In this final post concerning the revolutionary innovation of ultrasound for use in barrel cleaning, we may read below Andrew Yap’s breakdown of the step-by-step processes the beta prototype performs. And of the surprisingly low labor requirements. I must say I was impressed by his program. Should you read all three posts, imagine the water savings alone by using the Cavitus system. And imagine the extended life of oak barrels, increasingly expensive if French. Fewer trees might be felled, no small matter. Indeed, energy and resources are saved at every turn with the employ of high power ultrasonics. Whether it is ‘green’, I’ve yet to crunch the numbers. But I am encouraged.
Admin What size winery is the unit designed for?
Andrew Yap For the first unit it is for wineries that have at least 5000 to 7000 barrels to get a return on investment within 24 months. This is the average. Many wineries think this is pretty good. To get a return on investment on capital equipment is usually around three years. To get it back within two years we think is a pretty good deal. But of course, that is for this equipment, Wineries may decide they want to use selective components to retrofit into their systems.
Now, this is only a one-head system, so you clean one barrel at a time. Although you’re cleaning one barrel at a time the maximum time is only governed by the time you take to sonicate that one barrel. When the barrels come along the conveyer one is being filled, one is being sonicated, and one is being emptied. There are wineries that want to have a four-heads at a time. They can do more barrels in the five minutes required for sonication.
If I’ve read your paper correctly one of the advantages of ultrasonics is the uniformity of brett destruction/inactivation as opposed to high pressure hot water treatments.
AY Yes. That’s because the spray system does not target every spot within the barrel. There are various systems in operation, the main one, the static one, has a rose-like appearance which chucks water into the air and you hope that it will hit every part of the barrel. But it doesn’t. With the rotating head type they are a bit better than the static spray. I must point out that in Australia when we talk of ‘high pressure’ we are talking about 1000 psi to 3000 psi. Here in the states it is more common for wineries to use 100 psi. Our trials are at 1000 psi. If brett cannot be killed and tartrates cannot be removed at 1000 psi at 60 degrees centigrade then you can imagine what 100 psi does. Unless you clean your barrels several times a year, which some wineries do to maintain cleanliness. That’s fine but one of the concerns with winemakers is if they apply 1000 psi or 3000 psi you can remove off-flavor compounds. Now, we’ve already shown that at 1000 psi that doesn’t happen. At 3000 psi, some wineries in Australia do that, the smooth surface actually becomes furry after such a treatment.
Essentially destroying your barrel. And multiplying the surface area for spoilage bacteria, yeasts…
AY Yes, yes. Their argument is that they get an absolutely clean barrel (laughs) at the expense of ruining the barrel!
And all toasting must also be gone.
AY Yes. And in terms of hot water, I forgot to mention to you that we heat the water to 60 degrees centigrade (140 fahrenheit). We’ve found that 60c combines well for cleaning and killing the brett. In fact, both can be achieved at 50c, there’s data that shows that, but if you only wanted to clean and not kill brett then 40c is quite adequate with high powered sonics. So the high powered ultrasound works quite well at 40 to 60c. But if you want to kill the organisms at the same time as cleaning then what you want to do to ensure that the temperature is adequate for both processes.
About the power output?
AY In our previous lab trials we were using small units, about 10 to to 50 watts, but our unit here is 4 kw. Here we are talking about 225L, so the larger the volume, the power per ml, that is what is important. The larger the vessel, 225L versus puncheons, which are 400L, you need either to have the barrel sonicated a longer time or have a more powerful unit in place. The reason we’ve chosen a 4 kw unit is that the larger the unit the thicker the sonotrode, the rod you insert into the barrel bunghole. If it becomes too large it won’t go through the bunghole. An 8 kw unit would shorten the cleaning time to two minutes but the sonotrode would not pass through the hole. There is no manufacturer who can do that.
Will you be at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium this year?
AY Yes. For people interested in looking at the technology we will be at the Unified, a booth there, and we will have a warehouse in Sacramento, we’re not sure where, we’re looking for one. If you know of one let us know. We will put this unit there so people can come along and have a look at it on the exhibition days. They may see it in operation. We’ll take barrels, open them up so people can see what they are like before cleaning, and after cleaning we’ll open them up again. If people want advance information they can email me and I will provide them with the date and time, the place where the demonstration will take place.
Will you be in attendance?
AY Oh, yes.
So, may we walk through the unit in all its stages.
AY This is the full unit. It is designed to have all the components for the system to work independently of what the winery may have. It has all the bells and whistles. It contains the hot water heater, the filtration system so the water can be recycled 40 times. Indeed, there’s a lot of energy savings because you only have to heat the water once, to 60c, and then it is maintained at that temperature.
Now we see the conveyer system, where the barrels are introduced, from the right hand side. The movement of the barrels is all automated. As they go through the door they go through filling and then sonication. This is the prototype. Four sonicating heads may be added, as well as other modifications, for puncheons, for example. The customer will be free to determine what size barrels they would want to clean. The proper equipment would be provided.
Here you can see the sonotrode going into the bunghole, and on the right you see the barrel being filled. The red hose introduces the 60 c water into the barrel. We set up this system whereby the water level is predetermined, it will stop filling automatically when the proper level is reached. The sonitrode is introduced through the bunghole and into the water. Any water lost will be topped off using the blue hose which you can see on the left side. Water must be all the way to the top where the opening is because this is an area where brett infection is usually very pronounced. Because the barrel is completely full you would get cavitation bubbles right throughout the volume of the water, in every nook and corner. The barrel would be fully cavitated. There would be no escape for any micro-organism present in any part of the barrel, either on the surface, subsurface or in the pores.
The water is then drained from the barrel into a trough from which it is the sucked into a recycling tank and goes through a membrane filter and the filtered water goes back into the water tank and reheated back to 60c. Normally the temperature of the water after sonication is probably a degree or so below 60c. Very little energy is required to bring it back to 60c.
The last hose dangling is for water to remove any debris sticking onto the walls of the barrel. The remaining debris would be just tartrates. Any yeast cells would be dead. We recommend giving it a quick spray.
The unit may be run single-handedly, the whole system. During the sonication time, about five minutes, he can load more barrels and take off the clean barrels. The filling time is only about two minutes, and emptying takes about one and a half minutes.
This model is not the most refined for any particular winery but it is a ’stand alone’ model. It can be bought by a winery which is without reverse osmosis water, or a filtration unit, or a hot water heating system. Larger wineries may want to retrofit ultrasonic units into their system. And with four ultrasound heads, for example, you could clean four barrels in five minutes.
Can a Tom Beard system be retrofitted?
AY Yes. As you know Tom Beard systems already have four spikes that will clean four barrels at the same time. They come from underneath. So to replace this all you need to do is standby for a processing unit with four sonitrodes. Four barrels can be then be sonicated at one time.
Thank you, Andrew, for your time. Have a safe flight home.
AY Thank you, Ken.
Admin.
In part 2 Andrew Yap, Director of Oenology and Industry Marketing at Cavitus, passes through a modest series of more technical and commercial matters. Especially interesting is Mr. Yap’s discussion of the potential use of ultrasonics to purge TCA from corks and to increase the extraction of color and flavor from certain grape varieties grown in challenging warm-climates.
Part 3 will focus on the nuts and bolts of the HPU unit itself. Mr. Yap will walk us through each step of the sonication process.
Admin Could you say a few words about Darren Bates?
Andrew Yap Sometime after 2002 I came upon Darren Bates who is our Director of Technology and CTO [Chief Technical Officer]. He is the world-wide expert on ultrasonics. In fact, if your winemaker friend wants to know more about ultrasonics he should contact him, as may any winemaker. He is knowledgeable about all aspects of ultrasonics, whereas I am an oenologist applying the technology to barrel cleaning, to color and flavor extraction, defoaming, fermentation management, and a range of applications in the wine industry.
Your experimental trials used 225L barrels. Can you tell us something of the water use required, and is this technology scalable, can it be used to clean larger barrels?
AY It is scalable. The Beta Prototype that we have designed is contained within an eight foot by ten foot container for a very good reason: we have to move it from winery to winery and from country to country. So, all the components of the system are within this [container]. Now, if you already have got a system in place and you don’t really want this container, you want some of the components because you already have your hot water system, you’ve got your filtration system, you can utilize all these and retrofit the ultrasonic equipment into your system. And this is what many of the big wineries plan to do.
But if you don’t have a cleaning system, or have one of those mobile, hand-held high pressure hot water cleaning systems, then our system might be the one you want to employ. The other advantage of this system is that you can drag it around from winery to winery and provide a mobile service to small wineries.
Do you plan a rental service?
AY We’re looking to appoint service providers here. We haven’t come to any arrangements yet. The service provider may not be the distributor but some organization which is already doing this sort of mobile service, like bottling, dealcing, whoever they are. We plan to have such services in the different states. In fact, during the Unified Symposium in February this year there were people from Washington state, from New York state and other places interested in using this facility but yet too small to justify buying big equipment like this. So, one way to use this application is to get a mobile provider to come around to your winery on a Sunday and clean x number of barrels for a fee, just like what is now being charged for cleaning services provided by other people.
Now, coming back to the barrels, the barrel size for this unit is for 225L and 228L, those are barriques in the Burgundy style and Bordeaux style. One is longer and slightly larger than the other. So this unit will accommodate those two. Once you take away these outer parts [pointing to the front face of the unit] then you can use it for any barrel size up to hogsheads and puncheons.
Is the toasting level of the barrel an issue when you apply high power ultrasonics?
AY No, no, that shouldn’t affect it. Now, if your barrel is very heavily tartrated, of course you’ll remove the tartrates and expose the sub-surface layers to the ultrasound, the ultrasound to the brett to remove any residues in the pores and from the grain.
Has there been any analysis of the effect of HPU on the oak flavor?
AY We exacted the wash water after sonication and we couldn’t detect that any oak flavor compounds had been removed. That is a very positive thing. Now, having said that, we presently have a trial at a winery in the Barrosa Valley where they’ve cleaned barrels of different ages with high powered sound and at the same time cleaned them with high pressure hot water. As a base line we used clean and new barrels, so we have a big range. Then we put wine into these barrels and we’re looking at the extraction of the oak flavor compounds over twelve months. So, it’s very early yet, we started in August, I think, so only about three months worth of data. Whereas with the new barrels we could see a very rapid extraction of oak flavor compounds, with the barrels cleaned by high pressure hot water and high powered sound, there is extraction though not at the rate of a new barrel, of course. But what we are mainly interested in is whether with HPU, the sonicated barrels, we get more oak flavor extraction, faster extraction.
Now, if it’s faster extraction then instead of putting your wine in a barrel for 8 months or 12 months, as winemakers do, within 6 months you might be able to get the flavor compounds that you need for the wine. Now you’ve saved time. You can get your wines earlier to the market if you like. Even with two, three, or four year barrels you put your wines in you’ve got the style that you want earlier, so that’s a savings to the winery.
Of course, it’s important to point out that apart from brett/dekkera, HPU is effective on all spoilage bacteria and yeasts, at least according to your research.
AY Yes, that’s right. I should mention that all out trials have been on yeasts, although we’ve looked at the wine yeasts, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and one other yeast, so HPU has been effective against these three yeasts. But now the University of Adelaide people are looking at the efficacy of ultrasonics on all the other types of spoilage and wild yeasts, lactic acid bacteria, acetic acid bacteria, all the spoilage ones you find in barrels.
Have you taken an interest in TCA?
AY We came up with this idea when we first started. We told ourselves, “How can we make lots of money very quickly!” (laughs) TCA contamination is a huge problem with corks, now maybe we can suck all the TCA compounds out of the cork and then release the sonicated corks to the market. That’s still at the back of our mind. We haven’t gone down that track yet. But it’s a possibility.
The way in which ultrasound works, wherever there are pores, like you would find in corks, if you can get the water in there and with the acoustic streaming, the mass transfer, it’s possible that whatever is in the pores will be sucked out as well. That’s the theory, right? But you need to prove it. I mean, we’ve proved it in barrels, HPU does go through the pores, up to 14mm, which is way beyond what wine travels. If you can do that anything that’s in there gets sucked out, anything embedded in it, the barrel, will get killed.
Now, about water usage, hot water cleaning treatments require a constant stream of hot water. Does your system simply require that the barrel be filled? And is that water then recycled?
AY Firstly, in terms of water, what is required is reverse osmosis water, it’s easy to produce; most wineries have an RO system. In fact, when we take this around we actually take a RO system with us. Because water quality differs so much from region to region, winery to winery, and water quality affects the effectivity of ultrasound, so, if you use RO water that is degassed we can easily clean a one year-old barrel, that has just been used once, within five minutes. It will be back to its normal surface.
If you use water that hasn’t been degassed and has high solids, it may take six or seven minutes. That’s a difference.
[A more complete answer to this question will be given in part 3.]
You earlier mentioned using this technology also for the extraction of color and flavor.
AY Let me first say that the wine industry side is a small side for our company. Our big business is in food processing. We have arrangements with a dozen of the big food companies, Fortune 500 companies, using ultrasound for a range of processes. So the wine side is pretty small when you compare it to the food industry. For example, in the food industry we can treat food products at 100,000 gallons per minute. We have been doing trial here in California looking at extracting more color from the must at around 50 gallons per minute. Now, some wineries, most wineries, run their pumps at 100,000 to 200,000 gallons per minute. That’s already been done in the food industry. We’d have to up-scale if we want to use this process in the wine industry.
But what you apply in the food industry for a particular product, whether to change the viscosity, to pasteurize it, does not necessarily apply to the wine industry for affecting color and flavor. In extracting color and flavor we’re trying to break down the cell walls and release the flavor and color compounds. We’ve been very successful at it. That’s our new big thing!
As you probably know alot of wineries in the Central Valley and in the warmer regions have difficulty getting sufficiently color and flavor from certain grape varieties or even from the good grape varieties like Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. But also, say, in the North Coast, take Cabernet, for example, if you can extract color and flavor by skipping the cold maceration step, which takes two or three days, alot of energy cooling it down and then heating the must up later on, applying enzymes and all these sorts of things, you can skip all those processes by simply passing the must through a flow cell that sonicates the must to give you the color and flavor you want. You’d be saving mega bucks. Tank space, as well.
End of Pt. 2
Admin
For what follows I strongly recommend reading a piece I wrote in June entitled Cleaning Wine Barrels With Ultrasound. It chronicled that important innovation in barrels cleaning technology, ultrasonics, developed by Cavitus,
“the leading proprietary systems developer and solutions provider of high-power ultrasonics applications for liquid-phase food and beverage processing.”
As I have written in the June post, ultrasound as a cleaning technology for wine barrels had come to my attention in a November/December, ‘07 article of Practical Winery and Vineyard. Days before I was to leave for the Wine Blogger’s Conference in Santa Rosa I received an email from one of the principle authors of the article, Andrew Yap, Cavitus’ Director of Oenology and Industry Marketing. He was to be in Napa visiting wineries interested in participating in barrel cleaning trials with Cavitus’ HPU Beta Prototype.
Among the reasons for winery interest, let’s call it excitement, was a 2008 paper he co-authored, Inactivation of Brettanomyces/Dekkera in wine barrels by high power ultrasound published in The Australian and New Zealand Wine Industry Journal, available for download from the Cavitus site or to read below.
Cavitus pdf
In this wide-ranging, three-part interview Andrew Yap discusses both the published paper and the HPU Beta Prototype.
I interviewed him Sunday, October 26th, at his hotel in Napa.
Admin Perhaps we might begin with an overview of your recent paper. And a few details of your methodology.
Andrew Yap Yes. Essentially, what we wanted to show is that Brettanomyces can be killed in wine, or in liquid, or in media. But, of course, in a 225L barrel brett is not only on the surface of the wood but also in the sub-layers, in the pores. And we looked at killing brett that already existed in barrels. So we got lots of infected barrels from wineries and looked at the effect of high power ultrasound (HPU). But it was really difficult to find brett in the barrels, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack. We did locate brett cells in various parts of the barrels, but the thing is, once you’ve sonicated the barrel and you want to go back and see whether the brett has been killed and you obtain a plaque next to where you originally drilled, where you found live cells, that plaque may not contain any cells. What does that tell you? Does that mean the ultrasound killed those cells? Or that they weren’t there in the first instance?
So what we had to do was then actually inoculate pieces of wood, six centimeters by six centimeters, normal size staves cut into those dimensions, and suspend them into a broth culture of brettanomyces cells for five to seven days until we could detect the cells throughout the staves. What we did then with the staves, in one of the trials, we put the staves in a holder and then put the holder into the barrel so that it is midway between top and bottom. In another trial we nailed these staves opposite the bung hole.
In these two different trials, the first using high pressure hot water (HPHW), and the second using HPU, to see and compare the effects. Now, I must tell you that with these blocks of wood when using the HPHW or HPU we have to insure that the effects don’t come from the sides but that the effect come only from the front, through the wood. We had to seal the sides with parafilm and a thick rubber band around the sides so that you don’t get any of the effects of HPU or heat. And when we then drilled pieces of the stave blocks we drilled into the center so as to stay away from the sides. Any brett cells killed would be only from the energy coming through the block. I want to emphasize that.
One of the great advantages of your technique, high powered ultrasonics, over high pressure hot water is the depth at which the brett may be killed in wood. Now, the HPHW is effective to a depth of approx. 2 millimeters, if I’ve read your paper correctly, while HPU reaches to a depth of four millimeters.
AY Now, having said that, it could kill cells below 4mm, from 4mm to 12-14mm. You are probably aware that wine travels about 8mm through the barrel wood. That’s average. With the ultrasound we actually see water going as far as 14mm. And wherever there is water, cavitation bubbles are formed. Where they are formed and when they implode, energy is released. Any cells up to 14mm deep, wherever there’s liquid, the micro-organisms are likely to be killed.
Why did we do it up to 4mm only? Because this is an initial, very early trial. But the University of Adelaide is continuing to look at isolating cells at 8mm to 12mm, or deeper.
Have you heard from various wineries just how wide spread brett is? I know that in the secondary market it is very common. Alot of wineries will sell brett infected or at least questionable barrels to unsuspecting customers.
AY That is a problem. We’ve done alot of surveys of the cleanliness of barrels sold second-hand by large wineries to the smaller wineries. The barrels that are sold to the smaller wineries of boutique wineries are chockablock full of tartrates and, as you can imagine, obviously brett as well if they have been infected. In fact, most of the larger wineries sell their barrels after they are three to four years old. In a sense they get rid of their brett problem, really, by passing them on to the secondary market.
In terms of how wide-spread? You really need to be in the industry and know the people to get the message. If you are a winemaker and I came along and asked you, “Do you have a brett problem?” “Nah. I don’t have a brett problem.” (laughter) They don’t want to reveal it.
And I’ve been in the wine industry long enough, I’ve been in the wine industry for about 30 years, I am still involved in teaching at the University of Aukland, teaching wine science students doing a post-graduate course. And I know alot of people in the Australian wine industry, in the New Zealand wine industry, here in the US, and once you know them well enough they will discuss the problem with you. In fact, the reason they would want to tell you about a brett problem is in order to possibly get an angle as to how you can assist them. As a result of that, brett is very wide-spread. It’s extremely wide-spread.
In fact, in a previous paper I already stated that Pascal Chatonnet who is this French researcher, probably the best known brett researcher in the world, he stated more than 10 or 15 years ago the model for a brett infected wines you’d find on the supermarket shelves, were you to go collect them and assess them, was only around 28%. Two years ago when he did the same survey for a big conference at which he was invited to speak, he revealed that about 70% of wine on the supermarket shelves have got 4-ep taint, brett taint.
Was this in France or world-wide?
AY World-wide, world-wide. A random sample. Now it is possible of that 70% alot of them will be below the detectable threshold. But when you put it through a machine you’ll find the taint compound. But many people without a sensitivity to it will not be able to pick up the brett taint, even above the threshold.
Of course, in France brett is often used to produce a particular style. Provence, for example.
AY It’s absolutely crazy! I think one of your most famous winemakers here suggested that adding a bit of brett taint will give a wine a funkiness, a particular style, I think that was a big mistake. Now the American wine companies recognize that. They try to avoid brett at any cost.
I know you’re running a series of pilot tests in Australia, and of course, here. That’s the reason you’re in Napa, California.
AY Yes. We’ve done three trials already with our Beta Prototype system. We did it with a very large wine company in Australia, in the Barossa Valley and a medium size family company. [All but one of the wineries have not authorized the release of their names-Admin] Now why did we choose those two companies? Because they’re always in the forefront of technology and they like to look at new innovations. They’re trialing new things all the time, very much like many of the companies I’m working with here.
So we finished that in September. Our machine next went to New Zealand and just finished a trial with a very big company. The machine now being flown here, it is on the way to California. With regard to the trials they were all very successful. The winemakers liked what they saw with respect to what the ultrasound could do to clean the barrels.
Our first trial here in California will be in one of the big wineries in the Monterey wine region.
Oh! That’s near where I work.
AY Yes, it’s one of your biggest. In fact, if you want to come and look at the trial you are welcome to attend. The winemaker has said he would allow outside people to visit.
This would be Constellation’s Gonzales Winery?
AY Yes. I don’t know whether you know the general manager, Hugh Reimers?
Yes, I know of him. I wrote a recent piece about the new solar installation being assembled at the Gonzales Winery.
Is Hugh Reimers a colleague of yours?
AY He was my student! (laughs) That tells my age, doesn’t it? I taught him at Roseworthy Agricultural College. It is very well known for the oenology degree that it taught.
Hugh was one of the top students. In fact, there are quite a number of Roseworthy graduates in the industry here. Yesterday when I went to a winery I met one of the winemakers there, she’s from Australia, from Western Australia. I’m not sure where she studied.
What happened to the Roseworthy program was it got absorbed into the University of Adelaide’s when the two institutions merged. That was in 1990. I taught at the university up until 2002.
End of Pt 1.
Admin
Of the many fine activities offered at the recent Wine Blogger’s Conference was an assortment of Sonoma Vineyard Walks organized by Zephyr Wine Adventures. Among the listed Vineyard Walks was Alexander Valley North,
“Alexander Valley North: This walk starts at the Geyserville Inn, heads across the Russian River and through vineyards and farmland to the hillside property of Rodney Strong’s Rockaway Vineyard. Participants will be accompanied by long-time grape grower Jim Murphy. This is the longest walk option and is perhaps four miles.”
This was the best choice for me and a dozen other souls including, of course, Russ Beebe, of Winehiker. To walk a vineyard from the Alexander Valley floor, at an elevation of approx. 200 feet, up to the Rockaway hillside Vineyard, topping at 750 feet, would offer insights into important contrasts in growing and harvesting techniques, irrigation, yields, and terroir, especially when led by Rodney Strong’s brilliant viticulturist, Doug McIlroy.
Alas, it was perhaps a bit too much to ask for. An equally important contrast is the pace of the group on what quickly became a vigorous, though modest hike. And some preferred networking or quiet reflection in such a peaceful place. In any event, what follows are some of the lucid comments by Doug McIlroy made on our way to lunch and a taste of Rodney Strong’s new Rockaway wine.
It is important to add that Mr. McIlroy answered every question exhaustively. Indeed, I am greatly encouraged by Zephyr’s vineyard tours if this gentleman is the measure of the intellectual competence and rigor to be had in a guide.
Doug McIlroy on the Geology of the locale
“Near here you have the lateral faulting of the San Andreas Fault. There are pieces of granite actually on Bodega Head here in Inverness at Point Reyes that have come all the way from the Tehachapis and that’s how they figured out how long it took, how fast that fault is moving. As that fault is moving there are lots of stresses on sub faults off of the San Andreas, and what happens as the faults are running up against and moving passed each other they pull valleys apart. The Alexander Valley is actually a place where the valley has been pulled apart by the faulting on either side. And the hills are starting to rise. We have one of the larger faults in Sonoma County, the Maacama Fault, and we’ll be able to see that when we get up the other side.”
On the Soils
“What we have here on this ranch are pretty much ocean bottom sandstones, so they’re very well drained, rocky sandstones, greywacke, and those kind of things. They are really poor, low in fertility, and tend to be highly acidic, too, and you’ll see some of our red grapes with alot of red color in them, that’s because they have a phosphorous deficiency from the low pHs.
As the valleys get pulled apart, eroded down, the river is undercutting them, and it’s taking all the sediments from the area and depositing them in the valleys. The soils you saw today down on the Murphy Ranch, where you were walking along the flood plain of the river, are newer alluvial deposits in very recent geological history, whereas these hillside soils were deposited and formed under the ocean millions of years ago.”
“And in the valley below, where you started your walk, that’s another upper terrace of the river from where it’s eroded down. So you have river terraces, these benches which are really great vineyard sites throughout the Alexander Valley, all the way from the southern Alexander Valley into Cloverdale. We have a combination of these new alluviums, older alluviums, and these Franciscan soils, and a little volcanic debris, lots of different parent material in the soils. We like what we have here, very well drained and low in fertility.”
On Low Yields and Great Wines
“A lot of people think low yields give you great wines, that you can make a vineyard better by cutting back the yield. That’s counterintuitive. What’s really going on is that low-yielding sites have a tendency to give a higher wine quality, there is that correlation. There’s a little more stress, but you don’t want too much stress where the vines are really struggling. You want them to be somewhere in between, like the Three Bears where it’s just right, not too hot, not too cold! And you find that little sweet spot right here, that’s what we’ve got here.
And as you go up the Alexander Valley it gets warmer. The focus has been on Jimtown. We believe what makes this place more special for Cabernet is that it’s a little bit warmer. Jim might have even said, in the old days, that Cloverdale was too hot for Cabernet. Why did we even make that border at the Alexander Valley? At another of our ranches, eight miles up the valley, there you get more Napa-like wines because Napa County is a little bit warmer than Sonoma County. We’re finding that among the wines we’re making we like those from the warmer sites.”
“We have the Crown where we’ve made wines all along, down in Jimtown, and seven miles, five miles up the valley we’re here at Rockaway, and then another seven miles up the valley is the Brother’s Ridge, they progressively get warmer, and they produce distinctly different wines. You get a terroir-effect from the climate as well as the soil, each a little different.”
On Wildlife
“On the top of this hill there’s a Bald Eagle that nests here every year. Were you here in March you’d probable see it more than likely, sometimes coming with fish from the river and taking to the nest up there. And you can see Golden Eagles on this ranch, their habitat is mostly in the back country of Sonoma County. You do see alot of wildlife around here. It’s kinda cool. It’s one of the nice thing about doing what I do, to come out to these ranches. You never know what you’re going to see.”
On Grape Ripeness and Rockaway Wine
“I don’t really look at seeds. I’m looking more at the skins. A lot of people talk about hard, crunchy seeds but I’m really looking at what is happening in the skin. So, to begin with, I’ll chew them up a little bit in my mouth, just the skin, and I’ll rub it in my fingers to see its color extraction. With Cabernet, it tends to release quite a bit of color just rubbing the skins; Petit Verdot will release quite a lot of color.
But what we’re looking for is that silky tannin, that mature, soft tannin, that’s when I talk about phenolic ripeness. But one of the consequences of doing that is that the grapes become elevated in sugar. Well, as you know, when you have a lot of sugar you’re going to get a lot of alcohol. You know, people talk about should we have wines that are 13% alcohol or 15% alcohol, I say if you want phenolic ripeness and you want that soft, supple tannin, alcohol is a consequence of that. And alcohol, actually, can be your friend. It can give you mouthfeel in itself and it causes more extraction in the fermentation process.
And another thing that happens when you pick these wines they’re higher in pH, so your perception of tannin… they don’t seem as coarse, because of the higher pH. So a lot of the controversy about these highly extracted wines is how do you get there and make these kinds of wines without doing all these other things. We try to minimize those impacts of how much sugar they might end up with and those kind of things. If you like wines that taste like this they’re gonna be over 15% alcohol.
They’re going to be just as age-worthy because they have a lot more tannin, but it’s softer tannin. The alcohol will actually help them age. The other thing they’ll have is fruit, natural fruit. David Ramey is our consultant, I don’t know if you know that, and he talks about wines that aren’t made this way, that are made at a lower brix, lower pH, the more coarse wines, and he always said that what the French called an age-worthy wine, well, that’s a way of selling a wine from a poor vintage. The best vintages in France are where you get higher alcohol, where you get the softer tannin. If you have these softer tannins, if you have fruit, you’ll always have fruit. If you don’t have fruit you’re not going to have fruit.
Sure, if you have a fairly tight wine that’s acidic, that is age-worthy, it will get better with time, definitely, it will evolve. You’ll see more of an evolution in that wine. That’s kinda our philosophy. We’ve moved toward the more extractable, softer wines.”
Question from the group, “What was the pH when the grapes came in?”
“Somewhere in the 3.8 range. Potential alcohol somewhere between 15 and 15 and three-quarters. Somewhere around there.”
Great thanks to Doug McIlroy for his time. For those interested in this kind of immediacy and openness, this specialized knowledge, of a vineyard and a given winemaking philosophy, for those bored out of their minds with the Hallmark Card limitations of the tasting room experience, I strongly encourage those folks to put on their boots, and like our mothers used to say, go outside and play. Go tour a vineyard.
A final note: though I’m loath to write tasting notes I will weigh in on the Rockaway. Having learned the pH and brix of the wine I have to say it tasted unusually stable by which I mean finished. There was no mystery. I am sure both a dealc and an aggressive acidification was necessary. One must understand that this wine was sent out for a quick promotional review, the success of which hinged on accessibility. My feeling is that Rodney Strong found a way to promote an underperforming, troublesome vineyard. I would not be surprised to learn they might quietly search for a buyer somewhere down the road.
Admin
Galionen Steak & Lobster restaurant, Nyhavn 23, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Although it was just over a month since I was last in the Danish capital the nights were already drawing in and it was dark as we walked from our hotel in the centre of the city past the famous Tivoli Gardens, the entrance lit up and sporting a Halloween look in the October evening. Nyhavn was our destination once again, my last visit meant we were familiar with the area and knew that there was a large choice of restaurants available.
There were 4 in our group this time and the cool evening meant eating outside was vetoed, although fewer of the restaurants were giving the choice as the summer season wound down. Initially we tried to get into a quaint looking restaurant with an Octopus sign hanging over the door, but they were full so we moved onto Galionen a couple of doors up the street (in between Barock and Porto Bello, where I’d been in September).
We settled into a corner table by the front window and menus were passed around. The wine list was very appealing and, as seafood was the popular choice, it was left to me to choose a bottle of white. I had a hankering for Riesling and there was a choice between Alsace and Australia, either of which I would have been happy with, but as a dry wine had been requested by my colleagues I went for the New World offering, knowing it was more likely to be drier than the Alsace.
The Annie’s Lane 2004 Clare Valley Riesling was a vibrant golden yellow and had a heady petrol and lemongrass nose. As expected it was bone dry with a refreshing citrus mid-palate and finish. 3+/5.
Of course the wine needed food to match and a creamy fish soup was the perfect starter, rich saffron-yellow with a solid seafood-flavour base and thick pieces of salmon, prawn & crayfish to add texture, finished with a sprig of dill – wonderful!
While everyone else chose sea-bass I decided on the Surf n’ Turf kebab, large prawns and veal cubes skewered and grilled served on a bed of roasted fennel, peppers & aubergine (egg-plant) with two potato rostis and a drizzle of delicate lobster sauce. A single scarlet crayfish on the side added visual enjoyment to the plate (and its tail was tasty bite-sized morsel). The food was excellent, I enjoyed my kebabs and my colleagues agreed that the sea-bass was delicious.
Galionen was a relaxing, enjoyable restaurant with a good food and wine selection and friendly, quick and efficient service, joining Porto Bello on my list of Nyhavn favourites.
Greybeard.
In recent weeks we’ve read a blizzard of bad news. A representative pair:
Greenhouse gas emissions shock scientists.
The world pumped up emissions of the chief human-produced global warming gas last year, setting a course that could push beyond leading scientists’ projected worst-case scenario, international researchers said Thursday.
The new numbers, which some scientists called “scary,” were a surprise because experts thought an economic downturn would slow energy use. Instead, carbon dioxide output rose 3% from 2006 to 2007.
Climate change is ‘faster and more extreme’ than feared.
‘Extreme weather events’ such as the hot summer of 2003, which caused an extra 35,000 deaths across southern Europe from heat stress and poor air quality, will happen more frequently.
Britain and the North Sea area will be hit more often by violent cyclones and the predicted rise in sea level will double to more than a metre, putting vast coastal areas at risk from flooding.
The bleak report from WWF - formerly the World Wildlife Fund - also predicts crops failures and the collapse of eco systems on both land and sea.
WWF’s full report may be read here
Time for a bit of good news. In an oddly underreported development, Constellation Brands subsidiary, Constellation Wines US, announced that Gonzales Winery, (formerly known as Blackstone), in Gonzales, Monterey County here in California, has begun the installation of a 1 megawatt solar array, the biggest solar project in the state and of any winery in the world.
The 185 watt solar panels (poly-crystalline modules, not thin film) have been purchased from Mitsubishi Electric. Retail price is $900 per panel but I imagine Constellation will get a discount for the 6,358 panels! Indeed, as the Monterey Herald reports,
According to Kelly McMahon, Director of Sales for Pacific Power Management, it’s a project that would cost a typical consumer about $8 million. But because Gonzales Winery has an agreement to buy electricity from Pacific Power, Pacific Power is footing the bill for the installation.
The panels will be arrayed on the winery’s 170,000 square foot roof, an area the size of three football fields. More than 1.7 kilowatts will be generated over the course of the year. (Although another report puts the total at 1,176,230 watts of DC power, delivering 1,000,040 AC watts to the grid). 
The solar power generated translates into the equivalent pollution offset of 1.6 million pounds of CO2, 1,636 pounds of SO2, and 2,909 pounds of Nitrogen compounds. For fuller detail click any of the links highlighted above.
Let me add a link to a Gonzales Tribune story that aptly sums up Constellation’s Gonzales Winery effort: The September Blessing of the Grapes by Father Efrain Medina of St. Theodore’s at Blackstone, what is now the Gonzales Winery. I recommend you give it a read.
Admin
Here is given the second and final part of my interview with Bryan Babcock. In the post below you will read his opinions on a wide variety of subjects. From his take on environmentalism, climate change, and an extensive meditation irrigation, he never fails to be interesting and a challenge to the status quo. While one may not agree with him on some specifics, there is no doubting a lively intellect is at work. He is curious about the world, no small thing in a increasingly commodified culture where the ‘life of the mind’ struggles for breathing room.
Part 2:
Admin I recently had a conversation with Bob Mullen of Woodside Vineyards and I asked him whether it might be helpful to push for sub-AVAs within the Santa Cruz Mtns AVA, what, with our abundance of micro-climates. He counciled strongly against it arguing that it would dilute the ‘brand’, confuse the public. But we also know that in Paso Robles they are currently in the throws of a big to-do over sub-AVAs that, I for one hope, may come on-line in the next few years, sub-AVAs that will actually advance the ‘brand’. What ought to be the bottom line for the division of an AVA into subs?
BB Freedom. Freedom should be the bottom line.
That’s a great answer!
BB That’s the short answer to that question. Now, after that, I think that AVAs ought to be organized based on what they are, what exists, what’s different, and then what the causality is, the micro-climate, wind, the topography, the geology, the geography, all these different things that make the specific area what it is; and if it is unique and isolated, something that can be captured conceptually and designated, whether that designation is in the form of a law, by the ATF, for example, and then an American Viticultural Area or AVA, or whether it’s just a kind of a loosely held notion driven by the media and the producers. I think that, though I know Santa Cruz, maybe they’re just not one on them. I for one look at Paso Robles and I think the west side is so dramatically different from the east that there probably should be at least two different appellations.
I’ve got a good buddy that’s growing some of what’s arguably region 1 Pinot Noir out by the Coast, around York Valley, but because he’s from Paso Robles he gets associated with 50,000 acres of region 4 Cabernet. Maybe there’s a good opportunity for a different appellations there. And I think York Mountain is an appellation, it seems to me.
I’m not opposed to these things especially if they help to delineate and clarify information for the consumer I think they can be good.
But I don’t like the idea that the government is in control of these things. I guess if you want to have a territorial label that the government would uphold and protect, I guess that’s fine. But the last thing I’m interested in is the government telling us what varieties we can and cannot grow, how much we can plant, how we gotta farm, etcetera, etcetera.
I’m leery of anything that has to do with associating government which has the monopoly on the initiation of force when it should otherwise be free enterprise and free market play. So as long as the government can stand aside as much as possible then I think it should be ‘anything goes’. I’m all for laissez-faire.
As far as ‘green practices’ are concerned, do you think winegrowers are unfairly singled out to be especially pure of heart? It seems that hardly a day goes by when yet another green initiative is heaped upon the wine industry. When was the last time a cucumber grower was so put upon?
BB Well, I don’t know, maybe because we’re in the industry we feel it more… I mean, have you talked to a cucumber grower lately?
More and more are organic, that’s for sure.
BB Well, there you go. So before you hold that premise I’d talk to the cucumber growers. My guess is that they’re being attacked just like anyone else. I mean, the automobile manufacturers are being attacked and clothing manufacturers, you name it. We’re about to have a carbon cap; it’s ubiquitous now in our culture. I don’t think it’s just winegrowers. I think, if anything, winegrowers, because we farm a species, vinifera, which has the capability of living 50 to 100 years, growers are more interested in a healthy vineyard. It’s much more of a long term proposition and a long term outlook.
I do think alot of it is overblown. I think alot of it has kinda been forced upon us by environmentalism which I hold as an irrational philosophy. If you look at environmentalism for what it is philosophically then it’s not very rational. Nobody wants dirty water and dirty air. I mean, come on! And there are alot of people on the earth, we have to figure out ways to live with one another. And there are finite resources. But of [environmental] mysticism, when you try to derive politics and policy from that alot of times it gets very bizarre.
I for one have been interested in farming in a way I feel is wholesome. Any business, any responsible business owner, regardless of what they do, whether they’re a farmer or not, they should be accountable for and responsible to being wholesome and having a relative degree of safety. I don’t think your products should hurt people or kill people. I don’t think anybody out there is his right mind as a consumer wants to be hurt or killed because of your product.
The whole emphasis on sustainability, on the one hand it’s good, it makes sense, but on the other it’s a little awkward because I’ve yet to meet a winegrower who just went out and killed his vineyard. I’ve never met such a winegrower. I’ve met people who farm different ways, some of them are not as responsible, some of them use way more chemicals than they need to. But for the most part the farming community in general, viticulture or anything else, it’s a very hard working, very responsible community.
Have you noticed any elements of climate change in your vineyards?
BB I do think the most recent vintages have been warmer than when I first started in the business. And it seems like through the growing season it’s been warmer and through part of the harvest season in the Fall, it felt a little cooler. Now, is it because of global warming? I don’t know. Is it because of Man? I really don’t know. I can’t tell you that. Some scientists will tell you “yes”, some will tell you “no”. We know the Earth has gone through temperature fluctuations for thousands of years… ice ages. Am I feeling the results of global warming? It’s hard for me to say. But the vintages do feel a little warmer. The last ten years have felt warmer than I remember them being the first ten years.
This year was interesting. There just wasn’t as much June gloom, there wasn’t as much of a strong inversion layer that we usually see starting in April and extending alot of times through July and into August. This year there was an inversion layer that would burn off a little earlier, by nine o’clock the sun would be out. It just does feel a little warmer.
Have you taken an interest in international markets?
BB A little. We’ve done a little in the UK, we’ve been looking at the Pacific Rim.
On your blog or website it is mentioned that one of your labels is a painting of yours. Do you paint?
BB No! (laughs) The label I think you’re talking about was from my days in college. I got a liberal arts education, and part of that is you gotta take an art class, and so I call that ‘paint or flunk’.
(laughs) I see.
BB So rather than flunk I painted this stuff, and, you know, it hangs on the wall until sooner or later you end up doing something with it. And it did well because it’s abstract, which I’m certainly not a devoteé of, but because I didn’t know how to paint that’s what I did. I had no talent whatsoever so what else do you do but paint a blur or smear? Then, low and behold, ten years after school you find that the culture likes that kind of stuff! And you put it on a wine label.
I’ve had a similar experience!
BB Yeah.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
BB Just a conclusion of the irrigation discussion. After the bore-hole irrigation, that’s during verasion, we put on two to three inches, hopefully within 48 hours after we pick. Those two irrigations seem to unite with one another to set a perfect sequence for the planting of the legumes. You get the legumes planted right now, or the end of October, then they come into full flower before a very important point which is the frost season, because you want to have your cover crop mowed out before the frost season. The reason for that is after bud break, on really cold nights, you want the cold air to be able to drain out of the vineyard, off of the vineyard floor. If you have a full stand of legumes in March, legumes chest high, across the entire field that has a tendency to push the cold up off of the ground, up into the canopy area of the vine where the tender shoots are. And the tender shoots can get burned, frozen, and then they die. With the cover crop mowed, it’s out of the way. Then the cold air can stay on the floor of the vineyard and drain out. Cold air is like water. It’s heavy because it’s cold, more dense, so it tends to want to fall to the lowest point, just like water. With a full stand of cover, even on a hillside, it makes it much more difficult for that air to drain off.
The important connection is that while you have to mow your cover, while you’re compelled to mow your cover, if it’s a legume crop, you don’t want to mow it before full flower. When legumes are in full flower that’s when they’ve come to full biomass, that’s when they’ve fixed the maximum amount of nitrogen in their roots. That’s why you plant legumes, for nitrogen fixing. If you can mow in full flower before the frost then you’re in business. Plus you get a nice thatch when you mow, which is good for keeping the dust down, it helps minimize erosion damage. The frost season may have started but you may not have ended the rainy season. A nice thatch on the ground is good. So you get the full effect of the legumes as far as them being a fertilizer source, a green manure. Mowing before full flower will not get the full effect. To avoid mowing before full flower in frost season you gotta get you legumes planted early enough. The only way to make legumes grow early enough is to have enough water in the field right at harvest.
What we’ve found is that if we do a bore hole irrigation at verasion that down under the soil, between the vines and in the middle of the rows, there is still a relative amount of moisture, as opposed to a completely drip-irrigated system where the only moisture is under the dripper, the hydration sphere under the dripper. And then if you put on two or three more inches right after you pick then the two waterings, the first put on 60, 70, 80 days prior, the two waterings unite and the legumes grow. The legumes take off! And they take off better than if we’d only watered at harvest. That may just be wishful thinking. I haven’t done the science or read scientific studies on the matter, but it makes sense.
We have run into situations, especially with Pinot, where we might put on two inches the night we pick thinking, “Ok, let’s get ready to drill in our cover, plant our legumes”, and we plant the legumes, but because it’s the Fall and it’s still hot, you got Santa Ana conditions, 10 days later it’s dry again. The surface dries out. So what I’m finding is that bore hole irrigation at verasion and at harvest really makes the ground in the middle perfect for farming legumes.
What was just kind of a crazy idea ten years ago has turned out to be a pretty interesting approach overall.
Well, thank you very, very much.
BB Thanks, Ken. Nice working with you.
Admin
Bryan Babcock, winegrower for Babcock Winery and Vineyards, is in the prime of his life. What I mean by that, apart from his youth and vigor, is the coming into focus of hard-won knowledge achieved through disciplined experimentation in the vineyard. He is a student of the vine and vineyard, a conscientious, responsible visionary. As you will read in this two-part interview, Bryan Babcock is perpetually exploring the nuance and elusive character of terroir. A true believer in the concept, he amply explains why terroir matters, how to coax its expression, and he demonstrates the attentive care necessary to ask the right questions of the land.
I spoke to Bryan Babcock over the phone on two separate occasions this past week.
Part 2 will post Sunday.
Admin I was reading on your website blog about the difficulties you had with the Syrah this year. What happened?
Bryan Babcock What happened, I don’t know. But it looks to be some kind of an inversion because we had a nice set, at least by my standards, on everything else. Usually it’s the other way around. Usually our Pinot Noir is very light, our Chardonnay is very light, the Sauvignon Blanc usually has half about as much fruit on it as it does now. But the one variety that always seems to set a crop is the Syrah. I usually attributed that to a) it’s a different variety so it just could be a little bit more hardy in general in its pollinating capacity. Syrah is typically known to be a pretty productive variety. And b), because it’s a later season variety, compared to my other varieties, bud break on the Syrah is last, and then bloom is last. So I always attributed a little bit of set on the Syrah to a little nicer weather because the longer we wait for Spring for pollination usually depends on how nice the weather is. Of course that’s just theory. But one way or another we usually have clusters on the Syrah but this year it was pretty shot.
Can you tell me what Pinot clones you grow?
BB We grow 667, 777, 115, 114, 113, Pommard, 2A, 459, and there’s a new clone, I think it’s, if I’m not mistaken, it’s a 900 number from Dijon. And then I have my own ‘in-house’ clone, two of them actually, one’s called Psi [see pic] and the other one is called ‘Mama #2′.
Mama #2?
BB Yes. In other words, the other mother vine. Psi came from the first mother vine, at least what looked like at the time the strongest mother vine. When you look at one vine you have absolutely no idea of what the future holds or what’s in store for you, but the strongest vine I named Psi.
Do you have preferred yeasts for the different clones?
BB No. I just use different varieties.
Have you ever tried to let a wild fermentation run to finish? Will wines ever go to dry out there?
BB To the first question, yes, I have tried natural fermentation. The second answer is probably yes, too, if there’s not too much sugar in the lot it would probably go dry. But I’ve never liked the characteristics of a natural fermentation so I tend to stay away from it.
With a wild fermentation what happens exactly?
BB They tend to smell a little more like hay, like fresh cut, wet hay. I don’t know what the compounds are but it tends to smell a bit more like creosote, some of these other sort of guaiacolish-like compounds; it’s just not a real clean fermentation.
I have heard you’ve undertaken innovations with vineyard orientation…
BB Well, I don’t know if I have any innovations at this point. I think I’m just starting to understand some of the factors involved. I’m experimenting with some different row directions and vine spacing, in other words, the overall geometry of the vineyard. I wouldn’t call them innovations until I have the answers which will take another five to ten years, and then if I actually get the factors installed, get results, and my logic is good then I might call it an innovation. But at the end of it all how innovative can it be when you figure somebody in Europe already’s done it this way for 100 years?
I just don’t know how comfortable I am with the word ‘innovation’. I would say what I am doing is innovative in kind of a microcosmic way in my own little part of the world. I would not want it to seem I’ve discovered any real or new knowledge. What I really do think is that I’m starting to understand here is what a number of Europeans understood for years and years, that the way you lay the vineyard out really makes an impact.
You have to go into each environment and study it at that point. Somebody might tell me something involving the geometry of their Sauvignon Blanc in Pouilly-Fumé but when I go home the because of the way the wind blows or the temperature through the day it may not apply. You have to figure out where the sweet spots are in the layout of the vineyard. If the shade has an effect versus non-shade, or if the way the row runs whether the wind has an effect versus the way the wind is broken up, or if radiant heat off the ground has an effect insofar as how high or low the canopy is off the ground, those are all things that you have to find out based on your particular place. So if I discover the causality, the causes and the effects, and what works and what doesn’t, let’s say for Pinot Noir in the Santa Rita Hills and Babcock Vineyards, then I think that would be answering questions; it would be innovative in kind of a microcosmic way. But it’s not like nobody has ever known the overall effect of vineyard geometry because, like I’ve said, Europeans and probably smart domestic winegrowers have known that for years. I’m not the first.
I am probably one of the few people in my area to be as radical about it as I am. If you want a word that kinda pigeonholes me, rather than ‘innovation’ I like the word integration. Vineyard geometry is just one thing, that then has to be integrated with watering… irrigation.
Speaking of irrigation, at Babcock Vineyards you have different terroirs, your Terroir Exclusives line, for example, must have different water requirements. Could you say something of how you irrigate?
BB I think the basic difference between the way I irrigate and most of my colleagues is that I have gone back to using a significant amount of overhead irrigation with sprinklers. And for me there are two preferred targets, one is at verasion or slightly before verasion, depends on the block and variety. Pre-verasion with Pinot Noir I think is attractive; slightly before verasion or the early onset of verasion with Chardonnay, if you can catch it, right before bunch closure, I think that’s an attractive point. These are times where we will put down three to four inches, and I’m thinking next year it might be, if we can keep it all in the field without having it run off, five inches of overhead. And we try to apply the significant aspect of it, also, we try to get this all on in one night…. If the rig can deliver this much water.
And where does it come from, the water?
BB The well. We call it bore-hole irrigation. And the reason for that is the first time we did it I had all these ideas in my mind and I wanted to get out three inches in one night. We turned on the sprinkler, took it up to as much pressure as we could, we ran for probably twelve hours and we only got an inch and a quarter. We realized we were not going to be able to find, from the sprinkler head we had at the time, that it was going to be difficult to find a conventional nozzle of a big enough orifice, a big enough diameter to distribute that much water. So we had to unscrew the nozzles and take them to the shop to bore out the hole. So we call it bore-hole irrigation.
Bore-hole irrigation. Like a whale’s blow-hole.
BB (laughts) Yeah. You gotta bore out the hole in your sprinkler to get that much water out. (We finally found sprinklers that will accommodate it.) Another way to put it: three to five inches in one night at verasion.
Again, it’s all about integration. Bore-hole irrigation is integrated with the vineyard geometry and the farming of the cover crop. All of these things have to be put together. If you make one discovery, say with regard to lay out, and you discover that you want the rows here to go north and south, well, if you’re on a steep, west-facing hillside that means you have to cut terraces. And if the terraces are so crazy that they’re just not safe, that’s a problem, or if they’re constantly eroding out because of rain, that’s a problem, or if you can’t get your cover crop planted, or mowed because it’s too close to rain and the terraces are too mushy and easily damaged, well, what do you do? You may have to rethink the whole thing. So, it’s how it’s all put together. I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who is as radical as I am with regard to integration, and that includes every European I’ve ever met.
On the other hand, there have been times when I thought I was right, I thought I was certain, when I’ve gone out and installed something and five years later I realize I wasn’t [right]. The exciting thing about farming is when you get it right it is very fulfilling because once you put it in it’s really hard to make an adjustment. Ripping things out and starting over again is not easy.
Can you tell me something of the Sta. Rita Hills AVA insect complex you guys deal with?
BB We don’t have a whole lot of insects, certainly not a lot of insect problems. What the beneficial insect profile is I really don’t know. I’m not that up on my entomology. We have a few problems, we’ve got these little bugs that bore holes in the trunks of young vineyards typically when they’re two to three years old. We get a little bit of that. Of course, mildew, not an insect but certainly a pest. Bees, we have a bee problem in some places, if you’re next to enough of a bee population. We have not had a serious problem with mealy bugs yet. We don’t have a really high population of sharpshooters because it is so windy and cold.
Bees?
BB Yeah, typically yellow jackets. And honeybees, too. Honeybees will attack a grape crop. They typically like to attack white grapes. They especially love Chardonnay when it’s ripe for some reason. Though they will get into Riesling and Sauvignon Blanc. They tend to get into varieties that have a little rot on them. They think it’s damaged fruit. That opens the door. Once they discover there are carbohydrates then the whole hive is activated. Depending on the habitat, so if you’ve got a vineyard with alot of habitat, say maybe on three sides of it, like up in the end of a canyon, and there’s chaparral, places for bees close by then it can be a problem, not everywhere, just certain areas.
Even more problematic, you can you bait them or poison them, but if you put out certain baits to kill the yellow jackets and if you’re [also] killing a beekeeper’s honeybees that’s not good either. I guess the point of it is if I got a Chardonnay vineyard that the bees are going to eat every year then maybe it’s time for a different variety.
How do you ferlilize?
BB I plant legumes in the middle, between rows, and I will put down compost, as needed, from time to time.
Have you had TCA problems with corks? Do you ever have sourcing issues?
BB I used to. I’m getting to the point where my less expensive products now have synthetic cork. And my more expensive products have more expensive cork. So, for me I think the problem was at the lower end of the cork ‘food chain’. We were trying to spend ten cents for cork when the materials were not as good. And that’s when you always run into trouble. If you’re spending forty-five, thirty-five cents for a cork you ought to be able to demand from the supplier that there not be, you know, cork taint in this product. Sure, a few bottles here and there, one percent I suppose would be acceptable; but I would just tell my cork suppliers that if I’m paying thirty-five, forty cents a cork and you’re gonna deliver ten to fifteen percent TCA then I’m going to find another supplier.
That’s basically what I did for the better part of twenty years. I’ll tell you right now I buy from one or two suppliers, and as long as their product on the upper end is stable I’ll be back.
End of Pt. 1
Admin
I received a delightful, if breathless, email promoting The Houston Cellar Classic beginning October 13th and running until October 19th. I nearly passed on mentioning it here until I began reading about the participating restaurants. I had no idea of how sophisticated the dining scene has become in Houston. (Perhaps we on the West Coast might be forgiven our provincialism!) The founders of the event are Jerry and Laura Lasco, proprietors of The Tasting Room. Their business partner, Jonathan Horowitz, explains it this way,
“Over the years, we recognized that within Houston proper, there was no multiple-day event solely dedicated to the appreciation of fine wine and food. Last year, we decided to fill that void and we introduced to Houston the Houston Cellar Classic: A Celebration of Wine and Food. Last year’s event was a smashing success, and we plan on making this year’s event even better. This celebration will span an entire week and feature multiple events occurring at all of our Houston locations. Our goal is to create the City of Houston’s first
In this final post concerning the revolutionary innovation of ultrasound for use in barrel cleaning, we may read below Andrew Yap’s breakdown of the step-by-step processes the beta prototype performs. And of the surprisingly low labor requirements. I must say I was impressed by his program. Should you read all three posts, imagine the water savings alone by using the Cavitus system. And imagine the extended life of oak barrels, increasingly expensive if French. Fewer trees might be felled, no small matter. Indeed, energy and resources are saved at every turn with the employ of high power ultrasonics. Whether it is ‘green’, I’ve yet to crunch the numbers. But I am encouraged.
Now, this is only a one-head system, so you clean one barrel at a time. Although you’re cleaning one barrel at a time the maximum time is only governed by the time you take to sonicate that one barrel. When the barrels come along the conveyer one is being filled, one is being sonicated, and one is being emptied. There are wineries that want to have a four-heads at a time. They can do more barrels in the five minutes required for sonication.
AY Yes. For people interested in looking at the technology we will be at the Unified, a booth there, and we will have a warehouse in Sacramento, we’re not sure where, we’re looking for one. If you know of one let us know. We will put this unit there so people can come along and have a look at it on the exhibition days. They may see it in operation. We’ll take barrels, open them up so people can see what they are like before cleaning, and after cleaning we’ll open them up again. If people want advance information they can email me and I will provide them with the date and time, the place where the demonstration will take place.
AY This is the full unit. It is designed to have all the components for the system to work independently of what the winery may have. It has all the bells and whistles. It contains the hot water heater, the filtration system so the water can be recycled 40 times. Indeed, there’s a lot of energy savings because you only have to heat the water once, to 60c, and then it is maintained at that temperature.
Now we see the conveyer system, where the barrels are introduced, from the right hand side. The movement of the barrels is all automated. As they go through the door they go through filling and then sonication. This is the prototype. Four sonicating heads may be added, as well as other modifications, for puncheons, for example. The customer will be free to determine what size barrels they would want to clean. The proper equipment would be provided.
Here you can see the sonotrode going into the bunghole, and on the right you see the barrel being filled. The red hose introduces the 60 c water into the barrel. We set up this system whereby the water level is predetermined, it will stop filling automatically when the proper level is reached. The sonitrode is introduced through the bunghole and into the water. Any water lost will be topped off using the blue hose which you can see on the left side. Water must be all the way to the top where the opening is because this is an area where brett infection is usually very pronounced. Because the barrel is completely full you would get cavitation bubbles right throughout the volume of the water, in every nook and corner. The barrel would be fully cavitated. There would be no escape for any micro-organism present in any part of the barrel, either on the surface, subsurface or in the pores.
The unit may be run single-handedly, the whole system. During the sonication time, about five minutes, he can load more barrels and take off the clean barrels. The filling time is only about two minutes, and emptying takes about one and a half minutes.
