Discover the Art of Making Wine

Wine, treasured by the Greeks and exported throughout the Roman Empire. The wine trade dots the landscape of the ancient world. Throughout history, the art of the grape has been celebrated and its development mirrors the development of commerce and civilization. Over the centuries, the industry has expanded and innovation has set new standards for production. But even today, the art of wine, its essence, lies in the process, the journey from vine to wine. Wine, it can hold different meanings for each of us. For some, it's a simple beverage to be enjoyed at mealtime. For others, it's a commodity, something sought after than collected. Yet for many, wine remains intimidating. And it doesn't have to be. After all, it's only fermented grape juice. Hi, I'm Michael Fagan. In this episode, we're going to travel to some of the finest wine regions of the world, where we'll meet the winemakers and discover the secrets of winemaking and the magic of the grape. Although we are all familiar with various grapes from the fruit stand, the species of grape which has proven best for the production of wine is called Vitis vinifera, which means literally the wine grape. Whether Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Pinot Noir, virtually all wine grapes used today stem from Vitis vinifera, called the noble grape. Most wine grapes are grown in two belts around the globe, between 30 and 50 degrees latitude, north and south. These regions have the temperate climate and moderate rainfall the grapes need to flourish. The cycle also includes a beneficial winter season, because grape vines need a time to rest between crops. Now it's not just a matter of geography. Selection of a proper site and the skill of the growers and winemakers will determine the character of the finished wine. There is an innate factor, which is the terroir, which is the location, well you name it, and the place where you grow vines. And then there are acquired factors, which are at least as important. And the work of people who have just developed viticulture in that first identified the place as potentially extremely rewarding, and then worked on it in order to produce wine. Traditionally, grapes were grown in tracts of land that were left over when better soils were used to farm grain and vegetable produce. Today, many of the world's grape growers believe that poor soil produces their best fruit. You have to find unhospitable, very low in nutrients type of soil. The roots, which will actually drive the roots to go very, very deep. That's where quality starts. So the roots have really to go down, and as down as possible to get the real sap, the minerals. And in fact, they have to fight together. Obviously, soil conditions will vary widely across the world. But there can be dramatic differences, even in the same vineyard. I found it very surprising on my first visit, the difference in terroir, the difference in soil from one property to another. It's not a wide range in between. You can sort of step over, and you're in a whole new area. Absolutely. I can show you here. We are at Vieux Chateau Serton. Next door is Petrus. Taste the wines together. They are completely different. The differences in soil, the climate, and even the microclimate around the vine will influence the character of the wine produced. The character of a wine starts with the place that it's grown. And different soil types and microclimates produce different qualities. Some better than others, and some more interesting than others. And you're always trying to highlight the best potential qualities that a given site or soil can give you. To make it hardier against disease and pests, and to adapt it to different soil conditions around the world, the Vitis vinifera vine is often grafted with hardier North American rootstock. The grafting consists of actually cutting the shoot of each varietal and binding them together to form a new living plant. The resulting vine will then possess the qualities of the noble grape, Vitis vinifera, along with the desirable properties of the hardier rootstock. It's really quite a sturdy and hardy plant, isn't it? Oh, very much so. Very, very much so. It'll tolerate many different soil conditions, many different climatic conditions, hillsides, valleys. It's a very tough, tough plant. Once a new vineyard site has been selected and cleared, the grafted vines are planted. This comes after careful analysis of the many growing conditions, all of which are included in the French word terroir. Terroir means not only the ground in which the grapes are grown, but also the atmosphere, the aspect, the weather around, and the drainage. It takes into account all kinds of aspects about how that grape was grown. So this is Merlot? Yes. In grape growing, there are no overnight miracles. Rarely is there a usable harvest before the third year's crop, and growers will wait decades for the vine to yield its highest quality fruit. Well, there's a saying in winedom that says that the older the vine, the better the wine. And when they're healthy, that's absolutely true. Older vineyards care for their fruit differently than, say, teenage vines, in that they will shift their energy away from creating vegetation to looking after the fruit at a slightly earlier time. And then they don't race to maturity. And so that's something that we find gives better flavor, more complexity, and more density. And it basically comes down to the longer a vine is in the ground, the more extensive a root system it can develop. And what happens is the deeper and more extensive that root system is, the more access the vine has to other things in the soil. Spring marks the beginning of a new year in the vineyard. Here, in France's Alsace region, the beginning of the growing season is celebrated with the procession of Saint-Urbain, the patron saint of the growers. The work in the vineyards actually began months earlier. First, the vines were pruned to remove unnecessary canes. This results in fewer but larger bunches of ripe grapes and controls the shape of the vine. Next, the shoots are tied to the appropriate wires on the trellis structure that support the vine. Although the grape is a creeping or climbing vine and can grow wild, it must be trained to the trellis structure to produce optimal fruit for the winemaker. In late spring, the growth cycle begins with flowering. Most grape vines are self-pollinating, containing both male and female parts. At this point in the season, the grower can begin to predict how much a vineyard will yield at harvest. As the season progresses, grape growers will continue to monitor the health and development of the fruit. The grower's objective is to improve the yield and overall quality of the fruit by maintaining good ventilation within the vine and managing the fruit's exposure to the sun. In drier climates, grape growers depend on irrigation for the survival of their vines. This control over water supply can have a distinct advantage, allowing them to regulate the moisture a plant receives and making them less vulnerable to erratic weather conditions. If you irrigate, you're not battling what mother nature is throwing at you all the time, so you're putting on very exacting amounts of water, which really help you to dial in your wine styles, your grape styles out in the vineyard. Often, the spraying of fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides are necessary to control disease and pests. Their use, however, must be discontinued well before the harvest. There is an alternative, however, used in virtually all parts of the wine world. Some growers employ organic viticultural practices to combat pests and disease. Well, what organic means in the production of wine, making wine, is that in our grape growing, we're not using any synthetic chemicals, no pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizers. The whole approach is prevention. So, in the case of an insect population, we plant things between the grapes, daikon radish, bell beans, oats, all kinds of things that provide nectar, that attract predatory insects, and that keeps our insect populations down. Insect pests are also controlled in other ways. Here, pheromones are placed in the vineyard to disrupt insect pest reproduction and protect the vine. Throughout the entire growing season, a process called canopy management is employed. The vines need to be constantly trimmed to reduce excess vegetation. This hedging directs all the vine's energy to where it'll do the most good, into the grapes. Also, leaves that have grown up around the grape bunches may be removed to allow more sunshine onto the fruit for better ripening. At various stages of growth, immature grape clusters will also be removed to direct more nutrients to the remaining bunches. This is called the green harvest. The first thing we do is to cut off those green berries. It does two things. One, we reduce the crop so we get more intensity, but also we even out the ripeness so that when we harvest, all of the clusters are right about the same ripeness. Had you come here 30 years ago, people would have touched the vine twice, pruning and harvesting. That was it. Today, pruning is much more serious than ever before, which is the most important element. As autumn approaches, the grapes begin to ripen, changing from the hard green berries to yellow, green, pink, and soft blue colors of ripe grapes. This transitional stage, called veraison, is a time when more sugar will be produced and stored within the berries. In early autumn, when the process is complete, growers begin checking the grapes on a daily basis for ripeness. What they're looking for is an optimal balance between sugars and acid within the grapes. Unlike some other fruits, grapes will not continue to ripen once they're picked from the vine. Selecting the right moment to harvest is the most critical decision in the grower's year. You were saying another few weeks? Yes, I would think maybe almost a month. In cooler growing regions like Ontario, the fall weather can be highly unpredictable, making the decision to harvest all the more critical. Along with their years of experience, today growers have turned increasingly to technological advances like remote weather stations to help predict local weather patterns. A heavy rainfall during the harvest phase can advance rot and disease or waterlog the fruit, which dilutes their sugars. In warm climate regions, growers can generally rely on favorable dry conditions at harvest. This results in consistent ripening of fruit from one vintage to the next. When the sugars in the grape have reached their peak, the harvest can begin. While the vineyards of the north are blanketed under snow, the warm months of February and March mark the harvest in the southern hemisphere. This is a time of frenzied activity as communities come together to make the years wind. Everyone participates here. This is the culmination of months of hard work in the vineyards and a race to collect the fruit at its peak. For many producers, the best method for selecting and picking grapes is manual harvesting, a process as old as winemaking itself. Crews of pickers will move from row to row, cutting grape bunches off the vine with shears. In the Bordeaux region of France, where many wineries have achieved an almost legendary status, only the highest quality fruit is hand-picked, leaving any inferior grapes behind. But when it comes to the immense vineyards necessary for large-scale production, mechanical harvesters are unmatched in efficiency. First developed in the 60s, the mechanical harvester has replaced hand-picking in the majority of the world's vineyards today. These machines straddle the rows of vines, gently shaking the grapes loose. Their hoppers are then emptied into bins for transport to the wineries. The arrival of the fruit at the winery marks an important transition in the winemaking process. The grower, who's nurtured the grapes to fruition throughout the season, must place his bounty in the trust of the winemaker. The winemaker will now transform the fruit through vinification into finished wine. Now begins the process of extracting the sweet juice and flavor compounds from the grape. First, the stalks are removed by passing through a crusher destemmer that also lightly cracks the skin of the grapes. Unlike the reds, white wine grapes are transferred directly to a wine press. Exerting gradual pressure on the grapes, the press separates the liquid from the solid matter. The resulting liquid is called the must, containing water, sugar, acids, and flavor compounds. At every step in the process, random tests are performed to assess sugar levels, acidity, and pH that gauge the overall quality of the juice. The must is pumped into tanks for fermentation. The tanks are made from a variety of materials, ranging from stainless steel to traditional wood to lined concrete. They are usually geared to the size of a winery's production, ranging from giant industrial containers to the small vats housed within boutique wineries. Here, the must starts to ferment. Cultured yeast is added, which more efficiently converts the sugars into alcohol. Fermentation of white wine takes place at cooler temperatures than red, and the process can last for up to three weeks. The cooler temperatures within the tanks aid in preserving the delicate fruit flavors that distinguish white wines. But these tanks can also be used for extreme cooling, in a process called cold stabilization. The temperature inside the tank drops well below zero to crystallize the naturally occurring tartaric acid onto the tank walls. If left in the bottle, these harmless crystals, sometimes called wine diamonds, could be perceived as a quality defect. An interesting fact is that the juice from most grapes, even red grapes, is white. For this reason, white wines can be made from red grapes. Champagne is a good example. Champagne is a blended wine, usually made from Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, and Chardonnay grapes. But how is red wine made from white juice? So where does all the color come from? All the colors in the skins, and about 95% of the flavonoids. And when you ferment it, after two or three days, the color from the skins go into the wine, and you have a red wine. The essential difference in the making of red wine is that the must ferments on its own skins to extract pigment, tannins, and flavor compounds. As with whites, red wine making begins with the grapes passing through a crusher destemmer. The grapes are not pressed though. Instead, both skins and juices are pumped into a vessel together for fermentation. Cultured yeasts may also be added to red wine to control the process and to produce specific flavor characteristics. The fermentation of red wine ranges from 2 to 14 days. But the biggest difference is the extraction of color, flavor, and tannins from the skins. Called maceration, the longer the skins are left to soak in their must, the more intense the wine will become. As red grapes ferment, their skins rise to the top, forming a cap or crust. Traditionally, the cap is frequently punched down, extracting more from the skins. Alternatively, in a process called pumping over, wine will be drawn from the bottom of the tank and pumped over the skins to achieve the same results. When the winemaker is satisfied with the color and concentration of the wine, the liquid, now called free run wine, is separated from the skins in the tank. Now it's ready to remove the juice and press the skin. So to remove the juice, of course, at this point the skin are all up, all up on top, and on the bottom, on the bottom are the juice ready to remove it and move it in another tank. Okay. So in fact, you can see here, come out. Oh yeah. The juice. The skins and grape pulp are removed by hand and transferred to the press where the skins are squeezed under high pressure to extract the remaining liquid. This concentrated wine, called press wine, may be blended back to achieve the desired balance. With the alcoholic fermentation complete, the juice has been converted to wine, but the winemaker's work is far from over. The acid content of any wine must be in balance. At this point, many wines go through another phase called malolactic fermentation. This is especially important for red wines from cooler climates and even white wines like Chardonnay. Malolactic fermentation is, it's a conversion with bacteria as the catalyst for it that converts malic acid to lactic acid. Lactic is a weaker acid and provides then a softer effect in the mouth. Some wines you want that to happen, most reds you want to be softer in the mouth, a little richer. Some whites, some Chardonnays. But on the other hand, some whites like Riesling, you want to avoid the malolactic fermentation because it creates more complexity and one of the great things about Riesling is the purity of the fruit. Now the aging process begins where the wine's final flavors will begin to transform and develop. Aging periods can vary from six months to several years and may include treatment in new wooden barrels used to impart flavors, usually from French or American oak. The choice to use new oak barrels to add extra dimensions of flavor to the wine is a personal one on the part of the winemaker and if they decide to do so, the country of origin and even the forest the wood comes from will make a significant difference in the wine. The barrels are toasted inside to caramelize the wood adding a toasted or even smoky flavor to the wine. American oak tends to add stronger flavors than French and the differences are dramatic even with the same wine. These are both Chardonnay. Yeah they're both Chardonnay, they're from the same vineyard, picked the same day, they're both right here from Mendocino. Go away, this can't be the same wine from the same year. This is totally different. Yeah it's quite a difference. Winemaking is like it's an art if you will and it's an expression. They have an understanding of how oak is going to impact a different varietal so they use that as kind of part of their palette to select from. I like the quote from Louis Martini. Louis Martini said I want to taste the place where the grapes were grown rather than the container in which they were aged and if I want oak I'll chew on a two by four. The aging process is entirely dependent on the style of wine being made but even in the most inertive processes the winemaker is still at work refining his product through clarification. As wine ages in the barrel sediments are produced and the wine becomes cloudy. The sediment consists mainly of dead yeast cells called lees along with tannin and grape fragments. The winemaker removes these deposits through a process called clarification. Here a fining agent like egg whites is deposited into the wine barrel to capture the suspended particles. The heavier solids then fall to the bottom of barrel and the clear wine is carefully removed and transferred to a clean vessel in a process called racking. The most efficient method of removing unwanted particles is filtration and the wine may undergo several stages of refinement. Each time the wine is pumped through porous materials trapping solids in the filter membranes. These sediments are discarded leaving the wine clear and free of deposits. Every wine has its own character a unique personality based on varietal type the vineyard location and the vintage year but these subtle variations can challenge a winemaker who's expected to deliver consistent wine styles from one year to the next. In a process called blending the winemaker will combine wines from different vineyards or grape varieties to achieve a consistent complementary blend. You can have very ripe vintages very dry vintages and so by using blendings you are just adding to the wine what is the most or the better expression of the variety for a vintage. When the winemaker is satisfied with the final wine it is bottled sealed labeled and packaged for shipment often across the globe. When it arrives at the consumer's table the vast majority of wine is fully developed and ready to be enjoyed. However the finest wines are often returned to the cellar after bottling and locked away for further aging. How far back do the wines go in here? This maturation process allows the wine's flavors to transform and develop further and with some reds the harsh tannins to soften. 83 vintages or 71. 71 that was a great year. Some of the best dry giveouts we ever made. 86 that's the year I was married. The greatest wines may be cellared for decades before they reach their peak. It takes an expert to actually predict the lifespan of fine wines because the aging process will vary widely with each label and vintage year. However when the moment arrives and the bottle is open every wine will be a unique expression of the terroir and the craft of the winemaker. Wine from simple beginnings it evokes such a wide range of emotions for the collector the enthusiast and the novice. There's an appreciation for the winemaker's craft that takes simple fruit and transforms it into a complex and fragrant beverage. Every bottle has a story to tell and it's the memory of that journey from vine to wine that we celebrate in every glass that we raise. you