Looking at a room full of beautiful French oak barrels, you might think that the Cabernets they contain just stay tucked away until bottling, but nothing is further from the truth. In the gentle art of winemaking, barrel work is key to crafting exceptional wine.
During the ageing process wine evolves and improves in subtle ways. A subtle exchange of oxygen and oak in the barrel adds complexity and polish to the wine. Also during this time there is a settling and clarifying process where the suspended solids in the young wine slowly sink to the bottom of the barrel.
It is important to occasionally separate the heavy sediment or “lees” from the cleaner wine. This process is called “racking” and I often describe it as “decanting” the clean wine off the settled solids. Summer is a good time for racking wines from the previous vintage as enough time has passed to allow the heavier solids to fully settle out.
JP with racking "wand."
The way we accomplish this is in keeping with our philosophy of gentle handling of the wine. We use a racking wand – or stainless steel tube - with a sight glass on one end so we can see the wine as it is moving. We pressurize the barrel with inert nitrogen gas so that the wine is gently pushed into the racking tube, through the hoses, and into a tank which is blanketed with inert Argon gas for temperature control.
We start with the racking wand positioned high in the barrel where we know the clean wine is; then we slowly lower it deeper into the barrel watching the wine through the sight glass until we see a slight “puff” of lees. We then immediately raise the wand slightly having found the demarcation between the clean wine and the settled lees.
Once the gas has pushed out all of the wine, we de-pressurize the barrel and move on to the next one, repeating the process. The empty barrels are then cleaned thoroughly and prepared to receive the clean wine back to barrel again.
In addition to clarifying the wine via racking, we also take advantage of this wine movement to blend together the sub lots that we’ve determined to be the ideal components for creating a base blend. Our Affinity, a Bordeaux-style Cabernet blend, is a good example of this process. Grapes for Affinity are harvested in small lots which are kept separate during winemaking and then are evaluated several times during Winter and Spring. Trial blends are made up, tasted and evaluated until the final blend is agreed upon. Then the “real” blending begins in conjunction with the summer racking schedule.
Once back in barrel, the freshly racked, clarified and blended wine is allowed to continue the ageing process in the barrel, developing and gaining nuance until the moment just prior to bottling where it will be racked out of barrel for the last time.
Once the Summer racking and blending is complete, it’s time to start thinking about Fall and harvest!
Cheers,
Stephen