But options have expanded to a whole host of alternatives, including cans, plastic bottles, Tetra packs and even single-serving cups. Illustration by Marco Turelli Packaging Panoplyįor years, winemakers had two choices of containers: glass bottles or bag-in-a-box. “I never thought I’d be using phenolics to make decisions, but here we are,” says Tim Donahue, director of winemaking at College Cellars of Walla Walla. Data gleaned can influence picking decisions and winemaking practices to create more flavorful, less astringent wines. - Paul Gregutt Illustration by Marco Turelli Figuring Out PhenolicsĬompanies like WineXRay analyze berry and wine phenolics, compounds that affect color, taste and mouthfeel. Principally sourced from the Umpqua Valley AVA, it’s a spicy wine with flavors of cranberry, blood orange and underbrush. Production of this value Pinot has almost tripled in the past few years, but for the price the quality remains quite high. Uncork the Tech Underwood 2017 Pinot Noir (Oregon) $6/375 ml, 87 points. For wine lovers, this means enhanced aromas and flavors as well as reduced astringency in newly released bottles. At the same time, tools using luminescence-based technology for improved molecular visibility allow winemakers to measure the amount of dissolved oxygen in bottlings. Recent advancements have made implementing this method considerably more convenient and affordable. Since the 1990s, a technique known as micro-oxygenation, which introduces controlled amounts of oxygen into wine to accelerate what otherwise naturally takes place during barrel aging, has been used to help the process along. The pursuit to make young wines as accessible as possible has long been a goal for many within the wine industry. Illustration by Marco Turelli Magical Micro-oxygenation Hybrid barrels that use oak heads and stainless-steel bodies are also available and provide the flavors and oxygenation of traditional barrels, yet are said to lessen evaporative loss. Companies like Qvevri.XYZ create old-school earthenware wine vessels with 3-D printers, which they claim offer higher quality and greater consistency. Prominent Cognac-based cooperage Vicard, for example, analyzes its stave tannins using near-infrared spectrometry to increase consistency and decrease the number of barrels winemakers need to declassify. Now, some coopers make decisions by chemical analysis. Traditionally, barrel staves were selected based on criteria like wood grain or the forest of origin. The result is cleaner fruit that’s sorted faster. ![]() Any berries or material like insects, raisined fruit and leaves that don’t meet specific parameters get pushed into a waste bin by a small puff of air. Eye for Perfection With the space-age technology of optical sorting, cameras can scan berries on the sorting table and enable a computer model to determine individual quality. Companies like ETS Laboratories offer tests for spoilage yeast and bacteria, so that winemakers can make more informed decisions during aging and bottling. Today, DNA profiling and analysis allows winemakers to look at yeast strains in real time throughout the fermentation process, and ultimately provide better understanding of when fermentation goes right or wrong. What happened next, however, was uncertain. In the past, winemakers have either added commercial yeast to ferment grapes or hoped native yeast would do the job. Illustration by Marco Turelli Positive Profiling Winemaking combines art and science, and producers have never had more technological tools available to understand and leverage the latter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |