Let’s talk about wine maturation

A winemaker’s job is to make good wine, consistently, year after year. Easier said than done, right? This being said, any winemaker will tell you that it is also about making decisions for the short, medium and long term, but also in resolving unexpected problems, especially during harvest. ;)
This month’s blog covers the various choices available to winemakers regarding wine aging tools and strategies, in order to maximize efficiency and minimize problem solving.
How can the winemaker decide between these choices in order to make the best wine possible with a given budget and target retail price? Regarding the maturation phase, he might decide to go traditional and do 100% barrel aging. Or a mix of barrels and stainless-steel tank with oak alternatives and mox, or oxygen permeable plastic polymer tank with oak staves. The decision will be based on several factors and criteria: the financial priorities of the wineries, brand positioning, sourcing of the grapes, time to market, etc…
Any conversation regarding oxygen delivery systems involved in wine aging cannot be a simple comparison of coopers against coopers, micro-oxygenation suppliers against each other, or a binary opposition between barrels and micro-ox. The conversation should include ALL means of delivering oxygen while maturing wine: barrels, including large wooden vessels/tanks, micro-ox delivery units, permeable tanks made of complex polymers, and even a the basic oxygen tank cylinder with a manual valve, a hose and a sparging stone….
To give you a hand, below are some tips on how to segment wine maturation solutions in order to decide which best suits your needs:
- Passive vs Active: Do you prefer a “passive” oxygen intake in your wine, or “active” where you can chose the doses of oxygen and the rates and time of delivery? That would be the difference between a permeable vessel (oak or plastic polymer) and a micro-ox device.
- Multi-purpose vs Single purpose: Do you have several needs to fulfill with your investment, or a single purpose? For instance, barrels and tanks are also containers and help with storage capacity, while micro-ox devices only serve the purpose of delivery oxygen at a precise rate.
- Traditional vs innovative: Where do you sit on the scale of innovation? Are traditional winemaking methods critical to your brand or are you curious about more innovative and modern winemaking alternatives?
- Short term vs Long term: How much time do you have for aging — a few months or a couple of years?
- Risky vs No Risk: How much risk are you willing to take on in your winemaking process? Are you comfortable with a little more risk in order to harvest better results?
- Low mobility or fixed unit vs Portable: Do you need the unit to be able to be moved from tank to tank, from winery to winery, or have the aging units fixed and sedentary?
- Violent oxygenation vs Managed oxygenation: Do you want a tool that allows you to run only managed oxygenation (when the wine’s capacity to consume the oxygen is higher than the oxygen diffused), or also punctual violent oxygenation (during fermentation or before bottling for instance)?
- Phase 1 or Phase 2: Do you want a tool that allows you work during fermentation on the structuring phase (between AF and MLF), or the harmonization phase (after MLF), or all of the above?
- Add vs modify vs prevent: Do you want to add to or change your wine’s characteristics (link tannins to anthocyanins, soften tannins, prevent reduction), or all of the above?
- Sparging stone vs diffusor vs wood vs permeable plastic tank vs semi-permeable membrane. Do you care about the amount or size of the bubbles of oxygen of the delivery systems? What is the best suited for your wine’s needs?
- What is your winery setup? Is wifi available so that you can benefit from capturing and analyzing data or is this not practical for your winery?
- Last but not least: how much time does the winemaker have to manage oxygen intake during wine aging? Are you a single hand work force in the winery and have little time to do this or you have assistant winemakers and cellar workers to help you at all time?
Many different factors will impact a winemaker’s decision to invest in new equipment for their winery. Obviously, the benefits of any investment need to outweigh the costs.
At Wine Grenade we’ve built our business around allowing the winemaker to achieve all of the following:
- Improving significantly the wine’s quality in order to command a higher retail price
- Allowing wineries to keep the same retail price for the consumer, but improving the quality of the wine to achieve a better value for money product
- Increasing the efficiency of the winery, for example reducing the amount of time and effort required to install and manage the unit
- Reducing costs versus existing systems, for example reducing storage costs
To summarize, here is how the Wine Grenade is positioned along those parameters mentioned above:
- Active micro-ox system
- Single purpose (dedicated only to deliver oxygen during aging)
- Innovative, the combination of wifi connectivity and membrane diffusion solves some issues with existing micro-ox systems
- Flexible for short or long-term maturation, no risk involved
- Fully portable unit, simple to move tanks
- Managed oxygenation
- Best used during phase 2 (harmonization phase)
- Both “modify and prevent”
- Uses a semi-permeable membrane diffusion system,
- Wifi enabled to capture data and allow remote control of the unit
- And… last but not least: little required dedication time for the winemaker.
If those sound good to you, please contact us. We love talking about this stuff, so get in touch, and we’ll see if Wine Grenade can help improve your winemaking operation.
Cyril Derreumaux — cyril@winegrenade.com