Garnacha 2022

This fruit came in HOT. After a warm August in Sierra de Gredos into September, I was a bit nervous to see how the Garnacha would come in. The picking decision for grapes isn’t easy. While ripening, you want to give them enough time for the tannins to mature. In cooler climates or when grapes are picked quite early, the tannins are smaller (less polymerized) giving off a more aggressive/astringent taste. When left to ripen longer, the tannins polymerize, growing larger, and have a more rounded, softer profile (what makes a wine smooth). However, the longer you ripen grapes in the vineyard, the more acidity you lose, therefore you have to find the perfect moment to harvest, when there is still nice acidity, and developed tannins.

So early September when the Garnacha came in, I knew I had nice tannins, but was not sure how the acidity levels would be due to the heat (as I was just happy to accept any fruit available to me and not in charge of the picking decision). Because of this, I thought about using a form of Non-Saccharomyces yeast for fermentation, Lachancea Thermotolerans. This yeast produces lactic acid as a by-product when converting sugars to alcohol during wine fermentation, increasing the wine’s acidity. It is being studied to help wineries acidify their wine in a more stable way than adding tartaric acid during vinification, which often tastes artificial and is chemically unbalancing. I was particularly interested in using this yeast, as I had just finished writing my master’s thesis on the topic and thought putting it in practice would close the circle.

In the end, I did not end up using this new yeast and opted to have the native yeast spontaneously ferment the wine. Part of making natural wine is trusting the quality of the grapes to make good wine, as you cannot rely on adding any additional products to aid in fermentation or enhance or correct the wine. In fact, Lachancea thermotolerans naturally occur in many grapes, so I like to assume it was part of the native microbiome of my ferment. I crushed the grapes into a fermentation bin, with 70% of the grapes destemmed, and the remaining 30% with the stems. After five days of fermentation and daily punch-downs, I pressed the grapes manually and pumped the wine into a stainless steel fermentation tank, where the wine is aging and waiting to be bottled.

Wouter helping me press off the Garnacha

I had in mind to make a ‘light’ red wine. The day the fruit arrived, with its maturity and ripeness, I knew this was not going to be a light wine, but that I had a nice opportunity to make a more structured, bodied red. Through careful extraction with punchdowns (only wetting the cap), a maceration of five days, and lighter manual pressing, the final wine has a great structure that will age well with expressions of forest fruits, currants, and spice.