The word “biostimulant” turns up more and more often on the shelves of agricultural and horticultural suppliers, and not only in viticulture. The descriptions on those shelves tend to run along the lines of invigorating the plant, or activating it. When t …
The word “Piwi” increasingly needs no explanation. It has become a trend term in winegrape growing. Piwi is an abbreviation of the German Pilzwiderstandsfähige Rebsorten, meaning fungus-resistant grape varieties. These varieties are presented as having be …
Climate change and global warming are reshaping how wine is made. Winters have grown shorter and warmer, and budbreak now arrives earlier in the season. As a result, damage from late frost and hail has become more widespread. Shifts in rainfall patterns i …
Maceration is a winemaking technique with a surprisingly thin body of precise, publicly available information despite its widespread use. This article takes cold maceration (cold soak) as its central case and examines both the commonly cited benefits and …
How do you react when Brett comes up in a conversation about wine? Some may wonder why bread appears in the discussion — the resemblance goes no further than the sound of the word. What drifts from the glass is a distinctive smell rarely encountered in ev …
Preferences in wine vary widely, but few people seem to dislike the profound sweetness that characterises dessert wines. Even setting aside Château d’Yquem, the mere thought of a Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese from an exceptional vintage is enough to bring …
When making one’s own wine, few producers have never hesitated over the choice of whether to ferment with active dry yeast or to rely on indigenous microorganisms—so-called “wild” yeasts—present on grapes and in the winery. If the priority is fermentation …
Pruning is one of the most critical operations carried out in vineyards. In viticulture, pruning refers to removing unnecessary shoots and canes that have grown over the season, leaving only those required for the coming production cycle. This work is per …
This article focuses on the compounds extracted from wooden barrels during wine aging and their effects on wine. Discussions of barrel aging are often reduced to the notion of “oak aroma,” with an emphasis on aromatic attributes alone. In practice, howeve …
In the context of winemaking, you may have encountered terms such as “destemming” and “whole-cluster fermentation.” Both refer to how grape bunches are handled at the point of vatting. A grape cluster consists of many berries attached to a green, stem-lik …
