without manipulation on many levels but it would probably handle smoked turkey pretty well..

here:

This was Tolmach's response (in Decanter):

I have never made wines to please wine writers. I make them for myself and my customers. I was misquoted and my statements utterly misconstrued in the Los Angeles Times article.

We have always strived for balanced wines that drink well with food. It's embarrassing for me to say this, but I think we have a pretty good track record of making flavory, delicious wines that age quite well.

A few of our pinot noirs have been too big for my taste, that is to say, I don't get great pleasure drinking them. To that end we have been experimenting with picking less ripe grapes and are finding the results satisfying. In the last 15 years we began to farm our grapes more meticulously and have throttled the yields to ridiculously low levels. We are discovering that this has given us physiologically riper grapes at lower sugars. We are applying this knowledge to the other varieties we craft as well--attempting to make even better balanced wines that are zesty and full of life and a bit lower in alcohol.

And yes I do think these more nuanced wines will be less noticed by the critics; however, I think there are customers interested in finesse. An interesting fact is that back in 1991 we used to be the last winery to pick a vineyard, and today we are almost always the first. We have always aimed at 25% sugar as an ideal--what changed was everyone else. The norm in the San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara area is now 28 or 29%. Wine makers often wait a month after physiological maturity to pick. The resultant wines are monstrous alcoholic things with no acidity--and if they aren't low in acidity and high in alcohol they clearly have be manipulated to the point that they have lost any personality.

If you want a little more detail about my thinking look at The Ojai Vineyard website and my older "notes from the vineyard". Don't believe everything written in the newspaper! Adam Tolmach, Ojai Vineyard, USA

why you say that???? In my only trip to CA(about 1975), we stopped at Gundlach-Bundschu Winery . the chard crush came out 33-34 brix. I think that makes for 15-16% dry wine, if the bugs live long enough to finish fermentation.

I don't think people were doing much monkey-fritzing back then.

It was before parkerizing, so no parker to please.

Thanks, Bill. I could only have restated the few techniques mentioned in the article : )

Dave

You may have answered your own question....keeping the bugs alive would hae been the trick. Generally speaking alcohol production is self limiting since at a certain point the alcohol kills off the yeast. Newer yeast strains and cellar techniques are allowing the yeasts to continue fermentation using up all of the available sugar. I do not know if these were available in 1975 nor am I aware of how normal it would have been in 1975 to allow grapes to ripen to such high brix under normal conditions. A quick check showedd 1975 (in Napa) to be cooler than normal which extended the growing season by a few weeks for Chardonnay.

B>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

You may have answered your own question....keeping the bugs alive would hae been the trick. Generally speaking alcohol production is self limiting since at a certain point the alcohol kills off the yeast. Newer yeast strains and cellar techniques are allowing the yeasts to continue fermentation using up all of the available sugar. B>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Just for interest sake, what is the most alcoholic wine that can be made with current yeast strains? I'm not sure I'd want to drink a Chardonnay approaching the strength of Sherry :-)

Approaching? Fino sherries today are bottled at 15%.

(Natural) yeast strains in Valpolicella are known to easily ferment Amarone to 16% and more.

Here in Austria, Ernst Triebaumer some ten years by accident*) got a Beerenauslese with 17.2% alcohol.

*) He used a selected yeast strain from Champagne which fermented the wine overnight to this point.

M.

I don't agree entirely. Over here we have 320 days of sun per year, zero days of rain in summmer, and a grenache that is not manipulated will reach 15-16 or even 17 degrees. Manipulation is needed to LOWER the alcohol.

The techniques you mention do not necessarily increase alcohol, in fact irrigation and spinning cones will decrease alcohol, and clonal selection, cold stabilization or microoxygenation will have no effect at all.

And in fact the natural yeasts often go higher than the baianus selections. In 2003, a record heat year, some Bandol growers used baianus and ended up with a stuck fermentation and lots of RS...

One thing that rarely gets mentioned, Bill, is that yeast with time will try to evolve to live in higher alcohol concentrations. Simple Darwinian evolution argues that you should eventually start selecting for mutant yeast that can live in 16% ABV (or 17%) and those mutants will then have a selective advantage and propagate. If we take the view that most wineries have a resident yeast population that gets involved in the fermentation, the longer those wineries have been around (and producing wines of 16% ABV or higher) the greater the chance that a mutant yeast strain will come along to ferment at higher ABV. Of course, there must be an upper limit to this adaptation based on basic biochemical principles, but since we know that Sherry yeasts can get up there, 16 or even 17% should be within range.

Mark Lipton

As others have answered, you may be able to go slightly over 20% for industrial alcohol production with special yeasts. Very high alcohol content wines were quite common in some of the high end California wines in the 1970s. This was done by using extremely ripe grapes and usually special yeasts. Dr, David Bruce was perhaps the king of big wines back then. Chardonnay and CS with 15% alcohol, and more, were quite common for him. The extract in the CS was huge. I tasted a dry Riesling he made in the 1970s that was over 16% alcohol. It was hot and had enough acid to sear your tonsils. You likely would need a stainless steel lining for your stomach to drink much of it. Bruce's wines are now much more tame than they were in the 70s. Many late to very late harvest Zinfandels, both dry and sweet, were made back then with 15% or more alcohol.

As others have answered, you may be able to go slightly over 20% for industrial alcohol production with special yeasts. Very high alcohol content wines were quite common in some of the high end California wines in the 1970s. This was done by using extremely ripe grapes and usually special yeasts. Dr, David Bruce was perhaps the king of big wines back then. Chardonnay and CS with 15% alcohol, and more, were quite common for him. The extract in the CS was huge. I tasted a dry Riesling he made in the 1970s that was over 16% alcohol. It was hot and had enough acid to sear your tonsils. You likely would need a stainless steel lining for your stomach to drink much of it. Bruce's wines are now much more tame than they were in the 70s. Many late to very late harvest Zinfandels, both dry and sweet, were made back then with 15% or more alcohol.

Sorry, but Sherry yeasts never go up to there. Sherry is always fortified, less for fino/amontillado, more for oloroso.

16 and 17% are within the range of Amarone yeast.

M.

What exactly did you want to tell us?

M.