The Second Glass

A bout of unseasonably cool weather in Napa has left this New Englander feeling at home, but has also pushed off further harvesting of grapes. Cool weather slows the grape ripening process down, pushing off the harvest date for each lot. As a result, I scored a few days off to catch a concert, go to San Fran, plan some homebrewing, and various other non-wine related things…as well as drink some wine of course!

But the weather has warmed up the last 2 days, and floodlights were on in the valley tonight on my ride home meaning there are some midnight picks happening in the valley tonight, so maybe we’ll see some grapes tomorrow. (Fun fact — Many vineyards harvest their grapes at night, that way the winery crews have grapes to work with first thing in the morning. Night harvesting also cuts down on cooling costs, as the grapes come into the winery at a much cooler temperature than mid-day grapes would)

This week we did start malolactic fermentations in two lots of the chardonnay. Now you’re probably wondering what the $%&* does malo-blah-blah fermentation mean?!?! Well, malic acid is a farily tart acid naturally found in grapes (think green apple tart — thats malic acid). Historically, wines were found to mellow out over time after fermenation. It was later found that this was due to a naturally occuring bacteria that converts malic acid into a much smoother acid, lactic acid (think milk). It is this step that gives chardonnay the smooth taste, and a by-product of this step, diacetyl, is what gives chardonnay its buttery/butterscotch flavor. Most red wines will naturally undergo this, but whites for whatever reason tend to be trickier, so they are inoculated with a measured amount of this bacteria, along with nutrients. As scientific as “inducing malo-lactic fermentations” may sound, it boiled down to me and another guy at work adding a dixie cup of bacteria and a dixie cup of nutrients to 122 barrels of chardonnay, followed by stirring each one.