The Daily Taste: Tuesday May 17th, 2022 - Fermenting wine in concrete?

Hello wine enthusiasts, welcome to The Daily Taste for Tuesday May 17th, 2022.
Winemakers, today have lots of options when it comes to selecting vessels they use for fermentation. Typically, white wines are fermented in stainless steel tanks where the temperature of the fermentation can be controlled with cooling jackets cooled with glycol. A lot of red wines are also fermented in stainless steel tanks before being moved to oak barrels for aging. The decision which vessel to use usually depends on the style of wine being made. For example, some grapes and juice that are used to make high end red wines can be fermented in a stainless-steel tank or can be pumped directly from the destemmer into an oak barrel for fermentation. Using stainless steal tanks to ferment wine is more economical and requires much less labor while fermenting in oak barrels is the opposite. Using oak barrels for fermentation is expensive as a new French Oak barrel can cost up to $3000 a piece. Its also much more labor intensive and requires a lot more space in the winery. The barrels containing the fermenting red wine have to be moved to special racks that allow the winemaking team to rotate them back and forth everyday. This ensures the oak is introduced evenly to the must and juice. The benefits to fermenting in oak barrels includes adding silkiness to the tannins and a rounder more lush mouthfeel.
Sometimes white wines like Chardonnay are also fermented in oak barrels when the winemaker desires oak influence or wants to age the wine on the lees. Aging white wine on the lees is called sur lees aging. The lees are all of the dead yeast cells that are a byproduct of fermentation that sink to the bottom of the barrel. The lees release sugars and proteins into the wine that combine with tannins to soften the mouthfeel. Sur lees aging also requires regular stirring of the barrels which may be the worst job in the cellar, especially if there are a lot of barrels to stir.
Fermentation is not limited to oak or stainless steel. Some winemakers are experimenting with the benefits of other fermenting vessels like concrete eggs. Here is a clip from an interview I did with V. Sattui winemaker, Jason Moravec who talks about the impact of fermenting wine in a concrete egg.
One of my favorite experiences working at V. Sattui was working with the Reisling we fermented in the concrete egg. I have uploaded some videos to the show website that I took of active fermentations of a red wine in a stainless-steel tank and of the Reisling in the concrete egg. Go to www.obsessedwithwine.net and click The Daily Taste Segments button at the top of the home page. Then click the link for this segment to see the videos.
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