Wine process - Part II

We continue with the wine process and as we told you in our last post, with the FERMENTATION, one of the most important points during the elaboration process.

The grape juice needs to overcome two different fermentations, the alcoholic and the malolactic.

ALCOHOLIC FERMENTATION
The alcoholic fermentation is the process when the sugar turns into alcohol.
That is with are needed the yeasts, microorganism that we can find naturally in the grape skin (kind of white dust you can find out side the grape skin).

The oxigen is the responsable to start this fermentation, because of the yeasts need it in their growth period.
However, at the end of the fermentation the quantity of oxigen must be smaller to keep the ethyl alcohol and get the acetic acid. 

From the alcoholic fermentation, we obtain heat energy and we have to control the temperature because if it increase too much,(25-30 ºC) the yeasts could die and the fermentation will be stooped.

Another product from the alcoholic fermentation is the gas, carbon dioxide and it cause the bubbles and the boiling effect, and of course the characteristic aroma from the fermentation. There is a video from our tanks during this period, it is amazing! More than 30.000 litres... 

                       
This boiling effect makes the grape skins go to the top of the tank (solids) and create the "hat". This "hat" protect the grape juice from bacteria and another microorganism from the skin and also is from we get the tanins and the color, aromas and  another susbtances like Resveratrol located in the skin.

The prune - Working hard at the vineyards

In Bodegas Santalba the pruning and the pre-pruning are done to increase the quality of the grapes and also to make longer the vines life. .It will reduce the veg part of the plant so the growth and yields will be limited to get better results and  improve the wine quality.

 

Pruning at the vineyard



This is a very important point to obtain quality wines, because we can not forget that all the wine process start at the vineyards, so the hard work and care that we have now with the vines will be tralate into wine quality and atributes.


The grape quantity is not related with the green part or vegetable growth of the vines. If the vines have lots of fruits they will have a small size and will be really diffcult their maturation, so again, the quality will be affected.

The prune - In the traditional way with a modern scissor

 

In general, the vines can grow more than 30 meter high so from the prune we get the "sarmientos" and we will use them for BBQ as wood, they are great to cook Lamb chops (very tipycal from Rioja). Only the buds located at the end of the branches where the sap is, will be the ones that will improve, the others near the trunk will not sprout.



The prune objetive is to reduce the number of branches and the length to make the vine stronger, with a longer life and improving the quality of the fruits.

TASTING COURSE VI - BODEGAS SANTALBA

SENSE OF TOUCH

With the wine into the mouth you can have two different sensations:

 

Active, which is located in the tongue and pasive, located in the lips and cheeks.

The astringency (dry and rough sensation), the temperature that the alcohol couse into de mouth ot the spicy flavour are touch reactions when we are tasting wine.

The most important is the astringency because it cause a worse result tasting the wines.

SENSE OF EAR

This one is the less important but it can give us lot of information during the tasting, for example the sound when the wine goes into the glass confirm us some other sensations from other senses like the density.

After this, as we explain at the beginning of the course, the most important is to practice and train the senses with easy examples and start getting knoledges, you will see with time your progress.

DO YOU KNOW THE MEANING OF "ENVERO"??

In our vineyards in La Rioja-Spain, some time ago we could watch the "envero". It is a term used in viticulture referred to one of the most important stages in the grapes ripening. Basically it´s a change in the color; the red varieties change into a bluish color, and white ones turn yellow.

This change represents a transition to the end of the ripening, it takes place in the summer and can be considered the beginning of a countdown when we can start thinking about the harvest. That countdown  depends on grape varieties, climates and weather conditions. Grapes, as they grow on the vine, are undergoing morphological and physiological changes that allow them to accumulate substances such as sugars and acids, primary aromas and some phenolic compounds that are the responsible of the color, taste and structure of wines.

Not much time ago, winegrowers tasted grapes from the vines after "envero". Valuing the sweetness and the  acidity decreasing in grapes, they decided the best moment for harvest. Today, even without despising this technique, we can check acidity and sugar content in grape and we are able to decide more accurately, parcel by parcel, the begining for the harvest every year.

THE SOIL: ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTORS TO GET HIGH QUALITY WINES

When we talk about "terroir" we are referring to a group of terms involved in the winegrowing. One of them is the weather. Obviously rainfall conditions, daily hours of sunshine or average temperature in a particular area, are characteristics that set the future qualities of the grapes harvested. Another factor is, of course, the vines. If an area has lighting or thermal conditions, some varieties of vines are suitables than others to offer the best  quality wines. We can talk about other factors, on the other hand very important, as the human activity, called viticulture, but it´s not part of the "terroir". Viticulture is the group of actions that human do in the vineyard to improve the final results we´ll obtain naturally. Into the concept of "terroir", we briefly discuss one of the most forgotten, but on the other hand, one of the most important factor that set the most important parameters of the wine. This is the soil. Soil characteristics, give the wine the  aging potential. In our area of ​​winemaking (Gimileo - Rioja Alta), we have one of the most popular and sought soils worldwide to get high quality wines: the calcareous clay soil.

Soil sequence in Viña Hermosa vineyard at Bodegas SANTALBA

The profile of this soil type is very simple and consists of an initial layer of gravel with abundant clay matrix. No more than one or two meters deep, appear the weathered rock. Weathering is the effect of rock disintegration by the effect of erosion phenomena, in this case is water and which also generates a draining effect, very interesting to avoid waterlogging into the vineyard. Under this rock appears the bedrock, or intact rock. This layer, with hundreds of meters in depth, is the real key for this soil quality, because the roots of the vines do not stop here, they look for cracks in the rock and they advance drilling through the rock. As result we have slow-growing vines, with hard conditions that offer high quality grapes. We have always said that this soil type is very simple, but more complicated is to find it in union with adequate rainfall conditions, sufficient sunshine and an appropriate thermal gradient. But this is very interesting and we´ll talk about in following chapters.