hier ein pdf file einer untersuchung der Abteilung Weinbau und Oenologie des Dienstleistungszentrum Ländlicher Raum (DLR) Rheinpfalz .

sigi hiss

Angehängte Dateien: reinigung20korkholz.pdf (237 kb)

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ein höchst interessanter artikel der im jahre 2006 erschienen ist. hier als pdf file.

sigi hiss

Angehängte Dateien: spiegelrasterfahndung.pdf (791 kb)

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eine pdf datei über einen bericht der im "badischen winzer" erschienen ist. er vergleicht die ernte in 1874 und 2004 am blankenhornsberg. höchst interessant.

viel spass    sigi hiss

Angehängte Dateien: wbitraubenlese0blankenhornsberg18742004.pdf (253 kb)

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anbei ein artiklel von julia harding MW & rechte Hand von jancis robinson MW.

www.jancisrobinson.com

Angehängte Dateien: corkumwelt.pdf (8 kb)

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HIGHLIGHTS
 

---

 
• With the widespread use of screwcaps, some technical issues have emerged surrounding post-bottling sulfur chemistry, known as "reduction" in the trade.
   
• More than 2% of wines closed with tin-Saran screwtops may show mercaptan odors, while Saranex screwtops are not implicated.
   
• Screwcap-sealed wines affected by mercaptans should be a major concern for winemakers because the wine is emphatically not reaching the consumer "the way the winemaker intended."

The last decade has seen a revolution in the dull-sounding but vitally important field of wine bottle closures. Ten years ago, cork was still pretty much the universal closure, although the murmurs of dissatisfaction about its poor performance, with unacceptably high taint rates, were getting louder. The most progressive winemakers were beginning to try out alternatives, and back in 1997, most people were backing plastic corks as the taint-free alternative to succeed cork.

Screwcaps weren't yet on the radar: they'd been trialed in Australia in the 1970s and had been abandoned because of poor consumer acceptance. It wasn't until 1999 that Orlando's Phil Laffer reintroduced them for a high-end Riesling in Australia, offering consumers a choice between the same wine in screwcap and cork: The former sold out long before the latter. The following year, a group of 14 vignerons from the Clare Valley banded together and released their Rieslings under screwcap. This prompted a mass migration to this closure in both Australia and, even more strongly, in New Zealand. It became clear that in some markets, notably Australia, New Zealand and the UK, there was little consumer opposition to this novel way of sealing wine bottles.

Now cork's major opponent was no longer plastic corks, but screwcaps. The battle lines were drawn between those who still championed cork, and those who insisted that all wines should be sealed with screwcap. Screwcaps had established themselves as the key alternative to cork philosophically, if not yet in volume terms--plastic corks currently still sell significantly more worldwide than screwcap, but they lack the same sort of advocacy that screwcaps enjoy.

A Matter of Balance

But with the widespread use of screwcap, some technical issues have emerged, surrounding post-bottling sulfur chemistry, known more commonly as "reduction" in the trade. It's hard to discuss these dispassionately, because such is the volume of the war of words between advocates of screwcap and cork that these discussions rapidly get fanned into flames. Add to this that the subject matter itself is horridly technical, and the fact that we don't have all the data we'd like, and there's a need for calm, balanced treatment of these issues, which is what I'm attempting with this article.

The issue under discussion, screwcap reduction, first came to light in the closures study by the Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI), which commenced in 1999. "It can be argued that closing the bottle remains one of the greatest technical issues facing the wine industry," suggested lead authors Peter Godden and Leigh Francis in the report's introduction. "The winemaker can control many aspects of wine production to create a wine suitable for the marketplace, and yet there can be an unpredictable incidence of problems once the wine is bottled, due in large part to the properties of the closures used."

The same wine, a respectable Clare Valley Sémillon, was bottled using 14 different closures, and followed with regular chemical and sensory analysis. The results after 21 months in bottle were published in 2001, and showed that while the screwcapped wine kept fruit freshness and retained free sulfur dioxide the best of all the closures, it also suffered from a sensory defect described by the expert tasters as "rubber/struck flint." This was a surprising finding, and caused a great deal of head scratching and anxiety within the trade.

Shortly after publication, Godden had this to say about it: "We are very confident that the 'rubber-like' character is not a taint, but is an unwelcome modification due to chemically reduced sulfur, as a result of lack of oxygen. However, it is certainly an important character in screwcap-closed wine, and we have highlighted its existence to avoid mass-bottling of wine under extremely anaerobic conditions which might then develop a similar character somewhere in the future." This reduction was still evident five years post-bottling with the Sémillon used in the trial.

What Causes Reduction?

The AWRI results raised a number of questions. What is the explanation for this reduction? Was this problem specific to this wine? How much of an issue is it with real-world wines being drunk by consumers? And what does it suggest about the role of the closure in wine development?

The prevailing view at the time was that the ideal closure would be one that seals hermetically, allowing no oxygen transmission at all. But a further trial from AWRI seemed to indicate that an anaerobic closure is entirely unsuitable for wine. This trial involved comparing a Chardonnay wine sealed three different ways: with cork, with screwcap and then hermetically sealed in a glass ampule. The Chardonnay wine underwent some development in all three cases, but with the screwcap there was a bit of reduction and with the ampule a lot. Another study, this time looking at a Penfolds Bin 389 red wine sealed with synthetic cork, natural cork and screwcap, also encountered some reduction in the screwcapped bottle.

We need to pause here for a technical aside. The screwcap itself is just a means for holding a liner in apposition to the rim of the bottle. It is the properties of this liner that determine the oxygen transmission levels of the closure. Currently, two different liners are available for wine. The first, and most widely used, is called "tin/Saran." This consists of a Saran backing, with a metal layer (usually tin, but it can be aluminium) that is covered by a thin layer of PVDC, which is in contact with the wine. This metal liner allows very little oxygen transmission at all. It is the liner used almost universally in Australia and New Zealand. In the U.S. and Europe, it is still the most widely used liner, but you are also likely to encounter the alternative liner, known as "Saranex only," and consists solely of Saranex. This allows more oxygen transmission, and is not implicated in the screwcap reduction story.

Back to the issue of reduction. What is happening here? It all has to do with the issue of sulfur-compound chemistry. During fermentation, yeasts can produce sulfides. This occurs when they are stressed: for example, when there is low must nitrogen they may turn to the sulfur-containing amino acid cysteine as a nitrogen source, resulting in sulfide production. They can also produce sulfides when they are forced to operate anaerobically or are temperature-stressed, which is why good winemaking practice is to monitor juice nitrogen status, give plenty of aeration to fermenting musts and avoid dramatic shifts in temperature. In the worst case scenarios, reduced wines smell of hydrogen sulfide, which gives them an eggy, dirty-drains aroma. Hydrogen sulfide can be oxidized to mercaptans (also known as thiols, and smelling of burned-match, rubber, earth or cooked cabbage), which can be oxidized to dislufides (described variously as having aromas that are vegetal, cabbagey, garlic-like, rubbery or onion-like).

Mercaptans can also arise by other means. The presence of these sulfur compounds in wine is known as "reduction," but this term is actually a bit of a misnomer, and can lead winemakers into trouble when they respond to their presence by giving the wine oxygen: This is because it is possible for part-oxidized wines to have these aromas, and giving even more oxygen to them clearly wouldn't be a good idea.

There's another complication here. Some of the sulfur-containing compounds we're talking about can be bad in some contexts and good in others. The best example of this is in Sauvignon Blanc, where a range of thiols have been implicated as being positive contributors to the aroma of wines made from this variety. In the right context, a little bit of thiol can be positive--a complexing factor.

Redox Potential

So why is reduction a problem that's associated with screwcap use? It's to do with a concept known as redox potential. This is a measure of how oxidative or reductive a system, such as a wine in barrel or bottle is, and it is measured in millivolts (mV)--the higher the reading, the less reductive. Typically, an aerated red wine will have a redox potential of 400--450 mV, whereas storage in the absence of air for some time will reduce this to 200--250 mV. If levels get as low as 150 mV, then there is a danger that reduction problems can occur.

Exposure to oxygen through winemaking practices such as racking, topping up barrels and filtering, increases the level of dissolved oxygen in the wine and increases the redox potential, which will then return to 200--300 mV.

In white wines, this redox level will change much more rapidly than in red wines, because red wines have a higher concentration of phenolic compounds such as tannins that are able to interact with oxygen, and act as buffers. Another variable here is the level of free sulfur dioxide in the wine, which will act protectively by reacting with the products of oxidation.

Sauvignon Republic's international Sauvignon Blancs all are packaged with screwcaps.

Yeast lees also scavenge oxygen and protect the wine in a similar fashion, helping to lower the redox potential and create a more reductive environment. In modern winemaking, reductive conditions are encouraged: The protection of wines from oxygen by the use of stainless steel tanks and inert gases helps to preserve fresh fruit characters. These reductive conditions--those in which oxygen is more or less excluded--can also favor the development of smelly forms of sulfur compounds.

Post-bottling, the redox state of the wine will be influenced by a number of factors, including the state of the wine at bottling, the free sulfur dioxide levels, the oxygen pick-up during the bottling procedure, headspace extent and composition (air or inert gas), and the oxygen transmission by the closure. As we've seen, reduction seems to be a problem in these sorts of analytical studies involving metal-lined screwcaps, and the obvious explanation is that the low redox environment of the screwcap-sealed wine is causing some unwanted sulfur chemistry to occur, with sulfur compounds shifting from a less smelly (and thus unnoticed) form to a more smelly (and thus noticeable), more reduced form. This is assuming the wine is bottled clean, of course.

A Minor Technical Problem?

What are we to make of screwcap reduction? Is it a real world problem on a par with cork taint, or is it just a minor technical problem--a teething issue that just needs a bit of tweaking? The latter position has been the one consistently adopted by proponents of screwcaps.

Since the publication of the first AWRI report in 2001, there has been just a trickle of data on the subject of screwcap reduction. But little by little, a clearer picture has emerged, and the current weight of evidence suggests that the issue of mercaptans in screwcapped wines is problematic enough that some caution should be exercised in their use. Winemaker (Stonecroft, Hawkes Bay) and Ph.D. chemist Alan Limmer has been a bit of a thorn in the side of the screwcap lobby. He has written widely on the subject, bringing his knowledge of wine chemistry to bear. In particular, Limmer has pointed out that screwcap reduction is not a problem that can be completely eliminated by better winemaking, as many have claimed.

"In essence we are talking about thiol accumulation, post-bottling, from complex sulfides that do not respond to pre-bottling copper treatment," Limmer claims, in response to the assertion that fining with copper removes reduction defects. "This reaction occurs to all wines containing the appropriate precursors, irrespective of closure type. But the varying levels of oxygen ingress between closures leads to significantly different outcomes from a sensory point of view."

Limmer's explanation for screwcap reduction is that sulfides present in the wine at bottling necessitate a very small level of oxygen ingress through the closure, otherwise they can become reduced to thiols. Because sulfides are less smelly, it is possible for a wine that is clean at bottling to taste reduced after bottling if the closure doesn't permit enough oxygen ingress. So the use of a closure, such as cork, which does allow a little oxygen ingress (but not too much) is a necessary concession to the vagaries of sulfur chemistry.

"It's not the winemaker's fault these compounds exist in the wine at bottling."
--Alan Limmer, Ph.D.

Of course, we'd rather not have the sulfides in the wine at all, which would then avoid problems with reduction to mercaptans at a later stage. But, as Limmer points out: "Controlling ferments to not produce the complex sulfides is beyond our means currently. This sulfide behavior of the ferment is more controlled by the yeast genetics than the winemaker," he explains.

"It is not the winemaker's fault these compounds exist in the wine at bottling. We can minimize it to some extent by providing optimum nutrient conditions for the ferment, and employing some specific winemaking regimes. But, the research tells us this only has a slight impact on the complex sulfide pattern produced by the yeast." Limmer reinforces his point: "The patterns are quite specific to each yeast type, almost irrespective of nutrient conditions. Every wine contains these complex sulfides."

Keep it Clean

But others think that care taken during winemaking, and particular at bottling, can reduce the risk of any reduction significantly. Wise counsel would be that winemakers intending to use tin-lined screwcaps should ensure that they are in control of bottling parameters. It is important to get the wine clean before bottling, without any trace of mercaptan or disulfide. A healthy ferment should be the first priority.

When it comes to bottling, free sulfur dioxide levels that are a little lower than those used with other closures are advisable, as is a knowledge of the variation in oxygen pick-up on the bottling line used. It should be emphasized that allowing more oxygen pick-up or leaving a larger headspace of air does not counter post-bottling reduction, but rather results in oxidation.

Copper fining can help in some circumstances: This certainly gets rid of mercaptans, but it doesn't eliminate disulfides which, as we have seen, can revert in a low redox environment to mercaptans. Besides, copper fining will also remove the desirable sulfides which are important for varietal character in Sauvignon Blanc and other grapes.

Do Consumers Notice?

The extent of screwcap reduction is currently unclear. The only large survey to look for it, the faults clinic of the UK-based International Wine Challenge (IWC), reported that 2.2% of screwcapped wines suffered from mercaptan problems in 2006, and in 2007 provisional results were slightly up, at 2.7%. This sounds alarming, but it should be borne in mind that cork taint irredeemably ruins bottles it affects, while very few consumers will have a problem with low-level mercaptans in their wines.

I doubt that most of the wine trade would spot this as a problem in all but the most extreme cases, so it is unfair to equate it with the very well recognized problem of cork taint. Having said this, though, screwcap-sealed wines affected by mercaptans should be a major concern for winemakers, because the closure is modifying the flavor of the wine, which is emphatically not reaching the consumer "the way the winemaker intended."

It would be dangerously complacent for the industry to take the view that if the consumer doesn't notice it, then it doesn't matter. How do you spot low-level mercaptans? "They impact from an organoleptic perspective towards the end of the palate," Limmer says, "imparting a 'mineral' or bitter/hard/astringent aspect. This has the appearance of shortening or closing up the palate, so the wine does not display a fine, fresh, long finish, but ends abruptly, and somewhat harshly."

The picture emerging is a complex one, but a simplified "screwcaps taint wine" message would be dangerous if it caused producers to back away from adopting alternative closure solutions, which would then have the secondary effect of removing any incentive from the cork industry to put its house in order and do all it can to reduce taint levels. However, complications like this reduction issue should put pressure on winemakers to be more curious about the closures they are using, and pay more attention to the potential loss of quality that can occur during the bottling process.

(London-based writer Jamie Goode is the publisher of wineanorak.com and specializes in wine science issues. His first book was published in 2005 by Mitchell Beazley. To comment on this article, e-mail edit@winesandvines.com.)

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unten die bewertungen von jancis robinson ( www.jancisrobinson.com)  10 jahre danach - bdx 1997.

Angehängte Dateien: 1997jancisrobinson.pdf (8 kb)

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dieser artikel wurde uns freundlicherweise von andreas märz / chefredakteur der weinzeitschrift merum, zu verfügung gestellt. merum ist eine aussergewöhnliche zeitschrift - sehr empfehlenswert! www.merum.info

in der ausgabe 02/07 ist mir ein artikel über eine traubenwaschanlage aufgefallen. sehr interessant.

sigi hiss

Angehängte Dateien: traubenwaschanlagemerum.pdf (85 kb)

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der bericht von dr. limmer als pdf.

Angehängte Dateien: limmer-reduction.pdf (375 kb)

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Responding to recent news pieces on screwcap taint

Jamie Goode, 19th January 2007 

The last few days have seen a number of reports in the national press about wine ‘faults’ caused by screwcaps, not only in the UK (Times, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, BBC News Site), but also in New Zealand and Australia.

I feel strongly that there is a need to address these reports because, in my opinion, they represent the science of closures badly, are filled with inaccuracies and misunderstandings, and do not serve the wine industry well: they have the potential for misleading consumers about an important issue.

The reports are centred on the results from the faults clinic at the International Wine Challenge. It is puzzling that this story should suddenly be deemed ‘news’: the results were actually released last September (see here), and were given some press coverage then.

My concern is that while the issue of screwcap reduction is an important one that needs to be addressed by the industry, the reality is rather different (and rather more complex) than the one portrayed by these news reports.

Significantly, the pieces fail to recognize that screwcaps with liners allowing different oxygen transmission rates exist, and that winemakers can work with their wines to bring them to a point at bottling where reduction is much less likely, even if they use the tin-lined screwcaps that are currently the most popular sort and which allow very little oxygen transmission. Also, when reduction does occur, it is not the same as cork taint, which irredeemably ruins a wine, but is rather a more subtle effect that almost all consumers would fail to spot.

I’ll address the specific points raised in two of the news pieces below.

“In contrast to traditional corks, the caps stop the wines breathing, leaving them at risk of the chemical process of sulphidisation.” Daily Mail

The term ‘sulphidisation’ is meaningless here. And the term ‘breathing’ is misleading: the normal level of oxygen transmission by a cork is tiny, albeit significant. ‘Breathing’ suggests that air can diffuse/permeate freely through the cork: this would result in oxidation

“When the top is taken off, wine lovers are confronted with the reek of sulphur—likened to burning rubber or rotten eggs—rather than an attractive bouquet.” Daily Mail

The problem with screwcap reduction, when it occurs, is the presence of disulfides and thiols (this is another name for mercaptans). Typical descriptors for these are ‘burnt match’, ‘struck flint’, ‘rubber’ – not rotten eggs (see the table below). The latter is a descriptor for hydrogen sulphide. Hydrogen sulphide is caused by reduction: a lack of oxygen in fermentation, or an absence of other nitrogen sources means that yeasts use the amino acid cysteine as a nitrogen source, producing hydrogen sulphide. Hydrogen sulphide is then reduced to disulfides, which in turn can be reduced to mercaptans. In the reduced environment of a wine sealed by screwcap you’d be unlikely to see eggy hydrogen sulphide, unless the winemaker was negligent to bottle an already reduced wine this way.

“Many producers switched to screw caps about five years ago because of increasing concerns over cork. It can be affected by a mould - trichloroanisol - leaving as many as 4.4 per cent of wine bottles with an unpleasant smell and taste.” Daily Mail

2,4,6-trichloroanisole is not a mould. It’s a compound produced by microbes that live in the lenticels of cork bark.

“The problem with the screw caps was identified at the annual International Wine Challenge (IWC) event at which tens of thousands of wines from all over the world are examined. A test of 9,000 bottles found 2.2 per cent suffered from sulphidisation and other problems linked to the wine not being able to absorb oxygen, or ‘breathe’.” Daily Mail

“Tests last autumn on 9,000 screwcap wines by the International Wine Challenge found that 2.2 per cent of bottles were affected by sulphidisation because the contents were not allowed to breathe.” The Times

No, there were 10 000 bottles opened overall, and of these, 2.2% of those sealed with screwcaps (a much smaller number) were found to have sulfide issues. This was sensory analysis only. No bottles were subjected to chemical testing. The dreaded ‘sulphidisation’ term was not used anywhere.

‘In a number of cases the IWC chairmen validated a link between screw cap use and a unfavourable vegetal/rubber flavoured compound—presumed to be a complexed sulfide’, reported Sam Harrop, who headed up the IWC faults clinic, when I quizzed him on this. ‘At first glance a percentage of 4.9% of total faults may not seem high, but when examined in the context of total screw cap figures, a more worrying rate of 2.2% [of all screwcapped wines] emerges. In the context of the 2006 IWC cork taint figure of 2.8% [of all natural cork-sealed wines], this fault type is significant and should be given more attention by wineries using screwcap.’ However, Harrop was keen to emphasize that he wasn’t equating the two, as some of the newspaper reports did: ‘While the IWC figures for screwcaps are a concern, there is no question in my mind that the continued incidence of cork taint is still a more serious issue.’

“When naturally occurring sulphides degrade in wine, they produce the compound thiol, which gives sulphur its smell.” Daily Mail

Wrong. Sulphur smells of sulphur. Thiols smell quite different (see table below).

“Wine expert Martin Isark said consumers find it much easier to identify the sulphidisation caused by screw caps than problems with cork. Consequently, they are more likely to return these bottles to stores. ‘The everyday wine shopper would have no problem identifying a wine smelling like a stink bomb,’ he said.” Daily Mail

“They thought that the problem of corked wine had been solved by introducing the screwtop. But now red wine producers are grappling with an even worse issue: the whiff of rotten eggs.” The Times

“Leading wine stores and supermarkets have been told to expect returns from unhappy customers.” The Times

No. This is wrong, in my opinion. He’s confusing hydrogen sulfide with the other sulfur compounds. I’ve tasted a number of wines with what I suspect to be screwcap reduction, and it’s not as noticeable as cork taint. I doubt any consumers will spot it unless they are coached. Certainly, the 2.2% of screwcapped wines picked out at the IWC weren’t suffering from eggy/drainage hydrogen sulphide smells.  

“Screw caps have tight-fitting seals which prevent the air from getting in. Some wineries are working on designs with more room around the head of the bottle to allow air in.” Daily Mail

“Screwcaps have tight-fitting seals which prevent air from getting in. Some wineries are working on designs with more room around the head of the bottle to allow air in.” The Times

Both quite similar sentences, which makes me think that the journalists were working from a press release sent in, or reworked the same original article. Who was the author? Anyway, it’s wrong again. The author fails to distinguish that there are different sorts of screwcap liner. Those with a tin layer in the liner (the majority) allow very little, but some, gas transmission. Those with a saranex-only (white-looking) liner allow a good deal more. Screwcap manufacturers are looking at engineering liners with intermediate gas transmission, but no one would think of allowing ‘more room around the head of the bottle’ because this would cause the wine to oxidize fast!

 TABLE 1 Some of the volatile sulfur compounds in wine

quelle: http://www.wineanorak.com/screwcap_defence.htm

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Tim Patterson

Fruit and oak have their place in great wine, but the top prize among wine attributes probably goes to minerality—the expression of rocks and soil in the aromas and flavors that end up in the glass. But for all its desirability and status, minerality is only vaguely defined and not well understood. In fact, the one thing we do know is that it has very little to do with minerals.

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BELLEVILLE-SUR-SAONE, France: In the midst of some of France's most celebrated vineyards, a row of giant machines is busy at work distilling some of this year's vintage in a high-tech process winemakers hope will help them stay afloat.

The result is a kind of reverse alchemy: quality wine turned into near-pure alcohol for use in disinfectants, cleaning products or gasoline additives. The steaming grape juice that's left is pumped into an enormous open-air vat — something like an oversized Jacuzzi — sucked up by cistern trucks and hauled back to the vineyards, where it will be used to fertilize next year's vintage.

Chronic overproduction, dipping domestic consumption and fierce overseas competition have converged to create a European wine crisis of unprecedented scale. With lakes of unsold wine threatening to undermine prices, the European Union has resorted to paying vintners to destroy some of their stock each year, distilling billions of bottles of perfectly drinkable wine into pure alcohol.

Skeptics say the measure, which cost EU taxpayers €150 million (US$190 million) last year alone, is merely a quick fix that does not get at the root of the problem — which is that Europe simply produces too much wine for too few consumers. A contested new EU plan aims to fix at least the production side by downsizing Europe's wine industry. The proposal would shift away from distillation in favor of ripping out huge swaths of vineyards. Some 40,000 hectares (100,000 acres) of vines, more than 10 percent of Europe's total, could be grubbed up over the next five years. Across Spain, France and Italy, Europe's vintners are putting up a united front against the proposal, which they see as draconian and defeatist.

But as more wine is distilled each year — reaching 2.8 billion liters (740 million gallons) in 2005 — even the most virulent opponents of the EU plan acknowledge that something has got to give. "For years, we shrugged the crisis off as a temporary downturn," said Gilles de Longevialle, who heads a group representing the vintners of Beaujolais. "But we're beginning to see it's here to stay." Until last year, so-called "crisis distillations" were considered only for the cheapest table wines. Now, however, quality wines are also boiled away in large quantities. So for the second autumn in a row, Philippe Terrollion, director of the Beaujolais Distillery in central-eastern France, sent out a fleet of trucks to pick up an expected 8.5 million liters (2.3 million gallons) of unbottled, unsold Beaujoulais wine. That's enough to fill about 125 swimming pools."For vintners, the decision to distill is a hard one," said Terrollion. "But in the end, they have to do it to get rid of the old stuff to make room for the new."

With funds from the EU and local authorities, Terrollion paid vintners the EU-fixed price of about 35 euro cents per liter (US$1.66 per gallon) — about one-fifth of the average price paid by wholesalers for bottled wine sold for consumption. The problem is, the wine just doesn't sell. European vintages are languishing on the shelf as consumers around the world reach for bottles from New World producers in Chile, the U.S., South Africa, and elsewhere. New World imports now account for 70 percent of wine sales in Ireland, for example, and Australia recently overtook France as Britain's main supplier.

European vintners were too slow to respond to the so-called "New World threat," said Louis-Fabrice Latour, who heads the prestigious Louis Latour label in the Burgundy region, just north of Beaujolais. "In France, we used to think we were the biggest and the best and no one could touch us," said Latour, and the feelings of superiority blinded vintners to the threat from by foreign rivals. But overseas competition is not the only reason behind Europe's wine troubles. Changing continental drinking habits are also a major culprit. Wine consumption is down throughout the continent, with wine-drinking champions Italy and France leading the decline.

In 1980, the French and the Italians each consumed about 5 billion liters (1.3 billion gallons) of wine a year, according to the European Commission. By 2005, yearly consumption in both countries had dipped to roughly 3 billion liters (800 million gallons).

In the town of Beaune, in Burgundy, Jean-Pierre Charriot sat in a bar nursing an after-work drink. But instead of a chilled Chardonnay or robust Pinot Noir, both regional specialties, he was having a beer. Like many locals, Charriot makes his living in the wine industry. A tour guide, he takes foreign tourists on visits to local vineyards and wineries. Although wine pays the bills, Charriot said he doesn't drink much of the stuff.

"I drink beer pretty much every day, but wine is for special occasions," he said, adding that wine's high alcohol content makes it a tricky choice in today's drunk-driving-conscious France. "With wine, you can't drive home after a couple of drinks after work."

Many French vintners blame tougher laws aimed at curbing drinking and driving for the country's precipitous decline in wine consumption. In 1960, the average Frenchman drank 3.1 bottles of wine per week. Today, the average intake is 1.4 bottles per week and falling, according to Michel Baldassini, who heads the main Burgundy wine growers' association.

Once a French dietary staple as fundamental as bread or cheese, wine is increasingly regarded, and treated, as a luxury product, Baldassini said. "The French are drinking less but better."

The change is hurting middle-market regions like Beaujolais while favoring vineyards in places like Champagne, Bordeaux and Burgundy — the prestigious regions on which Europe is betting its winemaking future. The EU's wine overhaul still needs approval from member governments and the European Parliament. Brussels officials hope to have the new rules in place for the 2008 growing season. The winemakers warn against tearing out vineyards, saying the measure will effectively tie their hands and prevent them from adapting to a changing world wine market. They point to India and China — where an emerging middle class is beginning to acquire taste for wine.

"When the Chinese really get into wine, demand for our product is going to explode to the point where if we cut back today, we might not be able to fill it," the Beaujolais association's de Longevialle said. Still, with the continent's distilleries working overtime, nearly everyone admits the status quo is not viable. "It's clear we can't go on like this," said distillery director Terrollion. "But we can't just snuff out winemaking either — especially in a region like ours, where wine runs in our veins."

quelle: www.winebusiness.com

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Berkeley, Calif.—Fruit and oak have their place in great wine, but the top prize among wine attributes probably goes to minerality—the expression of rocks and soil in the aromas and flavors that end up in the glass. But for all its desirability and status, minerality is only vaguely defined and not well understood. In fact, the one thing we do know is that it has very little to do with minerals.

One would expect that an attribute this celebrated would be well documented, but one would be wrong. In fact, the famous Wine Aroma Wheel includes no trace of "mineral" quality. According to Dr. Ann Noble, creator and keeper of the wheel, "Minerality is a concept which could never be consistently defined in words or physical standards. If someone could come up with a stone or metallic solution that had an aroma that could be used to define minerality, it could be on the wheel. But the criterion for being on the wheel is that it is objective, analytical and nonsubjective, nonevaluative, nonhedonic."

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die bayerische landesanstalt für weinbau in würzburg-veitshöchheim startete in 2003 einen versuch mit kunststoff-korken. alle damals verfügbaren arten von kunststoffkorken wurden mit in den versuch einbezogen. ebenfalls waren 2 granulatkorken und ein schrauber dabei.

da der versuch mit bocksbeutelflaschen gemacht wurde, kann man die ergebnisse deshalb nicht uneingeschränkt auf andere flaschenformen übertragen.

abgefüllt wurden im august 2003 je ca. 150 flaschen einer 2002 marktheidenfelder silvaner spätlese mittels unterdruckfüller. weintemperatur war 17°C - füllniveau auf mm 58 tiefe eingestellt

2 jährige lagerdauer bei 13-14 °C

ermittlet wurden nach 6 / 12 / 24 monaten:

die auszugskraft der korken: tendenziell ging die mittlere auszugskraft nach 12 & 24 monaten leicht zurück. einzelne flaschen wiesen sehr hohe auszugskräfte auf. eine gewisse streung der daten war auch festzustellen.

gehalt an freier & gesamter schwefliger säure: hier sollte man wissen, dass klare zusammenhänge zwischen dem verlust an schwefliger säure & ascorbinsäure, einhergeht mit dem verlust an fruchtigen aromen im wein.

2 wochen nach der abfüllung wiesen die weine einen mittelwert freier schwefliger säure von 46 mg/l und an gesamter von 122 mg/l. aufgrund verschieden starker gasdichtigkeit ging der gehalt an schwefliger säure zurück. die verluste reichten bei der freien von ca. 5 bis zu 22 mg/l und bei der gesamten von ca. 13 bis zu ca. 37 mg/l. eine deutliche streung also.

gehalt an kohlendioxid: die im wein gelöste kohlensäure ist ein sehr wichtiges merkmal in bezug auf die frische des weines.

hier ist das bild deutlich einheitlicher, die schwankungen innerhalb der prüfreihe sind hier niedriger. der ausgangswert war 1,35 g/l. nach 2 jahren lag der mittelwert bei ca. 1,2 g/l. auch hier waren wieder innerhalb eines fabrikates deutlichere schwankunge zu sehen.

sensorische veränderungen: verkostet wurde nach 6 - 12 - 24 monaten. allgemein kann man sagen, dass grössere unterschiede (zwischen den verschiedenen fabrikaten)  erst nach 2 jahren deutlicher zu sehen waren. ein verschluss war nach 12 monaten stark negativ aufgefallen - dieser ist inzwischen vom markt. die varianten mit den geringsten so2 verlusten lagen an der spitze der sensorischen prüfung. die 2 korkgranulat-verschlüsse wiesen besonders häufig die merkmale korkton oder muffton auf.

fazit: die qualität der kunststoffkorken hat sich verbessert. eine empfehlung über 2 jahre hinaus, kann laut der landesanstalt nicht gegeben werden. bis zu 2 jahre hielten einige fabrikate mit dem schrauber mit.

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hier ein artikel der fundierte aspekte über den korkton beinhaltet.

nochmal möchte ich die seite http://www.verschlusssache-wein.de empfehlen, die sich objektiv mit dem thema befasst & ALLE seiten beleuchtet.

http://dlr-rheinpfalz.rlp.de/Internet/dienststellen/neustadt/web_dienst.nsf/1c07e96abfed33bec1256a48004908a3/d4e2a60ee6feef24c1256bfb0033f28d/$FILE/Sensorik_Korkton.pdf

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bitte die pdf datei öffnen.

Angehängte Dateien: vergleichnoverfahren.pdf (78 kb)

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Stein und Wein -
welchen Einfluß hat der Boden auf den Weincharakter?

von Dr. Dietmar Rupp
Staatliche Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Wein- und Obstbau Weinsberg

Im Frühjahr des Jahres 1911 rückte die französischen Armee in zahlreiche Weinbaugemeinden der Champagne ein. Der Regierung erschien dies als letztes Mittel um dort Ruhe und Ordnung wieder herzustellen. Zuvor probten wütende und rebellierende Winzer den bürgerlichen Ungehorsam: Mit roten Fahnen zogen sie durch Städte und Dörfer, enttäuschte Gemeinderäte traten geschlossen zurück. Der Protest der Landbevölkerung war durchaus verständlich, denn den Rebflächen um Bar-sur-Aube war wenige Wochen zuvor der AOC-Status aberkannt worden. Natürlich ging es in erster Linie um die Durchsetzung wirtschaftlicher Interessen, doch wurde erneut die Frage aufgeworfen, ob unterschiedliche Böden und Landschaften tatsächlich von sich aus unterschiedliche Weinqualitäten hervorbringen. Auch heute gibt es Bestrebungen, von unterschiedlichen Zusammensetzungen der Böden auf die Güte der darauf gewachsenen Weine zu schließen.

Wein - mehr als die Summe seiner Bestandteile

Daß die Frage des Standorteinflusses oder des Bodeneffekts nicht leicht zu beantworten ist, zeigen aber die meist allgemein gehaltenen Angaben in Werbeschriften oder die geringe Zahl von Veröffentlichungen zur weinbaulichen Standortforschung sowie die oft oberflächlichen Darstellungen des Weinjournalismus. Erschwerend kommt hinzu, daß zunächst einmal der Begriff Weinqualität definiert und Bewertungsmaßstäbe festgesetzt werden müssen.

Benotungen nach einem Punkteschema oder Rangfolgen sind hier untauglich. Weine verschiedener Standorte können gleich gut, aber dennoch verschieden sein.

Weinbeurteilung muß also nicht wertend sondern beschreibend erfolgen. Ein vielversprechender Ansatz ist die "quantitativ deskriptive Sensorik". Hierbei wird die Intensität ausgewählter Geruchseindrücke in der sensorischen Prüfung anhand von definierten Vergleichsproben zahlenmäßig bewertet.

Das Weinbukett kommt durch eine mehrphasige Entwicklung zustande: zu originären Aromen der Traube gesellen sich sekundäre Bukettstoffe die im Verlauf von Einmaischen und Gärung entstehen, weitere Überprägungen haben ihren Ursprung in Lagerung und Reife. Hinzukommende Eindrücke wie der Holzton oder gar Weinfehler seien nur am Rande erwähnt.

Um die einmal geknüpfte Verbindung zum Boden weiter zu stärken, müssen die Weininhaltsstoffe betrachtet werden, die ursächlich oder indirekt durch geogene Faktoren geprägt werden können. Abbildung 3 stellt daher den Weineindruck mit Geruch und Geschmack in den Mittelpunkt und sucht über den Bestand an Alkoholen und Aromastoffen, den Säurespiegel oder die Phenolgehalte nach Beereninhaltsstoffen, die in ihrer Menge oder Konzentration die Bildung dieser Stoffe beeinflussen. Sehr schnell wird man nun über deren Vorstufen wie Kohlenhydrate (Zucker), Aminosäuren oder Mineralstoffe zu prägenden Standorteigenschaften kommen.

Letztlich lassen sich die pflanzenphysiologisch relevanten Größen auf Strahlungsgenuß, Wasserversorgung , Mineralstoffangebot und Stickstoffverfügbarkeit einengen. Spätestens hier wird deutlich, daß originär durch Bodeneigenschaften verursachte Geschmackseindrücke generell durch Jahrgangseinflüsse überlagert werden. Wasserversorgung oder Wärmehaushalt sind eben viel mehr von Niederschlagsverteilung und Sonnenscheinstunden geprägt als durch Wasserhaltekraft oder Hangneigung.

Vom Gestein zum Weinbergsboden und zur Reblage

Zusammenhänge zwischen Reblage und Wein werden seit der Antike diskutiert. Die Mönchsorden des Mittelalters, wussten sehr wohl um die Güte ihrer Weinberge. So dienten die Flächen des Clos de Vougeot in Burgund den Ziesterziensern als regelrechte Versuchsstation auf der sie Erkenntnisse zur Verschiedenartigkeit der Weinbergsböden sammeln konnten.

Böden sind der oberste verwitterte Teil der Erdkruste. Festes Gestein zerfällt unter dem Einfluß von Temperaturschwankungen oder der Sprengkraft von Salzkristallen oder gefrierendem Wasser. Eisenhaltige Minerale oxidieren und ergeben die bräunliche Bodenfarbe. Sickerndes Wasser führt Kalk und andere Stoffe fort, Wurzeln zwängen sich in Gesteinsklüfte und aus der Streu der Pflanzen bildet sich Humus.

Die Ausprägung unterschiedlicher Bodentypen wird vom Ausgangsgestein, dem Klima, der Vegetation sowie der jeweiligen Landschaftsform verursacht. Auf kalkreichen Gesteinen wie den Keupermergeln wird beispielsweise ausgewaschener Kalk ständig aus Vorräten ersetzt. Im Gegensatz zu einem kalkarmen Ausgangsmaterial wie Schiefer oder Granit tritt daher hier keine Versauerung auf.

An Steilhängen verhindert die andauernde Erosion die Ausbildung tief verwitterter Böden, während in den Tälern die dortige Bodenbildung mit bereits aufgewittertem Material beliefert wird (Abb.2).

Abb. 2: Terrassierte Muschelkalklage am Neckar

                
Bei den Weinbergsböden hat der Mensch durch das Rigolen in die Bodenbildung eingegriffen, die ursprüngliche Schichtung verändert und einen einheitlichen, für die Rebe gut durchwurzelbaren Rigolhorizont geschaffen. Vor allem auf skelettreichen Standorten oder bei schweren, tonhaltigen Böden konnte dadurch die Wasser- und Nährstoffzufuhr für die Reben verbessert werden. Zu einer Nivellierung der Standortseigenschaften haben in großem Umfang die Flubereinigungen beigetragen (Abb.5).

Abb. 3: Bereits wenige Bodeneigenschaften wie Bodenfruchtbarkeit (N-Nachlieferung) oder Wasserversorgung können über die Stoffproduktion in der Rebe auf den Weincharakter einwirken.

Die Zusammensetzung des Ausgangsmaterials für die Bodenbildung entscheidet aber nicht nur über den Mineralgehalt oder die Kornzusammensetzung (= Bodenart!) sondern je nach Widerständigkeit auch über das Relief und damit über die Wärmegunst der späteren Reblage (Abb. 4).

Abb. 4: Das geologische Ausgangsmaterial beeinflußt sowohl den Mineralbestand als auch Wasser- und Strahlungshaushalt einer Reblage.

Mit dem Bohrstock zum Grand Cru?

Im französischen Weinrecht ist die Vorstellung von der "geborenen Qualität" tief verankert.

Der Begriff des "terroir", unter dem ausgewählte Parzellen mit ähnlichem Boden und Kleinklima zusammengefaßt werden ist deutlich bodenkundlich geprägt. Das deutsche Weingesetz vereint dagegen unter einer "Lage" jene Parzellen, aus deren Erträgen "gleichwertige Weine gleichartiger Geschmacksrichtung hergestellt zu werden pflegen"(!). Der Winzeraufstand in der Champagne aus dem Jahre 1911 war sicher nicht der Ausdruck geologischen Übereifers sondern nur der Versuch, eine willkürliche Festschreibung des Besitzstandes abzuwehren.

In Frankreich hat die Bodenkunde innerhalb der weinbaulichen Forschung eine große Tradition. Für dortige Bodenforscher hat jede geologische Formation für jede Sorte in einem abgrenzbaren Areal ihren "Optimumspunkt" und sind benachbarte Flächen damit untergeordnet.

In Burgund entwickelte man für bestimmte Appellationen sogar einen "topo-pedologischen Qualtitätsindex". In diesem Qualitätsmaß vereinigten sich Hangneigung, Steingehalt, Durchwurzelungstiefe, Kalkgehalt, Tongehalt, sowie die Menge an austauschbarem Kalium.

Dadurch konnte man den bekannten Grand Cru - Lagen höhere Qualitätszahlen zuweisen als diejenigen Rebflächen in der weniger wertvollen Appellation Village oder Bourgogne.

Derartige Ergebnisse nähren natürlich zwangsläufig den Vorwurf, die standortkundliche Datenerhebung würde nur dazu dienen, das einmal festgelegte System der Lagenklassifikation nachträglich zu erhärten. Mit Blick auf deutsche Terrassenlagen muß man einem bekannten französischen Fachmann andererseits recht geben, wenn er in Burgund beklagt, daß wegen der schwierigen Mechanisierbarkeit "diese kalkigen Steilhänge zugunsten des flachen Schwemmlands aufgegeben werden, obwohl diese für die Produktion eines Qualitätsweines wenig geeignet sind."

Ob sich Weine tatsächlich den Böden und Standorten ihrer Herkunft zuordnen lassen, wollten deutsche Forscher in den 70er Jahren mit radiometrischen Methoden prüfen. Sie verglichen das Spurenelementmuster von Weinen und zugehörigen Böden. Nachweisbar waren lediglich Effekte des Jahrganges und der Sorten, eine Zuordnung zu den Standorten war nicht möglich. Allerdings sind während des Weinausbaus durch Filtrierung oder Schönung Verschiebungen innerhalb der Spurenelementgehalte nicht auszuschließen. Hierin zeigt sich der dominierende Einfluß der Kellerwirtschaft und der dort angewandten Verfahren.

Wärme, Wasser und Wurzel

Wie hinlänglich bekannt ist, sind Strahlungsgenuß und Wasserversorgung am ehesten qualitätsbestimmende Standortfaktoren. Ein guter Rebstandort wird daher als Puffer für Witterungsextreme nicht für einen Luxuskonsum, sondern für eine ausgeglichene, nachhaltige Bereitstellung dieser Wuchsfaktoren sorgen. Ein guter Rebstandort muß also dort sein, wo die geeignete Sorte vollständig aber langsam zur Reife gelangt.

Für Saint-Emilion wurden die Weine aus den sandigen Flachlagen als dünn bezeichnet, während die kalkigen Verwitterungsböden am Hang weitaus mehr Körper hätten. Je nach Art der Unterböden kann sich diese Situation jedoch umkehren. Tiefgehende Wurzelsysteme scheinen demnach Extremsituationen in der Wasserversorgung abfangen zu können. Dies kann sowohl für Trockenheit als auch für eventuell kurz vor der Lese fallende Niederschläge gelten. Neue Hinweise gaben Untersuchungen an australischen Reben, deren Wurzelsysteme nur in Teilbereichen unter Trockenstreß litten. Bei ihnen fand sich eine bessere Wasserausnutzung als bei gut bewässerten Pflanzen. Trockenheit im Oberboden, aber Wasserzufluß aus tieferen Bereichen, könnte also neben verringertem Ertrag die oft gerühmte Qualitätsursache bei alten Rebbeständen sein.

Düngung und Bodenpflege

Wasser- und Stickstoffversorgung sind untrennbar verbunden, in vielen Veröffentlichungen ist die Auswirkung der Stickstoffverfügbarkeit auf Qualitätsmerkmale des Weines dargelegt. Insbesondere sind bei besserer N-Verfügbarkeit (nicht N-Düngung!) vor allem der Anteil gewisser Aromakomponenten, der Gehalt an Säuren sowie die Restextraktwerte erhöht (Abb.3).

 

Abb. 5: Durch Rebflurbereinigungen oder Erdauffüllungen wurden Standorteigenschaften verändert.

Wasserbereitstellung und Bodenfruchtbarkeit sind wesentliche Standortseigenschaften, ihre Beeinflussbarkeit durch Jahreswitterung, Düngung und Bodenpflege bedarf hier keiner weiteren Erörterung. Bemerkenswerte Hinweise sind jedoch die genannten Beobachtungen an unterschiedlich mit Wasser versorgten Wurzelsystemen und der in der deutschen Weinbaupraxis weit verbreiteten Kombination von dauerbegrünten und im Sommer offen gehaltenen Rebgassen.

Buntsandstein, Granit oder Muschelkalk - schmeckt man den Unterschied?

Vor einigen Jahren kamen an der Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt für Wein- und Obstbau Weinsberg ausgewählte Weine verschiedener Anbaugebiete zur Verkostung, von denen man sich bodengeprägte Unterschiede erwartete. Die paarweise probierten Weine kamen aus demselben Betrieb und sollten bei gleicher Rebsorte und gleicher Qualitätsstufe im Prädikatsbereich weitgehend gleiche Kennwerte in Bezug auf Alkohol, Extrakt und Restzucker aufweisen. Einige Weine der umfangreichen Probenfolge sind mit diesen Daten sowie Angaben zum Standort und dem Sinneneindruck der Teilnehmer in den Tabellen 1 - 3 dargestellt.

Tabelle 1: 1993 er Riesling Kabinett trocken, Rheinpfalz

Lage	Burrweiler Schäwer	Burrweiler Altenforst
Geologie, Boden	metamorpher Schiefer lehmiger Sand, schwach kalkig	Terrassensand aus Vogesenschotter, kalkfrei
Relief	Hangfuß	Hangfuß
vorh. Alkohol g/l	85,7	85,2
Ges.Extrakt g/l	27,9	27,9
Zucker g/l	4,4	5,1
Ges.Säure g/l	7,8	7,6
Sinneneindruck	fruchtig nach Aprikose oder Pfirsich, nachhaltige Frische	reifes Obst, volle Würze aber weniger prägend

Ohne Zweifel unterscheiden sich die Wuchsorte der paarweise probierten Weine etwas in ihrer Wärmegunst und deutlich in ihrem Wasserhaushalt. Beim Blick auf hier jedoch nicht dargestellte Aromaprofile lassen sich besonders Einflüsse des Basen- haushaltes vermuten. Die beim Muschelkalkwein oft erkennbare "Staubnase" könnte hierin ihre Begründung haben (Tab. 2).

Tabelle 2: 1990 er Spätburgunder Spätlese, Württemberg

Lage	Marbacher Neckarhälde	Knittlinger Reichshalde
Geologie, Boden	skelettreicher toniger Lehm aus Muschelkalk mit Lößlehm, kaum freier Kalk	lehmiger Ton, Mittlerer Keuper , kalkreich
Relief	Steilhang, Hangkante	Mittelhang
vorh. Alkohol g/l	86,7	85,2
Ges.Extrakt g/l	35,2	35,4
Zucker g/l	14,5	14,5
Ges.Säure g/l	4,3	4,9
Sinneneindruck	Staub, ledriges Röstaroma, Dörrobst, Karamell, samtige Fülle	kurzes Röstaroma, durchlaufende Säure, strukturiert

Tabelle 3: 1993 er Riesling Auslese/Spätlese trocken, Rheingau

Lage	Hochheimer Kirchenstück Spätlese	Hochheimer Domdechaney Auslese
Geologie, Boden	sandiger Lehm aus Tonmergeln mit Löß, pH über 7	toniger Lehm aus Molassemergeln, flachgründig
Relief	Hangkante	Mittelhang
vorh. Alkohol g/l	102,3	103,6
Ges.Extrakt g/l	25,1	24,3
Zucker g/l	1,7	1,9
Ges.Säure g/l	8,1	7,5
Sinneneindruck	Honig, intensiv reife Früchte, nervig, samtige Fülle	Aprikose, füllig,gewürzig herb, nachhaltig breit

Der als weniger erdhaft beschriebene Eindruck der Schieferherkünfte könnte gleichfalls durch den in Tabelle 1 wiedergegebnen Sinneneindruck untermauert werden. Über unterschiedliche Säurespiegel können hingegen die Beurteilungen in Tabelle 3 auf einen verschieden geprägten Wasserhaushalt der beiden Standorte hinweisen.

Beim Bodenwasserhaushalt liegt auch einer der Schlüssel zu möglichen Einwirkungen des Bodens auf die Rebe und den späteren Wein.

Das geologische Ausgangsmaterial gibt die Bodenart (Körnung) und den Mineralbestand vor. Seine Widerständigkeit prägt das Relief und entscheidet damit über den Wasser- und Strahlungshaushalt des Weinbergs.

Als unterschiedliches Bodenmaterial fränkischer Reblagen an einen zentralen Versuchsstandort gebracht, in Gefäße gefüllt und mit Reben bepflanzt wurden, waren diese Effekte ausgeschaltet. In den dort gewonnenen Weinen waren die früheren Unterschiede nicht mehr auszumachen.

Durch den Boden ausgelöste Effekte sind dort am größten, wo die langjährigen klimatischen Bedingungen für die Rebe bereits hervorragend sind. In den deutschen, eher nördlichen Weinbaugebieten wirkt daher in den meisten Jahren anstatt des Bodens die Witterung weitaus stärker auf die Rebe und den Wein.

Allerdings muß angemerkt werden, dass Sorteneffekte, Traubenausreife (Lesetermin) und Ertragshöhe, sowie vor allem die Verfahren der Weinbereitung (Kaltgärung, Hefestämme, Maischegärung, Holzfass u.a.) nicht nur die Einflüsse des Standortes, sondern auch jene der Jahreswitterung deutlich überprägen.

Wie ging nun aber die Sache für die französischen Winzer aus, deren Böden für die Champagnerpoduktion als ungeeignet eingestuft wurden?

Unter dem Druck der Öffentlichkeit wurde die - für die Betroffenen - nachteilige Entscheidung nach vielem Hin und Her wieder zurückgenommen. Am 27.Juli 1927 erhielten 71 rebellische Weinbaugemeinden ihre Appellation zurück.

Literaturangaben beim Verfasser

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The Phenomenology of Terroir: A Meditation by Randall Grahm
“Terroir is a composite of many physical factors… as well as more intangible cultural factors. Matt Kramer once very poetically defined terroir as “somewhere-ness,” and this I think is the nub of the issue. I believe that “somewhereness” is absolutely linked to beauty, that beauty reposes in the particulars…”

by Randall Grahm
April 18, 2006

Editor’s Note: At last month’s Terroir Conference at UC Davis, a transcendent Randall Grahm delivered a powerful paper on the role of Biodynamics in getting our vines, wines and winemakers back in touch with their terroir. His talk, delivered to a crowd of mostly winemakers and scientists, makes a lot of sense to us here at AppellationAmerica and we thought it might to you as well. With His Eminence’s permission, we present to you here, his paper in its entirety.

I have called this talk, The Phenomenology of Terroir; you may therefore have some expectation of a degree of philosophical rigor. Your expectations, however, will be nonsystematically thwarted, as I was, as a philosophe manqué many years ago, never particularly rigorous. I found that the more sensual, tangible medium of winemaking and grape growing was a far more congenial playground for intellectual exploration.

I have come to an appreciation of terroir in a way analogous to how non-believers find their faith. Terroir was the great absence in my winemaking life. I had become reconciled to the notion that as much as I yearned to produce a wine that expressed terroir, producing such a wine in my single lifetime just struck me as impossible, and I was simply going to have to get over it. I came to biodynamics as a method of improving the quality of the grapes I was growing. At the time, I imagined that with more active microflora in the soil (one modest aspiration of the biodynamic proposition) I would be able to enhance the expression of minerality in the wine, an element that I believe is crucial to producing wines of depth and of organization, and the sine qua non of a vin de terroir. I now believe that while there are perhaps multiple routes to the discovery of terroir in one’s vineyard – there is an extremely esoteric technique called cosmoculture, which involves stone menhirs and Ley lines – it is essentially a form of viticultural acupuncture, that is particularly intriguing to me - biodynamics is perhaps the most straightforward path to the enhanced expression of terroir in one’s vineyard. Its express purpose is to wake up the vines to the energetic forces of the universe, but its true purpose is to wake up the biodynamicist himself or herself.

I am still but a callow practitioner of biodynamics, but have become an unremitting seeker of terroir I have come to know that there are some very potent tools in the biodynamic arsenal to help elucidate terroir – and the chief one is the effect that it can produce in the practitioner – the ability to see the natural world with more sensitive eyes and the gradual cultivation of powerful intuition. There is another very practical tool called sensitive crystallization, which allows one to look far more deeply into a wine or a vineyard, beneath its obvious sensible presentation. With these tools one can develop a sense as to whether one is pursuing a path of discovery or simply wandering further into the labyrinth. On bad days, I feel like the Gene Hackman character in the movie, “The French Connection,” out in the rain, with my nose pressed to the window, looking in. On good days, I imagine that some day I will be able to sit at the terroir table.

As an aesthete (but not effete) lover of terroir, I will speak primarily about the aesthetics and poetics of terroir, perhaps polemicize a bit – (Why not? I have a captive audience) – and then touch briefly on some of the biodynamic methodologies that have relevance to terroir’s expression.

In the classical conception, terroir is the quality found in certain special wines, that transcends the winemaker’s personal style or aesthetic. It is the expression of the distinctiveness and individuality, the unique fingerprint of a particular vineyard site. Terroir, I am hoping to explain, is something like a Platonic form, or perhaps more concretely, a beautifully ordered wave-form that arises from a harmonically attuned vineyard – one wherein every element is in perfect balance. The formal information that is in this special vineyard is preserved, amplified, perhaps refined during the fermentation process of the grapes and emerges by dint of the winemaker’s skill, as the flavor characteristics of the wine. Some as yet unelucidated mechanism involving the minerality of the wine, I believe, acts as a medium to transform this information into a distinctive, unmistakable taste, analogous to the transformation of radio waves into aural sensation.

A great terroir is the one that will elevate a particular site above that of its neighbors. It will ripen its grapes more completely more years out of ten than its neighbors; its wines will tend to be more balanced more of the time than its unfortunate contiguous confrères. But most of all, it will have a calling card, a quality of expressiveness, of distinctiveness that will provoke a sense of recognition in the consumer, whether or not the consumer has ever tasted the wine before. Without becoming overly anthropomorphic, I would suggest that a great terroir site has something akin to intelligence, which is the ability to successfully adapt to a variety of climatic challenges. This innate intelligence can certainly be enhanced by the biodynamic practice.

The soil of a great terroir will have particular physical characteristics that allow it to extract more or less the correct amount of moisture from the soil appropriate to its needs, and trigger certain physiological signals (Dude, where’s my fruit? It’s time to stop growing.) in the plant at appropriate times, again, more consistently than its neighbors. The soil will have a chemical make-up that provides for all of the macro-elements in more or less balanced ratios, and very critically, will possess a definitive, eclectic assortment of oligo-elements.

Perhaps the presence of these trace elements in certain ratios adds more complexity to the vineyard color palette, which in turn enhances the complexity and distinctiveness of the wine palate. In any event, the crop yields must certainly be limited to enhance mineral concentration and the vine roots need to explore the entire soil profile. It is my personal belief, scientifically unconfirmed, that the typically large vines that we grow in California are counter-productive to the expression of terroir. Perhaps there is a dilution effect on the physical concentration of minerals or even on the subtle energetic fingerprint of the site, as the xylem has to move a greater distance. One thing I can state unequivocally: the pernicious practice of drip irrigation, as it is routinely practiced here in California, essentially infantilizes plants, turning them into dumb, sterile consumers, as if they were grown in flower-pots, making them gatherers rather than hunters, the viticultural equivalents of Chauncey Gardner, if you remember Peter Sellers in “Being There.” Needless to say, this essentially negates the possibility of the expression of terroir.

If there is a wave or vibrational form of terroir, the moisture in the soil is undoubtedly the medium through which it is transmitted. I have read that calcareous soils are strongly interactive with the dipole moment of water molecules, perhaps thus enhancing their informational conductivity. This is highly conjectural, but I would suggest that the absence of precipitation in the summer months in California may well make the expression of terroir problematic, as there is typically a disruption of communication between water in the surface layers and at depth. It is my sense that something like an ephemeral water table, such as one finds in Bordeaux, may well be the only way to really find true terroir under our arid conditions.

Very naively I once imagined that you could simply analyze the mineral content of “great” terroirs, do a regression analysis and simply chuck in a little bit of manganese or whatever it was that you were missing in the soil. But this in fact misses the whole point: if there were a terroir extract or even a terroir “formula” that the lazy or ill-favored winemaker could add, sort of like oak chips or organoleptic tannin, all wines would begin to taste the same (such as they in fact do in the New World) and the essence of terroir would become trivialized and devalued.

The terroir intelligence does not entirely repose in the site itself, of course, but within the relationship that exists between the land and those who have farmed that land over generations. It is through experience, observation and countless iteration that some very clever person or persons determined that a very particular grape variety or individual genotype thereof on a particular rootstock on a particular soil type produced a wine that had a unique, special quality.

Terroir’s differentiating signal somehow shines through the non-trivial level of noise of climatic variation that occurs from one vintage year to the next, in the Old World, at least. You could possibly argue that the absence of significant climatic variation, such as we experience for the most part in the New World, precludes an expression of terroir. For the other part of the equation is the skill of the winemaker not only in rendering Clos de Vougeotness, but also in capturing the positive qualities of the vintage itself – its 2001ness. This notion is somewhat anathema to American sensibilities. We are happiest of course when every year behaves more or less the same, ideally a “great” vintage, of course. Perhaps this is because as recently-come-to-the-party wine connoisseurs we behave a lot like small children; we never seem to tire of hearing the same song played over and over again.

Terroir is a composite of many physical factors – soil structure and composition, topography, exposition, microclimate as well as more intangible cultural factors. Matt Kramer once very poetically defined terroir as “somewhere-ness,” and this I think is the nub of the issue. I believe that “somewhereness” is absolutely linked to beauty, that beauty reposes in the particulars; we love and admire individuals in a way that we can never love classes of people or things. Beauty must relate to some sort of internal harmony; the harmony of a great terroir derives, I believe, from the exchange of information between the vine-plant and its milieu over generations. The plant and the soil have learned to speak each other’s language, and that is why a particularly great terroir wine seems to speak with so much elegance.

I would like to now talk briefly about the vast chasm that exists between Old World and New World understandings of vinous beauty – the great Transatlantic Misunderstanding, if you will. As you know, we can make an effort to quantify the qualitative elements of classical physical beauty – ratio of nose length to distance from the eyes and so forth – and create an idealized model of a beautiful person. But as we also know, this idealized model will never be as beautiful as the beauty of a particular individual, whose features may in fact be utterly out of whack from the parameters of so-called classical beauty. There is just “something” about the singular beauty that stands out, and likewise there is just something intangible that is missing from the composite beauty.

In the Old World, excellence is linked to typicity, on a macro as well as micro level, which is to say that a St. Emilion can only be great, if it is recognizable as a St. Emilion, but obviously it must also have something more. This typical St. Emilion must embody both its generic identity qua St. Emilion, as well as a certain uniqueness within the appellation – the exception that proves the rule – as reflected in a brilliant terroir, such as Cheval Blanc, where its Chevalness is always unmistakable. Does the consumer need to have a mental map of a wine’s provenance, to be able to fully appreciate its quality? Yes and no.

Really grasping the concept that a wine can be both a wine and a place is like suddenly acquiring the ability to taste the wine with two tongues, or to now hear a mono recording in stereo, moving from three dimensions to four dimensions. Feeling the place through the wine triggers something like synesthesia; it is the organoleptic equivalent of an out-of-body experience. If you have a history with the place, there is no doubt that it will create an even far deeper limbic reaction. But a great terroir wine will provoke a feeling that I can only describe as akin to homesickness, whether or not it is for a home that may only exist in your imagination.

Somewhereness. For a European it is everything. You need to come from somewhere and probably your family has been in that somewhere for years upon years; you need to know where you stand in a hierarchy, where you fit in. In our New World egalitarian, meritocracy, it doesn’t matter where you came from, it’s what you have achieved. New World wines are really all about achievement; they are vins d’effort, rather than vins de terroir.

Terroir has the power to evoke in us primal memories and associations. And certainly human intelligence is in part about perceiving and judging memory – in soil, wine and self. The construct of terroir is perhaps an atavistic product of our deep human need to link to the natural world, a need that has not vanished, despite its being systematically thwarted at every turn in the times in which we live.

Terroir speaks in a very still, small voice. It is easy not to hear it above the stentorian tones of 100% new oak, 15% alcohol and the extreme tannic extraction that we find in modern wines. We winemakers need to look long and hard in the mirror. Some of us aspire to produce vins de terroir but at the same time are loathe to make wines that are not très flatteur, i.e. obvious, i.e. highly commercial. The reality is that the most influential critics who shall remain nameless have essentially no appreciation at all for terroir; we are at a strange place indeed where the unnatural is held up as the ideal, and the natural is considered outré. Their counter-terroirism manifests in a predilection for the so-called “fruit bomb,” a wine of hyper-concentration and hyper-fruitiness (the vinous equivalent of a triple C-cup, without being too crude about it), largely in virtue of the extreme level of grape maturity. These wines are garish, painted ladies – adolescent fantasies of what a real wine might be.

The language of modern wine criticism tends to be reductive and anatomizing – it slices and dices a wine into its component parts. Fruitiness… check, soft tannins… check, concentration… check. We have liftoff and a 90+ point wine. But a true appreciation of terroir is an appreciation of integration, balance and originality; it compels us to slow down and be present with a wine. Which brings me to the film, “Mondo Vino,” which I’m sure many of you have seen. While the film is polemical, unfair at times and its main thesis a bit muddied, I think that Nossiter basically got it right. There is in fact a war right now between the terroirists and the anti-terroirists. But the black hats are not merely the guys who are making industrial plonk and marketing it to us as real wine; far more dangerous are those who aspire to make “great wine” but have lost their own moral and aesthetic compass. We have all become so acutely self-conscious, so fearful of offending the critics, that we have stopped listening to our vines. Biodynamics, if truly practiced soulfully, brings one back to oneself and back to one’s vineyard, a literal grounding. To produce a terroir wine, there must be a seamless link between the wine-grower and his vines and a connection strong enough to drown out the din of competing voices.

I would like to bring up again the concept of minerality in wine and what its relation to terroir might be. I believe that virtually all of the New World wine critics utterly miss out on the importance of minerality, especially vis-à-vis the ageability of a wine, where I believe it plays the signal role. It is obvious to me that every wine of distinction must contain a rich concentration of minerals in some sort of favorable ratio, but no one to my knowledge has worked out an algorithm for this. I have lately become convinced that it is not just the mere material presence of minerals that lend a wine stature, but what is really at issue is how these minerals are organized.

Because when you taste a terroir wine, what you get above and beyond the particular aromatic nuances associated with a particular soil type – (schistous soils, for example, are said to give wines a sort of raw petroleum-like aroma, a benign thing, by the way) – more importantly, you get a sense of the organization of the wine. Somehow the intelligence of the soil and the vine interaction has been transformed into intelligence in the wine glass. There is the manner in which the various taste impressions sequence on your palate. You get the sense of the multi-dimensionality of the wine, like rotating a precious stone, so as to be able to view its facets from many different angles.

You get the feeling that there is something like capacitance at work – the release of different flavor components seem to be gradually released, almost metered out. Minerals are most certainly linked to the redox chemistry that goes on in a glass of wine – chemistry that is so complex that you understand why acid-base chemistry has historically been the default point of entry for comprehending wine chemistry or alchemy.

To be an inspired wine taster, you must be capable of experiencing synesthesia. “Ça descend la gorge comme le bebé Jesu en culottes de velours,” the French say. “It goes down the throat like the baby Jesus in velvet underwear.” A great terroir wine you can visualize as possessing a center, a core; I sometimes visualize terroir wines as planetary systems, with the minerals exerting the gravitational pull of the sun. Or, I see the minerals as the backbone, the skeleton of the wine, that which gives the wine stability and persistence. The various nuances of flavor radiate out from this center, as do the symmetric ripples in a pond.

I have always felt that language is highly inadequate to really describe the sensation of tasting a wine, certainly the language that merely breaks a wine down into its constituent components. Maybe a haiku, a spontaneous response, would make for more cogent wine criticism. But it turns out that there is a particular technique called “sensitive crystallization,” employed by practitioners of biodynamics, and it offers a different sort of language to talk about wine’s aesthetics; it speaks to a vine’s degree of connectedness to the soil, to its organizing and growth forces of the wine. I believe that it can serve as a rather vivid visualization of what we are talking about today. But first, I will say a few words about how biodynamics works in the service of terroir.

Biodynamics deals with how we might seek to harmonize our farming practices with the subtle forces of the universe, following the astronomical calendar – free cosmic fertilizer, you might say, and utilizing the biodynamic preparations, which essentially are a form of viticultural homeopathy. The presence of animal life on the farm is also crucial to the biodynamic proposition, with the idea that they also bring a contributing intelligence to the system. The biodynamic model would hold that the human intelligence is capable of identifying and summoning natural allies – be they from the plant or animal kingdom – to assist in amplifying the relevant cosmic forces, which in turn help to regulate the more observable but no less wondrous processes we see in plant growth and differentiation, photosynthesis, mineral absorption and the like. As an example, if we select the appropriate animal to graze our fields – sheep generally work pretty well – or produce a well-conceived compost, the effects of the manure or compost will help to “balance” the soils far more precisely and effectively than a grower might ever do on his own, adding material, organic or otherwise, to achieve an “ideal” soil chemistry. The object as a biodynamicist, is in fact not to have an ideal vineyard, but rather to have a vineyard that is in tune with itself.

The intent of the biodynamic practice is, as I have said, to “wake up” the plants, so that they might become more tuned in to their surroundings. The medical analogy would be that you are boosting the vines’ immune systems, so that they are capable of coping with the environmental challenges that inevitably occur, and breaking the cycle of need for massive intervention on the part of the grower. Most importantly, the vineyard, or I should say, the agricultural organism, gradually becomes more individuated – its personality emerges; it becomes the macrocosmic reflection of the intent of the wine-grower, as it evolves into ever increasing homeostasis, requiring progressively fewer inputs. The overarching aim of the biodynamic work is to amplify the individuality of the site – its terroir, which has the concomitant effect of preserving more life force in the agricultural product. Vines are more resistant to disease and the wines themselves are healthier and more robust – more resistant to oxidation, and capable of greater longevity.

I have spoken largely in platitudes about how the biodynamic work supports the expression of terroir. In more practical terms, the biodynamic practice conduces to independence from soil amendments, which only serve to obscure terroir’s expression. A corollary of this is that biodynamically grown grapes seem to possess a more balanced nutritional profile vis-à-vis their fermentation behavior; we have found that they are generally complete the way they are and do not require nutritional supplementation, enzymes or cultured yeast to perform well – all interventions that deform the expression of terroir. One of the more obvious results of biodynamic farming is that one observes a much greater degree of uniformity of stand, both in terms of appearance of the vines as well as the ripening profile. This is definitely a step toward greater coherence and an identifying signature of the vineyard. Without indulging in too much anthropomorphism, the biodynamic practice, if done correctly, I am told, is capable of allowing the plant to become more sensitive, i.e. predictive of natural phenomena, such as killing frosts, drought and so forth.

By communicating better with the soil and with its surroundings, the plant is participating in the shared intelligence that is the essence of terroir. The biodynamic preparations can also be used shrewdly to move the wine towards greater elegance and economy. It has been observed both in the New World and in the Old World, that the parameters of phonological maturity are drifting ever upward. In other words, Grenache grapes used to taste ripe at 13.5% and now need to be 15% for comparable flavor intensity. The application of the biodynamic preparation 501, or horn silica, very carefully timed, will help to bring flavor development into better balance with the accumulation of sugar, leading to clearer expression of terroir.

Not all sites are created equal of course, and skillful biodynamic practice will not enable you to produce great wine from an indifferent site. But it just may, through the cultivation of the intuition of the grower, lead one to discern heretofore obscured qualities of a particular vineyard site. I will be very specific. I have a very funky vineyard in Soledad, in the Salinas Valley, not far from the Big House. There is nothing particularly prepossessing about the site, nor does the word “sustainable” make much sense in an area that receives about 6 inches of annual rainfall and whose irrigation source has a significant NaCl titer of the eponymous valley. For reasons mysterious even to me, I bethought to plant Albarino grapes on the site and the only real reason was that I remembered the saltiness of the air in the region of Rias Biaxas in Galicia. You can taste this wine in just a few minutes and will taste for yourself the fact that these grapes do in some sense “belong,” which I believe is another way of saying that they possess a degree of terroir.

I would like to now talk about the very odd, particular technique called “sensitive crystallization,” to which I had earlier alluded – an extremely powerful tool for elucidating some of the less obvious aspects of both wines and vines. It can tell you quite a bit about the felicity of the marriage between a particular grape variety or clone with a given rootstock on a given site. This could obviously be incredibly useful in making decisions about what you are planting on a given site. It can tell you about the degree of organization of a wine and its life force, speaking directly to its overall harmony and ability to mature and improve. In a sense, it is the glimpsing of the wine’s aura, its subtle body, not necessarily obvious from the impression one gathers in the physical realm. Sensitive crystallization is not a precise science, at all, not by a long shot. You do a number of replicates and they can all be a little bit different, but you do begin to see recurring patterns that are quite suggestive. To do the crystallization, you take your material, in this case a couple of milliliters of wine or tissue from the plant, mix it with a copper chloride solution, put it carefully into a Petri dish, and allow it to evaporate in a controlled environment. Voilà, you will observe a distinctive pattern, which is interesting if you have some inkling of how to make heads or tails of it.

I am somewhere in the sub-neophyte category as far as my ability to read these crystallizations. Certainly for many of the scientists here, this will seem like utter mumbo-jumbo and the pictures mere artifacts of phenomena very imprecisely grasped. But use your imagination and see what these pictures tell you. For me they can sometimes capture the essence of a wine far more accurately than words can do, and offer a way to visualize something that we have through language very clumsily groped to describe. Here is a 2002 von Volxem Riesling from the Saar, clearly a great terroir wine, and one that is to my knowledge, biodynamically farmed. The powerful acidity of the wine makes for a deep relief (white wines, by the way are a lot easier to read than reds) but nevertheless you can see how powerful this wine is, like a sun-burst. Note the highly articulated, dense and symmetrical branching pattern, indicating a strong presence of organizing forces in the wine. This is a wine that is capable of very long ageing. Note also the green tinge around the border, which is characteristic of organically and biodynamically grown wines.

Compare and contrast with a 2005 Riesling from a very young vineyard in Soledad, CA, which just happens to be ours. You see the pine-like needles that seem to shoot out very forcefully. They indicate strong growth forces in the vineyard. The vacuoles just below center indicate that the wine has a strong aromatic potential. It is my hope that perhaps as the vineyard gets older and the vines and soil become better acquainted, we will observe a greater degree of organization in the crystallization, and more importantly, in the wine. The one saving grace is the tinge of green that you observe at the periphery; this is an indication that this is an organically grown vineyard and contains a degree of life force. You will have a chance to taste this wine in just a few minutes.

This is a wine called Kokopeli made in southern France in Collioure, from very, very old vines. It is a real mineral wine – notice the depth of relief of the branching crystals and the absence of vacuoles. Note also that there are two loci in the center of the picture – this wine is made from two separate vineyards with slightly different soil typologies.

Here is a sensitive crystallization of a rosé wine made from a funny grape from Provence called Tibouren. Note the aromatic vacuoles and the very dense branching and the fact that the crystallization moves out to the very edges of the Petri dish. The peripheral zone of the picture speaks to the connection that the vine has to its soil. The crystal seems to hit the edge of the Petri dish and bounces back, indicating that these vines are very deeply rooted.

This is a picture of a very famous and fairly expensive California Cabernet Sauvignon, which shall remain nameless, for which I’m told people line up in the cold, wee hours of the morning at the winery to purchase upon release. Note that there is a discontinuity in the peripheral zone, indicating a lack of connection with the soil. There are numerous gaps in the crystallization and parts of the image are rather blurry. This is not a vin de terroir, that expresses a strong sense of place; its lack of organization is rather typical of New World wines that have been drip irrigated. I suspect that the vacuoles signify the very strong expression of highly aromatic new American oak.

To conclude, terroir is a descriptive mechanism that speaks to the intelligence or organizational force of a particular viticultural site, and miraculously persists through the vicissitudes of fermentation and maturation of a wine. It is a very special lens that allows us to experience a wine in a profound and deeply human manner, sparking a sense of recognition and connection to a larger whole, which is the basis of an aesthetic frisson and a great communion of the human spirit.


Randall Grahm, the original Rhone Ranger, is the charismatic proprietor and winemaker of Bonny Doon Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

quelle: http://wine.appellationamerica.com/wine-review/Randall-Grahm-on-Terroir.html

The Phenomenology of Terroir: A Meditation

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