Bordeaux - Winemaking - Red winemaking
7 important questions on Bordeaux - Winemaking - Red winemaking
Write a paragraph about red wine making in general in Bordeaux
- Green -harvest for sugar concentration
- Destemming and fruit selection before crushing
- Chaptilisation & Reverse Osmosis
- Fermentation & Maceration (3 weeks) in closed vats using cultured yeast
- Fermentation pumping over several times a day
- Grape varieties fermented separately
- Post-fermentation maceration for up to a week
- Wine racked in barrels before/after MLF - 225 l oak barrels 0-24 months
- Wine racked of lees in fresh barrel every 3 months and fined with egg whites
- Blending done in first few months after fermentation or at bottling
What is reverse osmosis?
Tell about plot by plot winemaking in Bordeaux
- For high quality wines
- picking and vinifying individual plots
- extra care for picking dates
- more expensive > more and smaller vessels needed
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In red winemaking in Bordeaux, what happens with the free-run juice and press wine?
- They are stored in barrels (barriques) 225 ltr
- Winemaker decides later what proportion of presse wine is needed to give structure and tannin to the free-run juice
In red winemaking in Bordeaux, how and when is malolactic conversion ensured?
How are high quality Bordeaux wines matured?
- In French oak barrels 225 ltr.
- mix 1-2-3- jr oak
- new oak decreasing
- range of cooperages and toastings
- 18-24 months
- racked every 3 months
- use of micro-oxygenation to replace the oxygenation caused by racking and softening tannins
What are two approaches to blending, in Bordeaux.
- Blending in winter (when needed for primeur tastings)
- Outcome near-final blend > in 2nd wine or bulk to merchants
- Minority: blending few months before bottling
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