Not So Good

While waiting for more Tasmanian pages from Chinskirin, I froze another open bottle of wine. Red this time.

I did not get a good result (sorry, Doc).

I was hoping for another anecdotal win. On that basis, we could have petitioned the FDA for immediate research funds, formulated a broad experimental protocol, maybe even settled the matter once and for all.

It was a sample a wine producer sent to the Lab. The faults evidenced after freezing were in no way their fault, so in spite of all the recent chatter on the subject, I'm going to eschew transparency and protect the name of an innocent party.

We're obviously going to have get deeper into the freezer on this, with or without the FDA.


image: © Rafal Glebowski | Dreamstime.com

In From the Cold

I left my notebook with Chinskirin Boktani and the bastard is mailing it back one page at a time. He thinks it's funny. Said he'd use Western Union if it weren't so expensive.

So while we wait for the next installment of the Tasmanian Chronicles, a little science in the interim.

Very little.

Before my trip, I was speaking with Cara Bertone of Veritas Imports. I was telling her about some of our wine preservation work at the Lab, and she mentioned she had a friend who advocates freezing wine. Given this research, seems like a flawed strategy. But what do I know?

So before I left for Tazzie, I opened this bottle (see photo), had a glass and then whacked it into the freezer.

We opened it when we got back and let it thaw on the counter.

It was terrific. Better than I remember.

This is hardly science. No control. No protocols. But it appeared to have worked.

Makes me less afraid of the cold.

Wither Thou Pumpest?

No doubt you've been sitting on the edge of your seat waiting for the results on this one. The excitement at the Lab has been palpable. Folks around here haven't been this geared up since we got the Lab rats drunk on Eiswein at last year's Christmas party.

We pulled the two bottles of 2007 Root: 1, Sauvignon Blanc from the fridge where they'd been stored. We let them sit for a full 96 hours before re-tasting. You may remember (or you can read the set-up HERE) we pumped one with a Vacu Vin pump to the full vacuum capacity of the device. The second bottle we pumped only half that much.

The results were... hardly conclusive. The truth is the two wines were nearly indistinguishable one from the other. However, both were remarkable given they'd been open for 4 days. The fruit on the nose was bigger, but had perhaps lost a little complexity over the period. The palate was bright with citric acid, gala apple and a concentrated, mineral core that stretched out like Mr Fantastic on the lingering finish. A recognizable grapefruit flavor had emerged in both.

If I were really pressed I might argue that the acid/mineral mix of the fully-pumped bottle -- let's call it the grapefruit -- had turned a little bitter. But it was a marginal difference, far from conclusive.

I hate it when science is ambiguous.

Pump It Up

In past experiments, we've tried to reach some functional conclusions regarding wine preservation. After extensive, though hardly exhaustive, trials, we remain convinced that not preserving the wine (i.e. finishing the bottle) is the strategy par excellence.

That said, we remain curious about something we learned along the way. Namely, that pumping short of the full vacuum (or at least less than the manufacturers suggested level) will provide improved preservation results with next-day wine.

So we opened two bottles of 2007 Root: 1, Sauvignon Blanc, tasted both, and then poured off 250 ml of each bottle. The first we pumped with a Vacu Vin wine preserver until it "clicked" (10 pumps). The second we pumped half as many times (5). Then we returned both bottles to the fridge for storage.

Given we found the wine on sale for $7 (it usually sells for $11), it was remarkable on a quality/price ratio. A nose of passion fruit, lime zest and wet grass. The palate was zippy citric acid and gala apple. The wine had a long lingering mineral finish. If tasted blind, I think I would have picked this as a mid-range to high-end Sancerre.

In fact, Root: 1 is a joint-venture from Chilean producer Viña Ventisquero and Seattle-based importer/genius marketing company Click Wine Group.

Root: 1 is sub-titled [The Original Ungrafted]. Not sure what they mean by "original" but it is notable that in South American appelations it's possible to produce a blend of multiple vineyard blends from all ungrafted vines. This is terrific table wine.

We'll pull the samples from the fridge in a couple days. Don't go away.

C6H12O6 → 2 CH3CH2OH + 2 CO2

A Lab correspondent recently wrote to us about his own experiments with vacuum pumps. And given our own work on the topic, I thought it would be useful to share his results. He pointed out that pumping per the manufacturers' recommendations (either until the pump returns strong resistance or starts to "click") might, in fact, be doing harm to your wine. Aggressive pumping will certainly provide a better vacuum and so reduce the effects of oxidation, but it may also serve to help pull ethanol out of solution and make the preserved wine smell "hot."

If you want to understand the hard parts of the science read these:

On the miscibility of Ethanol and Water (Science Beat); Wikipedia on Ethanol; and more on the effects of pressure on the solubility of gas.

If you read them (and I know you didn't), you know that yeast eats sugar and produces ethanol. It's the basis for making both wine and bio-fuels. Ethanol and water mix well but with weird results. Most relevant is probably that ethanol reduces surface tension in water. I say probably because I'm way over my head here science-wise and making most of this up. But it has something to do with the hydrogen's bonding properties and the reduction of system entropy that results. So it's not so much the pumping that's the problem, but the eventual release of pressure and the resulting disequilibrium that causes ethanol to evaporate out of solution and make the wine smell like grape-y diesel fumes. It's not dissimilar to what happens when you open a Coke and the gas, previously under pressure, escapes.

So we've been pumping less vigorously at the Lab (I know what you're thinking. Seriously, what's the matter with you? That is so infantile...) and the results have been positive (that's what she said!).

By the way, the guy who wrote us about this also makes a no smell, no taste, no residue soap just for wine glasses. We use it at the Lab. Check it out if you want.

More Cold Play

The reasons for doing this experiment were many. But first and foremost is the massive spike in traffic for the Lab website the last time we used "Cold Play" in the title of a post. I'm thinking the next 5 posts will be called "Britney".

But it's also true that after we tested the preservative qualities of inert gas and bottle pumps, we were left with a few unanswered questions. Most notably the one asked by my buddy Gary who wanted to know whether an open bottle of red holds up better in the fridge or on the kitchen counter.

In theory, cold is a useful preservative. Leave some chicken out on the counter for a couple days if you don't believe me. But there's also a persistent belief in some oenological corners that too much cold will deaden the fruit in red wine.

So we went back to the Bodegas Olivares, Altos de la Hoya, Jumilla Monastrell, 2006. It's terrific wine from ungrafted vines and costs as little as a gallon of organic milk, which makes it perfect for experimentation.

We replicated our prior protocols, pouring off 300 ml from each of two bottles. The first we gassed, recorked and left on the counter. The second, we gassed, recorked and put in the fridge. The temperature on the bottom shelf measured a crisp 38°. We let both sit for 5 days. We let both bottles come back to room temperature before tasting.

It was no contest.

The fridged bottle was the best showing of this wine so far (and we've had a fair few at the lab recently). Black cherry, ripe fig and cardamom spice. It was equally impressive in the mouth, energetic, gripping tannins and that ungrafted hallmark: inextricably intertwined fruit and rocks.

Meanwhile, the countered bottle was showing a lot of alcohol volatility and overripe, approaching rancid, fruit. The complexity in the palate had vanished. Whatever excitement this bottle once held had set sail for other ports.

Clearly, much more testing needs to be done. This effort is merely anecdotal. Please feel free to further our cause with your own refrigeration anecdotes.

If we get a big pile of them I can have one of the research assistants compile all of them into a shiny binder. They love making binders.

Gas Versus No Gas

For this experiment, we uncorked and tasted two bottles of Bodegas Olivares, Altos de la Hoya, Jumilla Monastrell, 2006, detecting no discernible difference between the two wines (see yesterday's tasting notes).

We poured off exactly 300 ml from each bottle. We sealed one with Private Preserve. The other we reclosed with a Vacuvin pump. Then we waited 72 hours before re-tasting the wines.

The idea behind both approaches is the same. Get rid of the oxygen. Either pump it out, or replace it with a heavier-than-air mix of oxygen-less gas. According to the Private Preserve website, their special blend is "pure air with no oxygen," a semantically challenged definition to be sure.

The wine preserved with inert gas had a beautiful nose, with no discernible fade. The pumped bottle, however, had slipped a little. There was also a warm-alcohol volatility present (even though both were poured after 10 minutes in the fridge). The pumped bottle was drinking well, no fade noted in the fruit. But the chalky, mineral finish had gone slightly bitter (no doubt from oxidation). On the palate, the gassed bottle was better again. There was a noticeable freshness to the fruit, especially when tasted side by side against the pump. The finish wasn't bitter, but -- and I'm not sure why -- the tannins seemed a little sharper, more pronouncedly green than both the prior tasting and the pumped bottle.

Neither device "failed" per se. The inert gas certainly seemed to outperform the pump in this trial, but the pumped bottle was still very drinkable, with only a slight fade in aroma and taste.

It is perhaps worth noting that the Lab has consistently argued the best approach to the dilemma of wine preservation is to avoid it altogether. If you drink the whole bottle, there's nothing to preserve.

The Day After

Summer is over and we are back to the grind of full-time science at the Lab.

At a recent planning meeting, several storage issues made it on our agenda. Most noteworthy were several proposed experiments with a focus on storing wine after it has been opened. We plan to test effectiveness of air pumps and inert gas. We also want to see what effect, if any, storage temperature has on already opened bottle of wine.

For our first round of tests, we found a few bottles of 2006 Bodegas Olivares, Altos de la Hoya, Jumilla Monastrell (Mourvedre).

The sandy soils of Jumilla proved inhospitable to our old foe, the Dry Leaf Devastator, and many of the vineyards survived the Phylloxera plague unscathed. So the region is home to some of the oldest, ungrafted vines in the world. The Altos de la Hoya comes from grapes grown in an 11 hectare vineyard with some vines planted as far back as 1872. The importers claim that the 2006 vintage in Jumilla was the best in a decade.

Ungrafted, old Mourvedre from a great vintage. It's astonishing that you can buy this wine for less than $10. It will make you rethink your first growth Bordeaux collection.

Aromas of sweet, smokey plums with background notes of dusty cobblestones and Wrigley's spearmint chewing gum emerge with some time in the glass. On the palate, more plum and rich, ripe figs with hints of campfire and bacon. Underlying this is an amazing core of sweet, chalky minerality. Given their youth, the tannins are surprisingly soft and chewy.

This deep purple-y garnet wine has the lively tension and balanced integration often found in wines made from own-rooted vines (this is also on the Lab's agenda).

We opened a couple over the weekend to test. Results later this week.


(image: © Carlos Sanchez Pereyra | Dreamstime.com)