When winemakers rack a wine out of barrel is it most common to transfer wine from all barrels together and then redistribute back across the different barrels, or is it more common to rack barrel by barrel so the wine from each barrel stays separate?
I would think the latter approach would allow a winemaker to see how each individual barrel impacts the wine and then determine their blend barrel by barrel, but it would seem to be a much more labor intensive process.
I’ve heard Russell Bevan talk about how he likes to keep each barrel separate to evaluate each individually, but I was curious how common this practice is and if it really makes a difference.
I would have thought so as well, but I’ve seen some of Roy Piper’s videos where he seems to rack all of the wines from each of his vineyards together and blend in tank while cleaning out the barrels and then refills. I was surprised by that technique as I thought you would lose the individual barrel signature so curious how common it is.
I’m not sure, but I don’t know that anyone is aiming for an “individual barrel signature.” With very small production, there may be only a few barrels of each wine and are thus kept separate. But with larger scale production, I think winemakers are more likely to focus only on keeping different grapes, vineyard blocks and picking days separate, so they can see how they evolve, before blending. And there may be many barrels of each lot.
Apart from the possibility that an individual barrel may go bad in some way (e.g., bacterial problems), I don’t think anyone expects a lot of variation from the effect of individual barrels, or needs to keep the same 225 liters in the same barrel.
Whether it goes back into the same barrel will also depend on the age of the barrel and how many barrels the producer has. If you have extras, you might rack straight into a clean barrel. If you don’t, maybe you have to transfer to a tank, as Roy did, while the barrels are cleaned.
Don’t forget, too, that many wines spend a certain amount of time in relatively new oak, then are transferred to older, neutral barrels.
But I’ll be curious to hear what others more knowledgeable have to say.
I’m sure some people somewhere rack and return each barrel separately, but I don’t personally know anyone who racks that way. I’m not an expert here, but it would be time consuming from a logistics standpoint. And you’d need a lot of topping wine anyway to replace the lost volume in each barrel during racking. In terms of losing individual barrel signatures, a lot of wines aren’t racked much if at all during their main stint in barrel. If you are doing barrel selections and blending trials then by definition you’ll end up racking those selections together anyway once you’ve decided on the blend.
A lot of wineries will keep different lots separate from, say, different blocks/clones/pick dates, but there will be multiple barrels per lot. Those lots will usually be racked individually, and when people talk about variability between barrels from the same vineyard, a lot of the time you’re really talking about lots rather than individual barrels. Individual barrel variability is most often likely to be a bad thing rather than a good one, caused by microbial issues. These will be tested for before racking/blending to ensure that contamination doesn’t affect the rest of the barrels.
In another thread William Kelley pointed out that people used to fine and rack every 6 months(I believe he was referring to Burgundy specifically).
In a world without any of the modern microbial controls(steam, ozone, chitosan, sterile filtration, etc.) fining and racking twice a year would be an integral tool for management of spoilage organisms. You fine(egg whites) to get solids out of suspension and then rack the clear wines off the lees to knock back any populations of spoilage organisms. 6 months later youndo it again to knock back any populations rebuilding themselves. By bottling a winemaker would be hoping to go to bottle unfiltered with small enough populations that careful storage would keep the wine at peak quality. It’s easy enough to talk about Brett, pediacoccus, or lactobacillus as things that shouldn’t occur but 100 years ago that would require constant vigilance(and still does now) in order to stay ahead of the game. Lots of people don’t have issues with these organisms, but these microbes are kind of like the Huns. All is good until they arrive, and if enough get a foothold you are up a creek.
Fast forward 100 years. I don’t like to come off of the lees, so we only rack prior to bottling. That’s when we blend lots to tank, but for the micro-lots we’ll rack barrel to barrel.
When I first was making my wines at Westrey, they(and I) racked the barrels after malo finished in the spring following harvest. Blends were chosen, and barrels were racked to tanks according to blends. Then barrels were cleaned and refilled from tank.
I would sometimes go barrel to barrel, with barrels that I really liked though.
The only quibble I have with Ben’s post above, is that in my experience barrels are not uniform regardless of microbial population. I source by forest and use coopers who will make barrels for me from specific forests. Each of those forests definitely has a signature and personality(or terroir) of it’s own, though like all natural things they are not uniform. Most of our micro-lots are single vessel wines(not including the topping wine). The 2018 Berserker Cuvee is a good example. That wine is both a single Block within the vineyard and a single 500L puncheon. It was racked from the 500L puncheon to a 400L tank(remaining wine went to the Willamette Valley) two weeks prior to bottling.
Marcus and Ben - Racking practice varies by grape type, too, doesn’t it? I believe that dolcetto producers rack regularly because, as I recall, the wine is prone to reduction.
Some varieties, as well as some types of wines are prone to reduction. Rosé is often problematic with regards to reduction as well.
Many producers will rack barrels that are reductive. It’s a fairly common practice in the Willamette Valley too. Typically, for Pinot Noir at least, quicker ferments will lead to more reductive compounds occurring in the wines, and then it’s up to the winemaker. Some like Cameron embrace those aspects, but many will rack the wines to both aerate the wine and come off of the lees.
We typically have longer fermentations for reds and have little issue with reduction. Stems typically reduce the impact as well.
I’m like Marcus, don’t really rack much until bottling. But I like to keep all barrels separate and not mix, because they all behave differently. A good example is my current Riesling - out of 4 neutral barrels that have all been kept the same, treated the same, one is now oxidized and can’t be used. No idea how it got that way, but sometimes they breathe differently and absorb SO2 differently etc. I’m also pretty green when it comes to cellar work, so maybe I messed something up in prep of barrel or bung.
In my experience it’s most common to rack barrel to barrel, rather than racking out, cleaning and then going back into that same barrel. The logistics sound tough, racking, washing, racking, etc etc. Sometimes racking time is the chance to free up better barrels for the coming harvest, so the wine definitely won’t go back in the same barrels, instead clean older ones for the final stretch before bottling.
Ive always read that racking to tanks and then back to barrels is the common practice in Bordeaux, once the blends have been decided. Different regions have their traditions, different grape may require different racking protocols. Racking is important to softening the texture of more tannic wines. In Bordeaux it’s more common to rack once if not multiple times. With Pinot Noir one racking after malolactic is probably most common, but like Marcus I have found I like the wine to stay on its lees until bottling - the lees preserve freshness - so I only rack at bottling time. I occasionally have reduction in some barrels but they’ve always resolved without doing anything. Cabernets and such often see longer elevage than Pinot Noir, so if nothing else there’s simply more time to rack the wine perhaps more times.
As an aside I recall a Washington winery that honestly seemed to keep their cellar crew busy by racking everything every two months. The winemaker almost bragged about it, how good they were at it. Damn the wines showed the effects - dried out, high VA, just generally abused wine that would have been best left alone. Racking is important but like anything, too much is no good.
I’m not a large scale winemaker, but based on conversations with friends the latter is probably correct.
I had a friend who worked for Chateau St. Michelle, they would do a wide range of experimental processes all of which disappeared back into the big blend for bottling.
I don’t rack my wines until bottling time, where I will rack to tank a few days before bottling. Every once in a while I’ll have a reductive barrel, and if that doesn’t resolve itself I’ll rack off the lees to a clean barrel. I also like to keep my wines on their lees the entire time they are in barrel.
Thank you Marcus for picking me up on that point. I should have clarified that it gets more complicated when there are material variations between the barrels themselves prior to the wine going in! I’ve seen people rack parts of lots in a given cooperage separately, also keeping new in new and neutral in neutral. And I can also think of a couple situations in which microbially problematic barrels were fined and racked separate from the rest of the lot to clean them up.
I don’t rack wines until bottling time as well. As many others, in the case of a barrel with extreme reduction that doesn’t resolve, I’ll rack off lees. In 2019 on a trip to Burgundy, two of my favorite winemakers suggested that in the case of Chardonnay, I try racking off the lees from the offending barrel, letting the lees sit for a couple days, and then reincorporating them into the wine. A bit counter intuitive in the arena of reductive-technique winemaking but there is something to the idea that lees are redox mediators that can swing one way or another. One winemaker was shocked that I would ever consider dumping the lees.
I tried it with a single barrel last year and the barrel recipient of the “rack, rest, and return” lees barrel is now my favorite from that vineyard with a beautiful light gun-flint reduction but none of the nastier reductive notes.
I think the key to winemaking is to not be ‘dogmatic’ in how you approach it. Every winemaker on here who says that they don’t rack WILL rack if a wine is reductive and kinda screams that it needs oxygen.
The main reasons wineries rack wines are:
To add oxygen to minimize reductive characteristics
To ‘open a wine up’ and get it to market faster by making it ‘more approachable’
To ‘clarify’ it so that one can bottle unfined and unfiltered.
When I started making wine, I normally racked after secondary fermentation because I was under the belief that one should move the wine off its lees at that point to minimize picking up any negative elements from the lees. On one occasion, and with a small lot, I ended up racking one barrel that had a small amount of brettanomyces that was undetected by me into a lot with 3 other barrels and I ended up with 4 barrels that were ‘infected’ at a low level - a risk that is always there when racking.
For the past decade, I have not racked my wines because I want to keep them as tightly wound as possible and I believe the fine lees act as a nice ‘sink’ for SO2, meaning I have to add less during elevage. My wines seem to stay fresher longer as well.
All of that said, if I had a really reductive barrel, I have two choices - rack it and return it to barrel or do a copper sulfate addition. I would rather and would rack it should the situation arise - because I believe we need to be pragmatic in how we make our wines . . .