My Pinot Gris Experiment

It seems like I can’t get enough of Pinot gris. I don’t mean the white wine, but the grape. Unlike most white wine grape varieties that have yellowish-green skin, Pinot gris skin is grayish pink. As mentioned in my previous blog posts (The Pinot Gris You Never Knew and The Peeno Noir You Never Knew), Pinot gris, Pinot noir, and Pinot blanc are genetically the same grape. What differentiates them is the amount of anthocyanins or color pigments present in the grape skin and pulp.

Gemini-generated color spectrum of wine

The length of maceration (or skin contact) employed during the winemaking process has a direct impact on the wine color. It determines if your Pinot noir is going to be red or pink and if your Pinot blanc is going to be white or orange. In the case of Pinot gris, the gamut may run from white to pink and orange. In Friuli, Pinot Grigio (Italian for Pinot gris) is traditionally made with skin contact, typically in the range of one day to two weeks. Known as Ramato, the wine blurs the line between a pink and orange wine. 

This year, I decided to experiment with making a Ramato-style Pinot Gris. Below is my documented process.

Day 1 - Crush and Macerate

The grapes arrived from Crawford Vineyard the same day they were harvested. The grayish pink berries in the signature Pinot pinecone-shaped clusters were then weighed and placed into crates, ready to be crushed and de-stemmed. Once processed, the crushed grapes and juice (also known as the must) went into my fermenter with a bit of sulfite to kill any microbes and wild yeasts, preventing any off-flavors during fermentation.

My Pinot gris grapes

Adding sulfite to the must

At home, I kept the must in my “garage winery” at around 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the optimal temperature for my chosen yeast strain. If I were to make a white wine, I would immediately press the grapes to minimize skin contact. In this case, I decided to let the grapes macerate in the must and watch the color of the juice.

Day 3 - Press and Ferment

As the sulfite wore off in 48 hours, it was the time to pitch the selected wine yeast and start the fermentation process. I needed to decide if I would do it with or without skin contact. Judging from the deep salmon hue of the juice, I made the call to press the grapes prior to fermentation, ending the two-day skin contact. (In the video, my friend and wine sidekick helped collect some free-run juice during press.)

The grape skins and seeds as well as random stems were discarded as part of the process. The remaining juice was funneled into a couple of glass carboys with the yeast starter. Before long, the yeast started eating the sugar in the juice to produce alcohol. Carbon dioxide was also released as a byproduct that protected the must from pesky bacteria-carrying fruit flies.

Start of alcoholic fermentation

Day 7 - Measure and Rack

 

Four days after the yeast was pitched, the Brix reading on the juice had reached zero, indicating that most of the sugar had been fermented. That was probably the fastest alcoholic fermentation I had experienced. It was also my first time using a white wine yeast strain.

Sediments settled after racking

I racked the juice off the sediments and into new carboys to minimize the headspace. This would prevent oxidation and spoilage as fermentation slowed down and less carbon dioxide was released. The sediments (or the ‘lees’), which consisted of dead yeast cells and grape debris, soon settled to the bottom of the carboys. The clear juice that sat above was a beautiful neon salmon pink.

Day 14 - Rack and Cold Stabilize

I waited another week for the long tail of the remaining fermentation to complete. The Brix reading finally reached -1.5 degrees. The wine tasted dry but had a light fizz, indicating a bit of fermentation was still underway. In a glass, the wine was a gorgeous light salmon in color. The nose was aromatic, perfume-y, and citrus-y. On the palate, it tasted like a tart lemonade with high acidity, medium body, light tannins, and a long finish. Alas! This was trending more towards a rosé than an amber wine. But oh so pretty!

Taste test before cold stabilization

This final step was to rack the wine off the sediments again and into a freshly sanitized carboy. I added a bit of sulfite to stop any residual alcoholic fermentation and to prevent any native malolactic fermentation. Malolactic fermentation is the conversion of malic acids in the wine into lactic acids. I typically orchestrate this secondary fermentation when making red wine to soften the acid and to give it a creamier fuller mouthfeel. In the case of this Pinot gris, I decided to keep it bright and cheery.

Thoughts and Next Steps

Winemaking is such a learning experience, and I have enjoyed this Pinot gris experiment. If I had to do it all over again, which I just might with my next vintage, I would make three changes:

1. Increase the length of maceration and start alcoholic fermentation on the skin
2. Use a red wine yeast strain
3. Encourage natural malolactic fermentation 

These would allow me to extract more phenolic compounds from the grapes and give the wine more complexity. The result will be more like an orange wine. But for this year, it will be a pink Pinot gris. The wine is right now going through cold stabilization in the fridge for at least three weeks. After which, I will do another taste test. If it tastes great, it may be time to bottle. It is all very exciting! Cheers!

A Tale of Two Wine Programs

I noticed an emerging wine trend in some of the snazzy new restaurants. I am talking about the kind of restaurants that will more likely snag a James Beard than a Wine Spectator Award. You will probably not find Bordeaux First Growths, big Champagne houses, or Napa’s Screaming Eagle on their wine lists. But that is the point. Their wine offerings are meant to pair with their food and not with Robert Parker’s scores. Let’s explore further.

Food and wine by Lee Myungseong on Unsplash

Two Restaurants, Two Wine Programs

If you live in Seattle, you have heard of Canlis. Perched on the edge of Queen Anne Hill with a spectacular view of Lake Union, Canlis has been awarded multiple James Beard and Wine Spectator Awards. In fact, it has won Wine Spectator’s highest level Grand Awards consecutively for over 20 years.

Iconic Seattle restaurant, Canlis from Canlis.com

Canlis’s line of wine directors hailed from the International Sommelier Guild and/or the Court of Master Sommeliers. Two years ago, the restaurant welcomed its first woman wine director. Linda Milagros Violago carries comparable credentials as her predecessors. The wine list is a book of over 100 pages with 2,600 wine selections, ranging from sparkling to still wines of red, white, and pink.

In 2019, Brady Ishiwata Williams at Canlis cinched the James Beard Award for the Best Chef in the Northwest. Two years later, Williams left Canlis to start his own restaurant, Tomo. Located next to an adult video store in a lower- to middle-income, admittedly grungy White Center, Tomo serves well-executed innovative upscale fare, which is a  juxtaposition to its neighborhood.

Tomo next to Taboo Video by Google Maps

At almost 20 pages, Tomo’s wine list is a fraction of Canlis’s. Nonetheless, it boasts of over 900 wines, curated from small production wineries to complement their dishes. Tomo’s current wine director, Rebar Niemi, came from a background of technology and education. Rebar may not share the credentials of his Canlis counterparts. However, in my few interactions with him, Rebar is very much a wine geek with a pulse on the palate of the Millennials and Zoomers. It is hardly surprising that Tomo was a semi-finalist for the James Beard’s Outstanding Wine Program in 2022.

Let’s delve into their wine lists.

The Sparkling

Both Canlis and Tomo have separate lists for Champagnes and other sparklers. Canlis showcases about 100 Champagnes, neatly catalogued by growers versus négociants, subregions, and vintages or non-vintages. In addition, there are 35 other bubblies from six countries with a good mix of French crémants, Spanish cavas, and mostly sparklers made in the Champagne style or traditional method. There are also a handful of Italian Moscato d’Astis and European Pet-Nats.

Dom Pérignon in Canlis but not in Tomo

Tomo’s Champagne list is not too shabby with about 30 selections, favoring grower Champagnes. You will not find the big négociants such as Billecart-Salmon, Dom Pérignon, and such. More interesting though is the list of 50 non-Champagne sparklers. There is one crémant and a Pet-Nat, intermixed with sparkling ciders and other non-classified sparkling wines.

The Still

Canlis’s impressive list of 2,000 reds and whites come from almost 20 countries. They are methodically organized by country, sub-region, winery, grape variety, and vintage. Canlis also has about 25 rosés. Each producer is respectable, and each wine is of a high quality. With a multi-year award-winning cellar, Canlis caters to a knowledgeable wine clientele who expect to find almost any special bottle to mark an occasion.

Tomo’s Seasonal Wine Selections, May 2023

Tomo holds its own with 400 selections from about 15 countries. You will be hard pressed to find a bottle of Bordeaux (compared to nearly 100 offered at Canlis). What you will find in Tomo, but not at Canlis, are the occasional Japanese wines as well as close to 80 orange wines. Listed under “Skin Contact” with 50 pink wines, that is the most orange wines I have seen in any restaurant wine list. Unlike Canlis, Tomo is catering to a younger and more adventurous wine clientele, who are willing to go off the beaten Robert Parker path to try something different.

About Skin Contact

While I love the incredible list of orange wines at Tomo, I am perplexed by the use of Skin Contact as a category. For those new to orange wine, it is made using white wine grapes with extended skin contact. White wine is typically made by separating the juice from the skin prior to fermentation. When making orange wine, these white wine grapes are fermented in the skin which leads to the orange hue in the wine; hence the term “skin contact.”

Orange wine at Tomo

Skin contact is, however, not an accurate descriptor for pink wine. Pink wine is technically the opposite of orange wine. Rosé, in essence, is made the same way as a white wine except that it uses red grapes. There are different ways to make rosé; separating the juice from the skin immediately after harvest or siphoning a portion of the juice from the red grape must into a different vat for fermentation. Regardless of the method, the goal is to minimize skin contact, not prolong it. Otherwise you will be making a red wine. 

My Verdict: I am excited about the new wine trend I see in hip innovative restaurants, like Tomo. It introduces a myriad of wines that are not constrained by traditional winemaking methods or Old World classification systems. This may just be up the Millennials’ and Zoomers’ alley. That said, I also don’t want to lose the tried and true wine styles - the Bordeaux, the Barolos, and similar styles in the New World. So let’s encourage innovation but continue to celebrate tradition - in wine.