"Working by Hand" (Winemaking)
- Most common styles
- Still, sweet (relatively rare)
- Winemaker choices and options
- For dry wines, virtually all winemakers keep intervention to a minimum, preferring the resulting wines to be all about purity of fruit. For the rarer dessert styles, managing harvest timing is a driver. In drier styles, lees stirring may be utilized to enhance texture. Wines finished with some residual sugar, whether labeled as such or not, are not unusual.
- Aging
- Stainless steel, concrete, large oak (vats, foudres), small oak (combination of newer and older for dry, but especially with the rarer, sweet interpretations)
- Aging potential (yes/no). If “yes,” give range
- 2-15 years, pedigree-dependent; the best will live even longer, even with such a low acidity profile—remarkable!
- Presented solo or frequently blended with
- Solo. Varietal wines are the rule.
For more on Gewurztraminer, check out Wine Pros’ “Gewürztraminer Wine Guide 101.”
What it does
It “pops” the fruit character by extracting components from the skins that make the wine opulent and flashy. The downside is that the wines often brown and oxidize (that is, age) over time more quickly, and can ultimately seem more like sherry than still wine.
Comment
Mild skin contact is regularly practiced with Gewurztraminer vinification to enhance its perfumed profile. The challenge is to mitigate pulling out too much tannin (phenolic) bitterness in the wine. One can get a sense of how much skin contact is involved by quantifying the bitterness of the wine’s finish: the more bitter the finish, the longer the pre-fermentation skin contact time.
What it does
Targeting a sweetness level determines a wine’s style – dry, off-dry, medium-sweet or sweet.
Comment
With Gewurztraminer, its inherent challenge is its lack of acidity, so making it into an off-dry or sweet wine can be particularly challenging. With this grape’s acidity, balance is key. Acidity provides a counterpoint to sweetness and has a balancing effect upon wines made with any measurable residual sugar. Lack of acid in Gewurztraminer may equate to wines tasting almost soapy. In the creation of a dessert-style Gewurztraminer a Sélection des Grains Nobles (SGN or selection of noble berries) in Alsace, for example, grapes are picked in late-October or early November. SGNs are made in much the same way as late-harvest, but with grapes affected by Botrytis and must have a higher potential alcohol and sugar level at harvest. Indeed, prior to harvest the intention to produce a Vendange Tardive has to be declared to the INAO, the French government body charged with regulation of the country’s wines.