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!

The Pinot Gris You Never Knew

Pinot Gris is often thought of as the grape next door - commonplace, approachable, and pleasant. Originating from France, Pinot Gris is mostly used to make a dry white wine that is zesty with notes of stone fruit. The grape is also known as Pinot Grigio in Italy, where the style of wine made tends to be lighter and livelier with higher acidity. Either expression of the white wine makes for easy sipping in the summer but not something that wows the palate.

Grayish-pink Pinot Gris by Reinhold Möller

It’s Not Really White

What you may not know is that Pinot Gris is not even a white grape. In fact, it is a mutation of Pinot Noir, where one of the two cell layers responsible for berry color is missing anthocyanins. It is crazy to think that both grapes are genetically identical except that the skin of Pinot Gris is grayish-pink (“gris” is gray in French) while the skin of Pinot Noir is deep dark red (“noir” is black in French).

Anthocyanins by Bruna Branco on Unsplash

Anthocyanins are color pigments found in many blue, red, and purple fruits and vegetables. Although anthocyanins by themselves are odorless and nearly flavorless, they do interact with aroma substances during the vinification process to enhance the flavor of the completed wine. Because of its lower level of anthocyanins, Pinot Gris is seldom made into a red wine. 

You Say Rosato

In recent years, I have seen more Pinot Gris being made into rosé (or rosato in Italy). That was actually how I found out that Pinot Gris is not a white grape. SMAK, a woman-owned winery in Walla Walla that makes rosés exclusively, has a summer blush that is 100% Pinot Gris. Depending on the vintage, the color ranges from light copper to pink hue. But it is always crisp, with notes of peaches and melons as well as delicious minerality. I have since tasted other pink Pinot Gris and generally prefer it to the dry white expression.

SMAK Summer Rosé

I Say Ramato

Last year, I had a taste of the 2020 Holocene Pinot Gris that blew my mind away. It had a beautiful deep orange-red hue and the aroma was a juxtaposition of smoke, cigar, and stone fruit all at once. On the palate, it was vibrant yet smoky and complex with notes of whiskey.

Is this a red, pink or orange wine? As I savored the wine, I knew this much - that was not a white wine! I would have pegged it as an orange wine except that it was not made with white grapes. Holocene website describes their Pinot Gris as a “great balance between a ramato-style orange wine and a rosé.” 

2020 Holocene Pinot Gris

So what exactly is ramato? Wine scholar Lynn Gowdy of Savor the Harvest described it best when she wrote “(o)range wines are made from white grapes, rosé from red grapes, and ramato only from Pinot Grigio.” Ramato style of Pinot Grigio originated from the Friuli-Venezia-Giulia region of Italy. It was the traditional way of making Pinot Grigio till the 1960s when white Pinot Grigio was popularized and exported.

Because Pinot Gris (or Grigio) is technically a red grape, one could argue that ramato is closer to a rosé or rosato than a traditional orange wine. However, the length of skin contact for a ramato sits somewhere between that of a pink wine and an orange wine. Depending on the winemaker’s style, maceration may last from 24 hours to two weeks and hence the wine develops the kind of complexity that is more commonly found in an orange wine than a pink wine.

My Verdict: Why limit yourself to dry white Pinot Gris? In my opinion, Pinot Gris blush and ramato are far more interesting and delicious. Give it a try this summer and prepare to be wowed. The grape next door does not always have to be plain. 

Que Syrah, Syrah, Syrah

Perhaps it was the pandemic. Or perhaps I had been in a winemaking rut. Nonetheless I decided to shake things up this year. The outcome? From a single Syrah grape variety, I ended up with three wines: a red, a rosé, and a pétillant-naturel (also known as pét-nat). Let me share my journey.

One grape, three wines

An Order of Doble Pasta Please!

After making only red wine for the past five years (along with all the rookie mistakes), I wanted to experiment with doble pasta to give my wine more concentrated flavors and depth. Far from the carb-laden name, doble pasta is really a winemaking technique where the crushed grapes are fermented with extra skins and pulp to extract a higher intensity of flavors, color, and tannins.  

Hailed from Spain, doble pasta is practiced in the southeastern wine regions of Alicante, Jumilla, Utiel-Requeña, and Yecla. There, the crushed grapes are traditionally macerated with twice the amount of grape skins and pulp, hence the word doble, while retaining the same amount of juice. 

Free run juice from half the grapes

My Syrah grapes arrived in mid September, freshly harvested from the vineyard that morning. After the grapes had been de-stemmed and macerated for a couple of hours, I put half the grapes into the basket press and let gravity draw out the free-run juice. I was careful to retain the tannins, anthocyanins, and other flavonoids in the skins and pulp to be added to my other half of the grapes that were macerating in a separate fermenter. My own doble pasta!

It would appear that doble pasta also meant doble cap. Cap refers to the crushed grapes that rise to the top of the juice during alcoholic fermentation. Typically, the winemaker punches the cap down into the juice two to three times a day to extract flavors and prevent bacterial activities. With twice the cap mass, this proved to be quite the workout. I ditched my regular metal paddle and went for a glass gallon jar for punchdown. A genius move if I may say so myself. Even then, the cap was so thick that the gallon jar could just sit on it. 

Glass gallon jar for punchdown

I also learned that doble pasta also meant more grapes to break down and more sugar to convert to alcohol. I had not accounted for that when I measured out the amount of yeast to use. As a consequence, my red was fermenting several days longer than normal. However, the reward was a rich wine with concentrated flavors. I am excited to see how the wine will further evolve with malolactic fermentation and oak maturation.

No Way, Rosé!

Not to waste the free-run juice, I used it to make my very first rosé. First I watered back the juice to reduce the Brix (or sugar content) to keep the wine at a lower alcohol level. Plus, I wanted to lighten the color but was barely successful as Syrah is a highly pigmented variety. As fermentation went on, the difference in colors for both wines was astounding. The rosé developed a deep pink hue, while the red was inky and dark.

Rosé Syrah

Red Syrah 

Rosé is made when you ferment red grapes using white winemaking method. It starts with separating the skins and pulp from the juice, which I did as part of doble pasta. I then used a white wine yeast strain known for producing crisp aromatic wine with intense fruit flavors. Like making a white wine, rosé is also fermented at a lower temperature (60°F) than that for a red wine (80°F).

As one might expect, more rookie mistakes were made in the making of the pink wine. Rosé is fermented in a carboy with an airlock to limit exposure to air. At the same time, adequate headspace is needed for the release of carbon dioxide from yeast activity. Getting the right amount of headspace, however, takes some trial and error, and in my case, a rosé eruption (see video below).

Because of the cooler temperature, rosé fermentation could go on for a while. Even with a zero Brix reading on the hydrometer, my rosé continued to bubble, an indication of ongoing yeast activity. I let it go for a few more days before the bubbling slowed down. After which, I racked the wine and topped it up, this time to truly minimize headspace. Sulfur dioxide was then added to inhibit further fermentation, and then the wine was chilled at 50°F to settle out any tartrate crystals (also known as wine diamonds). After a month in the fridge, the wine was finished and bottled. Viola!

What? A Pét-Nat?

While the rosé was bubbling with a zero Brix reading, I had a taste of the wine and really liked it. The thought of ditching the still rosé and bottling the lightly fizzy wine as a pét-nat crossed my mind. Pét-nat is after all a wine that has not completed fermentation, which is exactly what was going on.

That temptation was quickly killed by my fear of glass bottle explosion. That is always a risk when making a pressurized beverage. Being new and ill-equipped to accurately measure the dissolved carbon dioxide and its subsequent pressure in a glass bottle, it seemed prudent to keep the experiment limited. Besides, why choose one over the other when you can have both (or all three if you include the red)? 

Pét-nat securely stored in a bucket

So I decided to siphon out enough fizzy rosé to fill two previously used beer bottles. That would suffice as my little experiment. I then enclosed the bottles with crown corks, which is very hipster-y, and stored them in bucket with the lid on in case of a bottle explosion.

Que Syrah, Syrah, Syrah

It has been two and a half months since harvest. The pét-nat was the first to be bottled towards the end of September. The rosé followed suit after a month. The red is still in malolactic fermentation, a process often skipped when making white and pink wines. Since the proof of the wine is in the tasting, here are my notes of the three Syrahs as tasted this past Thanksgiving:

Pét-Nat: Foamed over after uncorking as pét-nats sometimes do. Deep pink and hazy. Highly aromatic with pressed sugarcane, cherry, apple cider, and a touch of brioche. Subtle fizz but not sustained. Medium body, dry, and very refreshing with a slight funk. Not bad for a first try!

Rosé: Deep pink in color but clear. Aromatic with rich cherry flavor and a tinge of sweetness. Medium body but refreshing with a lingering finish. Not quite the Bandol rosé, but a wonderful pairing with roast turkey and Thanksgiving sides.

Red (Barrel Tasting): Deep purple in color. Aromatic with cherry Jolly Rancher and white pepper. Full body. Medium plus acidity, a little astringent indicating that malolactic fermentation is not complete. Fine tannins and lingering finish.

My Verdict: Making three wines from a single grape has been a fun experiment and a much needed fresh breath of air. Now which wine shall I pick to drink to your good health this holiday season? Que Syrah, Syrah, Syrah. Whatever will be, will be, will be.