I remember tasting a bottle of Muscadet on one of my first wine trips to the Loire Valley. It had a very long title: Domaine Gadais, Muscadet de Sevre et Maine, Sur Lie, Vieille Vignes.
No wonder the Aussies and the Americans were making headway into the British wine market by offering the likes of Jacobs Creek and Echo Falls – a whole lot easier for a wine newbie to remember.
So let’s break down the Muscadet’s title. Domaine Gadais is the name of the producer and I am pleased to say that Christophe Gadais is still making Muscadet some 35 years after I first tasted it.
Muscadet is the nickname given to the grape – officially it’s melon de bourgogne but at least the nickname cuts out two words in its title.
The Sevre and the Maine are two rivers that flow through the Muscadet region and the best wines are said to be at the confluence of the two, while vieille vignes simply means old vines – there is no legislation to say when a vine becomes old though most growers say from around 35 years. In Gadais’ case the vines were approaching their 100th birthday.
Sur lie? Muscadet is one of the very few wines where this is indicated on the label. It simply means that the wine has been allowed to lie on the lees (the dead yeast cells and particles of grape skin in the fermented must) for at least six months, though many growers leave it for longer than this. This adds complexity and richness to the wine as well as, just occasionally, giving it a small prickle of carbon dioxide.
Many makers of white wine leave their wine on the lees to gain complexity, though Muscadet is one of the very few to indicate this on the label (a phrase well worth looking for if you are buying Muscadet from a domaine new to you).
So you will see that lees aging is just one more decision a winemaker has to make.
White wine is made by removing the skins and pips of the grapes soon after a wine starts fermenting. However, a grower has to decide how long he or she is going to leave before doing this.
There is growing interest world-wide in extended skin contact – orange wine, which is gaining in popularity, is simply white wine where extended skin contact is encouraged. Essentially it is white wine made using red wine techniques.
This is perhaps at its extreme in Georgia (the country not the state) where wine has traditionally been made in clay amphorae (qevri) which are buried in the ground to keep them cool. Here the skins are often left in contact with the juice for six months or more. The result is an amber coloured wine with complex nutty, herbal flavours. Amphorae are now being used by winemakers throughout the world – I was quite surprised to visit a Sancerre producer last summer to find several amphorae in the winery and that they are bottling a cuvee made just from juice aged in amphorae. It was very good though quite different to their standard Sancerre.
The red winemaker has even more decisions to make – here skin contact is vital – the juice of red grapes is clear and the colour of a red wine comes from the skins rather than the juice (there are a few exceptions but let’s keep things simple).
Rose wine is simply a red where the skins have been taken away very early in the fermentation process – minutes rather than hours depending on the depth of colour the winemaker wants.
So again a winemaker has to decide how long he is going to leave the skins in with the juice – normally two to three weeks. Prior to this he or she can decide whether to give the wines a ‘cold soak’ before fermentation to intensify fruit flavours as well as whether to allow skin maceration before fermentation which can add perfume.
Once the must is fermenting a cap of skins rises to the surface which can become hard and dry. It needs to be kept moist by washing over the fermenting juice. A winemaker may decide to punch down the cap so that it breaks up but this is very hard work and results in trips to the winery through the night as it has to be done every few hours.
Once a winemaker considers the wine has enough colour and extract the juice is run off and he or she must decide whether to press the skins and pips to extract extra colour – this needs a delicate touch as it can also add tannin to the finished wine, too much tannin will leave the wine out of balance and ultimately dry and bitter.
Additionally winemakers have to contend with malolactic fermentation. This is a bacterial conversion of appley malic acid into milky lactic acid. All red wines undergo what is general known as ‘malo’ but it is up to the winemaker whether a white wine undergoes it or not. Essentially a wine that has gone through malo will be softer and creamier than one that hasn’t.
Before a wine is bottled it needs refreshing by adding a little oxygen to the wine – this is usually done by racking which is basically moving wine from one container to another – though these days micro-oxygenation can be used where oxygen is trickled through the juice.
If the wine is being matured before bottling, the winemaker must decide when the wine should be bottled. This is done by taste and experience.
Finally, the wine is usually fined and filtered to get rid of any solids that could make the wine referment and to keep the liquid clear which is what most wine drinkers want.
If a winemaker wants their wine to have vegan or vegetarian status they must use a corresponding fining agent – usually bentonite clay for the former and egg whites for the latter.
So you will see from all of this that a winemaker has a huge number of decisions to make before his or her wine hits the marketplace.
Winemaking is far more complicated than ‘stomping on the grapes, letting them ferment and putting the juice in a bottle’.
Next week we will look at the final piece of the jigsaw – labelling and how to read a wine label.
