Question about racking wine

[Megan_Joy]

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.

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 think that maybe Marcus’ second point was lost a bit: there can also be material differences between the wines going into each of the individual barrels. When you use one and a half ton fermentors the free run will fill roughly two barriques, or one puncheon. Fermentation dynamics, stem content, even whether there is variability between one side of the block or the other. We routinely have 2-4 fermentors from individual blocks; they will have traits in common, but they are never exactly the same.

[larry_schaffer]

Megan,

Great point - and of course that’s assuming that you separate the free run from the press fractions. I tend to keep everything together rather than separate - the press I use is pretty darned gentle and I feel that the material differences between the lots is not great enough to warrant those separations, but I understand why others are able to or choose to do so.

At a large winery that I used to work at, they would really only separate out the hard press - they would make the call that after a certain number of ‘bars of pressure’ on the press, they would clean out the holding pan and then switch to another tank.

Cheers.

[Al_Osterheld]

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.

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 think that maybe Marcus’ second point was lost a bit: there can also be material differences between the wines going into each of the individual barrels. When you use one and a half ton fermentors the free run will fill roughly two barriques, or one puncheon. Fermentation dynamics, stem content, even whether there is variability between one side of the block or the other. We routinely have 2-4 fermentors from individual blocks; they will have traits in common, but they are never exactly the same.

One of the striking things on press days is that every fermentor is different even when they are nominally the same by all the known variables. As you say, they generally aren’t dramattically different but also not subtly different, either. It’s also interesting that there can be common vintage characteristics even between lots that are not nominally the same. There are lots of hidden variables in fermentation of small lots.

-Al

[William_Kelley]

People have mentioned racking “barrel to barrel”, which was the traditional way of doing things, and it might be worth explaining what that means: all you need is one empty barrel to start with, into which you rack a full barrel; the barrel you empty in the process is then refilled by racking another barrel into it, and so on. If you are in a cramped underground cellar, without powerful pumps or a large racking tank, this is also the most low-tech way of doing things. Note that with this sort of racking, wines change barrels, so no wine remains in its original barrel.

[Marcus_Goodfellow]

Megan,

Great point - and of course that’s assuming that you separate the free run from the press fractions. I tend to keep everything together rather than separate - the press I use is pretty darned gentle and I feel that the material differences between the lots is not great enough to warrant those separations, but I understand why others are able to or choose to do so.

At a large winery that I used to work at, they would really only separate out the hard press - they would make the call that after a certain number of ‘bars of pressure’ on the press, they would clean out the holding pan and then switch to another tank.

Cheers.

That makes a lot of sense Larry, and I know Jim Anderson and Patty Green used to keep press and free run together as well.

Our press is also quite gentle, but we rack all of the free run directly to barrel. Press wine is usually settled for a day or two.