Pinotblogger: the Capozzi Winery blog

I thought that since I shared my recipe for this year’s crush I’d go ahead and outline the protocols other producers have used in the past. You know, for comparison’s sake.

The following are general outlines for crafting pinot and will be influenced immensely by the quality of the grapes in a given year.

Besides being a useful practical guide, I think it’s fascinating to see how the craft has grown and progressed through the years. And since they’ve been at this thing for just a little while longer than we have it’s only natural that this list is weighted heavily toward French vintners.

Note: Much of the producer specific information presented here is culled and re-purposed from Ben Rotter’s excellent article “Techniques for Pinot Noir”. The article can be found here.

The Traditional Burgundian Approach (note: highly generalized)

• Hand harvested
• Typically 100% de-stemming
• Wild yeast ferment
• Approximately 10 day fermentation
• Ferment in small open-top vessels
• Punch down every 6 hours
• 12-18 months ageing in French oak
• Egg white fining
• No filtration

From this basic template the folks back in France eventually split down distinctly different paths in their search for more extraction and flavor, or for more transparency in their wines.

Henri Jayer

One of the most famous and influential is Henri Jayer, who is credited with inventing the pre-fermentation cold soak.

Jayer thought that saignée would reduce the life of a pinot and so never practiced it. He also avoided fermenting in wood vats because he thought that they gave the wine funky aromatics.

Jayer popularized the idea that wine is grown in the vineyards and prided himself on the fact that he took a very hands-off approach to winemaking (though you could argue that the cold soak is the very definition of a manipulative winemaking technique).

Jayer’s wines found favor with a pretty diverse set of palates. The co-owner of Domain de la Romanee Conti tasted his 1978 vintage and reportedly said that his were they type of wines that they aspired to at DRC. Robert Parker was also a huge fan of Jayer’s wines because of their concentration and elegance.

Of all the Burgundian winemakers Jayer is one of the most revered and celebrated, and his style influenced California and Oregon pinot noir winemaking immeasurably.

Jayer passed this last September.

His protocol looked something like this:

The Henri Jayer Approach

• Low yields in the vineyard
• Late harvesting to maximize flavor
• 5-7 days cold soak
• No saignée
• Native yeast
• Ferment in open cement tanks
• 18 months in 100% new oak before bottling
• Fining with egg whites until 1990
• No filtering

Guy Accad

Guy Accad’s name is fairly reviled in French winemaking circles these days, but interstingly he was heavily influenced by Jayer. Accad simply took Jeyer’s pre-fermentation cold soak to a new level, stretching it out to 10 days. But perhaps the most controversial technique he used was a regime of heavy sulphur addition that allowed his cold soaks to clear 10 days without spoiling.

Accad consulted with many of the best producers in Burgundy before his style of wine fell out of favor.

His recipe included the following:

The Guy Accad Method

• Advocated densely spaced vineyards
• Late picking to enhance flavors
• 50-75% destem
• Sulphuring at the crusher in large amounts (300-400 ppm)
• Extended pre-fermentation cold maceration 7-10 days long (41-50°F)
• Fermenting slow at cool temperatures for around 25 days

Domaine Jean Grivot

It is interesting to contrast the protocol above with the one currently employed by Domaine Jean Grivot, a producer that once employed Accad. Their recent offerings have garnered scores in the 90s by critics like Alan Meadows and Steve Tanzer, and neither are very big fans of concentrated, dark colored pinot.

Still, the recipe they use looks a lot like Jayer and Accad’s, the main difference being a more restrained use of oak.

• Very dense planting (around 4500 vines per acre)
• Crop thinning at the end of August/beginning of September
• Careful grape selection/sorting
• 95% destemming
• 4 day cold maceration
• Native yeast
• 14-18 day fermentation with daily punching down and pumping over
• Approx. 40 percent new oak
• Addition of tannin powder to stabilize color and avoid oxidation
• 18-20 months in oak with an average of two rackings during this time
• No fining or filtering

Interesting stuff. I’ll continue this series next week with some producers that are known for their more restrained use of winemaking techniques. See you then.