Risks Pay Off For Chardonnay Mavericks

HIGHLIGHTS

- Winemakers like Greg La Follette create captivating Chardonnay by taking risks, such as engaging in indigenous yeast fermentation and "dirty winemaking."

- Chardonnay winemaker David Ramey's method is to settle the wine for a short time--overnight for anywhere from 8-12 hours or so--and to separate the heavy solids that will settle out quickly at the bottom of the tank from the fine ones that will remain suspended in the juice. The trick is not having too many or too few solids.

- Managing the sulfides--if a winemaker is willing to take the risks and is adept enough at handling the fermentations--can produce Chardonnay that is startling in its complexity and exoticism.

Though it inspires both rhapsodies of love and cries of angst, Chardonnay can be one of the most interesting wines to drink--and to make. Because Chardonnay doesn't often present a host of truly singular, notable or galvanizing flavors, though, it can be up to winemakers to coax flavor from the wine through its fermentation and elevage.

For a long time in California, the most common practices designed to add complexity were to put the Chardonnay through full malolactic fermentation and then age the wine in lots of new wood. "Buttery and oaky" became the catch phrase for that style of Chardonnay, which is now falling out of favor.

The response to this style was the "unwooded" Chardonnay. Often made with zero or partial malolactic fermentation, little-to-no new oak and lots of stainless steel tanks, these bright, racy Chardonnays were offered as the antidote to the buttery and the oaky. But the unoaked style of Chardonnay has perhaps more limitations than the oaked. Too often, these wines, while free of toasty, woody aromas, are also free of flavor in general, leading to insipid and uninspiring wines.

Having traveled the course of this narrative arc, then, we're left with the question: How does one make captivating, inspiring and thoroughly interesting Chardonnay? It does occur in California--just not very frequently. And where it's happening is at wineries where the winemakers are willing to take risks.

One of these winemakers is Greg La Follette. The winemaker for his own label, Tandem, and for DeLoach, La Follette is known in winemaking circles as a bit of a mad scientist. He is indeed a scientist, with a degree in chemistry. And if he is mad, there is at least method to it--though it is explained in rapid-fire bursts of chemistry that become almost impossible for an interviewer to follow. And though I might not understand all of the chemistry, there is no doubt that La Follette is making compelling Chardonnay at Tandem, particularly his 2003 San Giacomo Vineyard. Beyond its recognizably Chardonnay fruit, the wine is layered with remarkable aromas of flint, gunsmoke, mineral and what the French just call sauvage--the kind of intriguing aromas that make it hard to take one's nose out of the glass. La Follette achieves these things through his fermentation regimen, which does involve risks that many winemakers don't want to take.

Greg La Follette

Foremost among these practices is that of indigenous yeast fermentation. Yes, the use of native yeasts is a controversial topic. Those who are against it make many claims: that it's not "wild" yeasts that do the fermentation, that the risks are too high for "bad" yeasts to take over, that they can't sleep while this is going on. However, those who do natural fermentations believe that what it brings to the wines is indispensable--and many of these Chardonnays are the best California has to offer.

Vanessa Wong, winemaker at Peay vineyards, also practices indigenous fermentation. As an enologist at Franciscan Oakville Estate, making the Cuvée Sauvage, and as winemaker at Peter Michael, Wong was exposed to wild ferments early in her career.

"I noticed that the Cuvée Sauvage lots had a certain texture that wasn't quite the same as the regular lots of Chardonnay fermented with commercially selected yeast," Wong wrote in a recent Peay newsletter. "But it wasn't until I made wine at the veritable 'house of Chardonnay,' Peter Michael Winery, where every lot of Chardonnay was vinified separately--each as an indigenous lot and also one that was inoculated--that I was truly able to distinguish what the indigenous fermentation lent to the character of the wine. By having this comparison of the two winemaking techniques for every single grape lot from every vineyard for five vintages I was able to get a good feel for defining what sort of Chardonnay fruit was most fitting for this sort of winemaking. The lots that were fermented with indigenous yeast were better integrated texturally and possessed a certain seamlessness on the palate."

In some lots, however, Wong says the indigenous yeast ferments were less vibrant than their inoculated counterparts. In her experience, grapes with higher acidity tended to make the most complete and interesting wild-ferment wines. Likewise, the high-acid grapes from the ultra-cool Peay Sonoma Coast vineyards are perfect for the natural fermentations and it shows in the wine--which is lean and minerally, yet with intriguing notes of toast and lots of California fruit.

For La Follette, though, the indigenous yeast fermentation is just the foundation of the regimen. The rest is how he treats the fermentation. He practices what he terms "unsafe winemaking." This includes going into barrel "dirty," as winemakers call it--that is, with a certain percentage of grape solids suspended in the must. Solids are not lees, but actually the tiny particles of the skins. Most winemakers think that 2% is a maximum amount of solids (meaning that if you were to put the must into a centrifuge and spin it, 2% would be solid matter), but La Follette will sometimes leave up to 3% in the mix. But this shouldn't necessarily be attempted with just any grapes.

"You have to have the right vineyard with the right yeast component," La Follette says. The San Giacomo vineyard seems ideal for this. It is farmed for low yields of healthy fruit, but it's also a low-nutrient site, meaning that the grapes not only struggle in the vineyard, but they're not overburdened with their own nutrients, which allows them to struggle in the fermentation. The amount of solids also affects the rate of fermentation, and vintners who whole-cluster press their Chardonnay will have fewer solids than those who macerate their grapes before pressing. "Even if you have a lot, you can settle the solids out in a tank," La Follette says, "and you'll have an easier time controlling the rate and temperature of the fermentation. If you have a lot of solids, you are not practicing safe winemaking. With a wild ferment and a lot of solids, the wine will get very skanky."

David Ramey

David Ramey, another expert Chardonnay producer, uses native yeast fermentations and some solids--but not as many as La Follette. "Like most things," he says, "there's a golden mean, and the extreme in either direction"--too many solids or too few--"is not how I like to operate."

Ramey's method is to settle the wine for a short time--overnight for anywhere from 8-12 hours or so--and to separate the heavy solids that will settle out quickly at the bottom of the tank from the fine ones that will remain suspended in the juice. "I think of it as being good and bad solids. The heavy stuff I don't want. Maybe I use about 1.5% solids--I don't check anymore. When you have too low of solids you can get stuck fermentations, you can get acetic acid. On the other side, high solids ferment rapidly and hotly, and I think that defeats one of the advantages of native yeasts, which is the long slow fermentation they give you."

La Follette does use a lot of solids and he says his fermentations in barrel can become quite "skanky," as he calls it. And while they will go hot, fast and wild--they also take a long time to finish. The wine in question, the 2003 San Giacomo, didn't finish its primary fermentation until the June following harvest. It went into barrel with 3% solids and no sulphur dioxide. "This is really not safe," he says. "I'm seeing how far I can tickle the dragon's tail." His goal is to coax flavors and aromas that go beyond just fruit by managing sulfides that are the byproducts of fermentation.

"The classic winemaking question about whether a wine has sulfides when in a barrel is, 'Is it real, or is it Francois Freres?', he says. "Sulfides, at low levels, can mimic barrel characters. Roast coffee, matchstick, smoky characters and even more subtle play that causes synergistic elevation of things native to the grape that are not fruit-driven or are more exotic fruits (such as guava on the verge of going too soft) are often the result. But it's a dangerous game, played with the yeasts. There is much to be gained from a little risk."

La Follette explains that, "The solids increase the heat, which increase the yeast stress. As the yeasts are getting stressed there are many ways that they produce aromas from sulfur-containing amino acids. You have to starve the yeasts a little. If you add yeast food to the must, the yeasts will not eat these sulfur-containing amino acids, which is what I want to do. Basically, the yeasts are eating out of the garbage can."

There are many risks--terribly off aromas, stuck fermentations. "Sometimes you have to resuscitate a fermentation," he says. "Get it going again so it will finish. But another huge payoff of these techniques," La Follette says, "is that the solids will help protect the must against oxidation." They can also buffer the wine from extracting too many flavor compounds from the oak and even help integrate the compounds formed during malolactic. La Follette's San Giacomo vineyard Chardonnay actually completed malolactic fermentation before it finished its primary fermentation. "This is a risk for volatile acidity," La Follette remarks, "but the yeasts can metabolize the diacetyl, which is the butter component, so you can have a smoother, softer wine without those buttery flavors."

These techniques are clearly not for everybody. When asked about it, another winemaker had this to say: "Stressed yeast byproducts are mostly H2S (rotten eggs). H2S production during the primary fermentation should be avoided. Having H2S produced during the primary fermentation results in a myriad of different HS-containing products over time, many of which have undesirable aromas (onion skin, inner tube, etc.). Going dirty means high solids, i.e. at or above 2%, which is too much of a good thing. While juice fining produces stripped juice and less interesting wine, high-solids wines can be funky and obscure the expression of the terroir."

There is no question, however, that managing the sulfides--if a winemaker is willing to take the risks and is adept enough at handling the fermentations--can produce Chardonnay that is not run-of-the-mill and, at best, is startling in its complexity and exoticism.

(Jordan Mackay lives in San Francisco, where he is wine and spirits editor for the metropolitan magazine 7x7. He is a contributing writer to Wine & Spirits, and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. Contact him at edit@winesandvines.com.)