MLF? Gross Lees? What am I talking about?
Less than 72 hours in Vienna, after my 12 week apprenticeship at Paumanok Vineyards in New York, our first vintage was ready for racking — where we syphon the wine from steel tanks to amphora.
The first vintage will be a cuvèe of Grüner Veltliner from the talented duo at Weingut Feldtheorie and our own Chenin Blanc. After a little less than two weeks the must underwent spontaneous fermentation in a steel tank and now it’s in amphora where it is undergoing malolactic fermentation or MLF followed by aging on gross lees.
You may be thinking WTF does all this mean Chris? Okay, stay with me here…
MLF? As explained by Science Direct:
Malolactic fermentation (MLF) is an option that some winemakers choose, especially for the more robust wine styles. MLF is the conversion of malic acid to lactic acid leading to a reduction in acidity and the production of aroma and flavor compounds. As explained by Wine Folly, “one way to recognize MLF in a wine is to note if it has a brioche, creamy, oily mid-palate texture.”
What the heck are gross lees?
Yes, I agree it doesn’t sound appealing, but as described by Decanter:
Lees are predominantly dead yeast cells left over from the fermentation process, but there are two kinds.
‘Gross lees’ refers to the general sediment that forms in the wine after fermentation. Gross lees tend to naturally fall to the bottom of the winemaking vessel and are generally separated from the liquid quite quickly. Fine lees are smaller particles that settle more slowly in the wine, which can be filtered out or left in enhance the complexity of the wine.
Nutty aromas, such as almond, plus hay and yeasty flavours can all be the results of a wine spending some time aged on lees, or ‘sur lie’ as it’s known in French.
If you drink Champagne, then you have enjoyed the results of lees aging, as by law Champagne must be aged on lees from 12 months to three years depending on non-vintage or vintage.
So hopefully this answers both questions - what and why. I’m not big on young, high acid driven wines and I love bready, yeasty notes — and I hope you do as well.
From the Cellar to the Vineyard
One of the biggest stresses I faced while I was in New York was accurate and timely weather data for my vineyard. I was using three different weather apps and several municipal webcams located around the Krems region and each showed something different. Additionally, knowing that it rained wasn’t enough. In August when temperatures reached extreme levels I needed to know how much rain fell and when.
Luckily I know a handful of very intelligent computer engineers including my former IBM colleague Ronald Luijten. A quick email to Ronald was met with an enthusiastic response, “when do you need it?”
Six months and 2,000 lines of code later he over-delivered — and even came to Austria to help me install it.
As of a few weeks ago I now have my own solar powered weather station tracking rainfall, humidity and temperature on the hour. Using only 4 watts of energy it can run for nearly 10 days without any sunlight. As the data is collected it is uploaded to a website using my sim-card wifi router — I can also download the data as a .CSV file. If you are interested in having one built visit his website.
`Tis the Season
In addition to the weather station I added some additional branding on the side of the press room (see photo below) in the vineyard, which is visible from the street below to help potential customers find us for a tasting.
To celebrate our first vintage and the end of the year, here is a 10% discount code on all Kapitel Zwei Wine merchandise — just type FIRSTVINTAGE when you check out. Everything is organically made and shipped locally.
Thanks again for following along on this journey.
Cheers,
