Wine Maturation
From the press, the wine is run into casks, wood as a rule for dry
reds and many of the better quality whites, but sometimes into stainless
steel casks. Usually the new wine is "racked" again, that is, pumped
from its first cask into another, leaving behind the lees which have
settled at the bottom. This must be done several times before the wine
is put into bottle, usually at about 18 months to two years for dry reds
and about seven or eight months for dry whites. After bottling, a red
wine may spend a few or many years in the bottle, for it is at this
stage of its life that character and flavor develop. Whites generally
reach a satisfactory drinkable maturity within a year of being bottled;
reds may take many years to reach full maturity.
Neither chemist nor winemaker can tell everything about the chemical
processes that occur during the bottle maturation of a wine, but they
know by smell and by palate that the wine is changing, and changing for
the better. And only the experienced winemaker can say when a wine has
reached its maturity and sometimes even his judgment is astray, for many
a good wine that has reached maturity has been known to "go downhill"
with remarkable speed. What the winemaker is sure about is that only the
bottle will satisfactorily Mature the wine, and that, as yet, there has
been discovered no satisfactory substitute for a natural cork.
Airborne bacteria are the enemies of naturally fermented dry wines. Once
the process of fermentation is completed, air will interact with
elements in the wine to produce, usually, excessive acetic acid. The
wine is said to turn vinegary, or sour. When the wine is made and first
put into the cask, the winemaker ensures that the bung in the cask is in
position. Some winemakers use a calico bag, filled with sand, to place
over the bung hole of the cask, with a house brick on top! In the cask
(often a 2000 gallons capacity and in some wineries five times as much)
very small amounts of air help the maturation, but if too much is
allowed to enter the wine will spoil.
When the wine is taken from the cask and given its final filtering or
"brightening", and put into the bottle, no further "processing" is
possible. It will develop (or it will not develop) into a good, a very
good, even a superb product. There is nothing the winemaker can do to
help it except to store the bottles on their sides, solely to keep the
corks damp and thus prevent their shrinking which would let air into the
bottle and wine out of it. He can, if he deems it necessary and has the
means, keep it at an even temperature, but there are many Australian
winemakers who think this unimportant. These are wine-makers whose
wineries are little more than corrugated iron sheds (and some of these
make our best wines) and believe, or have rationalised their opinions
that fluctuating temperatures actually help the wine to mature.
The processes described, in our attempt to define what wine is, are
those by which "natural" wines are made. Several variations may be used,
during the process of fermentation, or after it, to produce wines of
different kinds. Fortification or distillation to produce the ports and
sherries, or brandy, are examples of how natural wines are varied to
make different end products, but these will be described in other parts
of this book.
In spite of what science has taught and provided for the winemaker,
there is still much use of the old-fashioned, traditional ways. One now
famous Hunter Valley, NSW, vigneron believes that the earthen floor of
his cellar helps to give his wines a unique character. The same vigneron
is said to test fermenting temperatures by putting his arm into the vat;
certainly he pushes the "cap" (the layer of skins that rises to the top
of a fermenting vat of dry red wine) back into the wine by hand. But he
is also the vigneron who does not scorn the use of refrigeration and all
of his white wines in cask are kept at 68deg F and the temperature is
shown by modern dial thermometers in the cask ends!
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