I think the term ‘freshness’ as it pertains to stems is a bit ‘confusing’ indeed. There are many winemakers who disdain the use of stems for they feel it detracts from the purity of fruit a wine may have.
I do agree with this - which is why I DO everything 100% whole cluster. It is much easier to make fruit forward wines, IMHO, than it is to.make wines that have the ‘additional non-fruit elements’ that stems naturally bring to the table.
The biggest challenge with stems is that you’re not certain what you’ll ‘get’ in any given year, but that’s part of the ‘fun’, right?
I have absolutely no idea how to make wines or the process it takes so bare with my dumb question.
Is it possible to add stems little by little during the wine making process to get better results?
We all know that some consumers disdain even the smallest whiff of stems whereas others really dig it.
I don’t think that there is a ‘best’ way to make a wine - a winemaker has to just set a course and move forward with he or she is the best expression of those grapes from that vineyard or block for that vintage . . .
I phrased it incorrectly. Is it possible to add more stems later on in the wine making process to achieve winemaker’s idea of what he/she wants for that vintage?.or you can only add the grapes and stems one time and have to make the best of what is put in?
I recall Sylvain Pithiot telling some BBR clients about his ‘parlour game’ with visiting critics, whereby he would invite them to taste from both stemmed and destemmed barrels - but asking them to guess which was which. OK, this was pre-William Kelley😎, but he said there were very few who could consistently distinguish between the two. I have since attended very interesting workshops on stems vs destemming from Jasper Morris and Allen Meadows, where participants would be invited to make their calls. Never quite as brutally exposing as Sylvain’s approach:~]
No … but… I have heard of vignerons who destem, keep the stems and add a certain amount back into a fermentation for various reasons (a couple of interviews on “I’ll Drink to That” podcast). They would assess the early fermentation and add a bit. Given the logistics, this would only work if a wine maker has grapes arriving at different times (e.g., block A is harvested and destemmed on day 1, block b is harvested on day 4 and then these stems could theoretically be used in the block A fermentation bins). I’m in Oregon and haven’t heard of anyone doing this in our part of the world— it was an odd thing I heard on a podcast interview. Not the norm.
One thing not yet mentioned in this discussion that sort of blew my mind when I found out: wines fermented with 100% whole clusters convert sugars into lower alcohols, roughly 1% less alcohol in the finished wines versus a destemmed wine…those who are chemistry informed can feel free to chime in with why that is.
Certainly amidst the ongoing warmer-than-it-ever-was trends, this method would seem indispensible in an effort to make more balanced, lower octane wines.
I did many wine-tasting events under the title : To Stem or Not to Stem.
Cyrille Audoin produced many wines from Marsannays. According to Meadows, his Les Charmes aux pretres are always 100% stem ( or close to 100% ) where his other cuvees the stems inclusion varies. I matched Les Charmes aux pretes with his Clos du Roys in vintage 2008 and in vintage 2010, Les Charmes aux pretres with Les Favieres. We are not able to tell when they are at age 4 to age 6-7. The difference is more evident as they age…
What I prefer : 100% with stem as it is more complex as it aged.
Fourrier sometimes adds some stems back to the tank after destemming, but he doesn’t wait for the fermentation to begin first, they get added back straight away.
1% would be the upper end of range that I have witnessed. This said it is easy to have it convert to .75% lower alcohol if you are going 100% whole cluster.
I would regularly pick at brix levels that should render a 14% (ish) finished alcohol wine, however because of my affinity to whole cluster ferments my usual finished alcohols are in the 13-13.5% range. My goal for picking being driven by well lignified seeds, rather than stems.
At some point I heard Williams-Selyem did that. There does seem to be an era of their wines tended to show a lot of that dried sumac berry aroma, which is savory and punchy. Same aroma stems sitting in a compost bin for a few days get, so it rang true.
BW: It would depend on the stems, and on the clones, but particularly if the stem had coloration. If it was really green we de-stemmed basically everything. If it looked good, tasted good, had some spicy character, we would use maybe 25-33% whole cluster."
Thanks, Todd.
That’s what JP Guyon and Charles Lachaux had told me. They even had technical stats for how much sugar it takes with and without stems to make 1% alcohol.
Can you please describe WHY that is?
Again, I think that this is really important given the high ripeness levels which are increasingly the norm in Burgundy.
