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month in review WINE BUSINESS MONTHLY November 2015 • Volume XXII No. 11 EDITOR Cyril Penn SENIOR TECHNICAL EDITOR Curtis Phillips MANAGING EDITOR Rachel Nichols
After the Fire
ASSISTANT EDITOR Erin Guenther STAFF WRITER Bill Pregler COPY EDITOR Paula Whiteside EDITOR AT LARGE Lisa Shara Hall
to print and onward to subscribers, growers are in the final stages of what’s been an unusually fast, though somewhat light harvest. It’s also been about two weeks since a massive wildfire swept through parts of Lake County, California. People are still in a state of shock. While the fire is now 97 percent contained, 76,000 acres burned. The Valley Fire has been called the third most damaging wildfire in California history in terms of damage inflicted. The latest tally indicates 1,958 buildings were destroyed, including 1,280 homes, 27 multifamily structures, and 66 commercial properties. At its peak, 4,800 firefighters fought the fire. At least one of them was critically injured. Four people died in the blaze. The wine industry is always good about giving back to the community. It was heartening, though not surprising, to see industry groups step up to help. Support was quick and substantial: The Napa Valley Vintners immediately committed $250,000; E&J Gallo committed $100,000; while Constellation Brands matched employee donations, raising $100,000. Jackson Family Wines announced matching employee donations. Beckstoffer Vineyards, which farms roughly 1,300 acres in Lake County, made a large contribution. Individual vintners like Dario Sattui, just to name one, made significant donations. Smaller individual donations came from farmworkers and winery employees supporting the community. As for the fallout specific to the wine industry, the Lake County Wine Commission estimated that 80 percent of the 8,700 bearing acres in the county were not directly affected. Harvest was briefly disrupted but winds cleared smoke to the southeast and away from vineyards. Growers and wineries conducted widespread fruit sampling, checking for elevated levels of precursors to “smoke taint.” The Lake County Winegrape Commission, Lake County Wine Alliance and Lake County Winery Association came together to create a fund with an eye toward long-term rebuilding, as it will take months, even years to rebuild the affected communities.
CONTRIBUTORS Lance Cutler Mark Greenspan Jean L. Jacobson Jenny Jasinska-Olsen Michael S. Lasky Jake Lorenzo Thibaut Scholasch Liza B. Zimmerman
AS THIS ISSUE SHIPS
4 November 2015 WBM
DESIGN & PRODUCTION Scott Summers PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER Eric Jorgensen ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Tamara Leon ADVERTISING Advertising Account Executive Karen Fraser Classifieds Jacki Kardum
This issue of WBM includes a wide range of material. There’s a focus on packaging, on laboratory equipment for small wineries, a feature about the daunting challenges of growing winegrapes in Michigan, and more. An article by Thibaut Scholasch of Fruition Sciences presents new information about how one can analyze vineyard water use profiles in specific areas of the vineyard and then looks at grape variety-specific sensitivity to water, or to the lack thereof, another step toward understanding and improving irrigation efficiency. Mark Greenspan discusses the findings of the latest WBM vineyard survey in his regular column. The survey also looked at water use. Unfortunately, when it comes to water efficiency in the vineyard, the glass is half-full. More vintners are measuring their water use than ever before, but there’s a long way to go. This issue also marks (pun intended) 10 years of columns written by Mark and he’s never missed a deadline. That’s quite an accomplishment. It sure went by quick. Mark brings a sense of humor along with a deep understanding of viticulture to the column. Cranking out a column of this caliber is a real challenge, but Mark makes it look easy. A tip of the hat to Mark Greenspan. Cyril Penn – Editor
ADMINISTRATION Vice President – Data Management Lynne Skinner Circulation Liesl Stevenson Operations Analyst/Customer Support Katie Miller Office Manager/Customer Support Jacki Kardum CHAIRMAN Hugh Tietjen PUBLISHING CONSULTANT Ken Koppel For editorial or advertising inquiries, call 707-940-3920 or email info@winebusiness.com For subscriptions, call 800-895-9463. Copyright 2015 Wine Communications Group, Inc. Short passages can be quoted without permission but only if the information is attributed to Wine Business Monthly. Wine Business Monthly is distributed through an audited circulation. Those interested in subscribing for $39/year, or $58 for 2 years, call 800-895-9463 or subscribe online at www.winebusiness.com. You may also fill out the card in this magazine and send it in.
contents
WBM
November 2015 • Volume XXII No. 11 • The Industry’s Leading Publication for Wineries and Growers
www.winebusiness.com
winemaking
sales & marketing
Different Approaches to Destemming . . . . . . . 22 Understanding the “next generation” of destemmers and the applications Curtis Phillips
Packaging and Design Spotlight Differentiating for Success . . . . . . . . . . 70 Even minor design tweaks to your wine’s label, bottle shape and color, and capsule can improve sales. The key to sales success in an ever-crowded wine market is differentiation by design. Michael S. Lasky
Courage in the Cellar: . . . . . 32
Making Wine in Northern Michigan . . . . . . . 32 Lance Cutler
W I N E T R I A L S : The
Future of Wine Science . . . . . . . . . 42
Wine and Tipping in Restaurants . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Will wine sales be affected as restaurants focus on new profit margins? Liza B. Zimmerman
Retail Sales Analysis: Off-Premise Wine Sales Up 5.6 Percent . . . . . . 84
Catena winery sponsors unique research presentation at UC Davis Lance Cutler
Basic In-House Wine Analysis for Boutique to Small Wineries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
technology & business
Jean L. Jacobson E E E
P N P N N P P N N P N P P N
E
E E
Monitoring Nitrogen Levels in Wine . . . 56 Jenny Jasinska-Olsen
E
Directory: Offsite Barrel Storage . . . . . . . . . . 86
N 7 Nitrogen 14.0067
departments
grape growing 2015 Vineyard Survey Report: Where Do We Get Our Water and What Are We Doing With It? . . . 58 It’s no secret. Most growers get their water from the ground. Mark Greenspan
month in review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 what’s cool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Tow and Blow Wind Machines from New Zealand A versatile new design for frost protection
Optimizing Irrigation According to Grape Variety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Thibaut Scholasch, PhD, Agro-oenologist, Fruition Sciences Inc.
Bill Pregler
people . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 advertiser index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 jake lorenzo Fact Versus Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 winemaker of the month . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Fletcher Henderson, winemaker, Winery at La Grange, Haymarket, Virginia
Cover Photography & Design: Scott Summers
Wine Business Monthly (ISSN 1075-7058) is published monthly by Wine Communications Group, Inc., 110 W. Napa St., Sonoma, CA 95476. Subscription rates are $39 for domestic; US$49 for Canadian and US$89 for foreign subscribers. Periodicals Postage Paid at Sonoma, CA, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: Wine Business Monthly, PO Box 1649, Boulder, CO 80306-1649.
WBM
who’s talking in this issue
November 2015
Roger Boulton, professor, UC Davis, Wine Trials: The Future of Wine Science, page 42
“I have waited 25 years to do this kind of research. It would have been a complete waste of time to attempt before, but now with this new equipment we have here at the research winery, we are able to exactly replicate each fermentation, isolating out the specific vineyard contributions.”
Laura Catena, general director, Bodega Catena Zapata, Wine Trials: The Future of Wine Science, page 42 “Our goal in this research is two-fold: we want to elevate our Catena wines to a level that competes with the finest wines in the world, and we want to share our knowledge to elevate wine quality for all of Argentina.”
Steve Lamoureux, senior vice president of product innovation and design solutions, Nielsen, Differentiating for Success, page 70 “On a retailer’s shelf, your wine bottle has about 1.4 seconds to get noticed by the consumer.”
Coenraad Stassen, winemaker, Brys Estate, Making Wine in Northern Michigan, page 32 “Consistency is almost impossible to achieve here. You have to make your stylistic choices as each vintage proceeds.”
Thibaut Scholasch, agro-enologist, Fruition Sciences Inc., Optimizing Irrigation According to Grape Variety, page 66 “It is possible to improve irrigation strategy and save a lot of water without degrading vineyard production performance. Traditional viticultural practices tend to overestimate the need for irrigation, even in areas where water is becoming scarce. By measuring vine water use variations, vineyard managers and winemakers may learn how to refine and optimize irrigation strategies.”
8 November 2015 WBM
The only paper we used this year is in your hands
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news
For daily news you can search or browse by region, visit winebusiness.com/news
news
California
California • PAGE 10 Industry Steps Up to Help Fire Victims • PAGE 12 Bill Leigon Acquires Napa’s Jamieson Ranch Winery
Industry Steps Up to Help Fire Victims A Lake County wildfire that broke out on September 12 and quickly burned more than 76,000 acres, as of press time, brought out the best of the wine industry community. In the blaze, which lasted more than two weeks, 1,958 buildings were destroyed, including 1,280 homes, 27 multifamily structures, 66 commercial properties and 585 other structures. Four people lost their lives. The fire tore through Lake County on the tail-end of an early harvest and luckily most of the grapes near the epicenter had already been picked. However, some vineyards still had some red varieties on the vine had to pick the fruit early or risk losing it all. Langtry Estate, a Foley Family Estates brand, had some damage to its 1,000 acres of vineyards and a home on the property was destroyed. Director of marketing for Foley Family Wines Denise Roach was unable to provide an estimate of total acres burned, and said some grapes would not be harvested due to “smoke damage.” The historic Lillie Langtry house remained unscathed. Shed Horn Cellars in Middletown lost its winery building and owners Michael and Adawn Wood lost their home. The 3,000-case winery’s tasting room, however, is still standing. In a statement released through the Lake County Grapegrowers, the Woods said: “We are saddened about the loss of our beautiful county and our many friends that have lost their homes. We are blessed with the outpouring of kindness and thoughts of our personal friends and friends in the industry. We do have inventory in the warehouse to keep our orders filled and our tasting room stocked.” Countless other wineries and tasting rooms were evacuated or closed. The Valley Fire is the third major blaze to hit the Lake County wine industry this summer. The Rocky Fire in July burned 69,438 acres and the Jerusalem Fire in August burned 25,118 acres in Lake and Napa counties, though neither posed a serious threat to vineyards and wineries.
#LakeCountyRising #LakeCountyRising is a fundraising effort to support community rebuilding in the areas ravaged by the Valley Fire with a focus on livelihood, housing and community needs. The effort was initiated by three Lake County organizations: Lake County Winegrape Commission, Lake County Winery Association and Lake County Wine Alliance, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that will manage the collection and distribution of tax-deductible donations. Beckstoffer Vineyards announced its donation of $50,000 to the #LakeCountyRising fundraising campaign. “We’re part of the community,” said Andy Beckstoffer, founder, chairman, and owner of Beckstoffer Vineyards. “We have major vineyard holdings in Lake County, and many of our people live in Lake County.” “On behalf of the Lake County community, we are grateful for the generosity we’re seeing from across the region,” said Debra Sommerfield, president of the Lake County Winegrape Commission.
10 November 2015 WBM
• PAGE 12 American Pioneer Wine Growers Unveils Name of New Property, Virginia Dare Winery • PAGE 12 WineSong Raises More Than $600,000 for Charity
Oregon • PAGE 14 Former J Vineyards & Winery Owner Judy Jordan Purchases Oregon’s Chehalem Mountain Vineyard
National • PAGE 14 HR Managers Gather for First Winejobs.com Summit • PAGE 14 Record 19 New Masters of Wine
The smoky aftermath of the Rocky Fire after it burned a swath of hilly terrain east of the town of Lower Lake.
“This generous donation by the Beckstoffer family is a wonderful example of how the wine industry is coming together with significant support,” Sommerfield said. Beckstoffer Vineyards farms more than 1,300 acres in the Red Hills of Lake County, in addition to its 1,000 acres in the Napa Valley and 1,300 acres in Mendocino County. “We hope this will motivate other people to give,” Beckstoffer said. #LakeCountyRising aims to raise significant funds over the coming weeks and months to help members of the Lake County community cope, adjust and rebuild after the Valley Fire. #LakeCountyRising is working with local organizations and government agencies to identify the most pressing community needs. To donate, visit the Lake County Rising page on Facebook, www.facebook. com/LakeCountyRising, to make a donation online using PayPal, or send a check made payable to Lake County Wine Alliance, memo “Lake County Rising Fire Relief Fund,” to: Lake County Wine Alliance, P.O. Box 530, Kelseyville, CA 95451
Š Owens-Illinois, Inc. Jack Daniel’s Encourages Its Friends to Drink Responsibly.
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news Bill Leigon Acquires Napa’s Jamieson Ranch Winery Bill Leigon, president of Jamieson Ranch Vineyards since February 2013,
announced his purchase of the Napa winery, finalized on September 18, 2015. The purchase price was not disclosed. Bill Spear continues to manage all sales and marketing and was announced as the winery’s general manager and co-partner. “I am pleased that I can now complete my vision for Jamieson Ranch Vineyards. A vision that is nothing less than to make wines that compete in quality with any wines from the Napa Valley.” said Leigon, “A vision to make wines that compete in quality with any wines in the world.” Leigon’s purchase includes all existing brands and inventory, while Ken Laird bought all the real estate and property, including the winery buildings and vineyards. Leigon will lease the winery facility back from Laird. Leigon has been a Napa resident for 35 years and it has been his long-time dream to own and operate a winery in the Napa Valley. The purchase price includes the winery property and the case inventory of Jamieson’s Napa Valley wines including Light Horse, JRV Double Lariat, JRV Stagecoach, JRV Silver Spur, Whiplash and Reata Pinot Noir. The winery sits on about 300 acres, with 75 acres in grapes which was not included in the sale. “I truly believe my professional life of perseverance is paying off,” said partner and general manager Spear. “I work with a passionate affinity for the wines I sell and proud to be a partner of Jamieson Ranch.” Leigon has been involved in the California wine industry for more than 40 years. He co-founded The Wine Trust and Ariel Vineyards (the first premium non-alcoholic wine), served as national sales manager at J. Lohr wines for 13 years, and worked as vice president of sales and marketing for Associated Vintage Group. Leigon spent 12 years as president of Hahn Estates in Monterey, where he created the popular Rex Goliath brand (named after a 47-pound rooster). He grew Rex Goliath to national prominence before selling it to Constellation Brands. Right after the sale Leigon engineered the Cycles Gladiator wines before joining the management of what is now the Jamieson Ranch wines portfolio.
American Pioneer Wine Growers Unveils Name of New Property, Virginia Dare Winery After more than a year of speculation, American Pioneer Wine Growers (APWG) unveiled the name of its new property, Virginia Dare Winery. Located in Sonoma County’s Geyserville, Virginia Dare Winery pays homage to the influential people, places and stories that are part of the origins of early American winemaking. Over the past year, APWG has released a series of four wines—The White Doe, Manteo, Two Arrowheads and The Lost Colony—each revealing a different aspect of the Virginia Dare legend ultimately culminating in the unveiling of the new winery name. “The myth of Virginia Dare always intrigued me, and as a child I remember the Virginia Dare wine because of the pretty blonde girl on the label and the ‘Say it again, Virginia Dare’ jingle they used to advertise on the radio,” said Francis Coppola. “My goal is to revive the wine brand so that it isn’t lost to future generations. The winery’s new home in Geyserville is the ideal
12 November 2015 WBM
For daily news you can search or browse by region, visit winebusiness.com/news
location in the heart of American wine country to tell the origin stories of American wine.” Virginia Dare was the first English child born in the New World to colonists in 1587. Virginia’s fate became a mystery after her colony, now referred to as the Lost Colony, vanished from Roanoke Island in the late 1500s. Legend has it that she lived among the Native Americans and grew into a beautiful young woman trapped in the middle of a tragic love triangle when she was turned into a White Doe and ultimately killed. On the very spot where she bled and died, a grapevine sprouted with its fruit stained red. According to the legend, this is how the white wine of America became red wine. The grapevine is widely believed to be the 400-year-old Mother Vine, reportedly the oldest cultivated grapevine in North America which still exists today—a clipping of which will soon be planted in Virginia Dare Winery’s estate vineyard. Today, Virginia Dare Winery celebrates the genesis of American winemaking. Along with the spellbinding Virginia Dare story, it pays homage to the mythical and mysterious characters which grace the labels of the wines The White Doe, Two Arrowheads, Manteo, The Lost Colony, and soon Virginia Dare Chardonnay and Virginia Dare Pinot Noir, both sourced from Sonoma County’s Russian River Valley. For more information, visit www. VirginiaDareWinery.com.
WineSong Raises More Than $600,000 for Charity Record ticket sales helped propel Winesong 2015 to another record-setting weekend of wine, food and fundraising on the Mendocino Coast. “The best food and wine event in California wrapped up last weekend,” said Narsai David, KCBS wine and food personality and Winesong Master of Ceremonies. Guests from as far as Munich, South Africa, Alaska, Anguilla, Texas, Florida, Alabama, New Hampshire and Connecticut joined in. Bidders at the Wine and Lifestyle Auction under the tent conducted by DawnMarie Kotsonis and Rich Pio Roda helped raise significant funds, with a projected gross of more than $600,000 coming in from the two-day event. After covering production expenses, the Winesong net return will be used to assist the Mendocino Coast District Hospital purchase needed equipment. The highlight of the auction was the “Fund-A-Need” lot, which brought in $122,000 in a matter of minutes, with nearly every paddle raised to donate for purchase of Medical Safety Net. This means that the Bedside Medication Verification System has been fully funded and will be procured through the combined generosity of those who gave at the $10,000 level as well as those who stepped up with $100. Every dollar made a difference. The highlights of the auction included: a 7-night stay in Tuscany for four couples that went for $27,000; a chance for three couples to immerse themselves in the Italian heritage of Mendocino’s Redwood Valley, which sold for $6,500; a stay at the Mendocino Coast’s newest luxury destination, the Inn at Newport Ranch, garnered $8,200; and a barrel of Pinot Noir with grapes from Ferrington Vineyards with Phillip T. G. Baxter of Baxter Vineyards overseeing production from grape to bottle, plus custom designed labels. The Mendocino Coast Hospital Foundation/Winesong donated the $3,000 raised from Lot #47, “Lake County Rising,” to disaster relief. In addition, all surplus water, blankets and other supplies of any use have been given to Lake County residents who found themselves on the Mendocino coast and unable to return home.
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news Oregon Former J Vineyards & Winery Owner Judy Jordan Purchases Oregon’s Chehalem Mountain Vineyard Judy Jordan, former owner of J Vineyards & Winery, has purchased Chehalem Mountain Vineyard in Oregon’s Willamette Valley as well as another property in St. Helena, California that was owned by Pat Kuleto. These purchases will be placed under a new Santa Rosa company, The Capra Co., which will fund a nonprofit arm to mentor youth.
The vineyard acquisitions include: • Chehalem Mountain Vineyard — Chehalem Mountain AVA, Newberg, Oregon (35 acres planted to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay 75 total acres) • Eola Springs Vineyard — Eola Amity Hills AVA, Rickreall, Oregon (72 acres primarily planted to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay 176.2 total acres) • Sage Canyon Vineyard — Napa Valley AVA, St. Helena, California (60 acres primarily planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc - 602 total acres) Terms of the sale were not disclosed for either purchase, but the Chehalem property asking price had been listed at $1.25 million. Chehalem was established in 1968 by Dick Erath, and produces old-vine selections of Pinot Noir, Riesling, Pinot Gris and Chardonnay. The vineyard consists of almost 50 acres divided into two parcels. Its owner at the time of sale was George Hillberry. Jordan, who founded Sonoma County-based J Vineyards in 1986, sold that business to E&J Gallo in March, and although the purchase price was not disclosed, industry analysts estimated the overall deal to be worth as much as $90 million.
National HR Managers Gather for First Winejobs.com Summit More than 60 winery human relations managers congregated on September 17 to connect with their peers and discuss current HR topics at the first Winejobs.com Summit, a one-of-a-kind gathering of wine industry HR professionals. Topics included hiring trends, results of the Wine Business Monthly 2015 Salary Survey Report, performance reviews and incentive compensation in the tasting room as well as roundtable networking discussions. Winejobs.com, the wine industry’s leading online job site, presented the Winejobs.com Summit, the forum for HR professionals, which took place in The Barrel Room at V Marketplace in the Napa Valley.
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14 November 2015 WBM
Record 19 New Masters of Wine The Institute of Masters of Wine announced that a record number of 19 candidates passed the Institute’s examination and earned the title Master of Wine (MW). The new MWs, 11 women and eight men, hail from 10 countries, including Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Greece, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. The Institute of Masters of Wine is also welcomed its first Singaporean member. The 19 new Masters of Wine join the five MWs announced on March 20 this year, bringing the total number of Masters of Wine to 340, from 24 countries. WBM
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Wineries that attended IQ 2015 A To Z Wineworks Adelsheim Vineyard American Pioneer Winegrowers-The White Doe Amici Cellars Antica Napa Valley Appellations/Italics Winegrowers Araujo Estate Wines Artesa Vineyards & Winery Aubert Wines Aver Family Vineyards Baldacci Family Vineyards Ballentine Vineyards Baxter Winery/ Philippe-Lorraine Wine Beaulieu Vineyard Bedrock Wine Co. Bella Vineyards & Wine Caves Benessere Vineyards Benziger Family Winery Bevan Cellars Bin to Bottle Winery Black Hills Estate Winery Blackbird Vineyards Bokisch Vineyards Bourassa Vineyards Brack Mountain Wine Co./ Enos Vineyards Bremer Family Winery Brian Arden Wines Brick & Mortar/ MSix Wine Group Burgess Cellars C K Mondavi Cakebread Cellars Calcareous Vineyard Caldwell Winery Calera Wine Co. Calluna Vineyards Campana Ranch Winery Canihan Family Winery Cardinale & Lokoya Carneros Vintners Catena Zapata Celia Welch Wines Chappellet Winery Charthia Cellars Chateau Boswell Chateau Margene Chateau Montelena Winery Chateau St. Jean Winery & Vineyards Clos Du Val Wine Co. Colgin Cellars College Cellars of Walla Walla Columbia Crest Winery Conarium Wines Conn Creek Winery
Constant-Diamond Mountain Vineyard Constellation Wines Continuum Estate Corison Winery Courtesan Wines Covert Estate Covington Cellars Creekside Cellars Croma Vera Wines Cuvaison Estate Wines Dalla Valle Vineyards DAOU Vineyards Dark Matter Wines David Fulton Winery Del Dotto Vineyards Detert Family Vineyards Domaine Anderson Domaine Carneros Dominus Estate Don Sebastiani & Sons Donum Estate Duckhorn Vineyards DuMOL Winery E & J Gallo Winery Edge Hill/Rudd Oakville Estate Elyse Winery Envolve Winery Epoch Estate Wines Expression Wine Fantesca Estate & Winery Far Niente Winery Farm Collective Winery Fazeli Cellars Fisher Vineyards Francis Ford Coppola Winery Frank Family Vineyards Frog’s Leap Winery Gandona Estate Geyser Peak Winery Goosecross Cellars Greyscale Wines Grochau Cellars Groth Vineyards & Winery Hagafen Cellars Hall Wines Halter Ranch Vineyard Hanzell Vineyards Hartwell Vineyards Heitz Wine Cellars Herb Lamb Vineyards Heringer Estates Hess Collection Winery Hill Family Estate Hindsight Wines Holman Ranch Honig Vineyard & Winery
S I LV E R S P O N S O R S
Hope & Grace Wines House Family Winery Ideology Cellars Inglenook Invisible Hand Wines J Lohr Vineyards & Wines J Vineyards & Winery Jackson Family Wines James Family Cellars Jamieson Ranch Vineyards Jarvis Jessie’s Grove Winery Joel Gott Wines Joseph Phelps Vineyards/ Freestone Vineyards Kaz Winery Kelly Fleming Wines King Estate Winery Kitchak Cellars Kosta Browne Wines Kuleto Estate Winery Ladera Vineyards Lancaster Estate Larkmead Vineyards Las Positas Vineyards Lasseter Family Winery Laura Michael Wines & Zahtila Vineyards L’Ecole No 41 Long Meadow Ranch Winery Lucia Vineyards & Winery/ Pisoni Family MacRostie Winery & Vineyards Mahoney Vineyards Marciano Estate Napa Vineland Winery Marimar Estate Vineyards & Winery Martinelli Winery Matteo WinesNorthwest Wine Filtration Mauritson Family Winery Maxville Lake Winery Mayacamas Vineyards McEvoy Ranch Meander Wines Melrose Vineyards Merryvale Vineyards Merus Wines Michael Mondavi Family Estate Miner Family Winery Monticello Vineyards Mueller Winery/ Robert Mueller Cellars Mumm Napa Napa Cellars Napa Valley College Estate Winery Napa Valley Reserve
Napa Wine Co.Bonded Winery Number 9 Newsome-Harlow Winery Nichelini Family Winery Nickel & Nickel Nicolette Christopher Cellars Olabisi Wines O’Neill Vintners & Distillers Orpheus Wines O’Shaughnessy Estate Winery Other Guys Ovid Napa Valley Paoletti Estates Winery Paradox Wines Parrish Family Vineyard Passalacqua Winery Pasterick WineVineyard of Pasterick Paul Hobbs Perkins & Harter Phifer Pavitt Wines Pine & Brown Winery Pine Ridge Vineyards Plan B Wine Cellars Plata Wine Partners Plumpjack Winery Ponzi Vineyards Pott Wine Purple Wine & Spirits Co./ Sonoma Wine Co. Quintessa Vineyards Quivira Vineyards Quixote Winery Ranch Winery Ravenswood Winery Raymond Vineyards Realm Cellars Reynolds Family Winery Ridge Vineyards Robert Biale Vineyards Robledo Family Winery Rocca Family Vineyards Rombauer Vineyards Rosenblum Cellars Rudd Wines Winery Rutherford Grove Winery Rutherford Hill Winery/ Terlato Wines Saintsbury Schramsberg Vineyards & J Davies Vineyards Schug Carneros Estate Winery Schweiger Vineyards & Winery Screaming Eagle Winery Seghesio Family Vineyards Seven Stones Winery Shafer Vineyards Shale Oak Winery
Signorello Estate Silver Oak Cellars Sinclair Estate Vineyards Sinegal Family Estate Sloan Estate Sonoma Valley Custom Wine Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards South Coast Winery, Resort & Spa Spottswoode Winery Spring Mountain Vineyard St. Supéry Estate Vineyards & Winery Staglin Family Vineyard Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Ste. Michelle Wine Estates/ Chateau Ste. Michelle Steele Canyon Cellars Steltzner Vineyards Sterling Vineyards Steven Kent Portfolio Stonestreet Storybook Mountain Vineyards Swanson Vineyards & Winery Talbott Vineyards Talisman Wines Tangles Vineyard and Winery Terroir Napa Valley Wines Testarossa Winery Three Sticks/ Price Family Vineyards Toquade Wines/ Christine’s Wines Tournesol Wine Trahan Winery Trattore Estate Wines Treasury Wine Estates Treefort Valley View Vintners Vincent Arroyo Winery Vindemia Vineyards & Winery Vineyard 29 Vineyard 7 & 8 Vivier Willamette Valley Vineyards William Harrison Vineyards & Winery Windsor Oaks Winery Wine Foundry Wine Group Winery Exchange Wise Villa Winery Wood Family Vineyards & Winery Z D Wines
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what’s cool Products that are smart, make your tasks easier and provide cost or labor savings Bill Pregler
Bill Pregler has worked in the winery equipment industry for many years and is a staff writer for Wine Business Monthly.
Tow and Blow Wind Machines from New Zealand A versatile new design for frost protection
TOW AND BLOW
perfect method of frost protection, but there is a versatile new wind machine design that is worth checking out: a new wind machine where you raise the engine and propeller assembly 27 feet into the air on an articulating boom. This is an internationally field-tested design and works for a myriad of agribusiness tasks, beginning with frost protection for vineyards, orchards and row crops. The portable structure is mounted on a trailer for transport down the road or throughout the vineyard. Kim McAulay, a really smart engineer in New Zealand with extensive agricultural credentials, did the homework and named his versatile new design the Tow and Blow. The product now has global distribution from Germany to Turkey to Canada, and finally arrived in the United States thanks to importer Chamberlin Agriculture (located in the Northwest) that learned of the unit from a colleague in Chile. I have written extensively about frost protection and how growers must be proactive with risk management1. Along the way we have learned that there are two types of protection available to growers. First is passive protection, as in proper site selection, cover crops or timely pruning. Second is THERE IS NO ONE
18 November 2015 WBM
active protection, such as sprinklers, cold air drains, weather stations and, of course, wind machines. I really like the Tow and Blow because it brings some refreshing new design concepts to the market. Recently I met up with an old pal, Jerry Smith of BelKor Ag, LLC, one of the largest John Deere distributors in Northern California. There was a field trip on tap to visit Napa Valley for a demo.
The Design The Engine: The key words for this blower are efficiency, compactness and
portability. It all begins with a light-weight, highly reliable power plant from Honda, which means there is universal maintenance and parts support throughout the world. It is the air-cooled Model GX690 (688 cc) Honda V-Twin with electric start and it burns just 1 gallon of fuel per hour. This Footnote: 1
“Product Review: Frost Protection—Managing the Air,” January 2010, WBM and “Proactive Vineyard Frost Protection,” December 2013, WBM.
BILL PREGLER
The electric start 23 HP Honda V-Twin engine burns only 1 gallon of fuel per hour.
TOW AND BLOW
overhead valve, commercial-duty engine has been a mainstay in commercial applications for many years, produces a rated 23 HP and meets all U.S. emission standards. Compact within a 16 by 16 by 171/2 inch footprint, it weighs only 110 pounds. The unit features an auto-start that can be programmed to frost temperature alerts. Fuel is stored in two 8-gallon, white, see-through poly tanks beside the engine so the operator can monitor fuel levels even from the pickup. Immediately at the drive shaft is a simple, three-belt reduction drive (no gears), which then pushes a composite, three-bladed, truncated fan inside a ducted housing. The Fan Blades: Everyone should know propeller efficiency and noise
reduction are generally the result of controlling what happens at the tip of the blade. When a Cessna 172 flies overhead, the noise is not so much the engine but inefficient propeller tips (think blade circumference and high tip speeds) beating up the air. With the Tow and Blow, blade tips are cut off and then ducted within a 360-degree shroud. A shrouded blade essentially works like a turbo charger,
producing highly concentrated airflows with maximized velocity and volume. They travel long, straight distances before dissipating. As a bonus, the company includes straightening vanes beyond the shroud to further assist in smooth columns of air up to 650 feet. This should easily handle 10 acres. Finally, as mentioned, ducted props without tips produce very low sound decibels for the benefit of your neighbors. By making the three blades out of glass-reinforced, polyamide plastic, you dramatically reduce weight and minimize a centrifugal vector load, which increases stability. While the blade pitch can be changed, I would go with factory recommendations as any mistake in adjustment will result in out-ofbalance blades and serious problems at high RPMs. A traditional tower machine with a power unit positioned on the ground drives a propeller 30 feet in the air via bevel gears, 90-degree gear boxes and long drive-shafts. With the Tow and Blow, the engine sits directly behind the fan, eliminating all that weight, and the complete assembly can now be raised into the air with the boom.
The Boom The direction of airflow is adjustable, the entire boom can be raised or lowered to any desired height, and the vertical direction of airflow (pointing up or down) adjusts as the engine fan assembly tilts. The entire boom structure is mounted on a powered turntable base with speed control, offering continuous 360 degrees of horizontal rotation or oscillations to whatever degree suits the vineyard needs. Perhaps the grower wants to target a confined frost zone and only needs 30 to 40 degrees of coverage. This degree of versatility will accommodate a range of grape growers, from 20 acres or less, to large operations with specific problem areas in larger blocks. The turntable is run with a DC hydraulic power pack and battery, which is continuously charged while the engine is running. Thereafter, there is a solar panel to maintain battery levels while not in use.
WBM November 2015 19
what’s cool: Tow and Blow Wind Machines from New Zealand
What’s Cool Wind machines are highly effective and can vary widely in design. My past product reviews have featured spot-on, cold-air drains from Shur Farms or towers for larger acreage from Orchard Supply. Each offers good results, and all work well in their specific applications. What’s cool about the design of the Tow and Blow is that it is so versatile. It is designed by ag people for ag people to meet a wide range of agricultural needs, and is engineered for efficiency, ease of operation, transport and maintenance. Finally, they have a misting accessory kit that injects water spray into the airflow for evaporative cooling in dairies, barns and warehouses. They even apply organic spray coverage to discourage birds. WBM For more information, contact: Tow and Blow USA (www.towandblowusa.com) or Chamberlin Agriculture (www.chamberlinag.com) at 206-437-8738.
BILL PREGLER
Four leg extensions with leveling adjustments provide a wide base for stability.
The Trailer Portability is key. The entire boom and engine assembly folds nicely onto a 20-foot, single axle, galvanized trailer with only a 5½ foot wheelbase, allowing access onto the vineyard and site location. Stability is achieved, once the trailer is in position, by simply extending four legs with leveling adjustments. I watched as a unit was unhooked from a tractor on an unimproved location and was operating in minutes. When finished, the blower is returned to the equipment yard and stored. It is so compact that Tow and Blow in New Zealand can ship four units sub-assembled around the world in containers. It is my understanding that future sales will be fully assembled and inventoried at local dealers.
Maintenance and Warranty There really is not much to do other than change engine oil, filters and grease some zerts per the manufacturer’s specifications. What is really cool is that the articulating boom allows for the business end to be lowered to ground level for any work. Again, if anything should go wrong (power plant-wise) you have Honda engines as a resource. Factory Honda offers a three-year warranty, and Tow and Blow offers an additional two-year warranty on the rest of the machine. In my experience, if you should time out a Honda engine, simply throw it away. Replacement cost for the Tow and Blow is about $1,200. There are absolutely no specialized parts as everything is off the shelf.
BILL PREGLER
The control box also houses the DC hydraulic power pack and continuously charged battery.
20 November 2015 WBM
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Different Approaches to Destemming
Understanding the “next generation” of destemmers and the applications Curtis Phillips, an editor for Wine Business Monthly since 2000, is a graduate of UC Davis, and has been a winemaker since 1984 and an agricultural consultant since 1979.
Curtis Phillips
most high-end destemmers looked similar to each other. Pretty much all of them consisted of a rotating cylinder with more or less grape-sized holes, called a cage, and had a co-rotating set of “fingers” or beaters that rotated at a slightly different speed than the cage. Clusters went in one end, the berries were detached by spinning around inside the rotating cage and brushing against the holes, and stems came out the other end. The two big destemming innovations I saw during my early career were the switch from steel blades to neoprene “fingers” on the beater-shaft and the switch from crushing before destemming to crushing after destemming. When I started out in the United States wine industry, it was still considered a little unusual to have a destemmer-crusher rather than a crusher-destemmer. The innovation to crush after destemming rather than before was no doubt conceived decades before I saw my first Delta destemmer-crusher. There are still crusherdestemmers in production and in operation today, of course, but for several decades it seemed that the spinning beaters-in-a-spinning-cage design was the last word in destemming. About 10 years ago, I started seeing destemmers that approached the problem of getting the grapes off the rachis differently. I refer to these as “next generation” destemmers. NOT SO LONG AGO,
22 November 2015 WBM
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Delta Oscillys The Delta Oscillys, built by Bucher Vaslin, is an interesting re-think of the destemmer. The design is unlike anything I’ve seen before. The destemmer cage is mounted at an angle. Without actually measuring it, I’d say it was about 40 degrees from horizontal. There is no central pin-sharf or beater bar either. The cage doesn’t spin but moves in a conical hulu motion. I was able to see the Delta Oscillys in action a few years ago. I was very impressed with the quality of the destemmed fruit coming out of it. The Delta Oscillys currently has two models. One with a single cage and one with a double cage that can process up to about 20 tons per hour.
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WBM November 2015 23
Different Approaches to Destemming
Milani Estasi The Milani Estasi is a flat, rather than cylindrical, destemmer. It uses a knobby, flexible overhand belt to draw the clusters across a vibrating grid. The berries come off the stem, fall through the grid intact and the large MOG tumbles off the end. Milani’s new belt destemmer is a fresh take on getting berries off the stem as gently as possible. The Estasi is somewhat defined by what it doesn’t have. It doesn’t have a beating shaft, a cage or “centrifugal” force, and the clusters are not torn apart from the rachis. The grapes are dumped on the top conveyor and brought down into the destemming portion of the Estasi. A knobby belt pulls the grapes over a transverse oscillating screen that separates the berries from the rachis. In effect, the berries are brushed off the rachis. As the berries fall through the screen the rachis continues forward into a waste bin. Like most of the equipment on this list, I haven’t had the chance to use it myself. Judging from the videos I’ve seen, however, the action looks extremely gentle. Like any high-end destemmer, the Estasi is supposed to perform best when it’s fed as evenly as possible. For this reason, I would recommend that the crush pad is set up with dump bins into a hopper which, in turn, empties onto a vibrating table before the destemmer; but this is the same sort of recommendation I’d make for a more conventional destemmer. The Estasi destemmer could be fed by an auger, but that probably defeats the purpose of having such a gentle destemmer. The Milani Estasi has a maximum throughput of about 5 tons per hour.
24 November 2015 WBM
Different Approaches to Destemming
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26 November 2015 WBM
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To me, the Pellenc Process Selectiv Winery functions like a miniaturized mechanical harvester, although if I mention this to any Pellenc personnel, they seem surprised at the comparison. Certainly, there some differences. For one thing, rather than moving along a trellis of vines, grape clusters are moved through the Process Selectiv Winery by means of a clever double belt. The lower belt is a grid that allows detached berries to fall through but it moves at the same pace as the clusters through the destemmer in order to minimize the number of broken berries and jacks. Juice, shot berries and MOG drop into one auger, berries into another, and any larger-than-berrysized MOG into a third. The output from the juice auger can be screened to remove any MOG but the separate discharge also allows the winemaker to reserve or combine the juice with the intact berries as desired. Personally, since this is primarily juice form berries broken in transport, I would keep it separate at least until it could be evaluated for undesired oxidation.
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Different Approaches to Destemming
Scharfenberger Euroselect I first saw a Scharfenberger Euroselect, available in the U.S. from Euro Machines, in Europe about 10 years ago. At first glance, the Euroselect could be mistaken for an incline conveyor rather than recognized as being a destemmer. The Euroselect uses four rotating “fingers” to push the grapes off the rachis and through the grid of the conveyor. The destem rollers can be adjusted to rotate at different speeds, which aids in berry selection. This last feature is something one would expect to
28 November 2015 WBM
be important for high-end German white wine production where the entire prädikatswein grading system is built around the degree to which individual berries are selected. “Trockenbeerenauslese,” for example, literally means dried berry selection, whereas “beerenauslese” means selected berries and “auslese” means selected harvest with cluster selection implied. The Euroselect can aid the triage of berries for selection in these grades of prädikatswein. In the U.S., a lot of installations seem to be at wineries that specialize in the production of red varietals like Pinot Noir. A few U.S. wineries, including Airlie Winery, Utopia Vineyard and Arbor Brook Vineyards in Oregon, and Premium Wine Group on Long Island, have units. Airlie winemaker Elizabeth Clark has been using a Euroselect for several vintages. “I have been very happy with Euroselect. I really like the whole berry component which seems to lessen seed contact with the juice. Being in the Willamette Valley with typically cooler harvests, we often have less-ripe seeds and the seed tannins are not necessarily desirable,” Clark said. “This year the Marechal Foch was done at about 1.5 tons per hour, and we usually run about 2 to 2.5 tons per hour. That seems to give us the cleanest stems with the least amount of damage to the fruit. Fruit quality also has a huge impact on speed, as the ability of the fingers to knock the berries off the rachis varies greatly with water content, ripeness and health of the fruit.”
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The Socma Cube The Socma Cube was something of an unexpected addition to the list of next-generation destemmers. Socma is an established French mechanical engineering firm based in Narbonne and specializes in winery and industrial equipment, but I hadn’t noticed their products in the U.S. before Valley Pipe & Supply started showing off the Cube. The Cube does a lot in a fairly small space. The principle of operation is a little similar to the Pellenc Selectiv Process Winery insofar as the Cube also uses flexible “fingers” or beaters akin to those used by a mechanical grape harvester to knock the berries off the stems, and rollers to separate the berries and MOG, but this seems to be more of a form-following function coincidence than any shared heritage. The grapes drop vertically into the vibrating beaters which knock the berries off the stems. The stems, berries and any MOG drop onto a vibrating hopper. Any juice drops straight through to a screened sump; the berries, stems and large MOG are carried to a separate discharge.
Armbruster Rotovib Even though one could argue that it’s a departure from the criteria I listed above, I’ve included the Armbruster Rotovib as one of my “next generation” destemmers because it stands somewhere between conventionally designed destemmers and the more iconoclastic designs I’ve already discussed. The Rotovib has also had a decent adoption rate in the U.S. wine industry. Armbruster’s Rotovib destemmer models are somewhat different from a conventional destemmer in that the beater-bar vibrates a few millimeters back and forth along its rotational axis in addition to rotating inside the cylindrical destemmer cage. This vibration shakes the grapes off the rachis, which allows the Rotovib to have a beater bar that rotates about half as fast, relative to the rotation of the cage, as in previous, non-Rotovib designs. The end result is more whole berries and fewer jacks. In North America, Armbruster is represented by Scott Laboratories. The German-made Armbruster destemmers have a reputation for being especially gentle at destemming. Among the winemakers I’ve talked to over the years, those using Armbruster destemmers were all quite enthusiastic about them. Indeed, I’ve never met a winemaker with one that didn’t voice the opinion that they’re the best destemmers they’ve used.
30 November 2015 WBM
varieties. All the same, it’s probably a good idea to have a crusher at the winery. I like Demoisy’s stand-alone crusher, but most destemmers have crushers as an option. Just make sure it can be bypassed or moved out of the way to destem without crushing.
Choosing the Right Destemmer The destemmer capacity is as good a place to start the process of selecting a destemmer as any. All the destemmers discussed have capacities up to 5 tons per hour or up to between 20 and 30 tons per hour. This means that these destemmers are most likely to find homes at smaller wineries. Clark with Airlie Winery noted that the capacity of the Scharfenberger Euroselect was a good match for her winery. “It is a slow machine and we are probably about the right size to own one,” she said. “Much smaller than this and the cost would be prohibitive and much larger and speed would be the issue. I don’t think we have ever processed at 5 tons per hour.”
Not Crushing Anymore I suspect that my obsession with gentle destemmers is a product of my desire to have the grapes delivered to the press or fermentor as destemmed, but otherwise intact, berries. For the most part, I stopped using crushers almost 20 years ago. In my own winemaking, and when I have a choice, I don’t use a crusher for anything except for relatively slimy and hard-to-press white varieties like Muscat, Symphony and possibly Riesling. If I can, I use the press as my “crusher” for my whites. Fermentation, must transfers and pump-overs or punch-downs are my preferred methods for “crushing” red
New Approaches to Old Problems It seems to me that the U.S. wine industry is more reluctant to embrace new technologies than it could be. Too often anything “new” won’t be considered until the gee-wiz shine has tarnished to old-hat. The fact that something is newer doesn’t mean that it is intrinsically better, of course. No single destemmer design will be the correct one for every winery either. My goal in highlighting these destemmers is to make sure that winemakers look further than the destemmers that everyone else is using. WBM
WBM November 2015 31
winemaking Courage in the Cellar:
Making Wine in Northern Michigan Lance Cutler
Lance Cutler has been a working winemaker in Sonoma County for 35 years. He has been a contributing editor for Wine Business Monthly for more than 10 years. His unique perspective on winemaking has led to our Industry Roundtable series and our Varietal Focus series. Lance is also the author of four books, including The Tequila Lover’s Guide to Mexico.
When Lee Lutes, winemaker/distiller/general manager of Black Star Farms, saw this, he said, “Perfect for Pinot Noir.”
some exotic place in Hawaii. It conjures up visions of bronzed girls sensuously dancing the hula while strapping young men dig a pit to roast a pig. The trade winds blow gently, coconuts drop from trees, and when the waves are just right, you might go out on your surfboard. Not so fast. Leelanau Peninsula is the heart of wine country in Northern Michigan. It features some of the most fearless, tenacious winemakers in the world. In winter their grapevines are buried under 10 to 20 feet of snow. Frost is a common occurrence in May. Average rainfall for each of the September and October harvest months is more than 3 inches per month. In 2014, many wineries lost 95 percent of their crop. This year they are hoping to lose only 90 percent. They fight powdery mildew, Botrytis, birds and even raccoons. These winemakers come from all over the world. They are heroes, and this is their story. Up in Northern Michigan, two peninsulas jut out into Grand Traverse Bay. The one sitting in the middle of the bay is called Old Mission Peninsula. The one between the bay and Lake Michigan to the west is called Leelanau Peninsula. Just south of the two peninsulas sits the town of Traverse City, the largest city of the 21 counties in northern Michigan even though city residents number only 14,700 and the entire metropolitan area clocks in under 144,000 inhabitants. LEELANAU PENINSULA SOUNDS LIKE
32 November 2015 WBM
The area has a long history of significant agriculture, with Michigan being recognized as this country’s second most diverse agricultural state. Renowned for cherries, Traverse City is known as the Cherry Capital of the World, and more than 500,000 visitors attend the annual Cherry Festival in July. While Michigan has a history of growing grapes (mostly table) dating back to the 1800s, it wasn’t until 1965 that Bernie Rink planted the first modern vineyard using French-American hybrids. In 1968, Leonard Olsen and Carl Banholzer planted the first vinifera in the state: Chardonnay and Riesling. In 1970, Rink planted Northern Michigan’s first commercial vineyard, and in 1972 Leonard Olsen opened Tabor Hill Winery in Southern Michigan and sold the first bottle of vinifera wine from the area. Other pioneering wineries followed with Ed O’Keefe opening Chateau Grand Traverse and Rink opening Boskydel Vineyards, both in 1976, followed by Larry Mawby opening L. Mawby Winery in 1978. Today, more than half of the state’s 2,650 acres of winegrapes are grown in the Traverse City area, and half of those vineyards have been planted in the last 10 years. Currently, there are eight wineries on Old Mission Peninsula and another 25 on Leelanau Peninsula. Those wineries are producing surprisingly delicious, world-class Rieslings. They also dabble in Pinot Noir, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay, along with other varieties.
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Making Wine in Northern Michigan
The “lake effect” brings snow to the vineyard as arctic air picks up moisture from the warmer lake water and delivers heavy snowfall, insulating vines from extreme cold.
The “Lake Effect” The region works for grapes because of the “lake effect.” Lake Michigan and the adjoining Traverse Bay are large, deep bodies of water. As arctic air sweeps down from the north in the winter, it picks up moisture from the warmer lake water and delivers heavy snowfall. This snow covers the vines and serves as insulation to protect them from extreme cold. The lake waters cool during winter. In early spring, cool weather systems passing over the lake slow budbreak, which provides some additional protection from spring frosts. In the early summer, the cold lake water evaporates and helps cool the vineyards. The lake warms up during the summer months. By fall it warms the air passing over, extending the growing season for vineyards close to the lake. This lake effect works great in theory, and it has allowed vineyards to prosper in places like Michigan and the Finger Lakes in New York. Unfortunately, if the lakes freeze in the winter, there is no lake effect. When the lake effect doesn’t operate, there is not enough snow to cover and insulate the grapevines, or it gets so cold, the snow doesn’t help. Simply put, the vines can freeze to death. Larry Mawby is one of the true winemaking pioneers of Leelanau Peninsula. He grew up in Michigan as part of a farming family. While in college working on an English degree from Michigan State University, Mawby hitchhiked through Europe one summer and developed a liking for French wines.
34 November 2015 WBM
Returning home, he went into the family business but decided to try his hand at grape growing and winemaking on the side. One of the first to plant in the area in 1973, he doggedly worked at learning which varieties would fare well, experimenting with hybrids and then some vinifera. He opened his winery in 1978, producing a variety of wines. In 1984, he began producing the first methode champenoise sparkling wine in Northern Michigan. Mawby feels that site location is critical to making fine wines in Northern Michigan. Vineyards need to be planted on slopes to take full advantage of the lake effect. In the late spring on frosty mornings, the cold air, being heavier than the warm air, flows down the slopes into the valley, sparing the buds from freezing. Slopes should face south, southeast or southwest to receive sunlight better. The short growing season demands that growers squeeze out every bit of heat and sunlight they can get. Those south-facing slopes warm up early in the day and stay warmer in the evening. Even with the benefit of a prime vineyard site, Michigan weather can cause problems. Mawby explained, “Because of all the winter snow, my vines have double trunks and a spare insurance spur near the ground that we use in case of a freeze. We grow the vines low to the ground to benefit from reflected heat. The top wire is 5 feet, and the fruit zone is between 24 and 30 inches. Vines are low vigor and require neither fruit drop nor leaf pulling.” Vintages were pretty good, by Northern Michigan standards, for about five years, culminating with the largest vintage ever in 2013, which produced a
Making Wine in Northern Michigan
record 7,600 tons of winegrapes. It was a record crop, and good growing conditions produced fine wines, but now winemakers are dealing with their second straight brutal winter. The lake has frozen over both years, negating much of the lake effect. In Northern Michigan, grape growing is survival of the fittest. Coenraad Stassen, winemaker for Brys (rhymes with “eyes”) Estate, was born in Western Cape, South Africa. After eight years’ working in the Klein Karoo region, he came to Old Mission Peninsula through an international exchange program sponsored by Ohio State University. In his eight years at Brys Estate, he has garnered more than 350 medals in national and international competitions. “Each vintage presents a different challenge,” he explained. “Consistency is almost impossible to achieve here. You have to make your stylistic choices as each vintage proceeds.” In the winter of 2013-2014, 90 percent of Lake Michigan froze. There was no lake effect, and most of the primary and secondary buds were wiped out. Then it rained almost every day in September. “There was no way for me to make red wine that year,” Stassen explained disconsolately. Stassen’s harvest
in 2014 was only 20 percent of what he brought in the previous year. He made no red wine, turning all of his red grapes into Rosé. This past year, faced with another bleak winter, Stassen tried tying canes onto the low irrigation wire. He then used a blade attached to his tractor to push snow in between the rows up onto the vines until they were covered. It seemed to help. Despite a severe late freeze on May 20, he estimates that he will only lose 50 percent of his crop this year. “Hopefully we won’t be deluged with rain during harvest, and I can make red wine again.” Sean O’Keefe, winemaker for Villa Mari Vineyards, is the second son of Ed O’Keefe from the area’s largest winery, Chateau Grand Traverse. He earned a degree in German literature in the U.S. and then went to Germany in 1994 to apprentice at Weingut Jakob Pfleger in the Pfalz. Enamored with winemaking he went to wine school in Neustadt and then transferred to the wine university at Geisenheim, spending time with several of Germany’s cutting-edge Riesling producers. Returning home to the family business at Chateau Grand Traverse (CGT), he headed up the vineyard operations, gently moving things in the organic direction while he assisted winemaker Bernd Croissant. He eventually created a new brand of wine for the winery called CGT Eclectic. The brand featured distinctive labels and eclectic wines, like Vin Gris of Pinot Noir, Grüner Veltliner and Ship of Fools (Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, White Pinot Noir), but focused on variations of Riesling, including his Lot 49 Riesling made from a single vineyard using minimalist techniques, fermented and aged in German oak ovals. Perhaps because O’Keefe is native to the area, he tends to accept the vagaries of weather in Northern Michigan as a more normal occurrence. “Damage to vineyards in the area is very erratic,” he said. “Having enough snow cover helps protect the vines. Higher elevation vineyards seem to survive better than lower vineyards, and you never know in advance which vineyards will have enough snow and which ones won’t.” He has tried covering vines up to the graft union with dirt and/or sand and continues to do this for all vines less than three years old, but it is not terribly cost-effective. “It’s just not economical to routinely do for all mature vineyards,” he said, “and it is labor-intensive.” While small wineries can wait until late February or early March to begin pruning, O’Keefe explained that larger wineries have to begin in December. “We would start by leaving six to eight canes in December. Later we would go through and prune down to four canes, leaving eight to 10 buds per cane. The last time through we’d trim down to fewer canes for the growing season.” He laughed about this system devised to deal with the harsh winters. “It may be labor-intensive, but at least it keeps the laborers occupied for the entire season.”
Having a Plan Cornel Olivier is another South African winemaker who found his way to
Northern Michigan, preceding Coenraad Stassen by four years. Olivier grew up on his family’s farm near the Stellenbosch wine region. The family ran orchards and grew grapes to sell to local wineries. He remembers learning how to make his first wines at the knee of his grandfather. After a career in the military didn’t work out, Olivier entered the South Africa Viticulture and Science Program at the prestigious Elsenburg Agricultural College. He got the opportunity to work and study abroad in 1999 and settled in Traverse City. He worked at Chateau Grand Traverse and Brys Estate before partnering with Northern Michigan native Chris Balyga to open 2 Lads Winery in 2007. They have a 58-acre property with 22 acres of vineyard and a new state-of-the-art, gravity-flow winery. Brys Estate uses a special plow that pushes snow to cover vineyards.
36 November 2015 WBM
Making Wine in Northern Michigan
“It’s especially challenging growing grapes here, so I need to make the right decisions and think about many things—labor, finance, soil content, slope, degree of sun exposure and drainage—in order to make the best wines possible,” Olivier said. “I have a Plan A, Plan B and Plan C based upon each location in the vineyard.” Olivier’s vineyard is cordon-pruned. He chooses not to bury canes, but he does have an extra shoot coming from the graft joint or slightly above it to act as an insurance policy for the next year. Pruning starts in the snow in January and February, usually finishing by the end of March. He spur-prunes but leaves six to seven buds per spur to delay budbreak. After budbreak, he goes back and cuts those spurs down to the bottom two shoots. He feels it prevents a dense canopy and provides better fruit quality. “We’ve had frost here as late as the end of May,” he bemoaned. “The frost hits the primary shoots and severely cuts crop. Secondary buds will push in June but deliver a much smaller crop, and the malic acid will be much higher, which can be a challenge.” Olivier said he lost 95 percent of his crop in 2014, and he is expecting to lose 90 percent of this year’s crop. “The 2013 vintage provided a huge crop and excellent wines,” he said. “We had very little crop last year and will get not much more this year. In 2014 we made only sparkling wines from everything we got from the farm, including a Riesling sparkler and another that blended Cabernet Franc, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. This year we will likely have to import juice to remain in business.”
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What Else Can Go Wrong? Sometimes you read things, but they don’t sink in. In Northern Michigan in 2014, most of the wineries lost 95 percent of their crop. Ninety-five percent! This year they expect to lose another 50 to 90 percent. Wineries are actually considering importing juice to make wine just so they can stay in business. Can you imagine that happening in Napa Valley, Willamette Valley or Walla Walla? If you are heartless and jaded, you might think, “Alright, so it is cold in Michigan, and they’ve had a couple of tough years. That can happen to any winemaker. Right?” Well maybe, but it’s not just the snow. Sean O’Keefe said, “Vines grow differently here. Budbreak and bloom happen much later than on the West Coast, often late in June or even in July, but we can go from budbreak to full canopy in just two to three weeks. It’s hard to get the vineyard work done when things are growing that fast.” Stassen likes to do some leaf removal right after fruit set. He feels that allows maximum sunlight to reach the grapes and provides for wind to move through the vines to keep them dry. He believes this early leaf removal toughens the skins against sunburn even though sunburn isn’t a big issue in Michigan because the growing season is short, temperatures are generally mild, and daylight is at a premium at harvest time. Early leaf removal also seems to help dissipate pyrazines in Cabernet Franc. Stassen even does a light hand-hedging on his Cabernet Franc late in July and then another machinehedging of the entire vineyard in August to try to maximize airflow through the fruit zone.
O’Keefe agrees that some leaf removal is of benefit for reds, especially “Budbreak and bloom happen much later Cabernet Franc, but not really necessary for most other varieties in his than on the West Coast, often late in vineyard because the area’s sandy, low organic soils contribute to low-vigor vines. He also pointed out that too much berry sun exposure is detrimental June or even in July, but we can go from to Riesling. Olivier also talked about the very rapid growth in the vines during July budbreak to full canopy in just two to three and August. “Those months have high temperatures and high humidity in weeks. It’s hard to get the vineyard work this region,” he explained. “Because of that, our biggest problem is powdery mildew.” All of the winemakers use fungicides to help battle powdery mildew, done when things are growing that fast.” black rot, Botrytis and other issues, which can be set early in the season and Sean O’Keefe, winemaker, Villa Mari Vineyards then explode into bloom with harvest rains. “You either farm for yield or quality,” said Olivier. “We pull leaves and drop crop, especially for reds and tight-cluster varieties. The trick is to leave enough leaf cover for the grape bunches and for photosynthesis. Then we will pull more leaves near harvest to allow things to dry out during the harvest rains.” Hopefully, the enormity of issues that Northern Michigan winemakers have to deal with is having an impact upon you, but there is more. Once these winemakers survive the winter, spring frost, bursts of vine growth in heat and humidity, and control the mildew and other challenges, they can’t just sit back and look forward to their fruit ripening. It seems they have a problem with birds. “Birds are a big issue,” confirmed O’Keefe. “We are on a major migratory path for birds, but local birds cause a lot of the damage as well.” Olivier agrees that birds are a major concern. “We use netting for the red wines and colored white grapes although they seem to leave the Riesling alone.” Turns out that the birds will peck the berries, punching through the skins. If they attack the grapes at 18° Brix or lower, you can get sour rot, and your vineyards start to smell like vinegar. If the birds hold off until 19° Brix, then sour rot is not the issue, but Botrytis is. So everyone uses bird netting to cover a large portion of their vineyards. “We net for birds,” admitted Stassen, “but we also put up electric fencing around the entire vineyard to keep out the deer and raccoons. You know your One of our staff scientists, Dr. Jeff McCord has developed a micro-oxygenation system grapes are ripe when the raccoons which enables stainless tanks to breathe in precisely the same manner as oak barrels. When used in union with StaVin’s array of Oak Integration Systems, The OxBox can effectively show up. They love ripe grapes and transform a stainless tank into the oak barrels of your choice. For about a third of the price. can wipe out a vineyard even faster StaVın Incorporated, Post Office Box 1693, Sausalito,CA 94966 tel (415) 331-7849 fax (415) 331-0516 www.stavin.com than birds.” © 2015 StaVin Inc.
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WBM November 2015 39
Making Wine in Northern Michigan
When Challenged, Let’s Make It Harder As if snow, frost, mildew and pests didn’t provide enough of a challenge, some Michigan winemakers go out of their way to make things even harder. Lee Lutes was born in Michigan. His parents pursued teaching jobs in Australia, where he has early memories of his parents enjoying wine in Yalumba. Returning to Traverse City in 1975, he graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in finance. Finding no affinity for working in the finance field, he returned to the Barossa Valley and found inspiration for a potential career. He moved to New York, worked for Danny Meyers, spent time volunteering at Gristina Vineyards on Long Island and worked as assistant winemaker at Abbazia di Valle Chiari in Northern Italy. He returned to Traverse City in 1993 to work at Leelanau Wine Cellars before founding Peninsula Cellars with the Kroupa family in 1994. In 1998 he was hired to develop the winery and make the wine at Black Star Farms, where he is currently winemaker/distiller/general manager. The first thing he did was to plant Pinot Noir—a lot of Pinot Noir. “I love Pinot Noir,” Lutes explained. “So I thought, why not take a shot at it?” Forget that Pinot Noir tends to bud early, making it very susceptible to spring frost. Lutes brought in Dijon clones and had at it. He is now farming five uniquely different Pinot Noir sites, carefully managing his vines to produce small clusters and keeping crop loads around 2 tons per acre. Lutes produced 3,500 cases of Pinot Noir in 2012. According to Lutes the typical long, cool growing season in Northern Michigan delivers a different flavor profile than most other places. Harvest doesn’t take place until late October or early November. He contends that flavor development comes early, and then growers wait for sugar to rise and acid to drop. That’s a different scenario from California and other places where sugar development comes first and winemakers wait for flavors to develop. “Our Pinot Noir can be fairly high in pH, which can make it taste broad in its texture and add a perception of sweetness,” said Lutes. “Our Pinot usually spends extended time on the lees following fermentation, which adds to an extended mid-palate.” Wherever wine is made, winemakers and winery owners know that it is very hard to obtain or grow high-quality grapes and then turn those grapes into great wine. Even after you do that, the real test comes when you try to sell the wine. A question comes to mind: Who is going to buy wine from Michigan and why would they? By 1996, Mawby had developed a reputable winery with a devoted following. He made dry and sweet wines from hybrids as well as vinifera grapes, and 15 percent of his production was sparkling wine. Life was good, so using good Northern Michigan logic, Mawby decided to focus on sparkling wine production and give up 85 percent of his sales. “I have two views when it comes to winemaking,” Mawby told me. “One is aesthetic, and the other is commercial. From an aesthetic standpoint, I wanted to make the best wine I could from my grapes on the Leelanau Peninsula. It seemed to me that my best shot was to focus on sparkling wine. Because it was harvested sooner, sparkling wine was less influenced by hostile weather events, so I felt we could produce consistently good sparkling wine.” Mawby figured that the best way to make good sparkling wine was to focus on it. “I didn’t want to mess around with other stuff. I didn’t want to occupy my time thinking about other wines. I decided to concentrate exclusively on making good sparkling wine every year.” Commercially, he quickly realized
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that walking away from 85 percent of his business was not economic suicide. More and more wineries were opening in the area. There was a solid rationale in becoming a specialist winery. It made him unique among all of the wineries. As time went on, his winery became the go-to place for sparkling wine in Michigan.
Marketing Michigan Wines Lutes points out that the bulk of wine sales for all of the wineries in Northern Michigan occurs in the individual tasting rooms. A lot of those visitors are new to wine. Some of them are trying it for the first time. They have neither the experience nor the sophisticated palates of people visiting wineries in California, Washington or Oregon. “We work at pleasing the consumers,” said Lutes, “and in some instances that means making sweeter-styled wines. Fortunately, our high acids prevent our wines from becoming cloying. When we started our winery, we produced six different wines. Now we make 32 different wines, and 30 to 40 percent of those have some residual sugar.” Stassen added, “All of our wine is 100 percent estate-bottled, and we sell virtually every bottle from our tasting room. We get 50,000 visitors each year at the winery, and that number is growing.” Olivier makes 13 wines at 2 Lads: 10 still wines and three methode champenoise sparkling wines. “Eighty to 85 percent of our wine is sold on-site, and the rest is self-distributed or sold wholesale.” Mawby, who produces 10 different method champenoise wines and another eight charmat or cuvée close method wines, called it, “the tyranny of success. I’ve been trying to cut back on the number of wines for years, but the consumers have their favorites, and they’d go crazy if I stopped production.”
Embracing Acidity When you taste wines from Northern Michigan, the first surprise is how well made they are and how good they taste. The second thing you are aware of is the acid. Most wines from Michigan have a lot of acid. Each winemaker deals with that issue slightly differently. In talking about acidity in the grapes, Stassen said, “I don’t like to remove acid from wine. I’d prefer to leave a little bit of residual sugar to balance the
acid.” He also uses 71B yeast, which naturally removes acid during fermentation. Stassen often picks grapes with 8 to 9 g per liter of acid. After fermentation, he sees 7.5 g per liter. “At that acid, about 15 g per liter residual sugar usually creates the perfect balance, depending on vintage.” Olivier likes to use yeast strains that help decrease malic acid content in his white wines. When acids are very high, he might de-acidify some of the juice and then blend to achieve the acid content he wants. On Chardonnays he will use malolactic. On Rieslings he uses a small amount of residual sugar to find the perfect balance between acidity, sweetness and body. “Of course, on all of the red wines, we put them through malolactic fermentation to lower the malic acid,” he said. Lutes said, “Ultra-high acidity is rarely a serious issue that cannot be dealt with through some ML manipulation, a little amelioration, de-acidification (only in the worst years) and/or a combination of all of these things. With Pinot, we have not had to do any of these things in most vintages; but if the fruit quality is poor enough to not be considered for red wine, we make it into Rosé or sparkling.” For Riesling and white wines O’Keefe said, “I use extended skin contact to increase potassium in juice or long fermentation in neutral oak ovals with extended gross and fine lees contact. In the worst case scenario I will de-acidify the juice. Also, malic lowering yeasts, like 71B, SVG, etc., can help, as well as co-inoculation with ml bacteria.”
As usual, Larry Mawby has a slightly different take. When asked what he does about the acidity, Mawby replied, “I embrace it. High acid is great for sparkling wine, and it’s good for most table wines as well. With still wine, a winemaker can always use malolactic fermentation to lower the acid and, if necessary, a bit of residual sugar will help as well.”
An Evolving Region For this writer, high acid is about the only downside for Michigan wines. Especially for the red wines, I find that the acid builds and builds, making it difficult to sail through an entire bottle. Perhaps the best policy is to follow Larry Mawby’s lead. Embrace the wines from Northern Michigan, acid and all. We have to remember, most of them have been at this for less than 20 years in Northern Michigan. They will figure out what to do with the acidity. Their Rieslings are already stunning and rival any other Rieslings being produced in this country. These fearless winemakers fight harsh winters, freezing springs, rot and pests. They take grapes with high acid and low sugars and somehow extract balanced flavors and substantial color to make very nice wines. They are succeeding in a very competitive marketplace, and their industry is growing steadily. One thing for sure, they are not going to give up. It is just not in their nature. WBM
...before settling down for your long winter’s nap...
ATP suggests that winemakers conduct preventive equipment maintenance prior to storage. This includes: 1. A detailed cleaning of your equipment. 2. Inspecting, identifying and replacing damaged or worn parts. 3. Conducting a “close~out, close~down equipment run.” 4. Covering and/or sealing all equipment as necessary to keep out debris and miscellaneous materials. 5. Performing all necessary oil changes and greasing chores. 6. Creating a photographed condition file of each piece. However, we don’t recommend draining equipment completely. Doing so, can actually harm the “heart” of your equipment by allowing oxygen to enter the various components, from metal to rubber. (These components, when exposed to air, can become quite brittle and crack.) We recommend you do these things to insure that your equipment, come Spring, won’t awake with a clatter.
For more inFormation, call atP services at (707) 331-2170 or email us at: services@americantartaric.com
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Lance Cutler has been a working winemaker in Sonoma County for 35 years. He has been a
winemaking
contributing editor for Wine Business Monthly for more than 10 years. His unique perspective on winemaking has led to our Industry Roundtable series and our Varietal Focus series. Lance is also the author of four books, including The Tequila Lover’s Guide to Mexico.
WINE TRIALS:
The Future of Wine Science Catena winery sponsors unique research presentation at UC Davis Lance Cutler
SAMUEL KASS
of Mendoza, Argentina has been carrying on serious, scientific wine research for 20 years under the direction of Laura Catena, general director. By 2008, as part of their ongoing research, Bodega Catena was doing 250 microvinifications a year. In 2010 that number had climbed to 2,000 annually. These microvinification trials are critical for any vineyard trials but often present a problem because of the difficulties with being precise and reproducible while still providing information that transfers directly to commercial winemaking. The winery decided to sponsor Fernando Buscema, executive director of their research program, for the two-year MS program at UC Davis, focusing on learning how to run these microvinifications in the best possible way. Working primarily with Dr. Roger Boulton and relying on new state-of-theart equipment in the UC Davis experimental winery, Buscema released the most extensive Malbec research ever conducted. B O D E G A C AT E N A Z A PATA W I N E R Y
Some Background on Bodega Catena Zapata’s Research Start Bodega Catena Zapata has led the way in Argentina’s viticulture and winemaking research since the 1990s. Nicolás Catena, the third generation of the family, had a Ph.D. in economics; and while spending time in California in the 1980s, he was impressed by California’s attempts to compete with the classic wines of Europe. He saw that research conducted at UC Davis had contributed to California’s burgeoning wine industry. When he returned to Argentina, he decided to learn all he could to improve his wines until they could compete on the world’s stage. Nicolás focused his efforts on Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, the major players in France and much of Europe, and he seemed to be making progress. His wines were improving. By 1995, he showed CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE...
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As founder of Catena Institute of Wine, Laura Catena felt it was time to let the wine world in on Buscema’s research and the other areas they were studying. She recently hosted an event called “The Future of Wine Science: A Dialogue with Experts from UC Davis and the Catena Institute of Wine.” The event was a collaboration between UC Davis, the Catena Institute of Wine and MundoVino, a member of The Winebow Group, which represents Bodega Catena Zapata nationally. A select group of wine writers, sommeliers and wine experts attended the all-day event on August 31, 2015 that featured a who’s who list of Davis experts and Catena Institute researchers.
The Most In-depth Study of Cultivars Ever Attempted The centerpiece of the event started with a tour of the LEED Platinum Teaching and Research Winery at UC Davis that introduced attendees to the special equipment that made the study possible. Then Fernando Buscema and Boulton gave a presentation of their research on Malbec cultivars and how they used the state-of-the-art UC Davis winery to conduct their experiments. Buscema’s M.S. thesis at UC Davis is the most in-depth study of Malbec ever published. It is also the largest single comparative cultivar study ever attempted. The project studied Malbec—comparing 26 different blocks in Mendoza with 16 different blocks from six different counties in California. The blocks selected from Argentina were as uniform as possible. The same irrigation methodology was used; and if hail-protection netting was used, all of the vines in the block had to have it. Buscema harvested between 500 and 1,000 kg of fruit from each block between 24° to 25° Brix. The Argentine wines were fermented in 500 L
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POTENTIAL S I N C E
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his wines at a Wine Spectator event in New York, but his wines got little attention. That year, Nicolás’ daughter, Laura, got involved in the research. She felt that her father needed to do something different, and she decided that their winery had a unique opportunity with Malbec, the most planted grape in all of Argentina. Laura Catena, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a degree in biology and has a Doctor of Medicine degree from Stanford University, was appalled by the unscientific way the winery was doing its research. She brought a more pragmatic and empirical methodology, insisting on replicating experiments and compiling data to make informed decisions. “We wanted to promote knowledge and understanding through science,” explained Catena. “Our goal in this research is two-fold: we want to elevate our Catena wines to a level that competes with the finest wines in the world, and we want to share our knowledge to elevate wine quality for all of Argentina.” By 2002, Catena realized she needed to hire full-time researchers to run the experimental programs and organize data. They hired Alejandro Vigil as research and development director. Vigil transformed the team and brought in new expertise. In 2004 he partnered with the agronomy school in Mendoza to study high-altitude viticulture, which was a major focus for Bodega Catena Zapata. By 2007 Vigil joined the enology team full-time and is now the winemaker. His place on the research team was taken by Fernando Buscema.
Developing the Malbec Program Catena’s first project was to develop the Malbec program. Bodega Catena Zapata identified 134 different Malbec selections among its vineyards. They worked with these clones for years, finally selecting five clones based on positive features, like small clusters, small berries and naturally low yield. In 2007 these five clones were sent to UC Davis where they compared the Argentine clones against five clones from France. In research carried out by Roy Urvieta from the Catena Institute, characteristics between the Argentine and French clones were compared. The Argentine clones produced significantly lower yields than their French counterparts, averaging 22.5 kg per plant compared to the 69 kg per plant of the French selections. A bit surprising was the fact that the clones from Argentina behaved the same way in California as in Argentina, with the lowest and highest yielding clones performing the same in both locations. The conclusions were not as evident when it came to studying the flavonoids and anthocyanins between the French and Argentine selections. Of the 24 compounds analyzed there were differences in just seven. The French clones did have more tri-hydroxylated anthocyanins, while the selections from Argentina contained more di-hydroxylated anthocyanins. Urvieto hypothesized that the higher UV-B and more stressful conditions in Argentina may have caused the Argentine clones to develop more of the di-hydroxylated anthocyanins. Catena said, “Twenty years ago we wondered if we planted a Malbec vine from France, whether it would taste the same as our selections. So we brought in French Malbec and realized that the plant material was different. This study proves that the plant material is different, and we believe it shows that Argentina has more desirable Malbec selections than France.” WBM
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plastic bins while the California wines were fermented in 250 L stainless steel fermentors. Winemaking was conventional: 150 mg of SO2 was added at crushing, and 24 hours later 200 mg per liter of Lalvin EC-118 yeast was added. A day later 100 mg/liter DAP was added. Fermentation temperatures were kept between 22° and 25° C. After 11 days of fermentation on the skins, the wine was pressed, and the free run juice was inoculated with Lalvin VP41 malolactic bacteria. Once ML was complete, free SO2 was brought to 35 mg per liter. Twelve bottles of each wine were sealed and kept standing at 15° C until analysis. Roger Boulton commented, “Only someone with Fernando’s enthusiasm and dedication could get this 60-year-old professor up at four in the morning to pick grapes from 16 locations all over the state. I have waited 25 years to do this kind of research. It would have been a complete waste of time to attempt before, but now with this new equipment we have here at the research winery, we are able to exactly replicate each fermentation, isolating out the specific vineyard contributions.” Using HPLC liquid chromatography, Buscema focused on 30 phenolic compounds with a system called chemotronics to develop a fingerprint of the various wines. The research revealed that the Mendoza wines showed similarities but were significantly different from the California counties. All of the California counties separated from each other except for Sonoma and Monterey. All four of the Mendoza locations separated from each other
SAMUEL KASS
although two were closely associated. Buscema determined that as expected, the phenolic compounds present in Malbec wines are affected by site characteristics. The study suggested that California and Argentine Malbecs are different compositionally, and that chemotronics could be used to explore new regions. That research led them to a methodology that allows them to isolate specific factors they wish to study. State-of-the-art equipment allows them to focus on those factors, running their experiments in triplicate. The information gleaned from these experiments is readily adaptable to real winery production. Since obtaining his degree, Buscema adapted his techniques to look at different sections within Catena Zapata’s legendary Adrianna vineyard located at a 5,000-foot elevation. He discovered overlap in most sections of the vineyard, but four plots stood out as unique. They experimented with individual lots from the four designated sections using the same rigorous technique he developed at UC Davis. Over time their research proved that three of the plots consistently produced wines recognizably different from one another. They are now trying to figure out if it is soil type or possibly different microbes in the soil that contribute to these differences. If they unlock and identify the keys to differences in the vineyard, they might be able to replicate those conditions that improve quality and consistency from one vintage to another.
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WINE TRIALS:
The Future of Wine Science
A Day of Research Findings HIGH-PERFORMANCE PROCESSING & WASHING SYSTEMS
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The day began in the vineyard where Josh Puckett, the head of plant production at Foundation Plant Services, walked participants through the rows planted eight years earlier with the Argentine and French clones. Laura Catena reiterated that her winery is focused on learning how to make wines that compete with the world’s best while also spreading the information gleaned in their research to improve Argentine winemaking as a whole. Puckett explained how the vineyard selects clones, plants them, clears them for disease and then offers them to nurseries for distribution to winegrowers. Buscema went over data gleaned from the original experiments while people tasted the differences between the French clones and the Argentine selections. Exhibiting his gentle humor, Buscema said, “You see, these vines bring Argentina with them even though they are in California.”
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Dealing with the Possibility of Phylloxera Only 6 percent of Argentina’s vineyards are grafted onto resistant rootstock. The rest of the vines are own-rooted, which leaves them susceptible to phylloxera. Phylloxera is present in Argentina, but thus far it has caused very little damage. The Catena Institute of Wine is aware that being lucky is not the same thing as being safe, so they are researching phylloxera and how it might affect the vineyards in Argentina while trying to come up with a program to monitor the pest and develop a strategy to protect the vineyards before there is a major problem. Another presentation featured Dr. Andy Walker, whose research program focuses on developing new rootstocks resistant to phylloxera, fanleaf and other pests and diseases. He gave an introduction about the pest, its history and how it spreads. He explained that phylloxera feeds on both leaves and roots and is primarily transferred by wind and machinery but can even be brought in on resistant rootstock. In vineyards comprised of mostly sandy soils and places that use flood irrigation, (which describes a lot of Argentina), phylloxera tends to be less of a problem. Flood irrigation and lighter soils allow for large, spread out root systems; so if phylloxera is present it causes less damage. Once drip irrigation is introduced (and this is happening more frequently in Argentina), the root systems become more confined, making them more susceptible to the pest. As the root systems deteriorate, they are less able to intake potassium, so lack of potassium in vines can be an early indicator of phylloxera infection. Dr. Summaria Riaz followed Dr. Walker and spoke about the different types of phylloxera and the work done by Catena Institute researcher Celeste Arancibia. Arancibia has identified specific strains present in Argentina. Currently research is focused on fingerprinting the types of phylloxera present and determining if they are known strains or mutant strains. Changes in viticulture techniques in Argentina will have a definite impact on the phylloxera threat. The Catena Institute has dedicated itself to developing a strategy for defense that it will share with the entire industry.
Making Argentina’s Wine Industry Stronger In addition to making world-class wines based on knowledge from scientific research, Laura Catena wants to improve and protect the future of Argentina’s wine industry. To that end, they have begun studies of less successful varieties, lower altitude vineyards and high-yielding vineyards in the hopes of showing farmers how to improve quality and increase income from their grapes. The next session included tasting experimental lots from the Catena Institute, working from these types of locations with these varieties. A Criollo from Serrera Vineyard in Tupungato exhibited white pepper, intense dark 46 November 2015 WBM
color and rich mouthfeel in spite of a low 11.5 percent alcohol. Grenache is another variety found in Argentina but little known. The selection from La Antonia Vineyard in Rivadavia had some peach aromatics but remained somewhat dull on the palate with a bitter finish. It was thought that overcropping was the main issue. A Cabernet Franc from Angelica Sur Vineyard in El Cepilla was served next. It was big, with green tannins that made it astringent, but showed some promise. The biggest surprise was a Bonarda from Patagonia, a typically cool region. Although it came from a three-year-old vineyard, the wine showed delicious black fruit, with depth and a fine tannic backbone. The tasting ended with Malbec Cortado from Angelica Vineyard. This is sweet Malbec developed by Catena Zapata by leaving small clusters of grapes hanging on the vines until they are picked around 30° Brix. The wine was very sweet and lush with a lot of Port character. Buscema said that the Catena Institute of Wine has a goal of advancing their region to the first world of wine. Whatever they find out will be used to help Mendoza become one of the world’s top wine regions. “The institute is an attempt to fast-track Mendoza by virtue of first-class wine science.” Current collaborative projects at the Catena Institute of Wine include: • The quality of Malbec and its relationship to UV-B, low night temperatures, light quality, soil microorganisms and the effects of natural stress hormone ABA and drought • Melatonin and harvest time • Identification of phylloxera strains in Argentina • Compounds from winemaking residues with biological applications
• Rewriting the sustainability code as it applies to Argentina • Physiochemistry of soils and its impact on wine quality and uniqueness.
Conclusion A lot of winemaking is based on tradition, myth and observation. Assumptions may or may not be true, but winemakers cling to them nevertheless. Winemakers have very definite opinions about what goes on during a cold soak, the best temperature for fermentation, the contribution of concrete tanks and how we use oxygen in winemaking. In most cases, they are simply opinions. When scientific research is applied to aspects of winemaking, the information is readily adapted into the winemaking community. Until Brad Webb and Louis Martini isolated ways to reproduce malolactic bacteria, it was a hit-or-miss operation in wineries. After scientific research taught us what was going on, isolated the proper bacteria and developed delivery systems, malolactic fermentations became predictable and easy. Today there are several ML products that are efficient, reliable and used throughout the industry. It is not often that wineries are willing to finance specific scientific research into aspects of winemaking. That Laura Catena and the Catena Institute of Wine have been conducting this exploration of winemaking using scientific methodology is certainly to be commended. That they have decided to share it with their Mendoza competitors and the rest of the wine world makes it a generous gift that will likely influence how wine is made for generations to come. WBM
WBM November 2015 47
winemaking
Basic In-House Wine Analysis for Boutique to Small Wineries Jean L. Jacobson Jean L. Jacobson is a writer and author of the book, Introduction to Wine Laboratory Practices and Procedures, published by Springer Publishing, NY, NY. Jacobson was laboratory director for Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates for many years and is currently working in the wine and spirits industry.
Basic Analyses
statistics published by Wine Business Basic analyses are the most common assays performed in winemaking. Monthly (February, 2015) and Wines & Vines Analytics (January, 27 2015), It is important to know what analyses (data) you will need to make your there are currently 6,599 bonded grape wineries in the United States, of which winemaking decisions and go from there. For each of these assays there is a approximately 6,335 (96 percent) of that total are boutique to small wineries learning curve. The what, when, how and the dos and don’ts are too many to ranging from less than 1,000 cases per year to 49,999 cases per year. The address in the scope of this article but are very important to know. Below are amount of analyses these wineries generate varies from winery to winery, the assays performed and the most common reason to perform them (there depending on the number of lots and the funds to perform the needed tests. may be other reasons not mentioned, and there This article covers the different types of analyses are many, many more analyses available): and equipment available to perform basic juice and wine analyses at the winery site. • °Brix: Level of fermentable sugars in berries Before we delve into the assays and equipment, Learning the methods and procedures is much and fermenting juice. Monitors sugar I have to add a note about analyses. The more easier than in past years. Workshops are available levels through fermentation and indicates completion. Can also be expressed as a analyses you perform, the better control you will for most levels of proficiency through colleges and percentage, %Brix. have over your wine production, the better wine community programs; books and manuals, both you will produce, the less spoilage and loss you hard copy and e-copies, are available, but keep in • Temperature: Required for many reasons in will have, plus the generation of valuable data for mind the level of learning you are seeking and not winemaking and analyses. your next year’s production. If cost is a concern, get in too deep or be bored. Suppliers such as The • Glucose/Fructose: Level of residual it is better to follow your lots with an analysis Beverage People in Santa Rosa, California offer reducing sugars (RRS) in juice or wine, that will give you an estimated value to track the classes and help with the equipment they carry, verifies completion of primary fermentation. “trends” until the wine reaches critical points at and vendors of certain equipment may also offer • Alcohol/Ethanol (EtOH): Measurement which time you will need accurate (close to the classes or on-site instruction. Commercial wine of ethanol content in a fermenting juice “real” value) and reliable results. laboratories, such as ETS and Enartis Vinquiry in or wine. Important to estimate potential Please keep in mind that regardless of the Northern California, offer a variety of educational alcohol and alcohol content in finished wine. type of assays you perform, execution of that experiences for the wine community, and there are • L-Malic Acid (LMA): Level of LMA in assay has to be precise (repeatable), including consultants that can help set up your laboratories juice or wine. Important for malic acid measurements, temperatures, calculations, cali- or help with an assay. fermentation (secondary fermentation, brations, etc. as dictated by the test procedure In addition to the above, the internet has a MLF). Monitors the fermentation and in order to obtain usable results, or it will be a wealth of information, how-to videos, etc., which verifies completion. futile endeavor with the quality of your wine can be very helpful. I have looked at some of • Titratable Acidity (TA) and pH: Measures at stake. Know your procedures and, better yet, these videos online, and my advice is to stick with acids in juice or wine, the total amount of know and understand the analyte you are trying videos that are credible. Companies, professional hydrogen ions present in the wine or juice to measure. Proficiency in performing even the organizations and academic organizations not only (excluding those ions bound to alkaline simplest of assays will give you confidence and, know the material but will have your success and ions). Not to be confused with Total Acid. TA depending on the number of lots you produce, safety in mind. Many of the videos I viewed were is expressed as tartaric acid. TA and pH are will save you money down the road. required for proper sulfur dioxide additions. lacking in technique and safety. ACCORDING
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Learning the Procedures
48 November 2015 WBM
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Basic In-House Wine Analysis for Boutique to Small Wineries
• Volatile Acidity (VA): Measures the volatile acids that can be distilled
from a juice or wine and is expressed as acetic acid. VA monitors fermentation and is an indicator of contamination and spoilage. • Acetic Acid (AC): Level of AC in juice or wine. Important during
fermentations. Correlates with VA results up to approximately 0.050 g/100 ml. • Free Sulfur Dioxide (FSO2): Level of SO2 in a juice or wine not yet
bound. Used as an anti-microbial and an antioxidant. • Total Sulfur Dioxide (TSO2): Level of SO2 in juice or wine includes the
FSO2 and the bound SO2.
Equipment The sophistication and technologically advanced pieces of equipment most often dictate the level of accuracy and precision, which dictates the price. It is most definitely “what you pay for is what you get.” Accuracy and precision are not the only perks throughput of samples; reduced labor costs, reduced human error and data management are major considerations for cost-effective accurate analyses. Equipment is designed based on test methods and The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has a listing of approved methods. The results/data generated from these approved methods are acceptable to TTB without further testing, another cost savings. Results produced by lower-end, less accurate equipment should be considered as “trend” following and require additional testing with more accurate
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and precise equipment. Confirmation of dryness and MLF completion, TA/ pH and VA, ethanol content, FSO2 and TSO2 are the very basic assays that require accurate results prior to the first sulfur additions. Periodic accurate testing of FSO2 and TSO2, TA/pH and VA throughout maturation is highly recommended. Prior to bottling, all of the assays above should be rerun. Commercial wine laboratories provide a plethora of analyses to meet your needs with the accurate results you require. Using the higher-end, more accurate equipment eliminates the guesswork and the need for additional testing. When deciding on the method you want to use and before you purchase any equipment, be informed about the procedure, additional equipment, level of accuracy, calculations, supplies, fragility and chemicals associated with the assays. Keep in mind the expiration dates on chemicals and strips, chemical and reagent storage and disposal requirements, safety, electrical, gas, vacuum and water needs, glassware, cleaning and cost.
Assays TEMPERATURE
Temperature is an integral part of every step of winemaking and in performing analyses. From fermentation to case goods storage, it is imperative to have accurate temperature control. Many test results are computed using temperature as a factor, and laboratory equipment may be calibrated to perform at certain temperatures. Some instruments are designed with automatic temperature compensation (ATC).
Thermometers come in an array of types and accuracy levels. There are floating, clip on, stainless steel encased, electronic and more. Non-electric thermometers utilize alcohol or mercury expansion to indicate the temperature. Electric thermometers utilize a probe. The ability to be recalibrated for better accuracy is a plus. The most accurate thermometers are certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and other standards organizations and should be sent in for recalibration periodically. NOTE: Mercury thermometers should not be used in the cellar. If used in the lab, follow strict safety guidelines. °BRIX, %BRIX
Brix measurements can be determined by several different methods, such as specific gravity, density, refractive index, near infrared (NIR) and soluble solids. These methods use different scales and tables to estimate the sugar content. °Brix is a percentage by mass measurement of soluble solids in a liquid and is an estimated amount due to other soluble solids in the juice. %Brix is a more contemporary measurement of tabulated true density against the mass fraction and is more accurate, but the difference between the two measurements is very, very small and in most cases %Brix is reported as °Brix. When looking at equipment for Brix determination, you may see %Brix. °Brix via refractometer is commonly used for field sugar levels using a hand-held refractometer. Measurements are approximate. Pros: Very mobile and rugged; only needs a light source; provides years of service; uses small amount of sample. Cons: Cleanliness is paramount; scratches may alter results; results are temperature dependent; calculations; only non-fermenting
juice. Digital hand-held refractometers are battery operated and accurate when calibrated properly. Pros: Small and portable; digital readout; many have ATC; uses small amount of sample. Cons: Battery operated; cleanliness is paramount; scratches and may alter results; only non-fermenting juice. Bench top portable digital refractometers are normally used in scale houses and in the winery. They are accurate; ATC; Multi Uses; larger Brix scale; can be battery powered or low voltage and are larger easy to read units. Pros: Easy to calibrate; fast; may have auto shut off; warranties; better prisms; uses small amount of sample; some units support wine, must and juice samples. Cons: Battery or electrical source required; cleanliness is paramount; repair/ replacement costs. °Brix via hydrometer is a quantifying method and is primarily used during fermentation. A Brix hydrometer with a scale of 0 to 35 can be used to monitor fermentation until you get to or near the 0 level at which time switch to a second hydrometer with a scale of 0.5 to -0.5. A third hydrometer is often used with a scale below 15. Pros: With proper care the hydrometers (glass) and cylinders can be used year after year with good approximate results (Certified hydrometers are recommended); can utilize throughout fermentation. Cons: Proper technique and hydrometer reading imperative; samples require CO2 elimination; temperature dependent results; calculations breakable requiring a back-up set during harvest; test requires a large juice sample. °Brix via densitometer is the most accurate method used. Handheld density meters with LED readout are a fast and accurate way to monitor Brix in the field and through fermentation. In addition, some units may have programs available for specific gravity and alcohol determination; data storage and transfer making them usable throughout the year. Units utilizing oscillating
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Basic In-House Wine Analysis for Boutique to Small Wineries
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There are several different methods and instruments available to quantify these analytes, including chromatography, remission photometry and spectroscopy. LMA via basic chromatography is a qualitative test method to indicate the presence or absence of an acid by using a large jar, solvent, paper and a standard. Pros: Inexpensive. Cons: Time consuming; confirming final LMA is recommended. LMA via remission photometry (reflectometry) is a quantifying method based on reflectance photometry. This method can be used in samples less than 30mg/L LMA and is fairly accurate in the lower range of MLF. Pros: Easy to use; fast; economical, uses small sample. Cons: Samples may require dilutions or de-colorization; uses a bar code slip to set up tests which are fragile; battery operated; breakable; confirming final LMA is recommended. RRS, LMA, and AC via enzymatic spectrophotometry is the most utilized method in the wine industry due to the quantitative accuracy, excellent precision and TTB approval. A UV-Visible spectrophotometer is recommended with an array of wavelength ranges which include 340 nm, one or more beams and more than one sample cell. Pros: Enzymatic kits; provides low cost/assay for higher volume user; no verification test required; some units are able to analyze several samples in one run; instruments available with multi sampler and totally automated. Cons: Requires accurate measurements; requires good lab skills; turbid samples must be centrifuged; samples may require dilutions or de-colorization; requires good maintenance; repairs can be expensive. TA AND PH
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The pH can be estimated via pH indicator strips or measured using a calibrated potentiometer instrument. TA determination can be quantified using a Colorimetric Indicator Method or Potentiometric Method. Both methods include the delivery of a titrant (01N Sodium Hydroxide). Samples require degassing and may require clarification. TA via basic Colorimetric Indicator Method estimates the level of TA in a wine or juice utilizing Phenolphthalein, a known color indicator solution. Pros: Inexpensive. Cons: Exact measurements; burets are breakable; calculations; color determined end point. TA and pH via Potentiometric Method uses a pH meter to measure the pH of the sample before titrant is added and during the addition of titrant. Pros: More accurate than Indicator Method; inexpensive. Cons: Exact measurements; burets and pH electrodes are breakable; calculations. TA and pH via Potentiometric Method with auto titration using a pH meter is a fast and more accurate method to obtain TA results. These titrators dispense the titrant by the drop much faster and more accurately than can be done manually increasing the throughput of samples. Auto-titrators come as standalone instruments to be used with a separate pH meter or as a combined unit. Pros: Accurate titrant dispensing with digital readout; cost effective; calculations; some units can be expanded for future growth; may have tech support; warranties. Cons: Cost; calculations; requires exact measurements; repairs can be expensive. For the highest throughput look at auto-titrators that are combined units with automatic sample trays that hold several samples. Pros: Accurate titrant dispensing with digital readout; high throughput; accurate calculations with data management; multi-sample capability “load and go;�
cost effective; some units can be expanded for future growth; tech support; warranties. Cons: Cost; requires exact measurements; requires good maintenance; requires good lab skills; repairs can be expensive. VOLATILE ACIDITY
The only method for the quantification of VA is distillation to separate the volatile acid from other acids found in the wine via a glass still. Since the levels of VA are regulated by the TTB an accurate and precise measurement is necessary. Distillation method is approved by TTB. Samples require de-gassing. VA via Cash Still Distillation Method uses colorimetric endpoint titrations of the distillate to determine the VA. Results are accurate and precise with proper procedure and techniques. Pros: TTB approved; equipment can last for years with proper care. Cons: Requires a higher level of lab skills; requires exact measurements; color determined end point; calculations; glass still; replacements/repairs can be expensive. VA via automated Segmented Flow Micro Distillation Method with colorimetric spectroscopy to determine the VA is accurate and precise. Units have multi sample capability. Pros: TTB approved; fast; auto calculations; eliminates color interpretation; eliminates exact measurements; can be expanded for future growth; tech support; warranties; low reagent cost. Cons: Requires higher level of lab skills; cost; requires good maintenance; troubleshooting; repairs can be expensive.
ALCOHOL
Alcohol v/v% quantification methods vary. Alcohol content is regulated by the TTB and the methods acceptable are boiling point, densitometry and gas chromatography. Near Infrared (NIR) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) methods or a combination of the two are used widely in the wine industry. There are several other methods including pycnometry, hydrometry and distillation that estimate the alcohol content but these methods can be time consuming and difficult to perform. For the purposes of this article gas chromatography and benchtop, TTB-approved density meters are not an option due to the cost factors. Results that are obtained by other methods and calibrated with TTB traceable standards; have accurate and precise results within the TTB limits; may be used. Check with TTB for more information. Alcohol via Ebulliometer is a quantitative method based on the boiling point of alcohol in a liquid. This method has been long standing and an approved method that is available to the smallest wineries. Pros: Least expensive of all approved methods; with excellent skills and technique is fairly accurate in the desired range; long life; available in an electronic model. Cons: Alcohol fumes; exact measurements; exact technique; requires calculations; temperature dependent; atmospheric conditions can effect precision; least accurate of all approved methods; requires good lab skills. Alcohol via NIR is an accurate and precise quantitative method. Easy to use and calibrate. Pros: Fast; multi-sample options; many years of service with good care; warranties; tech support; LED read out; results calculated.
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WBM November 2015 53
Basic In-House Wine Analysis for Boutique to Small Wineries
SUPPORT RESEARCH A N D W I N E INDUSTRY NEEDS THROUGH THE AM ER I CAN VI N E YA R D FOUN DAT I O N
Finding Solutions Through Research MEASURING TANNIN ACTIVITY
Dr. James Kennedy has developed an analytical method that predicts tannin interaction with salivary protein. Kennedy’s research gives winemakers the ability to measure tannin interaction and how tannin modification through winemaking practices could affect the perceived “softness” in red wines. For additional information visit AVF.org or contact Dr. Kennedy at jakennedy@csufresno.edu.
Cons: Highly accurate standards to calibrate; requires adequate cleaning and maintenance; repairs can be expensive; cost. Alcohol via densitometry is a quantitative, precise and accurate method. Density meters are user-friendly and are found in hand held and benchtop devices. Please note that all density meters are not approved by TTB for alcohol determination, check with manufacturer or TTB. Pros: Bench-top meters have multi-sample options; uses small sample; fast; results calculated; LED read out; with good care will last for years; warranties; tech support. Cons: Requires good maintenance and cleaning; repairs can be expensive; cost. FSO2 AND TSO2
Colorimetric (Ripper) and aeration/oxidation (A/O) are the primary quantitative methods used to determine FSO2 and TSO2 in wineries today. A/O is approved by TTB. Several other methods are used, including the Amperometric Method. FSO2 and TSO2 via Ripper is a quantitative colormetric endpoint titration method that estimates the SO2 levels and is more accurate in white wines than reds with marginal precision due to phenolic materials (pigments) in red wines. Pros: Least expensive method; fast. Cons: Requires consistent precise technique and very good lab skills; calculations; colorimetric endpoint errors; large quantity of glassware needed. Modified Ripper Method consists of utilizing auto titration and potentiometric detection removing titration, color, and end point error to estimate the FSO2 and TSO2. Pros: Better accuracy and precision than Ripper; fast; some units come with automated stirrers; long life with good care. Cons: More expensive with automation; requires good lab skills; repairs/replacements consideration. FSO2 and TSO2 via Amperometric Method is similar to the Ripper method but utilizes an amperometric (SO2) electrode detector which replaces the iodine in the procedure to estimate FSO2 and TSO2. Pros: Eliminates the colorimetric endpoint errors; eliminates the use of iodine; improved precision. Cons: More expensive than basic Ripper; calculations; large quantity of glassware needed; repairs/replacements are cost considerations. FSO2 and TSO2 via A/O, being the approved method, is by far the most utilized method in the wine industry. Accurate and precise with proper procedure and techniques. A colorimetric titration is performed to calculate the analyte. Pros: TTB approved; most accurate method; Cons: The set up for the collection of the FSO2 is fragile and made of high quality glass; requires a high level of lab skills; colorimetric endpoint errors; calculations; large quantity of glassware needed.
Conclusion For a wealth of useful viticulture and enology research and information, visit AVF.org, ngr.ucdavis.edu, asev.org, iv.ucdavis.edu, or ngwi.org
AM ERICAN V I N EYA R D FOUN D AT I O N
P.O. Box 5779, Napa, CA., 94581 T: (707) 252-6911 Visit our web site at www.avf.org for information on funding and current research projects
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Take a look at your current wine production and estimate your needs over the next three to five years before you choose equipment. As you grow, the amount of analyses will grow and it will be more cost effective to purchase equipment that can be expanded via automation, larger sampling options, or the option to add one or more additional detectors. Regardless of the size of your winery the initial cost of some equipment may be more than you had in mind so get what you can and add your laboratory equipment to your five-year plan for a fruitful future making great wine. WBM
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2015 Registered Wineries
Alpha Omega
Far Niente Winery
Rutherford Wine Company
B Cellars Vineyards and Winery
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Silver Oak Cellars
Boisset Collection
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St. Francis Winery & Vineyards
Bronco Wine Company
Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards / Freixenet USA
Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars
Cakebread Cellars
Grgich Hills Estate
Chappellet Winery
Gundlach Bundschu Winery
Chateau Lane Winery and D’Ambrosio Vineyards
Terlato Wine Group The Hess Collection Winery
Honig Vineyard & Winery
Clos Du Val Wine Co.
Huneeus Vintners
Constellation Brands
Inglenook
Crimson Wine Group
Jackson Family Wines
Delicato Family Vineyards
Luna Vineyards Inc.
Distingusihed Vineyards & Wine Partners
PlumpJack
The Napa Valley Reserve The Ranch Winery The Wine Group Treasury Wine Estates Trinchero Family Estates
Precept Wine
Duckhorn Wine Company
Ram’s Gate Winery
E&J Gallo Ehren Jordan Wine Cellars / Failla Wines
Renteria Vineyard Management Rombauer Vineyards
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Monitoring Nitrogen Levels in Wine
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Jenny Jasinska-Olsen
Jenny Jasinska-Olsen is the global product line manager for electrodes
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7 Nitrogen 14.0067 N I T R O G E N I S A K E Y nutrient that yeast requires during the fermentation process, and controlling its levels is essential since it can influence the flavor, aroma and quality of the resulting wine. In order for wine to present a consistent profile from different batches of grapes, it is essential to ensure the correct levels of nitrogen are available at the appropriate times during the fermentation process. There are several different methods winemakers can use to test for nitrogen, depending on the size and capacity of the winery’s operations. Some methods can be carried out in almost any facility size while others require advanced equipment that is only suited to large-scale operations. In this review, we will outline the different types of nitrogen present in the grape and examine the techniques used by winemakers to measure nitrogen levels and subsequently optimize fermentation.
How Much Nitrogen is Needed? Other than glucose and fructose, nitrogen is the most important nutrient for a successful fermentation. Nitrogen is contained in the grape, and its total content can vary widely between varietals and vineyards, typically ranging from less than 50 mg per liter to more than 1,000 mg per liter. Nitrogen is, however, found in many different forms—each with slightly different chemical composition—and not all forms are metabolized by yeast during fermentation. Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen (YAN) is the form required for fermentation, and it is present as ammonium salts and Free Alpha-amino Nitrogen (FAN). Ammonia is the simplest form of nitrogen found in the grape and is formed by cellular breakdown reactions, whereas FAN is a more complex form of nitrogen and is found in the amino acids of the grape cells. Both of these nitrogen forms are important for effective fermentation, but their levels are independent of each other since they result from different cellular processes. During fermentation, both forms of nitrogen are used by yeast, with ammonia utilized first followed by FAN later in the fermentation. It is important that the right amount of nitrogen is available to yeast during the entire fermentation process. Too little nitrogen can result in a slow, stuck or “stinky” fermentation, as lack of nitrogen leads yeast to break down sulfur-containing amino acids, resulting in the production of sulfur dioxide. To ensure an 56 November 2015 WBM
adequate nitrogen supply, winemakers often add ammonia as Diammonium Phosphate (DAP), as well as FAN in the form of complex amino acids found in yeast extract, prior to and during fermentation. At the other end of the spectrum, high volumes of nitrogen (exceeding 450 to 500 mg per liter)1 can lead to excessive fermentation and the production of undesirable compounds that result in wine spoilage. It is, therefore, extremely important that optimal levels are maintained throughout the process. Recommending an optimum nitrogen dosing level is difficult since the required amount and dose timing depend on a number of factors, such as the yeast strain, fermentation progress and the original nitrogen and sugar concentration in the grape. According to a study by the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology, optimal YAN content for fermentation correlates to the amount of sugar present in the grape as determined by specific gravity measurement (°Brix). • 200 mg N/L for 21° Brix • 250 mg N/L for 23° Brix • 300 mg N/L for 25° Brix • 350 mg N/L for 27° Brix
Testing for Nitrogen Since the level of nitrogen can greatly influence the quality of the resulting wine, it is important to monitor levels throughout the fermentation process and adjust them as required. Winemakers can measure YAN or measure ammonia and FAN individually, depending on the depth of analysis required and available equipment budget. The aim of nitrogen analysis is to provide data that the winemaker can use to control fermentation and ensure consistency in each batch. The simplest way of measuring YAN involves a formol titration. This titration can be performed using a pH meter. Measuring YAN this way throughout the fermentation process often provides enough information for the winemaker to make critical dosing decisions. As a simple and economical choice, formol titration offers the additional benefit of enabling the winemaker to measure titratable acidity at the same time, with a slight modification to
Cherish every drop the procedure. Separate ammonia analyses can be performed by adding an ammonia ion selective electrode. By changing the electrode, the winemaker can also use the pH/ISE meter to perform a number of other critical tests, such as pH, potassium, and titratable acidity, or a titration to determine sulfur dioxide content. If the wine producer would like to analyze other forms of nitrogen, such as FAN, and test for other compounds, the use of a spectrophotometer may be required. Using a spectrophotometer, a winemaker can measure ammonia and amino nitrogen levels using enzymatic methods (for ammonia or amino nitrogen) or a dye binding test, such as NOPA (amino nitrogen by o-phthaldialdehyde assay). While a spectrophotometer represents a large initial investment and has higher operating costs due to the continual investment required in replacing reagents, it is more versatile as it can be used to test other parameters that might be of interest. Parameters that can be measured with a spectrophotometer (with the correct reagent) include glycerol, sulfur dioxide, sugars, acids, color and phenols. Depending on the winery’s production facilities, the ability to analyze some of these parameters could help the winemaker find ways to improve wine quality.
Adjusting Nitrogen Levels Many winemakers add a standard amount (around 100 to 300 mg per liter) of DAP to juice or must to increase the rate of fermentation before actually measuring nitrogen levels2. As discussed above, it is very important to adjust nitrogen based on the required flavor profile, as too much DAP can cause the wine to become overly acidic. This is due to the presence of phosphoric acids that are formed as by-products when yeast consumes nitrogen. To ensure that fermentation doesn’t become too rapid, nitrogen levels should be measured from the offset and DAP added in small quantities determined by this measurement. Another method of increasing nitrogen levels is through the addition of complex amino acids in the form of yeast extract prior to fermentation. Yeast extract is primarily comprised of the more complex forms of nitrogen, such as FAN, and also contains other vitamins and micronutrients that could improve wine quality.
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Perfecting the Art of Winemaking Nitrogen is a very important nutrient in fermentation, and it can heavily influence the aroma, taste and character of the end product. Measurement of nitrogen levels before and throughout the fermentation process gives winemakers the opportunity to adjust the amount to achieve the desired quality of wine. Obtaining control over nitrogen levels can help to ensure consistency across production lots, something that is very important in a commercial setting. Winemaking involves artistry, and its subjective nature makes it very difficult to provide stringent guidelines for the amount of nitrogen and other nutrients required to produce certain wine profiles. Ultimately, every winemaker has their own formula for creating what they consider the “perfect” wine. WBM References 1. Leonardelli. M, “Why, When, and How to Measure YAN,” Enology News and Notes, Fall/Winter 2013-2014. 2. www.wineserver.ucdavis.edu/industry/enology/fermentation_management/wine/ practices.html
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2015 Vineyard Survey Report:
Where Do We Get Our Water and What Are We Doing With It? It’s no secret. Most growers get their water from the ground. Mark Greenspan
Dr. Mark Greenspan has over a quarter century of scientific viticulture research and viticultural field experience. He specializes in irrigation and nutrition management, yield and canopy management, vineyard climate and microclimate, vineyard design and vineyard technology. He is the founder of Advanced Viticulture, Inc. based in Windsor, California (www.advancedvit.com), providing consulting, technology, vineyard management and vineyard development for wineries, winemakers and wine growers devoted to producing premium wines. Please direct queries to mark@advancedvit.com or 707-838-3805.
issue, I’ve been writing this column for Wine Business Monthly for a full 10 years! Without a single miss! It continues to be a joy to write about viticultural topics, and I learn as I go, so writing this column has been personally and professionally beneficial to me. I’m both humbled and honored to hear people in the industry tell me they enjoy my column in this magazine. I suppose the ones that don’t like it don’t read it. Whatever the case, keep giving me feedback, positive or negative. It feeds the fire that keeps me doing this every month without fail. One topic I’ve covered probably more than any is water and irrigation. Perhaps that’s because I’ve studied it, researched it and practiced it more than any other topic in viticulture. But, just as likely is that it’s plainly and simply a super important topic, agriculturally, socially and economically. So, maybe that’s why it’s a primary topic of questions for the Wine Business Monthly annual Vineyard Survey Report. There were 283 respondents to the 2015 Wine Business Monthly Vineyard Survey. The majority of respondents (63 percent) were growers or vineyard management companies while only 31 percent were wineries. Nearly all of the respondents had a role as a vineyard manager, viticulturist, president or owner of their business, so there was a good chance that they had a good idea about what their company has been doing. Unlike many previous surveys, respondents to this one were mostly outside of California (54 percent), with the majority of non-California respondents coming from Oregon (12 percent of total). Within California, the North and Central Coast regions represented 33 percent of the total respondents, with the remaining responses coming from throughout the United States, plus four responses from Canada. Just over half of the respondents claimed to have vineyard acreage under 24 acres, which should be considered when viewing these results, as the majority of vineyard acreage in California is comprised of much larger operations. Only 10 percent of respondents claimed to have more than 500 acres under their ownership. However, the growers seemed to be producing higher-end wines, with 38 percent of them stating that their wines sell for over $25 per bottle. The value segment was not represented well here, with only 3 percent of respondents claiming wines under $10 per bottle. WELL, AS OF THIS
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58 November 2015 WBM
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2015 Vineyard Survey Report: Where Do We Get Our Water and What Are We Doing With It?
CHART 1
What tasks do you use vineyard software for?
2013
2015
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% None – we don’t use vineyard software
Labor tracking and payroll
Chemical application and reporting
Farm planning Resource and (equipment) tracking management (development of a calendar of operations)
Vineyard economics and budgeting
Vineyard monitoring (pests, diseases, nutrition, water status, etc.)
Tracking of samples (petiole, soil, fruit) from vineyard block to lab
Irrigation scheduling
Tracking of phenology, yield components, fruit maturity, etc.
WBM 2015 VINEYARD SURVEY
But First, About Vineyard Software There was a lone question about the use of vineyard software by growers. Amazing to me, perhaps because I’m a technical person, the use of vineyard software appears to be quite low among the respondents, with a full 61 percent stating that they do not use vineyard software (C H A R T 1 ). Perhaps this could be a little misleading since some growers probably use some type of software for vineyard operations, such as a spreadsheet. And perhaps this group is biased, being that the majority are small growers. Larger growers are more likely to have need for vineyard software to track labor, resources, pesticides, harvest, etc. Small growers could potentially do this on a sheet of paper. Indeed, breaking out the responses from growers larger and smaller than 25 acres, we see that the larger growers are much more inclined (56 percent of them) to use vineyard software than the smaller ones (27 percent of them). Based on the responses in 2015 compared to a similar question in 2013, the trend suggests that there are more growers using vineyard software now than there were back then. The two roles that appear to have grown the most are chemical tracking and farm planning and tracking. Among the larger growers, labor tracking and payroll and chemical application and reporting are the most common needs fulfilled by this software, followed by budgeting and monitoring. From what I have seen in the market, there are fewer companies now that offer dedicated vineyard software than there were a few years ago. Some of the companies have consolidated and are producing integrated, multi-functional software that fulfills many needs. It may be necessary for smaller growers to use less vineyard-specific, general agricultural software or perhaps even nonagricultural applications available at a lower cost than the fully integrated software packages are offering.
Tracking of harvested fruit from vineyard to winery with traceability back to vineyard block
Where Does Your Irrigation Water Come From? It should not come as any surprise, based on the history of asking this question in these surveys, that the vast majority of irrigation water comes from groundwater reserves (wells). Sixty-two percent of respondents claimed well water as their primary source of water. If this seems like déjà vu, I wrote an almost identical column to this one last year1. The news hasn’t changed much. There has been a slight downward trend in the percentage of
CHART 2 100%
Indicate what percentage of your water comes from the following:
90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% well (subsurface water)
pump from lake or stream (surface water)
WBM 2015 VINEYARD SURVEY
60 November 2015 WBM
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municipal
irrigation district
rain catchment system
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2015 Vineyard Survey Report: Where Do We Get Our Water and What Are We Doing With It?
CHART 3 100%
Indicate what percentage of your water comes from the following: (by region)
well (subsurface water)
pump from lake or stream (surface water)
municipal
irrigation district
rain catchment system
90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% California Sonoma
California Napa
California Central Coast
California Northern Interior
California Other
Oregon
Washington Idaho
Southeast
Great Lakes
Southwest
Northeast
The Plains
WBM 2015 VINEYARD SURVEY
users reporting well water, down from 68 percent in 2009 and 65 percent in 2014. The results, however, could be biased because of the higher percentage of non-California respondents to this survey. The remainder of agricultural-scale users (i.e., not using municipal sources) were divided up rather equally among surface water (ponds, reservoirs and streams), rain catchment systems (surprisingly high) and irrigation districts (C H A R T 2 ). It is quite possible that some respondents interpreted surface water as rainwater catchment and vice-versa. Rainwater catchment was not a response option in 2009, but was in 2014. Across the various regions that were represented by this survey, it appears that Californians are heavily dependent on groundwater for their irrigation, though they are not alone (C H A R T 3 ). The only regions where groundwater does not appear to be king were in Washington/Idaho, where irrigation districts provide the majority of water needs. Even there, however, almost one-third of them did report getting their irrigation from well water. In all other regions, the majority are sucking their water out of the ground. Of course, if one is using well water as their source of irrigation, it is not that easy to switch to a different source, especially in only a few years’ time. And some growers simply do not have any alternatives. Arid regions, such as much of the California Central Coast, do not receive sufficient rainwater to capture an effective amount of rainwater. Irrigation districts are present in some counties and regions, but there will be few, if any, additional districts set up for the foreseeable future. From many perspectives, groundwater is a good source for irrigation. It requires no, or very little, above-ground storage facilities, water is often (but not always) of high quality, and construction of a well is relatively inexpensive (compared to reservoirs, irrigation districts, etc.)—and it can be a renewable resource. But while vineyard growers are not solely to blame by a long shot, many groundwater basins are not being sustainably managed and are becoming depleted, sometimes dramatically so, as I discussed in my column last June2. Read or re-read that article and then do some more research. Unless you’ve had your head in the sand (a not-so-funny analogy), you know that groundwater regulation is in the works here in California, and we won’t be able to pump water without control. I’m not going to say that makes me happy, but we can’t simply do whatever we want without consequences to
62 November 2015 WBM
our future growers. That means we need to be proactive about protecting the resource for our own use, about managing it sustainably and about using only the amount of irrigation water needed. Fortunately, we are growing a relatively low-water-use crop compared to many others. Think about how this would affect you if you were a nut grower!
Are You Monitoring Your Water Use? Chances are you are not monitoring your water use, at least not with a flow meter. Only 36 percent of respondents claimed they are using flow meters to monitor their water use. So, almost two-thirds of them are not using flow meters. There has been quite a change in this statistic, however, as use of flow meters has increased from 25 percent in 2012 to its current level in only three years (CHART 4) . I suspect that percentage will continue to increase over time as new groundwater management laws get put into place. CHART 4 100%
Do you use flow meters to monitor water usage in your vineyard?
90% 80%
No
70% 60% 50%
Yes
40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 2012 WBM 2015 VINEYARD SURVEY
2014
2015
CHART 5
Do you use flow meters to monitor water usage in your vineyard? (by region)
Yes
No
Don’t know
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% California Sonoma
California Napa
California Central Coast
California Northern Interior
California Other
Oregon
Washington Idaho
Southeast
Great Lakes
Southwest
Northeast
The Plains
WBM 2015 VINEYARD SURVEY
Use of flow meters varies widely among regions (C H A R T 5 ). Napa and Sonoma show only 34 percent and 41 percent of flow meter use, respectively, while Central Coast growers show 66 percent usage—the highest percentage of any region. Northern Interior California and other regions of California
also show higher use of flow meters than North Coast growers, yet less than one-half of growers report using them. I suppose many growers simply count hours of irrigation and compute the amount of water used that way, but that is fraught with potential error due
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WBM November 2015 63
2015 Vineyard Survey Report: Where Do We Get Our Water and What Are We Doing With It?
to leaks and blow-outs, clogs in drip irrigation systems and/or inaccurate reporting by irrigation staff. Flow monitoring will be required throughout California, I can almost guarantee. There are federal and state programs available to offset much of the cost of purchasing and installing these meters, and growers should take advantage of those programs while they are available. It won’t do any good to keep looking the other way. They will eventually find you. And on the positive side, don’t you want to know how much you are applying to your vineyards? How else will you know if you are making improvements in efficiency and also producing hard evidence to show how sustainable your irrigation practices are? Our non-farming neighbors think we waste water, but we use less than they do for their houses per acre. Let’s show them some evidence for that. CHART 6 100%
How much water do you use PER VINE per season?
90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Don’t know
0Dry farm
Up to 30 gallons
30-60 gallons
60-90 gallons
90-120 gallons
Over 120 gallons
How Much Do We Irrigate? I found this interesting. First, one out of five respondents do not know how much they irrigate (C H A R T 6 ) . I hope that they would endeavor to improve their knowledge level in this respect. Also, 23 percent reported that they dry-farm. I was surprised at how high a percentage that was until I looked at the regional responses (C H A R T 7 ). About 10 percent of California growers dry-farm their grapes, which is still more than I suspected. Outside of California, dry-farming is more commonplace, such as in Oregon, the Southeast, Great Lakes and Northeast regions. Of those who irrigate, the plurality of respondents (22 percent) apply up to but not more than 30 gallons per vine. The percentages taper off quickly above that benchmark, with only 5 percent reporting they use more than 120 gallons per vine. In cool-climate Sonoma County, most of the growers who know how much they irrigate reported using less than 30 gallons per vine (42 percent of respondents), not including the 11 percent who say they dry-farm. Napa is a bit warmer than Sonoma in most growing sites, and fewer irrigate under 30 gallons per vine, but a large number (41 percent) irrigate between 30 and 60 gallons per vine. The Central Coast, Northern Interior and other regions of California are the only ones reporting massive applications of water, with over 120 gallons per vine per year. About one quarter of those respondents fell into that category. So, the regions that have the least natural water resources use the most gallons of irrigation. Makes sense but it also is quite concerning. My guess is that many of those high water users could apply far less than 100 gallons per vine and still get their economic yields. Some low hanging fruit there, I think. Methodology Wine Business Monthly received 283 responses to this year’s survey. Fifty-nine percent of all respondents were vineyards with less than 24 acres. The remaining 41 percent of respondents had more than 25 acres. The survey was conducted via the Internet. Forty-seven percent of respondents were from California with the rest from outside California.
WBM 2015 VINEYARD SURVEY
CHART 7 100%
How much water do you use PER VINE per season?
Don’t know
0 – Dry farm
Up to 30 gallons
30-60 gallons
(by region)
60-90 gallons
90-120 gallons
Over 120 gallons
90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% California Sonoma
California Napa
WBM 2015 VINEYARD SURVEY
64 November 2015 WBM
California Central Coast
California Northern Interior
California Other
Oregon
Washington Idaho
Southeast
Great Lakes
Southwest
Northeast
The Plains
science a platform for progress
66th ASev national conference June 15 –18, 2015
Scrutiny over agricultural and certainly winegrape water Downtown use will continue Portland Marriott to accelerate, as it has been doing for decades. EvenHotel if the drought subsides, Waterfront Portland, we will be tested over our consumption of water resources. Standing firm Oregon with pitchforks and shotguns won’t work, so weUSA need to not only do a better S P e c i A l let the public know we job at using water wisely and efficiently, we need to e v e n t S are doing so and not in an empty, unsubstantiated way. Using groundwater Merit Award Presentation — resources is okay if we are doing so in a• sustainable manner. Let’s be honest Mr. E.B. “Pete” Downs, with ourselves. Not all of us have been doing so. WBM Consulting Enologist and REFERENCES
Retired Senior VP for External Affairs, Kendall-Jackson, California • Extension Distinction Award
1
Mark Greenspan. 2014 Vineyard Survey Report: Water Use in Vineyards. Wine Presentation Business Monthly, December 2014. • 2nd International Symposium on
2
Nitrogen in Grapes and Wine Mark Greenspan. Dwindling Water Resources for Agriculture. Wine Business Monthly, June 2015. • Tour of Columbia Gorge and Wineries
Visit our website for updates on the 2015 program. www.asev.org 530-753-3142
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ASEV Updates
• Research Reports • Oregon Regional Wine Reception • Industry Seminars & Supplier Displays • Outreach Seminar — Balancing Vines and Wines from Coast to Desert • Student Flash Talks
American Society for enology and viticulture
Periodically, I will post communications regarding the American Society for Enology and Viticulture (ASEV). Check them out and consider becoming a member if you are not already. You can learn more about membership at asev.org or contact me at mark@advancedvit.com. ASEV is excited to announce Markus Keller as the new science editor of the ASEV publications, the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture (AJEV) and Catalyst: Discovery into Practice, effective March 1, 2016. In this capacity, Dr. Keller will direct the strategic planning of AJEV and Catalyst to guide the development of journal features and functionality, and to ensure the scientific rigor of the journals. As science editor, Dr. Keller will serve as chair of the ASEV Publications Committee and will be a voting member of the ASEV Board of Directors, acting as a liaison between the Board and the Publications Committee. Dr. Keller is the Chateau Ste. Michelle Distinguished Professor of Viticulture in the Department of Horticulture at Washington State University’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser, WA. His research interests are in viticulture production and grape physiology. He received his PhD at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland and has more than 20 years of experience in viticulture research and teaching in North and South America, Europe and Australia. He has published numerous scientific and practical articles and is the author of The Science of Grapevines: Anatomy and Physiology. The appointment of Dr. Keller as science editor is a three-year term, with an end date of February 28, 2019. Dr. Keller replaces Linda Bisson, who has served as AJEV science editor since 2001. With this new appointment, Dr. Keller will work closely with Dr. Bisson and ASEV managing editor Raquel Abad in order to ensure a seamless transition. On a personal note, Keller is an immensely knowledgeable viticulturist, lecturer and scientist, but beyond that he is a wonderful and enjoyable person, and I look forward to working with him on the ASEV board. — Mark Greenspan, ASEV President, 2015-16
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WBM November 2015 65
grape growing
Optimizing Irrigation According to Grape Variety Thibaut Scholasch, PhD, Agro-oenologist, Fruition Sciences Inc. Thibaut Scholasch holds a PhD in viticulture from the French National Institute of Agronomy at Montpellier, France. His research focused on vine water status variations under dry climates and their consequences on berry ripening. Scholasch also serves as a scientific consultant for various high-end vineyards in Napa Valley. Prior to his PhD, Scholasch worked as a winemaker for various companies throughout the world (Chile, California, France and Australia). In 2001, he was hired by Robert Mondavi Winery as a research viticulturist: his projects focused predominantly on mapping vineyard variability, analyzing vineyard practices and vine water deficit impact on fruit composition. Scholasch earned a Master’s degree in viticulture and enology in 1997 and a master’s degree in winemaking in 1998 from SUPAGRO, one of the top agronomy schools in France.
(ABOVE) (RIGHT)
climate and grape variety to diagnose vine water needs is crucial for optimizing practices (irrigation, cover crop or exposed leaf area management) and, thus, control the yield and quality of production. However, such a diagnosis is complicated. Even when soil, climate and leaf area size are the same, and when plenty of soil water is available, the daily volume of vine water use varies according to the genetic origin of the vine. Furthermore, when soil moisture content becomes limiting, vine water use regulation in response to water deficit also varies according to variety. In order to better understand what a vine really needs in terms of water, we have been performing vine water use measurements directly on vines planted in commercial vineyards for the past eight years. This new information makes it possible to analyze vineyard water use profiles in specific areas of the vineyard. It reveals the pattern of vine water use in response to changing environmental conditions. This knowledge provides a unique perspective to improve irrigation efficiency. U N D E R S TA N D I N G T H E L I N K S B E T W E E N
66 November 2015 WBM
Sap flow sensor for measuring vine water use Connected vines for continuous monitoring
How to Describe the Effect of Irrigation on the Vine By installing sap flow sensors on representative vines of the vineyard block, it is possible to measure the amount of water used by the plant alone. This measurement includes altogether the effects of genotype, leaf area and environmental conditions on vine water use. Since 2008, thanks to this approach, we have characterized the changes in water use throughout contrasting soil and climatic conditions (California, Bordeaux, Portugal, Argentina, Languedoc). In 2014, because of the exceptional drought in California, this measurement became a strategic asset. Thus, thanks to the funding from a water agency and six independent wineries, we set up an experiment with different varieties under contrasting climates. The purpose of the experiment was to demonstrate that it is possible to reduce irrigation without negatively affecting performance or maturation by comparing two treatments: the
traditional treatment, where irrigation is triggered according to some of the common historical practices (visual observations, shoot apex assessment and leaf or stem water potential measurements), and the treatment “sap flow,” which calculates a level of daily water deficit and triggers irrigation accordingly. The water deficit index, Ks, is the ratio of actual vine transpiration measured on the vine over the maximum vine transpiration, which is theoretical and based on weather (Allen et al., 2009). As the season unfolds, Ks gradually declines with declining soil water content. The “speed” of the decline is unique to the plant and varies between 100 (no water deficit) and 0 percent. Irrigation is triggered every time Ks reaches a threshold defined by the user. The results have confirmed large amounts of water savings (more than 60 percent on average) under the sap flow treatment, despite the drought. Through regular samplings, vine growth and fruit maturation were monitored during the season. The comparison between the two treatments shows that sugar accumulation rate and yields were not different. In addition, fruit oenological quality is preferred when less water is applied, which was a direct effect of a moderate water deficit imposed before veraison (Deluc et al., 2009). These results show that it is possible to improve irrigation strategy and save a lot of water without degrading vineyard production performance. It also reveals that traditional viticultural practices tend to overestimate the need for irrigation, even in areas where water is becoming scarce. Consequently, by measuring vine water use variations, vineyard managers and winemakers may learn how to refine and optimize irrigation strategies with the confidence that the level of vine water deficit is not detrimental to vineyard performance.
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WBM November 2015 67
Optimizing Irrigation According to Grape Variety
4.0 4.0$
Transpira6on (mm)
(A)
3.5 3.5$
A
3.0 3.0$ 2.5 2.5$ 2.0 2.0$ 1.5 1.5$ 1.0 1.0$
31)Jul$
Deficit en vapeur d’eau (kPa)
(B)
8$8
Understanding the Sensitivity of Varieties to “Heat Waves” The effect of variety on vine water use variations, as a function of air and soil moisture deficit, has been reported in literature (Prieto et al., 2010) and remains a topic of current research (Rogiers et al., 2012). In practice, how can we incorporate grape variety sensitivity to water deficit in order to improve irrigation? F I G U R E 2 A shows a period of sunny days in Northern California during the 2010 season. F I G U R E 2 B shows that between August 24 and September 15, four heat waves are recorded. The intensity of each episode is measured by daily peak height reached by air vapor pressure deficit, which indicates evaporative demand (F I G U R E 2 B ). The dotted lines show that vine transpiration increases in response to each heat wave (F I G U R E 2 A ). While the intensity of each heat wave decreases with time (red crosses F I G U R E 2 B ), stem water potential becomes progressively less negative even though less water is available in the soil (no rain and no irrigation). Cabernet Sauvignon vines respond to heat waves by increasing water use as well as the “tension” under which water is flowing through the plant. These two phenomena result in a rise in vine water outflow while stem water potential becomes more negative. After the heat wave, stem water potential becomes less negative even if the availability of soil water has decreased. 68 November 2015 WBM
B
Poten6el de 6ge (MPa)
9)Sep$
19)Sep$
10)Aug$
20)Aug$
30)Aug$
9)Sep$
19)Sep$
10)Aug$
20)Aug$
30)Aug$
9)Sep$
19)Sep$
5$5 4$4 3$3 2$2 1$1 31)Jul$
Aerial photography (May): measurement sites for each treatment are located in homogeneous areas ( B E L O W ) California map of measurement sites.
30)Aug$
6$6
-0.6 )0.6$
(ABOVE)
20)Aug$
7$7
0$0
(C)
10)Aug$
)0.7$ -0.7 )0.8$ -0.8 )0.9$ -0.9
C
-1.0 )1.0$
-1.1 )1.1$ -1.2 )1.2$ -1.3 )1.3$ 31)Jul$
water deficit variations during 4 heat waves, Cabernet sauvignon, non-irrigated (A) Vine transpiration (sap flow); (B) Vapor pressure deficit (weather station); (C) Stem water potential (Pressure chamber).
FIGURE 2:
These observations are in agreement with the literature (Edwards et al., 2013; Santesteban et al., 2011) and show that vine water use is strongly modulated by atmospheric water deficit, even as soil becomes progressively drier. Consequently, to go one step further to improve irrigation strategy, one could account for grape variety-specific sensitivity to atmospheric water deficit. We can distinguish two variety groups according to vine response under heat waves. The “optimistic” varieties (anisohydric) increase water use under high evaporative demand and show a marked drop in leaf and stem water potential. The “pessimistic” varieties (isohydric) also increase water use under high evaporative demand but in a more limited range and show a smaller drop
in leaf and stem water potential. Under a similar climatic demand and for a given plant size, an “optimistic” variety, such as Syrah or Sémillon, will use a larger volume of available soil water compared to a “pessimistic” variety, such as Cabernet Sauvignon. Furthermore, vine water use measurements show that, irrespective of grape variety, recently irrigated vines increase their water use more strongly during a heat wave than vines not recently irrigated.
Variety Sensitivity to Nighttime Transpiration Despite the fact that stomata are mostly closed at night, several studies have shown that significant water losses may take place at night (Rogiers et al., 2009). Thus, depending on the variety and environmental conditions, nighttime transpiration may represent between 5 to 30 percent of the water loss measured during the day (Coupel-ledru et al., 2015). Because of nighttime transpiration, plant tissue rehydration during the night is incomplete, and predawn leaf water potential does not always reach equilibrium with soil water potential. Accordingly, leaf water potential becomes more negative and suggests that there is less water in the soil than the plant really “sees.” Neglecting the effect of nighttime transpiration leads to an underestimation of available soil water content and can lead to unnecessary irrigations (Rogiers 2012; Fuentes et al., 2014). The effect of variety-specific regulation on the amount of nighttime water losses is currently being studied. It may be a promising research field to identify and select new varieties with a low level of nighttime water use.
Practical Applications for Irrigation Through the monitoring of vine water use, vine water deficit variations are characterized by daily variations of the Ks index. F I G U R E 3 reports Ks seasonal profiles obtained for two different varieties with vines of the same age, planted on the same soil, with the same planting density and row orientation and under the same climatic demand. There was no rain during the recorded period. The first irrigation was triggered around 800 degree-days (Celsius) for Syrah and 1,000 degree-days for Cabernet Sauvignon. The two Ks profiles show a declining trend over the season, which corresponds to a declining soil water supply. The slope of Ks decline is faster with the variety Syrah, and three irrigations had to be applied to maintain the Ks index above a minimum level, achieving between 25 and 40 percent. By FIGURE 3
120
Cabernet sauvignon
Ks (%)
100 80 60 40 20 0 400
contrast, only one irrigation was needed to maintain the Ks index above 40 percent with the variety Cabernet Sauvignon. The slope of Ks decline, which indicates the progression of water deficit, is dependent on the variety. Contrasting vine water use regulatory mechanisms during heat wave or at night, partially explains why varieties can behave differently. Differences observed across Ks profiles reflect complex mechanisms related to genetic determinism and to vine architecture (hydraulic conductivity, stomatal conductance, leaf area permeability, cavitation, hormones, etc.). Furthermore, this determinism can be modulated by vineyard practices. Thus, Cabernet Sauvignon is reported to behave in an “isohydric” manner (Hochberg et al., 2013) and Merlot in an “anisohydric” manner (Chaves el al., 2010), but the answer is less clear for Syrah after irrigation (Pou et al., 2014). In practice, regardless of the variety, optimal irrigation strategy aims at maintaining Ks above a threshold value. If Ks decline is rapid, response time to trigger irrigation should be brief. Otherwise, low Ks levels will negatively impact yield or sugar accumulation. If Ks decline is slow, the winemaker has more time to anticipate the best time to trigger irrigation. According to production objectives, water deficit level, particularly before veraison, is more or less pronounced by delaying more or less the first irrigation date. Finally, under heat waves, one should expect that “optimistic” varieties use more water and consequently become more sensitive to water deficit thereafter. Thus, the benefits of an irrigation applied, during a heat wave, are more limited in time since the water applied is immediately lost, especially with an optimistic variety. Consequently, vine varieties directly influence the triggering threshold and the frequency of irrigation strategy.
Perspectives Increased water scarcity due to the current climatic context requires that we improve the efficiency of water use, especially in semi-arid areas. By applying different irrigation regimes for different varieties, significant improvements in water use management can be made while optimizing production. Grape variety genetic effect is fundamental, but rootstock effect should not be overlooked. Recent work has shown that the level of vine water use and its adaptation to water deficit are genetically controlled by the rootstock (Marguerit et al., 2012). In Argentina, Ks profile monitoring shows that vine water use is reduced with a rootstock compared to own-rooted vine. The soil affects vine water use by providing more or less water according to its textural properties but also by its topography. By increasing climatic demand, vineyard slope imposes higher levels of vine water use, which precipitates the onset of water deficit, especially with “optimistic” varieties. Finally, a higher crop load imposes higher levels of vine water use, especially after veraison. Depending upon variety-specific water requirements, water loss rates are highly variable at the scale of one day or at the scale of one season. By integrating all these effects, the direct measurement of vine transpiration offers a way to improve irrigation according to variety. This knowledge is key to developing competitive and sustainable viticulture practices. It is also key to implementing strategies that avoid unnecessary irrigation. WBM
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sales & marketing
Packaging and Design Spotlight
Differentiating for Success Even minor design tweaks to your wine’s label, bottle shape and color, and capsule can improve sales. The key to sales success in an ever-crowded wine market is differentiation by design. Michael S. Lasky Michael S. Lasky is the former editor of AppellationAmerica.com and is the author of hundreds of articles for national magazines and newspapers.
your wine bottle has about 1.4 seconds to get noticed by the consumer,” said Steve Lamoureux, senior vice president of product innovation and design solutions at consumer market research firm Nielsen. Lamoureux reported this and other brutal facts about wine retailing in a Nielsen wine label study commissioned for the Wines & Vines Packaging Conference held in Napa this past August. “All wine brands have to work harder to get noticed on store shelves,” he said. Nielsen reports that wine media spending (advertising) for the last three years has been $90 million per year, a puny amount compared to the whopping $1.3 billion spent to advertise beer and $600 million for spirits. So it follows that packaging is the only advertising that the consumers see when they shop. “And it’s at the point of sale that most consumers make their buying decisions—research reveals that 50 to 80 percent are made at the retail shelf,” Lamoureux noted. With the ocean of new product introductions each year across all price tiers, package design is of critical importance. New products help drive sales. Nielsen research reports that 12.5 percent of the wine category is new, and 4,200 items were introduced in the past three years. The shelves are very crowded, hence the 1.4 second scan of items by the consumer. Accordingly, all parts of a bottle are strategic to the end sale. The bottle size and shape, glass color, the capsule and, of course, the label lend to the message of the personality of the wine. As Lamoureux explained, package differentiation is key and is determined by a package’s uniqueness, relevance “ O N A R E TA I L E R ’ S S H E L F ,
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and consumer preference. “The jobs which a wine package must do well are: stand out for visibility and ‘findability,’ get purchased (consumer preference) and build the brand (strategic messaging and brand fit).” Nielsen focus group-based research uses eye scan technology on computer screens to pinpoint which art elements of an array of bottles a consumer’s eye jumps to in the first four seconds. Then it tracks where eyes go next. This information can then be used in tweaking design elements of the label, the capsule and the bottle itself. Nielsen found that a label’s color, shape and contrast on the bottle were the main attention getters. Color, symmetry and intrigue held that attention. For example, research results revealed that a dark label on wines priced under $10 did not stand out but succeeded well on high-priced wines.
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Packaging and Design Spotlight Differentiating for Success
Unique Packaging Made Joe Wagner’s Wine a Sales Winner To make his Pinot Noir stand out from the crowd, Joe Wagner, who started the Meiomi brand in 2006, worked with designer Tony Auston of Auston Design Group to tweak what was a basic, traditional label into one that jumped out on the store shelf. According to Wagner, Auston made essentially small changes to the original label, but that did the trick as sales took off. “These small differences make a huge difference in a brand’s life,” Wagner explained. But a label is just one element in the success story. Wagner realized from the get-go that the entire package is the sales vehicle. For Meiomi, at a $20 to $30 price point, he chose a screw cap, which increased its popularity with bartenders and on-premise businesses because it was easier to open and stayed fresher longer, he said. The brand was recently sold to Constellation Brands for $315 million. Wagner is now focused on his current company, Copper Cane Wine & Provisions. As one of the presenters at the Wines & Vines Packaging Conference, Wagner explained his four-pronged criteria for brand packaging: exclusivity of design, individuality, purpose and tell-a-story tradition. He realized, of course, that not only must a wine bottle attract the consumer but must be tradefriendly as well. One need look no further than the bottle design of Wagner’s benchmark brand, Belle Glos, a Pinot Noir. “We took a traditional label design but put it on a bottle with a custom, distinctive shape. We now custom-mold all our bottles. We use a custom glass color as well,” said Wagner.
A Package Speaks a Thousand Words
Further distinguishing Belle Glos bottles is the splotch of wax that covers the closure and the top half of the glass, like a melted candle. While the wax treatment on the sensuously shaped bottle all but screams expensive elegance and distinctiveness, Wagner said he learned the hard way how wax can screw up the bottling line. “The future of wax as a packaging element depends on bottling line automation that can handle wax, safety and ease of use,” he said. Other problems Wagner had to overcome with the wax on bottles was retailer resistance. “I had to deal with many complaints from sommeliers and others who disliked the added steps of removing the wax just to get to the cork before it was removed,” Wagner said. The solution to “Waxgate” was an injected molded nylon zipper to easily remove the wax cap. Now every case of Belle Glos wines also includes directions for removing the wax. But Wagner added that, ultimately, it was worth the risky design, and the unique wax closure helps make the bottle prominent on a crowded shelf.
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72 November 2015 WBM
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Packaging and Design Spotlight Differentiating for Success
Wine Labels Before and After Redesign While attending the Wines & Vines Packaging Conference, WBM had the opportunity to speak with design studio principals, veterans of successful wine packaging for both original designs and evolved refreshes. We wanted to find out just what is involved with package updates and asked each designer how they move from an existing label or bottle design to the updated one. Consumers are expecting to see the old label, so how as a designer do you manage to create a new label that points back to the old one?
Differentiated strategic positioning and evocative design are both essential for establishing an emotional and cognitive connection between a consumer and a brand. When historical truth, culture, lifestyle and strategic positioning are balanced correctly with artful design, the results are both visually appealing and commercially successful.
Kevin Reeves, design director, CFNapa “I think this usually depends on the size of the brand. If it’s a very large brand, I think the changes are a little more subtle, and I think it’s more of a polish to the common eye of the consumer. A current example of one that we’ve worked on recently would be Constellation Brands’ Woodbridge. They just went through a refresh, and they obviously have a huge core following. “Basically, all we did was make it follow some more current trends, more current techniques with printing, and just make it feel more for today and try to get in new consumers while, at the same time, not alienate their current core consumers. We want to keep a lot of the things that the current core consumer is really looking for; but, again, just trying to revitalize illustrations, renew colors, new label sizing, new techniques as far as capsules, different closures.” TAPP-WBM-AD-1015.pdf
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Before
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We offer an extensive list of wine bottle choices by taking a worl iew. Diablo Valley Packaging continually searches the globe to further enhance our offerings of high quality wine bottles and packaging materials. The best packaging makes a world of difference.
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Wine Business Monthly
Packaging and Design Spotlight Differentiating for Success
Jeff Hester, creative director, Cult Partners
Tony Auston, creative director, Auston Design Group
“I think that reinvigorating brands is a completely different beast than doing something completely from scratch. There is a brand history, there’s brand equity that needs to be taken into consideration, and they tend not to be the most innovative projects. I think the real innovation there is just making it look as clean and modern as you possibly can while still playing to the heritage of the brand. “We do this by incorporating some of the elements that were in the old label into the updated version. We recently updated Kunde Family Winery’s labels. The before and after labels are very similar. There were certain design elements on it that were making it look kind of dated and very difficult to read on the shelf. We just took off everything that was unnecessary to make the new label clean and modern.”
“I think it depends on the brand and the price point and volume. A lot of times, it’s very important to make a big change. We redesigned Bogle Vineyard’s main tier, and it was a 100 percent departure from their current label, and their sales grew 120 percent in one year. It’s continued to grow. So sometimes the best move you can make is to get away from your old package. But there’s also arguments for making an evolutionary change, as well. It just depends on the brand. I think at lower price points you see more opportunities for more dramatic changes. High-end wines skew more traditionally.”
Before
After
The Estate Series is the volume driver for the Kunde brand; however, consumers perceived it to be a value brand and not worthy of the $15 to $25 price. Kunde wanted their new packaging to be clean and elegant so that they would be able to compete with ultra-premium brands from Napa and Sonoma counties. Cult Partners polished the typography and inserted typographic quality cues, cleaned up the information hierarchy, and commissioned an illustration to capture the large scale and beauty of the Kunde property.
76 November 2015 WBM
Before
After
Bogle Vineyards made a drastic change to its label and sales increased 120 percent in one year. Though nearly completely revamped, the new label still incorporates two birds, which were first drawn out by a resident in the early days of the brand’s history.
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Differentiating for Success
P
recious resources to brands of distinction
Differentiate Your Brand with New Glass and Closure Designs With wine consumers scanning crowded store shelves, Nielsen research has found your bottle has just a mere 1.4 seconds to be discovered before the potential buyer’s eyes move on. Clearly your wine packaging has to stand out. While the wine label certainly attracts the most attention, studies have shown that new glass designs, as well as fanciful closures, can be eye-catchers as well. Here are some examples of creative bottle and closure designs that can make the difference between a sale and a shelf stiff.
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78 November 2015 WBM
These whimsically designed capsules by Jim Moon Designs add another eye-catching element to the overall bottle design.
Saverglass offers articulated punts, which in the right light, add an elegant flourish to otherwise conventional bottles.
Bruni Glass’ beguiling cactishaped bottle differentiates it from every other bottle on a retailer’s shelf but does call for caution on the bottling line.
Bruni Glass’ 750-liter bottle with its scalloped side becomes a convertible carafe when laid on its side, practical and visually appealing.
Full bottle plastic laminates can transform conventional bottles into eye-popping designs, such as faux wood and colorful gift wrap.
SGP Packaging offers bottles with internal textured embossing whose crystal-like appearance disappears when filled with liquid. WBM
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sales & marketing
Wine and Tipping in Restaurants Will wine sales be affected as restaurants focus on new profit margins? Liza B. Zimmerman
Liza Zimmerman has been writing, educating and consulting about wine and food for two decades. She is the principal of the San Francisco-based Liza the Wine Chick consulting firm and regularly contributes to publications such as Cheers Magazine, DrinkUpNY and the SOMM Journal. She has also worked almost every angle of the wine and food business: from server and consultant to positions in distribution, education, event planning and sales. She has visited all the world’s major wine-growing regions and holds the Diploma of Wine & Spirits (D.W.S.), the three year program that is the precursor to the Master of Wine.
The Numbers continues to rise, the prospect of eliminating tipping could benefit both restaurants and their customers. It might even provide an additional revenue stream to offer employees benefits and stabilize their earnings. Added benefits would include better pay for experienced back-of-the-house (BOH) staff and fewer “additional charges” for guests. High-end restaurants have generally been the first to take the profit margin adjustment jump by doing away with tipping. The percentage is frequently either replaced by a service charge or price increases on the menu. “We began considering this, as an option, when healthcare reform and dramatic wage increases became a reality,” said Matthew Dolan, executive chef and partner of San Francisco-based restaurants Twenty Five Lusk and Tap 415, who has not yet implemented a no-tipping policy. Removing tipping from the picture can actually make wine lists much more customer-friendly, according to some operators. Brian Crookes, manager at the Oakland-based California cuisine restaurant Camino, said that since he eliminated tips, his guests can “take a server’s suggestion at face value rather than wondering if personal gain plays a role. If that $800 DRCC [Domaine de la Romanée-Conti] is really going to impress your clients, go for it. But if this is about dinner—real dinner—the right choice for you might be that little $40 Village Wine.” “I’ve always wanted to eliminate tipping,” said Jennifer Piallat, owner of Zazie, a French restaurant in San Francisco, which was one of the first to do so in June of this year. “I love the feeling in Europe when I know what my meal will cost and I don’t have to judge my server for every generosity or failing.” As a result, the restaurant raised its pricing by 20 percent; and as a result, food costs went down by approximately 5 percent. The topic of tipping has been of such interest that it was addressed in a panel during the San Francisco-based Golden Gate Restaurant Association’s (GGRA) first annual industry conference. A mix of operators, who hadn’t all implemented a no-tipping policy, touched on its short-term effects and how it might influence future wine sales. AS THE MINIMUM WAGE
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It is difficult to ascertain the number of restaurants that have moved forward with a no tipping policy. Gwyneth Borden, the executive director of the GGRA, said that, “No one tracks this sort of micro data. At this point it’s not enough of a trend.” Ronn Wiegand, editor of the Napa-based Restaurant Wine publication, said that an “automatic service charge policy has been adopted mostly in luxury and high-end restaurants, where service is often excellent, and in other restaurants for larger parties [of eight or more], where it has not been an issue.” He added that, “Where it is likely to become a problem if implemented—not just with wine sales but all sales—is in restaurants where service is inconsistent or inferior, regardless of cuisine. Then, customers will vote with their feet and go elsewhere.” Carrie and Rupert Blease, the British owners of the new San Francisco British food-focused restaurant Lord Stanley, were considering a serviceincluded model while planning their opening. “It is a system we previously used while living in England, and we feel that it makes sense. This model allows us to pay all staff a comfortable wage.” What’s more, they noted that it has not seemed to have unfavorably affected wine sales.
The Anti-tipping Perspective Like many operators who have worked in Europe, Carl York, director of operations and beverage director at Boston-area Craigie on Main and The Kirkland Tap & Trotter, said that he only sees pluses in eliminating tipping. “Sommeliers, bus boys, etc. all deserve to be able to plan their lives around their income… [and] tipping doesn’t allow for that.” He said it also created a culture that detracts from the idea of hospitality. Piallat from Zazie noted that eliminating tipping has also allowed servers to stop “judging tables; there’s no more arguing about who’s going to take the table or students or French guests.” The math behind the move means, according to York, that the “food cost, as a percentage, would go down because labor would go up: likely some 7 percent. Successful fine dining restaurants generally run food costs between 31 and 33 percent. I see that ending up at 24 to 26 percent.” He added that the shift to a non-tipping environment would be unlikely to affect wine sales given the fact that many wine programs are already run
Wine and Tipping in Restaurants
by salaried employees. “I can see a decrease in motivation for top servers to push expensive bottles, but we work in a ‘pooled house’ anyway, and a bigger tip for a big bottle barely affects a server’s salary now.” Piallat confirmed that the motivation of salaried employees remains strong to sell, so “this is why I didn’t just give servers a higher hourly rate; I want them to be driven to sell.” She added that, with the new policy, “They are now getting 12 percent of every check [including take-out, foreigners, teenagers, frugal students, etc.].” York added that fine wine sales are only likely to be lessened if “you don’t believe that transparency will yield the best results.” In some cases, he admits that adopting a no-tipping policy might be “a drag for the stereotypical steak house sharks that push big bottles of red with high price tags, but in true fine dining I see it as having little or no impact.” At Twenty Five Lusk, the wine team is also on a base salary and take part in a tip pool. Chef Dolan added that he is not sure if a move to no tipping would increase their earnings, “but it would make them steadier.”
Added Advantages It has long been presumed that many front-of-the-house professionals are reluctant to move into management as their salaries would be initially reduced. I have had this personally confirmed by dozens of skilled executives. At the same time, management wants to see their staff move up through the ranks and show more commitment to the restaurant than their acting careers. York agreed that the move to the non-tipping model would leave more doors open for wine-focused staff to potentially move into senior positions.
Restaurants that have made the shift admit that they have lost talented servers, who perhaps weren’t the right fit for the restaurant. According to Brian Crookes, manager at Camino restaurant, which opened seven years ago in a depression, the “draw to work at Camino isn’t the money, but then it never was.” The whole goal, he noted, was “to level the playing field between the dining room staff and overworked/underpaid back-of-house staff.” The restaurant also has no dedicated front- and back-of-the house servers, so all the staff sells “what they are excited about [and] what makes most sense for the guest.”
The Drawbacks Operators who have tried to implement a no-tip policy at higher-volume, lower-price and hipper places haven’t always met with success. At the GGRA panel Teague Moriarty, one of the chef owners of San Francisco Sons & Daughters restaurant, tried to eliminate tipping at some of the group’s more casual restaurants, and it was not well-received. One of the other questions may be how to close the gap between those who allow and those who don’t permit tipping. If this happened, everyone would be on the same boat, said Umberto Gibin, owner of Perbacco and Barbacco Italian restaurants in San Francisco. The long-term prognosis of the potential wine industry benefits of eliminating tipping is still inconclusive. Initially, the few pioneering operators may continue to have greater involvement in their wine programs while customers decide if they can trust front-of-the-house more with the elimination of personal profit for each bottle sale. WBM
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sales & marketing
Retail Sales Analysis:
Off-Premise Wine Sales Up 5.6 Percent O F F - P R E M I S E T O T A L T A B L E W I N E sales increased 5.6 percent from the same period of the previous year in the four weeks ending Aug. 15, 2015, according to Nielsen-tracked data. In the 52 weeks ending Aug. 15, wine sales increased 4.3 percent. Domestic wine sales increased 5.9 percent while imported wine sales increased 4.9 percent in the four weeks ending Aug. 15. In case volume during that same period, domestic case volume grew 2.1 percent while imported case volume increased 1.4 percent. The New Zealand, French and Portuguese categories lead the growth for imported wines: New Zealand wines are up 19.1 percent in sales and 17.7 percent in volume; French wines are up 20.2 percent in sales and 13.7 percent in volume; and Portuguese wines are up 11.1 percent in sales and 7.1 percent in volume. Sales and case volume for wines from Australia, Argentina, Chile and Germany decreased in the four weeks ending Aug. 15. Sales for wines in the $15 to $19.99 price point segment had the most growth, increasing 16.9 percent in sales and 15 percent in volume. Nearly all price point categories had good growth in the four weeks ending Aug. 15: the $9 to $11.99 segment grew 7.4 percent in sales and 6.7 percent in volume; the $12 to $14.99 segment increased 13.8 percent in sales and 13.2 percent in volume; and the over $20 segment grew 13 percent in sales and 14.3 percent in volume. Sales and volume for the less than $2.99 segment dropped in the four weeks ending Aug. 15.
$millions
By Varietal RosĂŠ table wine above $7.99, as a category, saw a 61 percent increase in sales and a 55 percent in volume in the four weeks ending Aug. 15. The category holds just a 1.3 percent market share in sales and 0.6 percent market share in volume. Blended table wine, as a category, is up 8.5 percent in sales and 3.7 percent in volume in the four weeks ending Aug. 15 and holds a 12.5 percent market share in sales and a 13.1 percent market share in volume. Of all the blended table wine, blush leads the growth. In sales, blush blended table wine sales are up 52.3 percent, and volume is up 41.6 percent. Red blended table wine is up 10.1 percent in sales and 5.8 percent in volume, and white blended table wine, meanwhile, is down 2.3 percent in sales and down 3.2 percent in volume. Pinot Noir, Pinot Grigio/Gris and Sauvignon Blanc also showed good growth in the four weeks ending Aug. 15. Pinot Noir grew 8.4 percent in sales and 5.2 percent in volume; Pinot Grigio/Gris grew 8.8 percent in sales and 8.7 percent in volume; and Sauvignon Blanc grew 15.6 percent in sales and 12.2 percent in volume. Cabernet Sauvignon grew 7.1 percent in sales and 4.2 percent in volume. Cabernet Sauvignon was the second largest selling varietal on the market in the four weeks ending Aug. 15, representing 15 percent of all wine sales and 12.6 percent of case volume.
Total Table Wine (last 13 4 week periods)
1,200
2014
1,000
2015
800
Year Ago 600 08/16/14
09/13/14
Source: Nielsen. 4 Weeks Ending 08/15/15
84 November 2015 WBM
10/11/14
11/08/14
12/06/14
01/03/15
01/31/15
02/28/15
4 W EEK S EN D I N G
03/28/15
04/25/15
05/23/15
06/20/15
07/18/15
08/15/15
Chardonnay, the top-selling varietal on the market, holds a 20.4 percent market share in sales and a 20.5 percent share in volume in the four weeks ending Aug. 15. During that period, Chardonnay grew 5.7 percent in sales and 1.8 percent in volume. Sales and volume for Syrah/Shiraz, White Zinfandel and Merlot have all decreased in the four weeks ending Aug. 15. WBM
Nielsen Table Wine Category Segments U.S. Expanded All Outlets Combined Plus Liquor/Convenience/AAFES Dollar Volume
weeks ending: August 15, 2015
4 WEEKS ENDING 8/15/15
52 WEEK ENDING 8/15/15
PERCENT CHANGE vs. YEAR AGO 4 WEEKS 52 WEEK ENDING ENDING 8/15/15 8/15/15
TOTAL TABLE WINE
$959,625,440
$12,984,047,386
5.6
4.3
TABLE WINE 187 ML
$21,497,180
$268,468,344
6.5
4.5
TABLE WINE 375 ML
$1,137,803
$14,057,521
34.2
7.6
TABLE WINE 750 ML
$669,584,963
$9,139,943,134
6.7
5.3
TABLE WINE 1 L
$2,506,465
$33,798,539
(10.0)
32.4
$168,558,207
$2,294,231,439
0.8
(0.8)
$40,690,376
$508,024,892
13.1
9.5
$32,618,861
$382,261,558
22.8
17.8
TABLE WINE 4 L
$7,599,250
$108,200,265
(3.4)
(0.7)
TABLE WINE 5 L
$38,656,563
$512,702,788
0.4
0.9
$370,902
$1,517,892
969.0
358.5
TABLE WINE 1.5 L TABLE WINE 3 L Premium 3 L Box >$10
TABLE WINE REM SZ TABLE BLUSH
$62,174,859
$750,489,974
6.8
0.8
TABLE RED WINE
$446,647,751
$6,647,132,685
4.7
5.1
TABLE WHITE WINE
$450,547,142
$5,575,275,892
6.4
3.8
DM TABLE WINE
$697,098,667
$9,462,764,280
5.9
5.1
IMP TABLE WINE
$262,526,770
$3,521,283,102
4.9
2.0
ITALIAN TBL
$82,568,280
$1,133,427,045
7.5
5.5
AUSTRALIAN TBL
$52,486,429
$737,146,969
(3.6)
(5.9)
ARGENTINE TBL
$28,660,030
$424,849,512
(0.5)
0.7
NEW ZEALAND TBL
$30,203,865
$323,293,947
19.1
16.2
FRENCH TBL
$25,202,372
$284,118,551
20.2
5.9
CHILEAN TBL
$19,085,422
$278,742,263
(1.0)
(1.8)
SPANISH TBL
$11,053,804
$158,456,897
(1.6)
(0.8)
GERMAN TBL
$6,768,570
$99,331,457
(5.4)
(6.1)
SOUTH AFRICAN TBL
$2,172,308
$27,836,434
2.2
6.0
PORTUGUESE TBL
$2,542,249
$25,840,965
11.1
7.7
A/O IMP COUNTRY TBL
$1,783,443
$28,239,147
6.7
8.9
VARIETALS
$821,536,091
$11,093,934,576
5.4
4.2
GENERIC
$138,089,347
$1,890,112,793
7.2
4.8
CHARDONNAY
$196,032,849
$2,455,423,472
5.7
2.7
CAB SAUVIGNON
$143,749,125
$2,115,257,265
7.1
7.7
BLENDED TABLE WINE
$120,302,676
$1,705,864,963
8.5
8.9
$95,011,949
$1,406,850,480
10.1
10.8
$8,493,954
$119,514,266
10.3
6.5
$21,671,695
$274,838,691
(2.3)
(1.5)
BLENDED TABLE WINE RED SWEET RED BLENDS BLENDED TABLE WINE WHT
$3,619,029
$24,195,747
52.3
35.9
PINOT GRIGIO/GRIS
BLENDED TABLE WINE BLUSH
$96,523,936
$1,148,887,908
8.8
6.2
PINOT NOIR
$61,861,639
$900,425,545
8.4
8.7
MERLOT
$58,476,485
$869,092,432
(2.0)
(3.2)
SAUVIGNON BLANC
$64,926,547
$710,754,776
15.6
11.0
MOSCATO/MUSCAT TBL
$48,651,227
$687,293,166
4.5
5.5
WHT ZINFANDEL
$25,470,757
$353,515,424
(5.0)
(6.5)
MALBEC
$19,180,745
$289,273,238
1.9
3.9
RIESLING
$19,626,507
$267,981,059
0.7
(0.5)
ZINFANDEL
$16,218,082
$241,876,722
1.4
0.5
SYRAH/SHIRAZ
$10,072,914
$157,445,199
(11.4)
(11.2)
ROSE TABLE 750ML BE >$7.99
$12,183,477
$73,457,645
61.0
38.3
GLOBAL TBL BE $0-$2.99
$60,525,559
$832,678,364
(3.0)
(0.9)
GLOBAL TBL BE $3-$5.99
$298,717,883
$4,013,837,937
1.5
(0.3)
GLOBAL TBL BE $6-$8.99
$122,558,417
$1,684,450,964
0.3
(2.4)
GLOBAL TBL BE $9-$11.99
$218,761,365
$2,968,533,359
7.4
7.9
GLOBAL TBL BE $12-$14.99
$128,531,765
$1,705,905,389
13.8
12.2
GLOBAL TBL BE $15-$19.99
$71,051,340
$947,411,224
16.9
14.7
GLOBAL TBL BE >$20
$58,716,206
$824,476,988
13.0
7.8
Source: Nielsen
WBM November 2015 85
technology & business
Directory:
Offsite Barrel Storage
years, vineyards in California have seen some incredible harvests. Total tonnage set records in 2012 and 2013, and the 2014 harvest was nothing to blink at either. It was no surprise that many wineries had to look for more tanks and barrels to ferment these extra grapes in, or find buyers for the excess fruit, and we’ve talked about what that meant for grape and bulk wine prices and tank and barrel purchases before. At the same time, neighbors and city councils across the state have grown increasingly worried about local wine industries’ footprints. While event capacities and permits have received the most press in recent months, other wineries are running into problems expanding their crush and storage capacity—it has become progressively more difficult, for example, to receive an increased use or building permit approved by the county to build a new barrel storage facility. It has always been easier to add a few more tanks to a facility, and that’s what’s happened in the last few years. But the problem has been finding a place for the resulting or displaced barrels. Tanks with incredible heights can be purchased and added as much as the ceiling will allow, but barrels really shouldn’t be stacked more than four high, as many winemakers in Napa and Sonoma learned following a 2014 earthquake as it causes a safety issue, and in the end that wastes vertical space. While it may not be right for all wineries, offsite barrel storage facilities can be a good option for temporarily storing excess barrels. One storage site reported that capacity has been full the last two years, but will see some extra space free up this year, as the 2015 harvest is looking to be a bit lighter than in years past. Aside from cost, which can vary by location, number of barrels and ancillary services required, there are a few other things to keep in mind.
IN THE LAST THREE
86 November 2015 WBM
Earthquakes As learned from the Napa earthquake in August 2014, if barrels aren’t properly secured or are stacked too high, they can topple over, resulting in loss of wine and damage to the winery. “We changed our stacking and strapping methods as a result of the earthquake,” said Mike Blom of Napa Barrel Care. “I am working on organizing a group of wineries to look at implementing the UC Berkeley early warning earthquake detection system, which is in beta testing.” The UC Berkeley system would measure seismic activity and try to provide anywhere from a few to tens of seconds of warning prior to any shaking to give people a chance to get to safety. When scoping out a new warehousing facility, ask the sales rep or facility manager what preparations have been put in place in case of an earthquake. Are barrels stacked end-to-end, or rather belly-to-belly as some earthquake and barrel experts recommend? Has an engineer come by to check out the facility? Are the top racks of barrels strapped down? Are they using fourbarrel racks?
A Note About Insurance Not all warehouses will have the correct type or amount of insurance to cover any loss of your product. Before signing the dotted line, it is crucial to speak with the provider to see what coverage the company has and exactly what you will be on the hook for should a loss occur. For the most part, the winery will be responsible for insuring any product stored in a third-party warehouse. If there is a loss, it will more than likely only be covered by any policy the winery has. The warehouse policy will only kick in if there is an unforeseen event that is determined to be the result of warehouse failure which therefore holds them liable.
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WBM November 2015 87
Offsite Barrel Storage
Directory
The barrel storage facilities listed below were pulled from the Wines Vines Analytics database. Companies had to list barrel storage on their websites to be included. Custom crush wineries are another option for barrel storage, though most will require customers to crush wine at the same facility either. While not included in this directory, it might be worth contacting a local custom facility to see if barrel storage is available.
Alexander Valley Cellars/AVC Direct
Napa Valley Wine Warehouse
www.alexandervalleycellars.com, 707-838-8700
www.nvww.com, 707-963-8220, St. Helena, CA
Alexander Valley Cellars offers storage for case goods, bins and barrels, as
Napa Valley Wine Warehouse offers case and barrel storage at its ware-
well as dry goods such as corks and knockdowns, in addition to trucking and order fulfillment. Serving the Sonoma, Napa, Lake, Marin and Mendocino counties, AVC boasts 250,000 square feet of storage in clean, secure and climate-controlled facilities.
house facility in St. Helena, California.
Sierra Foothills Wine Services www.sfwinewarehouse.com, 530-344-7721, Placerville, CA
Mana Wine www.manawine.com, 201-484-1353, Jersey City, NJ
In addition to storing and managing private wine collections, Mana Wine offers commercial storage options at its 22,000 square foot cellar. Barrel storage, case storage, local van and truck deliveries, same-day and next-day delivery services, protective packaging, shipping supplies, domestic and international shipping and insurance options.
Michael Dusi Logistics Warehouse, Inc. www.dusiwinewarehouse.com, 805-237-9499, Paso Robles and Napa, CA Michael Dusi Logistics Warehouse, Inc. is equipped with both cooling
and fire suppression systems and provides more than 120,000 square feet of secure, temperature-controlled wine and new barrel storage space in its Paso Robles and Napa warehouses. The company also offers wine club and direct-to-consumer fulfillment shipping through FedEx, UPS and Golden State Overnight.
Sierra Foothills Wine Services offers wine case goods and barrel and tank
storage in bond and tax paid, climate controlled, temperature stable and humidified building. In addition to storage, SFWS offers racking, topping and stabilizing for barrels and tanks; laboratory services, analysis and trials; and finishing, blending and bottling for client/negociant wines. A UC Davis enology graduate is on hand as the consulting winemaker.
Sonoma Valley Custom Wine www.sonomavalleycustomwine.com, 707-938-8364, Sonoma, CA Sonoma Valley Custom Wine offers the following services: crushing and pressing, temperature-controlled barrel fermentation, temperaturecontrolled stainless storage, case goods storage, SVC vendor services network, tank and barrel fermentation, barrel and bulk wine storage, blending and bottling and full service consulting.
Vintners Logistics, LLC www.vintnerslogisticsllc.com, 509-783-5544, Kenniwick, WA
Napa Barrel Care www.barrelcare.com, 707-254-1985, Napa, CA Napa Barrel Care provides wine barrel storage services to existing and
virtual wineries. Napa Barrel Care offers environmentally controlled space and can provide almost any type of service that you would find in a complete winery cellar. Other services include rack and return, ozone and steam treatment, high-pressure hot water wash, wine additions, inventory tracking, blending, filtration, shipping and receiving, fining, cold stabilization and topping.
88 November 2015 WBM
Vintners Logistics’ 80,000 square foot warehouse is a state-of-the-art
facility constructed with phenol-free products specifically to handle the demanding requirements of wineries and industry suppliers including secure, temperature and humidity controlled, inventory tracked, food grade, contamination-free storage of bottled and bulk wine. It features industrial grade refrigeration of 55° F to 60° F, minimum R-30 insulation throughout the facility and 24-hour centrally monitored, fire, burglary and temperature alarms. WBM
To
UCDAVIS 16th Annual 15th Annual
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BLENDING THE BUSINESS AND SCIENCE OF WINEMAKING: From Grape to Table Presented by GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT and DEPARTMENT OF VITICULTURE & ENOLOGY
MARCH 22-27, 2015 UC Davis Campus Gallagher Hall, Graduate School of Management Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Sciences
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WHO SHOULD ATTEND? Result-driven sessions designed for wine industry professionals across the full spectrum of the business. With a broad national and international blend of attendees, the course offers powerful knowledge sharing about wine business best practices. WHY UC DAVIS? Renowned Faculty in business, viticulture and enology complemented by leading industry experts. Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science: Global innovator in university-based wine and food sciences research, education and outreach. Home of world’s most environmentally sophisticated winery. New UC Davis winery complex is the first ever to earn LEED Platinum certification, the U.S. Green Building Council’s highest rating.
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Gallagher Hall, Graduate School of Management UC Davis Campus Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science Gallagher Hall, Graduate School of Management Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Sciences
To register and for complete information on the curriculum and faculty
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people Wineries & Winemaking The owners of Bouchaine Vineyards, the oldest continuously operating winery in the Carneros District, hired winemaker Paul Hobbs as its consultant. The move is on the heels of hiring a new winemaker and general manager this spring, Carneros winemaker Chris Kajani, formerly winemaker of Saintsbury. Hobbs has twice been named “Wine Personality of the Year” by Robert M. Parker, Jr. and was recently called “The Steve Jobs of Wine” by Forbes.com. In addition to his consulting practice, he is the owner of Paul Hobbs Wines and CrossBarn Winery in Sonoma County, and is partner in several wineries including Viña Cobos in Mendoza, Argentina, Crocus in Cahors, France, and a new vineyard development in New York’s Finger Lakes region. Bogle Vineyards, a family owned and operated winery, announced the appointment of Eric Ariyoshi as director of marketing. Ariyoshi is a veteran of the wine and spirits industry, with experience building brands at Campari America, DFV Wines and Treasury Wine Estates. He earned his masters of business at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and his undergraduate degree from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. The Other Guys (TOG), a family-owned and operated wine company based in Sonoma, California, brought in Alex Beloz as consulting winemaker. The Other Guys portfolio of wines include: Leese-Fitch, Pennywise, Plungerhead, The White Knight, Hey Mambo, Moobuzz and Gehricke. Beloz will be overseeing winemaking for Moobuzz, The White Knight and Gehricke wines. Beloz comes to TOG with more than 15 years of premium winemaking experience. He is currently (and will remain) the winemaker at Tricycle Wine Company helping build the Poseidon Vineyards and Obsidian Ridge Wines. Prior to that his experience includes winemaking abroad in Bordeaux, France with Vignoble Despagne, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand with Thornbury Wines, and Casablanca, Chile with Kingston Family Vineyards.
•
Applications for ABC and TTB licenses
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Distribution agreements & direct shipping advice for all states
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ABC and TTB Business Practice Counseling
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Accusation, Defense and Protest Hearing Representation
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Regulatory clearance of promotions, point-of-sale material, labels and advertising
ATTORNEYS: John Hinman • Lynne Carmichael • Beth Aboulafia Sara Mann • Rebecca Stamey-White • Suzanne DeGalan
260 California Street, Suite 700 • San Francisco CA 94111 Telephone 415.362.1215 • Facsimile 415.362.1494 BeverageLaw.com
90 November 2015 WBM
NakedWines.com Angel investors crowd-funded Washington state winemaker Katy Michaud. Michaud secured $500,000+ and counting in Angel crowdfunding to develop her own brand on her own terms. After a stint as a Colorado-based snowboarder and Deadhead, Michaud discovered her love for wine and got her winemaking diploma from UC Davis. Michaud has worked with Bonny Doon, David Bruce Winery, Canoe Ridge Vineyard, Kim Crawford Wines and Covey Run. Deborah Detrick joined Round Pond Estate as vice president, finance. In this position Detrick will have full responsibility for the finance and accounting functions and team. Detrick brings more than 20 years of financial and accounting experience. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration from St. Mary’s College. Detrick began her career in the wine industry at St. Supery and has worked for Beam Wine Estates, Terlato Wine Group and, most recently, for Pernod Ricard USA as the finance director at Mumm Napa Valley. She brings extensive financial, accounting and leadership experience, with responsibility for substantial budgets and reporting. Douglas Allan joined Wine Creek, LLC as brand manager for its Quivira Vineyards and La Follette Wines. Allan joins Wine Creek from Crimson Wine Group in Napa, where he was the brand manager responsible for Seghesio Family Vineyards and Chamisal Vineyards. He has experience in all aspects of brand marketing and sales and will focus his efforts on the trade channel with Wine Creek. Prior to joining Crimson Wine Group, where he worked for more than two years, Allan was the managing director and co-founder of Stacked Wines, a pre-poured, single-serve wine package. Scheid Family Wines hired Andrew Powell as the company’s West Coast regional sales manager. Powell brings more than 17 years of wine sales experience to the position. He most recently worked for The Wine Group where he served as director of national accounts since 2012 and as division manager, California/Nevada/Hawaii since 2010. Prior to that, Powell was with E&J Gallo Winery for 13 years where he achieved Black Belt certification with Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma methodologies.
Industry Services & Suppliers Tapp Label Company added Jeff Licht as the new director of quality systems today. He brings more than 20 years of experience in the printing, packaging, automotive, and plastics industries. Most recently, Licht held the position of chief quality officer with CPI Card Group and spent the previous nine years with a large North American label manufacturer. Licht specializes in driving marked improvements in quality and efficiency through Quality and Lean Six Sigma methods and processes. He is a Six Sigma Black Belt, a senior member of the American Society for Quality and holds a Masters of Business Administration of Bellevue University.
For people news you can search or filter visit winebusiness.com/people
Associations & Education Mendocino Winegrowers, Inc. announced the appointment of Bernadette Byrne as the group’s new executive director. Byrne has more than 30 years of experience in the California wine business and has spent the last 28 years living and working in Mendocino County. Byrne’s career began in production jobs in the Napa Valley. She spent 10 years working for Fetzer Vineyards and the Fetzer family in various positions ranging from director of hospitality to training director and special events coordinator. During those years she also served as president of the Mendocino County Vintners Association. After leaving Fetzer Vineyards, she was executive director of the Mendocino Winegrowers Alliance (previously named the Mendocino County Vintners Association) and director of marketing for McDowell Valley Vineyards. She left McDowell in 2007 and started her own business, SIP! Mendocino in Hopland, the county’s first comprehensive and exclusive retail outlet for Mendocino county wines.
The Red Mountain AVA Alliance appointed Jennifer Nance as its executive director. The Alliance serves as the central contact point for the AVA’s public relations, marketing and regional issues. In her role, Nance will be responsible for planning and implementing a communications agenda to encourage further recognition of the Red Mountain AVA as one of the great appellations in the world for Cabernet Sauvignon-driven wines. Nance brings seven years of experience in the Washington wine industry. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in global wine studies from Central Washington University. Her wine industry experience includes the position of general manager of direct-to-consumer operations for a nationally distributed winery and Northwest account executive for a Napa-based wine marketing firm. #WineLover Community has named their first Canadian ambassador, Leeann Froese, who hails from British Columbia, one of Canada’s most established wine regions. The #WineLover Community, founded by Luiz Alberto of The Wine Hub on February 14, 2012, is a well-established community that unites wine lovers from all over the world to promote, educate and share their wine knowledge, region and passion with one another. Froese’s appointment as the Canadian #WineLover ambassador marks the 29th country to join this globally recognized network of wine lovers. In addition to being a longtime wine lover and a WSET Level 2 holder, Froese has been working in the wine industry for nearly 20 years. She has extensive experience in wine marketing and promotions where she co-owns Town Hall Brands, a wine-focused marketing and design agency in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Bernadette Byrne
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service viticulturist, Dr. Ed Hellman of Lubbock, has earned accolades twice in recent months for his educational efforts supporting the Texas wine industry. Earlier this year Hellman received the T.V. Munson Award from the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association at their annual conference in San Marcos. Then in early August he was again honored with the Outstanding Extension Educator Award from the American Society for Horticultural Science at their annual meeting in New Orleans. According to background information, the T.V. Munson Award, named for a pioneering horticulturist and Texas grape breeder, is given to an individual who has contributed much to the Texas grape growing industry. Hellman garnered the honor through his work as an educator, researcher, author, speaker and leader. He has served on the board of the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association, as well as the group’s education committee for many years, helping plan their annual conference and other educational programs. Hellman earned the Outstanding Extension Educator Award for being a national leader in viticulture extension. His national activities include 10 years of service on the board of the National Grape and Wine Initiative. He chaired the group’s Extension and Outreach Educational Committee for many years, during which he partnered with colleagues to develop an informal national meeting to facilitate collaboration among Extension viticulturists. WBM
WBM November 2015 91
advertiser index Thank you to all of our advertisers! Company
web address
page
Company
web address
page
Alain Fouquet French Cooperage
www.alainfouquet.com
85
Seguin Moreau Napa Cooperage
www.seguinmoreaunapa.com
52
Alfa Laval Tank Equipment
www.gamajet.com
57
Shur Farms Frost Protection
www.shurfarms.com
65
All American Containers
www.aacwine.com
85
Spec Trellising
www.spectrellising.com
67
American AgCredit, CoBank, Farm Credit West, Northwest Farm Credit Services
www.farmcreditalliance.com
59
Spokane Industries
www.spokaneindustries.com
31
St. Patrick's of Texas
www.stpats.com
47
American Tartaric Products, Inc.
www.americantartaric.com
41
StaVin, Inc.
www.stavin.com
39
American Vineyard Foundation (AVF) www.avf.org
54
Sunridge Nurseries
www.sunridgenurseries.com
63
Amorim Cork America
www.amorimca.com
33
SureHarvest, Inc.
www.sureharvest.com
67
Ardagh Group
www.ardaghgroup.com
83
Tapp Label Co.
www.tapplabel.com
74
ARS/Swash Cleaning and Sanitization www.cleanwinery.com
65
Tom Beard Co.
www.tombeard.com
46
Bergin Glass Impressions
www.berginglass.com
5
TricorBraun WinePak
www.tricorbraunwinepak.com
79
Bruni Glass Packaging
www.bruniglass.com
81
Trust International Corp.
www.barrelmakers.com
30
Bucher Vaslin North America
www.bvnorthamerica.com
28
UC Davis Extension
14
California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance
www.extension.ucdavis.edu/ winemaking
www.sustainablewinegrowing.org
49
UC Davis Wine Executive Program
www.wineexecutiveprogram.com
89
C-Line Express
www.c-linexp.com
65
Unified Wine & Grape Symposium
www.unifiedsymposium.org
13
Criveller Group
www.criveller.com
50
Vitro Packaging, LLC
www.vitropackaging.com
73
Della Toffola USA, Ltd.
www.dellatoffola.us
27
Waterloo Container Co.
www.waterloocontainer.com
77
Diablo Valley Packaging
www.dvpackaging.com
75
WECO Sorting and Automation
www.wecotek.com
25
ETS Laboratories
www.etslabs.com
43
Western Square Industries, Inc.
www.westernsquare.com
51
G3 Enterprises
www.g3enterprises.com
95
WineDocÂŽ - Winery Consulting
www.winedoc.com
52
Ganau America, Inc.
www.ganauamerica.com
96
Winejobs.com SUMMIT
www.winejobsSUMMIT.com
55
Global Package, LLC
www.globalpackage.net
72
WiVi Central Coast
www.wivicentralcoast.com
21
Granbury Solutions
www.granburyrs.com
82
World Wine Bottles & Packaging
www.worldwinebottles.com
37
Gusmer Enterprises
www.gusmerwine.com
26, 46
Hinman & Carmichael, LLP
www.beveragelaw.com
90
Hobart Corp.
www.hobartcorp.com
87
Innerstave, LLC
www.innerstave.com
53
Innovation + Quality
www.winebusinessiq.com
La Garde
www.lagardeinox.com
7
2. The location of the office of the Publisher is 110 W. Napa St., Sonoma, CA 95476
M A Silva USA
www.masilva.com
29
MALA Closures Systems, Inc.
www.mala-usa.com
14
3. The name and address of the Publisher is: Eric Jorgensen, 110 W. Napa St., Sonoma, CA 95476
Monvera Glass DĂŠcor
www.monvera.com
9
Moss Adams, LLP
www.mossadams.com
15
Napa Valley Vintners
www.napavintners.com
61
Nomacorc
www.nomacorc.com
35
O-I (Owens-Illinois)
www.o-i.com
11
Owl Ridge Wines
www.owlridge.com
30
P&L Specialties
www.pnlspecialties.com
23
Pellenc America, Inc.
www.pellenc.com
23
Portocork
www.portocork.com
3
Pure Tin Capsule Committee
www.puretincapsules.com
78
Rack & Maintenance Source
www.rmswinebarrelracks.com
45
6. For the single issue published nearest filing date: Number of copies printed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,623 Paid and/or requested circulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,367 Nonrequested distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 Total print distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,567 Digital Edition circulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,113
Ranch Winery
www.ranchwinery.com
2
Eric Jorgensen, Publisher Wine Business Monthly
Revolution Equipment Sales
www.revoquip.com
26
Saverglass, Inc.
www.saverglass.com
71
Pacific Coast
(a division of SML Stainless Steel Group)
92 November 2015 WBM
16,17
STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION as required by the Act of Congress on October 23, 1962, Section 4369, Title 39, United States. Code of Wine Business Monthly, published monthly, in Sonoma, CA. 1. The date of this filing is September 30, 2015
The name and address of the Editor is: Cyril Penn III, 110 W.Napa St., Sonoma, CA 95476
4. Wine Business Monthly is owned by Wine Communications Group, Inc. A California Corporation. 5. For the year preceding this filing: Average number of copies printed per issue. . . . . . . 5,678 Paid and/or requested circulation average . . . . . . . . 5,095 Nonrequested distribution average. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 576 Total print distribution average . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,671 Digital Edition average. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,113
Fact Versus Theory Lorenzo got invited to UC Davis where the Catena Institute of Wine hosted a day-long seminar called “The Future of Wine Science: A Dialogue with Experts from UC Davis and the Catena Institute of Wine.” It was a stunning day that summarized 20 years of research carried on by the Catena Wine Institute, including the most extensive Malbec cultivar research ever conducted, comparisons of French and Argentine Malbec selections, a study of the phylloxera threat to Argentina’s mostly own-rooted vines and information on high-altitude vineyards and the effects of UV-B on wine. Jake Lorenzo was fascinated by the rigorous use of the scientific method in these studies. I find provable science more reliable and interesting than much of the subjective, hypothetical theories of many winemakers. When it comes to making wine, every winemaker has a theory. They might cold-soak to have more extraction take place in a non-alcoholic environment in the hopes of developing softer tannins. They might believe native yeast lends their wines a more complex reflection from a particular vineyard, or they might use a specific commercial yeast, hoping that it lends a floral character to their Chardonnay. Some winemakers are convinced that concrete tanks give their Rhône varietals a delightful minerality. Others insist that size matters, and they want their fermentations carried out in neutral barrels, hogsheads puncheons or tuns. While these theories may or may not make sense, they remain nothing more than theories. There are other aspects of winemaking that we know to be true based on scientific research. Phenolics in wine, which include several hundred chemical compounds, affect the taste, color and mouthfeel of wine. Fermentation occurs when yeast converts the sugars in grape juice into ethanol and CO2 gas. Malolactic fermentation is a secondary fermentation that converts tart malic acid to softer lactic acid. These are things we know to be facts about making wine. Jake Lorenzo is a very accomplished private detective, but I am also a pretty good winemaker. This detective has been making wine for close to four decades. Like most winemakers, I have theories about how to make great wine, but I also have scientific knowledge that I know to be true. Here is what I know: Jake Lorenzo likes drinking and what I like drinking the most is wine. Jake Lorenzo lives on a very limited budget, one that does not allow me to purchase the level of wine to which I have grown accustomed. The only way this detective can afford to drink the quality of wine I need is to make it myself. Given a choice, I would rather drink Pinot Noir than any other grape variety. Then again, variety is the spice of life, so I am willing to dabble in most other grape varieties. Jake Lorenzo has lots of friends, and those friends like to come to my house to eat and drink. They drink a lot, so I have to crush at least two tons of grapes a year just to keep up with demand. These are scientifically proven facts around the Lorenzo household. I have plenty of winemaking theories as well. My first theory was that all my friends, who promised they would be willing, able and available to help make wine during the harvest season, would show up. This proved to be an invalid theory. It seems like my friends have all sorts of things that make it impossible for them to come help, things like fishing trips, lunch invitations, kids or even jobs. EARLIER THIS MONTH, JAKE
Jake Lorenzo is nothing if not resourceful. Once I realized help was a precious commodity, one that I was not likely to enjoy, I had to redesign my winery. My fermentors quickly turned into 30-gallon, foodgrade trash cans. I built a wooden ramp that enabled me to drag full fermentors into the winery by myself. I acquired two dozen 5-gallon carboys to collect the wine from my press, allowing me to lift them one by one and carry them inside. I got a moveable ladder so I could place the carboys on top and siphon the wine into barrels after it had settled, and I shifted to 30-gallon barrels so I could lift them by myself when they were empty. Since theories are not scientific fact, this detective changes his often. I went years using no SO2 at the crusher, with no ill effects, but then I saw winemakers around me starting to have problems with lactobacillus, so I changed my theory. My new theory is, “Better safe than sorry.” I went years having
Here is what I know: Jake Lorenzo likes drinking and what I like drinking the most is wine.
native yeast power all of my fermentations. It was fine. Sure, there were some funky aromas before active fermentation kicked in, but the wines were good. Now I use commercial yeast, just because I felt like doing something different, and I was intrigued by the Chr. Hansen Melody, which offers two non-Saccharomyces yeast strains along with the Saccharomyces strain. Like most winemakers, I felt fermentation temperatures needed to reach close to 90° F to get full extraction out of red grapes. When you ferment in 30-gallon trash cans, there is not enough volume to generate that kind of heat. (I’m not sure, but I think that part is a scientific fact.) After years of making all kinds of red wines in 30-gallon trash cans that rarely reach fermentation temperatures above 82° F, this detective thinks that high temp theory is a bunch of malarkey. My wines have plenty of color, great fruit character and a rich, full-bodied mid-palate that we really love. My theory is that these small-volume, lower temperature fermentations help provide that luscious mid-palate. But that’s just my theory. I use Viniflora® Oenos for my malolactic fermentation. The theory is that these commercial bacteria will give a cleaner malolactic fermentation even in the face of higher alcohols. That’s not why Jake Lorenzo uses it. I use it because it is easy. It sits in the freezer until you need it. Once you add it, it almost always finishes and does so quickly. Finishing malolactic, as quickly as possible, is very important because once ML finishes, I can add SO2. After the SO2 is added, I can top the barrels and start checking airfares to see where I am headed for my post-crush vacation. Post-crush vacations are absolutely necessary if you want to keep your partner content and happy. That is a scientific fact. WBM
WBM November 2015 93
ILLUSTRATION BY BOB JOHNSON
jake lorenzo
winemaker of the month
Fletcher Henderson, winemaker, Winery at La Grange, Haymarket, Virginia
“Wine Business Monthly is a wonderful resource to me because of the broad scope of informative industry topics covered; winemaking, winegrape growing, tasting room and wine clubs, etc. I was glued to the “Winemaker Roundtable: Additives” article in the August 2015 edition. The opinions expressed gave me additional food for thought on my approach to additives that I’ll apply during the pending harvest. But, you have to understand that, in reality, if you ask three winemakers a question you will get four answers.
“
LARRY FOX
NAME AND TITLE: Fletcher
Henderson, winemaker
WINERY NAME AND LOCATION: Winery at La Grange, Haymarket, Virginia is located on 20 acres at the base of Bull Run Mountain, 45 miles west of Washington, D.C. The tasting room is in a 1790s brick manor house that was restored in 2006 and 2007. It is a tranquil setting to say the least. ANNUAL CASE PRODUCTION:
7,500 cases
7.25 acres estate, approximately 8 acres leased, and contracted for approximately 70 tons of out-of-state fruit.
PLANTED ACRES:
94 November 2015 WBM
CAREER BACKGROUND: Aside
from being the winemaker at La Grange, I am vice president of the Atlantic Seaboard Wine Association. In the past I have been a commercial underwater diver; commercial fisherman in the Bahamas, eastern Gulf of Mexico and western Caribbean; and dock boss for a salmon cannery in Kodiak, Alaska. I have a construction background as well. I entered the wine industry around 1995 by volunteering in vineyards and as an assistant to a winemaker for two years before going to the distribution and importing side of the industry. In 2005 I became an investor in the newly formed Winery at La Grange and was employed by the investor group to manage the restoration of the 1790s manor house and all other construction necessary. Eighteen months
later, upon the completion of construction and restoration, I returned to distribution and importing. In June 2012 I accepted the opportunity to be the winemaker at La Grange and have never looked back. WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR BIGGEST PROFESSIONAL
Since accepting the mantel of winemaker, my biggest challenge has been learning the unique idiosyncrasies of each different varietal I work with. In other words, learning how to listen to what the grapes have to tell me and accomplish their request.
CHALLENGE?
VARIETALS THAT YOUR WINERY IS KNOWN FOR:
Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc and Cuvee Blanc (a white blend with 1.4 percent residual sugar)
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