Cold soak / cold maceration opinions

WINE TALK
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I’ve been reading about this process in anticipation of a small lot of wine (zinfandel from my father’s vineyard in Yolo County, a little west of Winters) that I’m going to make this fall.

For those not familiar with the process, it involves keeping the must (the mash of juice, skin, seeds and possibly stems from after you crush the grapes) chilled for 3-7 days at something like 45-55 degrees, before then letting the must warm up and the fermentation begin. The beliefs seem to be that (a) you get a darker, smoother, fresher-tasting wine by having extracted some compounds from the skins and seeds in the cool enviroment and prior to fermentation having begun, and, to a much lesser extent, (b) you increase the efficacy of the native yeasts if you intend to ferment without adding commercial yeast.

I’m curious what the views on here are about cold maceration, both from the winemaker’s perspective and from the customer’s perspective. A few specific questions:

(1) [Since everything on this board seems to be viewed through this prism, I might as well ask] Is this viewed as an overly interventionist / modernist technique? Do all or most of the wineries commonly considered the low alcohol / traditional / minimalist ones on this board avoid using this technique, and if so, why? Where in the spectrum of intervention does this technique fall – is it a modest affront to minimalism, or a big one?

(2) Do wineries generally do this or not do this as a matter of regular course, or does the winemaker make a decision on a case-by-case basis, on a varietal by varietal basis, and/or on a vineyard by vineyard basis? And if the latter, what is generally the basis for deciding whether to do or not to do a cold maceration?

(3) What are the downsides to doing a cold maceration? Is it just a matter of maybe the resulting wine not being in the style that a given winemaker may desire, or are there other considerations that weigh against doing it?

Thanks in advance for thoughts and opinions of all sorts.

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Pre-fermenation maceration is actually an old technique. In many parts of the world, grapes come in cold. Before yeast inoculation was so prevalent, it simply took time to get fermentation going. So you have something of a cold soak.

I think it’s more a “modern” technique when you’re truly cold soaking - dropping temps to 40F or so to extract as you describe, then warm up, pitch yeast, ferment, drain and press either at or even before dryness. That’s essentially a recipe for modern red wine making.

I can only speak to Pinot Noir, but I don’t cold soak as much as the former example. Grapes come in cold, or I may add dry ice to cool things, but more to 50F or so. Then I let the must warm up on its own, perhaps with an aquarium heater in one place to encourage fermentation to start on its own. Only when a cap has formed do I punch down. In that way, I’m giving ambient yeast time to get going and I’m not mixing any EA on the surface down into the must until fermentation is rocking enough to take care of it. I really like the technique. I pretty much do this with everything, unless something’s highly compromised by rot, where I would get fermentation going sooner to minimize risk. Haven’t had to do that yet though. My goal isn’t cold maceration, instead it’s a slow, “natural” start to fermentation with an outcome being that the grapes just soak.

I have some experience with zin and I would essentially do the same thing with it, though I’d punch down more once things got going.

As far as downsides, like anything, you can overdo things. The old Accad method in Burgundy of cold mac. with high sulfur tended to give really dark wines that homogenized vineyard by vineyard nuance. It all depends on your goal. If you want hyper dark, fruity wines, you can use enzymes for color extraction and press things sweet and finish fermentation in barrel. That seems to give a rounder, sweeter tasting dry wine with softer tannin. But if you want ambient fermentation, some amount of cold soaking to come degree just comes with the territory, and I think it’s a nice way to go. To minimize any overt candy fruit that one might get from soaking, I like to drain and press a few days after dryness. The goal is to add a little wine character, for lack of a better term, rather than “tasting the fruit” as so many people want in their wines. We have fruit, a little extra post-ferment maceration seems to tone that down a bit.

Hope that helps.

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Chris,
I pretty much agree with Vincent but I would be very careful of post-fermentation maceration with zin. because zin. usually has a good bit if alcohol in it when it’s done fermenting and alcohol is a solvent. Hence, by macerating after fermentation you may extract more tannin than you want.
Just something to consider . . .
Best, Jim

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I’ll be very interested to what people have to say.
IN my limited experience this process creates a wine with lots of early appeal. However, it doesn’t always produce age worthy wines. Charmail is a good example from Bdx and B-C PNs one that is closer to home. But I wouldn’t extrapolate too much from these examples.

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And best of luck with the Zin!

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Thank you everyone, and Vincent in particular, for the thoughts and encouragement.

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Vincent - my feeling about cold maceration is that it might lessen delicate floral aromas in return for having darker fruit aromas. Any truth to this?

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Chris - if you are not going the natural yeast route, use assmanhausen yeast. Ive tried most on the market available to “hobbiest” winemakers and thats by far the best IMHO

How much fruit are you getting? Where are you going to ferment it?

Ive made some wine for fun so if you need to learn fron my many mistakes feel free to PM me and I live pretty close to that vineyard so I might be able to give a helping hand depending in the schedule.

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Very kind of you, Berry. I’d be happy to benefit from any lessons learned, to the extent you feel like typing them up or sharing them in any other form. I’d be particularly interested if you think my idea of trying fermentation in my first time with wild yeast is crazy or not (I would monitor it and have commercial yeast ready in case needed, though).

I had heard a number of winemakers talk about the benefits of cold maceration over the years, so I was going to try it anyways, but it’s going to serve double purpose for me in this instance, because I want to pick this weekend (the zinfandel was at 24 Brix last Saturday and I don’t want them to get superripe; I may coferment some petite sirah as well, those were at 22 Brix last weekend). However, I can’t make it up there until the following week because I’m out of town (not having suspected harvest would be this early), so my brother and dad are going to give me a fermenter of must and hopefully cold soak it until I can come up and pick it up, then drive it back down here to Orange County where I’m going to try to make the wine.

Berry, my dad has planted a wide variety of grapes there. This year, there will be a first harvest of Tempranillo, Viognier (already harvested), zin and petite sirah. Starting next year, there will also be Marsanne, Grenache and probably another one or two I’m forgetting, then I think he’ll get Grenache Blanc in a couple of years (the varietal I was always pressing him to plant). His vineyard is basically an extension of the England-Shaw Vineyard, which Rosenblum makes into a SVD syrah, but my dad has decided to plant assorted different varietals, hoping to sell some for blending lots or to hobby winemakers, though mostly just for fun. I think he’ll be getting 1,500 pounds give or take of each varietal annually.

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I dont think its that crazy if you have nice clean fruit. You can do a small dose of s02 to ease your nerves.

One thing you should be aware of is that other yeasts besides S. cerevisiae (the main wine yeast) will start off the fermentation. When I did my natural yeast pinot ferment I was smelling tons of VA from these other yeasts and started to think I had ruined the wine. But as the must heated up and S. cerevisiae kicked in and joined the fermentation the VA blew off.

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You are lucky. Picking grapes is really hard work! You would be surprised.

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Starting two years ago I began to NOT cold soak and instead, inspired by Jayer, just ambient soak until fermentation kicks in. Surprisingly, this still takes 3-5 days on its own. I have found (for myself) that cold soaking has zero effect on color, as my wines are darker than they have ever been due to the higher ferment temps I have been using since 2010 (93-96F.) I find that color is more affected by heat during fermentation that any artificially induced cold-soaking. I also find lab-measured VA seems to go up during cold soak and also extended maceration no matter how much dry ice you throw on early or whether CO2 is coming off the cap after fermenting. Can’t explain why but have seen it up close enough to know it happens.

In the end though, the whole cold soak/yeast/ferment temps/oak regimen/brix thing will have less effect on the final quality than A) The quality of the site, B) the vineyard management, and C) the picking decision. Get the first three right, and you are about 75% home, imho.

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I think of cold soaking as primarily a pinot technique. Pinot is particularly prone to rapid ferments, and cold soaking is a way to ensure that you’ll have adequate skin contact before fermentation is finished. It’s also a way to be a little bit selective about extraction; primary fruit flavors seem pretty readily extractable during cold soak, and tannins are less so. I’m not sure that either rationale is very compelling in the case of zin (or for pinot, in my case). The downside to cold soaking, as has been mentioned, is susceptibility to VA producing microbes. Since zin seems particularly prone to VA probems, I’m not sure I would temp fate with this variety on your first go-round. The more practical reason to cold soak zin might be to allow an adequate pre-ferment period for the raisins to soak up so that you can get an accurate brix reading so that you can make an informed decision about whether to add water. Good luck.

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Pretty much agree with Stewart. Most people I know who do Zin inoculate on day one. If you have never seen a Zin cluster before… it can be a scary sight. Water ads are common as well, as Zin can soak up 3+ brix beyond the pick number do to the inherent amount of raisins within a cluster in ripe years. I am astonished that almost no one uses sorting tables on Zin, as it can lower a bin of grapes from 17% alcohol to 14.5% just by removing raisins. But it can be a mess at the sorting table. I’ve never seen anything like a Zin cluster before and hope to never see anything like it again. You know the pics of the winners of the world’s ugliest dog contest? That is a Zin cluster many times. Don’t be scared, it is par for the course.

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Great information, thanks.

As of yesterday’s Brix reading from the vineyard, it looks like I might be able to hold off harvesting until I get up there after Labor Day, so maybe I should just skip the cold soak, or keep it very brief.

Besides removing shriveled grapes, what else am I looking to do in sorting the clusters? I assume I would remove any green grapes, though I don’t know that there will be any of those.

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You might be surprised with a Zin cluster you get Raisins, slightly over, perfect, slightly under, green all on the same cluster.

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What should I select out? Just the raisins and green grapes?

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You probably can’t do that kind of berry sorting without really expensive equipment. I assume you are going to be sorting by clusters rather than berries. As Matt and Roy have indicated, zin clusters are wildly heterogeneous. What appears from one side to be a lost cause will look pretty good from another angle. As a first cut, set aside (rather than throw away) the clusters that appear very raisined. As you go back through those clusters, you may find that it is just an easily separable wing that has raisined and that 90% of the remaining mass is fine. With zin, it’s more likely to be a % of cluster sort of evaluation rather than any sort of zero tolerance policy. I’ve tried poring over clusters berry by berry with sangiovese in my garage winemaking days, and it’s agony. I took all the raisins I culled from a half ton and fermented them separately with just enough sound fruit to produce a liquid must. The results were decent enough to change my previously held opinion that any amount of raisined fruit was diastrous.

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Chris -

I’ve tried many different flavors of cold soaks and the only thing I can say for certain is I’m not really a fan of either adding dry ice or pulling the must into a cold room. I will/would add dry ice now if for some reason I had fruit comes in really warm, but I have not had to do that since my 2008 EPR Syrah.

My routine now is to do what Roy called an ‘ambient’ soak. I do nothing to either encourage or discourage the start of fermentation. In my experience at my site, Cabernet goes the fastest, sometimes as soon as 4 hours. Pinot Noir takes the longest, usually at least 4 days to start and often 8 to really get going. My winery is very cool for California though. At harvest my day time temps are in the mid 70’s at most and night time is high 40’s. My crushpad get’s no sun unless I haul the bins out to then end so everything stays pretty cool on its own. At a warmer site I’d expect faster starts.

You have to monitor the must very carefully and smell for off odors or VA. If my ferments don’t start within 36-48 hours I begin to cover the ferment with Argon. I don’t like to add sulfur at crush and will only do that if the fruit has some sort of problem. That’s roughly 1 in 25 ferments for me. I think the number one problem home winemakers make is adding too much sulfur at the start and not enough/ none during aging so be cautious of that. If you don’t have access to Argon or CO2 you should be prepared to add yeast. I would not use Assmashausen in this scenario. It is a slow starter and at the point you decided something has gone wrong and you need to add yeast, you want something that will start fast.

One very important thing for you will be air to must ratio With small ferments you want as little of the must exposed relative to total volume as possible. For the amount you are talking a 600 liter tank or 1 ton bin (t-bin) would be best. Anything larger and you’re must will have trouble turning out enough CO2 layer to keep your fermentation safe.

If you asked this to me 1x1 I’d tell you not to bother. It’s your first time. Play it safe, don’t take risks, and don’t ruin your first lot of wine. Do everything as safe and basic as possible. Experiment later as you have confidence and experience. Winemakers fall into two camps. There are mad scientist, experimenters who are always playing with yeasts, soaks, temps, and all the other variables. The other type are all about logistics. Get the best fruit, through the process as efficiently as you can. They tend to make changes only when they have to.

I’m the later for sure and most of the people I’ve worked closely with fall into that same camp. Ask yourself what camp you think you’d be in for you personality? If it’s the former, you might want to play around this time, because you’ll likely always be doing that. If the later, you probably want to stick to the basics this first time.

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Sorry for the delay. With true cold maceration, when you’re not just naturally letting cool must gradually warm up, this seems to be true. Except I know a producer here in OR who surprised me when I heard his method of cold soaking for like two weeks. The wine don’t “show it” in the way you describe. Almost to the point of making me ask, why do it? So I think there’s no simple answer. It seems like real cold maceration, especially for longer periods of time, achieves the goal of extracting more and probably losing some more delicate aromas in favor of boldness. Then again, we see examples where the wines don’t turn out that way.