Thermovinification

Your new fifty cent word for the day is thermovinification and the process is just what it sounds like, the application of heat to the winemaking process.  Actually heat has always been a part of the process if you consider what happens when you pile up grape bunches and maybe allow a whole bunch fermentation to happen.  Heat is inescapable in this common winemaking practice.  Thermovinification though is the deliberate use of near boiling temperatures to alter grape chemistry before fermentation.

Ten years ago we wrote about Flash Detente, Italian technology that flashed a blast of 185 degree steam heat onto grapes, then immediately cooling them.  It was, more or less, an instantaneous de-contamination.  The process effectively dealt with the problems of Brettanomyces taint and pyrazines in unripe grapes.  At the time there were just two of the contraptions in California.  Now there are much more.  Thermovinification is a little different.  It is often a one hour "pre-fermentation hot maceration."  Though not as hot as Flash Detente, it effectively extracts anthocyanins (red pigments) for enhanced color and phenolic compounds that affect the taste and mouthfeel of a wine.

So why are we writing about the subject now?  We recently met a North Georgia winemaker who educated us a bit about the stuff which, as often happens, lead us to investigate further.

We now have a fifty year window on the wine industry and we've seen huge changes in wine quality and wine business dynamics.  What heat in the winemaking process has done is to clean up ordinary grapes by breaking down cellular walls to release the better qualities in those ordinary grapes.  If the heating is overdone the wines will taste cooked and there are plenty of examples of that on store shelves.  But if done right, the heat bonds red and blue colors into a brighter purple; it boosts the berry fruitiness of the wine and it leaves tannins that are softer and rounder than before.

While all of this seems to be good, wines that are so treated show less complexity over all and a uniformity that may be considered to be the commodification of wines in general.  Wines so treated become the singular "new normal" style.  Distinction goes out the window.  Since heat treatment shows its greatest value in making ordinary grapes palatable, then the great beneficiary of the process on the business side of things is the large wine industry player.  They can profitably over-crop a harvest and then remediate it with thermovinification.