Native Wine Yeasts, Franken-Yeasts and Winery Buildings
Even mention the word yeast in a room full of winemakers and you’re off to the races, opinions abound about the use of native yeasts that are found on the grapes, or the manufactured yeasts that are custom designed to attain specific characteristics in the wine.
Sometimes these manufactured yeasts are called Franken-Yeasts but I think that’s overly harsh. Humans have been tweaking natural products for thousands of years, and even the grape vines in modern vineyards have been subject to extensive selection to attain what we get today.
The point that is often missed is the contribution of the winery building to the flavor. I remember John Kelly of Westwood wines telling me that studies had shown that the amount of the yeast on the vines wasn’t sufficient to attain the level of activity that was normally experienced in a natural yeast fermentation; that the remainder of the yeast was coming from the air, the environment of the building.
This is fascinating to me because the reason that we first came to Sonoma was to write a book about the influence of the buildings on the wine. What we were interested in was the position of the winery on the property and the way that the constructed complex shaped the energy of the final product. We’ve written and spoken extensively about this in terms of homes and work places, and we found the wonderful variety of buildings in the North Bay wine area inspiring.
After touring the area for several years and spending time in hundreds of wineries and vineyards I’m even more convinced that the nature of the building affects the wine in very complex ways. One very obvious connection is this; because native yeast is less aggressive, and the winemaker doesn’t destroy the existing yeast with sulfur before introducing the manufactured yeast, the grape must is more subject to the invasion of the yeast in the air of the building.
The building’s ability to inoculate the wine is similar to San Francisco’s famous ‘sour dough bread’. The most famous bakeries there have used the same ‘mother’ yeasted dough for many years. It is an organism that exits in the air there, and if you want really good sour dough bread in New York City you need to fly it in daily, because it doesn’t exist there, and companies that do.
In the same way that cooks prefer a particular pot for its shape and materials (Just visit the Culinary Institute of America’s cooking store to see how many pots they offer) the shape and materials of a wineries affect the flavor. The history of the winery, the maturing of the yeast, all have to contribute to the flavors. Sometimes it so obvious!
The next time you visit the Cakebread winery use your nose and get a good whiff of the aroma in the place. Then the next you have a bottle of Cakebread Chardonnay in a restaurant put that glass to your nose and smell the winery in that glass. Tah dah!
I think that I’m going to write more about this connection, so keep an eye open.
Ralph & Lahni de Amicis are authors of the Amicis Winery Guides (Find them on Amazon), and owners of Amicis Tours that takes people on tours of the wineries of Napa and Sonoma. They are authors of over twenty books on health, design, business and travel. Their iPhone Apps, The Napa Valley Wine Tour, and The Sonoma Winery Tour are a tour guides approach to these beautiful area, complete with 1000’s of photos and insights. Their articles and products can be found on the sites http://www.amicistours.com and http://www.spaceandtime.com
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