Bordeaux - Winemaking - Red winemaking

7 important questions on Bordeaux - Winemaking - Red winemaking

Write a paragraph about red wine making in general in Bordeaux

  1. Green -harvest for sugar concentration
  2. Destemming and fruit selection before crushing
  3. Chaptilisation & Reverse Osmosis
  4. Fermentation & Maceration (3 weeks) in closed vats using cultured yeast
  5. Fermentation pumping over several times a day
  6. Grape varieties fermented separately
  7. Post-fermentation maceration for up to a week
  8. Wine racked in barrels before/after MLF - 225 l oak barrels 0-24 months
  9. Wine racked of lees in fresh barrel every 3 months and fined with egg whites
  10. Blending done in first few months after fermentation or at bottling

What is reverse osmosis?

Reverse osmosis (or RO for short) is one technique they can use to reduce the alcohol without changing the fruit flavors and other elements in the wine. In RO, wine passes through a filter—a really, really tight filter. Water and ethanol are the smallest molecules in wine, so they pass through the filter most easily

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?

Inoculation and heating of cellars to encourage malo for wines to be presented to press and buyers in spring after harvest

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.

  1. Blending in winter (when needed for primeur tastings)
    • Outcome near-final blend > in 2nd wine or bulk to merchants
  2. Minority: blending few months before bottling

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