Vintage step by step

For many, the “how” of growing and making wine is confusing at best, intimidating at worst. But a little exposure to these processes can be hugely empowering in better understanding wine. Here's what happens during vintage, wine’s busiest time.

We explore the process of winemaking, from vines to bottle

There are so many approaches you can take in the winery to achieve different outcomes. Winemaking is a science and an art, and it would be a disservice to the craft to suggest it’s simple. For the sake of education, however, there are a few main stages that are important to know. To get a grasp of exactly what happens from grapes to your glass, we caught up with Noisy Ritual’s Cam Nicol, who regularly brings people behind the scenes of vintage at his urban winery in Melbourne. Along with winemaker and business partner Alex Byrne, Cam runs a ninemonth intensive with three workshops: The Stomp, The Press, and The Bottle.

STOMP (AKA CRUSH)

Wine in its simplest, purest form can be made without machines – from picking the grapes in the vineyard to sorting and crushing them in the winery. At Noisy Ritual, to have the most hands-on learning experience possible, the winemaking processes are approached in this way. “We start by tasting the grapes, assessing the flavour and texture, and discussing why the fruit has been picked when it has. It might be a cliche that wines are made in the vineyard, but it exists for a reason, as a lot of the hard work is done before the fruit arrives at the winery,” he explains. Tasting and analysing the grapes is an integral first step, and for those wanting to improve their palate, it can be eye-opening to learn how the skins, seeds and flesh each impart different characteristics. “We then go through the physical process of cleaning up the fruit, removing any leaves or creepy crawlies from the vineyard, and making sure it’s really pristine,” Cam says. “Once that’s done, we do the stomp, which is a fun way of releasing the juice and getting the ferment happening. After that, everyone cleans up, and we do a bit of the science-y stuff. We sit down and do some simple analysis of the wine – assessing the sugar and potential alcohol levels, looking at the pH, and discussing what the juice is about to go through as it ferments.”

FERMENT

Fermentation is the conversion of fruit sugar to alcohol by yeast. There are two types of yeast commonly discussed in winemaking – “inoculated” and “wild”. While both are natural, the former refers to cultured yeasts being added to crushed fruit. In contrast, wild or indigenous yeasts come from the air, meaning winemakers sit back (not literally – vintage rarely offers a moment to hang out with a beer) and wait for fermentation to begin. “At some point following the stomp, fermentation begins – we don’t add any yeast, it’s all wild,” Cam says of the pathway they take at Noisy Ritual. Once fermentation has begun, there are a few jobs that need to be done. With red wine, the skins and seeds steep in the juice, imparting colour, texture and flavour. These solids regularly rise to the surface of the ferment, creating what’s known as the “cap”. The cap needs to be punched down (plunging the solids back into the liquid by hand) or pumped over (a hose sucks wine up from the bottom of the tank and pours it back over the top). “We plunge the cap daily so that the skins and seeds don’t dry out, and the liquid spends as much time

as possible in contact with the skins and seeds,” Cam explains. The temperature of the ferment is also important, with warm and hot ferments traditional for red wines, increasing the intensity of colour and tannin, and cool and cold ferments typical of white and pink wines. “We take temperature and baume [sugar level] measurements the whole way through to ensure the ferment is progressing at a good pace – not too fast that it gets too hot, and not too cold that it’s taking too long.” White wine ferments are generally not as demanding, and get pressed to tank or barrel straight away, although skin-contact styles are becoming more popular.

PRESS

Pressing is the process of removing solids from wine. With reds, this step happens following the fermentation on skins, while most white grapes are pressed immediately after crushing, eliminating the skins and therefore the colour from the wine. After pressing, the liquid gets “settled”, allowing any sediment to settle at the bottom of its container before being “racked” or filtered out. “Once all the sugar has converted to alcohol and we have wine with lots of floaty bits in it, we press it using old-school basket presses,” Cam shares. “We also taste the wine that comes out of the press at different levels of pressure – the free-run juice at the beginning tastes very different to the juice that comes out at the end under high pressure when you’re extracting oils from the seeds and other astringent elements. It’s good to show people the different flavours that are in there because in a more commercial setting, they might use more of the heavily pressed juice. For our purposes, because we’re doing it all by hand, we can’t put that much pressure on to extract any of those astringent flavours, so we find the wine that we put into the barrel is pretty well balanced.”

AGE

Any wine, red or white, can be aged before release, and the “how” and “how long” will affect the resulting wine.

The amount of time a wine is aged (a few months versus several years) and the type of vessel it’s aged in (wood or steel, French or American oak, large or small, new or old) can have a big influence. For example, a large, old oak barrel will impart limited flavour, while a small, new oak one will pack a punch – plus French oak is usually associated with soft vanilla flavours, while American oak gives more of a broad, coconut-like quality.

“Once the wine is in barrel, it stays there for six months,” Cam says of the wine they make with Noisy Ritual members. “Across that time, we do barrel tastings to check on how the wine is developing and maturing as it goes through malolactic fermentation. This secondary fermentation affects the acid in the wine, taking it from a tart, green apple type [malic acid] to a lactic acid that’s a bit smoother and rounder.”

BOTTLE

Once all of the elements have come into balance, it’s time to bottle the wine. Bottles will vary in size and shape, depending on the variety or style, and closures range from screwcap to cork and crown seals. Then, it’s over to you.

Keen to have a vintage experience?

Check out Noisy Ritual’s workshops and events, which include lots of eating and drinking alongside the learning.

noisyritual.com.au