I’ve got two problem vineyards this year. Well one problem, one young one. The young one has about 1/2 ton of Syrah fruit hanging out there right now, with all the issues you expect in a 3 year old vineyard. Namely hugely uneven fruit maturity. I could easily do a few passes through the vineyard and either drop fruit or run harvest in a few tries, but then I’m only bringing in 300 pounds at a time.
My other problem is Cabernet that if all goes well might reach 22 Brix but is more likely to be around 20. I’m not so worried about the Brix as I am that I know at that maturity I’m gonna have bell pepper and even green bean. Got me thinking maybe it’s time to do a ‘Haut Tubee Rose’.
So what are some tips on making Rose for a first timer?
Destem the fruit. Let it macerate between 2 seconds and 2 days depending on the fruit and your preferences. The rest is like making a white wine. I.e. press to a settling tank then rack the settled wine to stainless steel and/or neutral oak barrels. You can add sulfur either when its on the skins or when you rack to barrel. If you use oak, I’d make sure the barrels are pretty well used.
If you want to inoculate, GRE yeast is an excellent option and is one of the best all purpose Rose yeasts. GRE works well with syrah and cabs (as reds I mean), so that’s a compatibility plus. Rhone 4600 seems like an interesting option as well, tho I’ve never used it. “Native” fermentations work really well with roses as well (my roses, for personal consumption, are done this way).
If your cab is really green then maybe you’ll want to cut the maceration of that short and get more color from the syrah.
What he said. Pyrazine in rose is pretty offputting IMHO. No news here, but obviously keeping them seperate until you have a pair of finished wines is probably a good idea if they’re coming from different sites / varietals and there are issues with both.
My only experience is that kitchen sink / weak grape rose shows oxidation / tiredness more quickly than good well treated healthy fruit whites so care is needed and really really lengthy fermentations are not necessarily a great idea.
Most people don’t let their rose go through malo.
For a couple of reference points on color, Domaine Tempier gets all their color from 8 hr skin contact on about 20% of the grapes, the rest are pressed immediately. Many of the darker CA roses you see are saignee product that are saigneed after a day or two of cold soak…
What Eric said. Had good luck with direct to press and no crushing/destemming with Pinot, but you gotta be comfortable with ‘salmon.’ I also like rose barrel-fermented in pretty old barrels rather than in tank.
Other than that, why not just play with it? Try something wacky.
Couldn’t you reduce these by more leafing? It was my understanding that there was direct correlation between increased pyrazines and increased leaf coverage, no?
But if he is worried about it getting ripe at all (or what we would consider ripe), the pyrazines would probably go hand in hand with that, especially with the limited sun/cool temps he is experiencing.
I am worried about getting the flavors ripe, that’s the main concern.
I had though that I’d want a faster fermentation too. On everything else I go native/natural/colonized/whateverthe hellispoliticallycorrectfornotaddingyeast but thought I should pitch yeast on this. I was planning on keeping the Syrah and Cab separate during fermentation. Odds are they’ll come in 8 weeks apart anyway. The Syrah is actually good fruit, my other option is to put it in the Haut Tubee blend as a red, but thought playing with it as a Rose was at least as good an idea and figured that would give some options on blending with the Cab. I’m not expecting any flavor issues with the Syrah, just looking for options on a three year old site.
Malo’s are a problem for me. They go on their own in our cellar. New barrels, in tank, whatever, they just fire off and finish by mid January or sooner, doesn’t matter if I add starter or not. I figure I’d need to block that and I’ve never tried that before.
Most of my wood is fairly new, we rotate everything out before it’s fourth use and a fair amount goes out after the second use, I don’t have anything really old in the winery so I’ll do stainless.
Lysozyme. Add early, then at regular intervals if you want to prevent. Just check your malics at the beginning and throughout. If you see them moving, add again.
Or you can just let them go through ML. I’ve made small amounts of Pinot Rose before and let them go through. Of course it depends on what you’re aiming at for the finished wine, but I don’t think letting Rose go through ML is necessarily a bad thing.
SCM cab at 22 brix? Its gonna be acidic. Easiest way for you to do it, Paul, will be to barrel ferment it. Put them outside if they get warm. Wild is fun. Otherwise, GRE and L2056 have worked best for me. Biggest thing you need to watch out for is reductivity. They sure like to get reductive. If it’s a small lot, just run it through malic. It’ll save you a ton of headache. PS the Pinot vineyard looks good. It’s just getting its first color.
Daniel at Tempier correlates his ML use based on starting malics. Most years he does 50% or so, but in 2009 (which is a great year for the rose IMO), the starting malic was low enough that he did not do it. Also, not sure what other wines you do, but if you are picking at 20-22 brix my guess is the starting pH is going to be pretty unfriendly to ML. Lysozyme is helpful as well, and it can work in concert with good molecular SO2 levels to keep ML in check. That said, ML could soften some of the harder acid elements that might bring out more pyrazine character.
For my rose’ of old-vine Mourvedre I whole-cluster press at 22 brix or so, native yeast ferment in the low 50’s in S.S. tank, and allow ML to go through as I find the green-apple malic element does not work particularly well with the funky Mourvedre character. It also spares me the necessity of sterile filtration, which just makes my life easier.
Let’s accept that you are not going to make a Tempier competitor with very young Syrah that you are worried about already.
My advice is to do some fruit thinning now if you have variation on high yields (for your terroir).
Next, Syrah will give you lots of colour very quickly. I harvested mine at 11.5% last year, put it straight in the press and it took on colour very quickly. Mourvedre is even worse.
The variation is my main concern with the Syrah vineyard. I just know that a three year old vineyard can have clusters 2-4 week apart in their development. We’ll drop those that are behind this week. That will take me from about 2 tons/acre to probably 1.25 tons /acre. ‘High’ yields for me are 2 tons/acre.
I will admit though that to me serious rose is like saying serious stripper. I’m sure they exist, and some people like them, but I’m not looking for either personally. Fruity, crisp, refreshing and perfect on a hot summer afternoon, that’s the goal.
As luck would have it, I stumbled upon a good bargain for some premium Sangiovese grapes and have decided to make a couple barrels of Rose of Sangio.
I have no SS tanks, I am thinking of doing everything in barrel…primary ferm…secondary ferm…aging…all in used French oak barrels. Is this workable?
Also my first time at attempting this, so any feedback is much appreciated. I’m just wondering on how primary will work out in barrel? Should I fill the barrel or leave some headspace for the ferm bubbling? Seems if I filled it, it would bubble out of the bung?
How far are you hoping to see the ferm bung shoot across your winery? I can get one to 4 feet on a 5 gallon jug, so I bet on a barrel you could probably shoot the thing 20-30 feet easy in the first couple of days.
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