It's harvest time here in the Napa/Sonoma area (early this year). I'm going to be making some premium Zin and Cab as I do every year. I usually use Pasteur Red, Montrachet, and/or a couple more recent strains with very good and consistent results. However, I'm just checking to see if anyone has any better yeast suggestions, i.e. what yeasts are used in $100+ bottles?. The local wineries here in the Napa Valley often use their own strains. Would it be worthwhile to try some of theirs which produced pleasing results? Has anyone made a yeast start from a bottle they really enjoyed?
You are scaring me; you must mean that harvest time is real soon?
I'm going
If you live in Napa you must know by now that " the "$100+ bottles" are all hype, and the real quality wines do not have a price & never really leaves the proprietary door at any price. If you are lucky you walk away with them you do so as a simple gift.
The
If you are lucky enough to get hold of some of these strains from quality winemakers I guess you are all in.
Last year we did Zin's with the following yeasts. Lavlin Bourgonvin RC R12, also ICV/D-47 and 71B-112. Also Red Star Pasteur Red & Montrachet. 30g barrel each.
Of all these I would do the R12. This batch seems to retain the best taste of fruitiness for me. This is all from the runoff and the first
2 pressings. The rest when into 5g jugs and have been run through some
10g oak barrels, but is no where near the quality that we achieved with the first press batches.
With the he Montrachet batch I used I changed some in that we added tartaric after consulting with Daniel Pambianchi. I was disturbed at first in that this wine after going through the first part of the fermentation it felt quite tepid, thin and not much color. This wine is now much heavier, lost some of the delicate fruit, but is interesting in that it displays a much heavier feel and feels bolder to me than all the rest. The color have come back after now nearly one year in a 10g barrel. The barrel was well used and has not infused too much oak flavor, but have caramelized the wine quite a bit. Plus all I ever topped up the wine with was syrah. I do not contribute this to the yeast as much as to the acid/tannin infused. I know now that we should have added the acid much earlier and that might have retain more of the fruitiness symbolic with this wine.
Nothing much scientifically here, but I tried for myself to get a better understanding of what the yeasts would do to the wines we did.
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