No Wine is Natural

The Story of Grapes, Yeast and Wine Additives…

Yes, this was meant to turn heads and generate clicks. But hear me out, maybe you’ll learn something new.

Grape vines don’t like being strung up on a trellis in neat rows. They prefer verdant hills with ample trees to climb. They would very much enjoy producing lots of leaves for photosynthesis and fewer grapes. However, since they are held in a type of purgatory by us, they produce more grapes to entice birds to come eat them so they can “move”. They want to get the heck out of this row and onto fertile ground with trees to topple over with their veracity. But being the five fingered clever humans that we are, we keep them producing grapes year after year, in soil that gives them a bit of struggle, in an environment they’d prefer to escape. As a result, we get to use their delicious bird food and turn it into our crafty beverage of choice.

Do not feel bad for the grape vine. Or at least no worse than the trees planted to build houses with or the lettuce planted to eat in a salad. This is our lot in life, to use resources (ideally in a thoughtful and sustainable way) to improve our lives. Besides, the grape vine prevails, it has an immense will to live.

However, this brings me to my point about the way we make this product. Many farm it with a great deal of intention and intervention – planting in rows, on a hill with weaker soil, in the direction with the best sun exposure for our product. We work hard to keep it happy in organic farming – which I do believe makes a tremendous difference in our world. I certainly prefer to breathe and drink without poison in the air or water. With our cover crops and lack of tilling, natural fertilizer and nitrogen and crop and animal biodiversity - I believe the vine feels like it is happily caged in a Scandinavian jail rather than Riker’s Island.

That said, after we remove those grapes (gently, with our hands) we take them home and make something. It is exactly like making a chair (in theory) – we have a vision for the kind of wood we need, the cuts to make, the polish to apply. You can make a chair in a factory, or with your hands and refined tools passed down over the ages. If the carpenter has sanded an edge too much and left it out of balance, it will rock, annoyingly, for the rest of its life.

These are all great parallels for winemaking. You do have to have a vision for your product – is it acidic and tart? Tannic and rich? Robust in body or moderate? Then you apply the appropriate tools to achieve your vision using your experience with those specific grapes and site to guide your hands.

Which brings me to yeast and additives – a couple of the tools of the trade. Is there yeast in the vineyard? Yes. Is there yeast on your nose? Also, likely, yes. Is this the best yeast for the wine you are trying to make? TBD! You have to trial it and explore. Yeast is not some GMO product. The saccharomyces cerevisiae commercial yeast we have has not been altered, it has been isolated for having properties that are advantageous to making certain wines.

Some types of this yeast are happy with lower temperatures and will aid a cold fermentation. Some others are lively at higher alcohols, they demand less and can finish a riper fermentation handily. But I think its borderline ridiculous to romanticize yeast coming on your grape bins. I think its fine if you don’t choose your own yeast – which is what someone who doesn’t inoculate is doing (this is branded as “native yeast” or “ambient yeast”, the latter of which is inaccurate, yeast is too heavy to hang around in the air). They may get the yeast from the tank next to them, they may get some yeast from someone’s shoe, they may get some yeast from the vineyard – there are no guarantees. Or you can test varieties of yeast and use it as a tool to better your final product. I happen to always be exploring, both yeast I do and don’t chose.

There are any number of choices like this in wine. You can choose to use fewer tools to make wine or you can choose to use more. One may be more sustainable than the other, as using less resources tends to be. But if the wine is poorly made as a result or doesn’t stand up to time, then likely that approach has failed. We have been making these choices since the dawn of civilization. The winemakers of the oldest pottery shards we have (with wine bio markers on them) added the resin of the terebinth tree to prevent spoilage. It was likely not grown anywhere near the vineyard itself, it was simply an effective antimicrobial that was useful to these ancient winemakers.

Tools themselves are not the enemy, the way they are deployed and the recklessness of their use is what we should be weary of. For example, I don’t find grape concentrate (otherwise branded as Mega Purple) evil in anyway. It is a tool to color wine with. Since consumers prefer a darker color, it gets added to wine sometimes. That said, because it is grape concentrate, it innately includes sugar. So if you add it to wine, you add a little sweetness. Usually a little goes a LONG way with that product, so it isn’t much. But it’s enough that I don’t enjoy that effect in my wine and I’m not alone in that stance.

Have I bought wine with that addition? Probably, but if it is used effectively and I enjoyed it, it’s not my issue. My problem is more that the grapes grown to produce the grape concentrate were probably high yielding grown with pesticides and herbicides. However, if I found out that grape concentrate was mainly a by-product of organic winemaking, I would be thrilled (its not, but you get what I’m saying).

You see, its not the tool*, it’s the use of the materials and how it’s yielded that should matter to us. I use some tools to make wine. I’ve done pretty exhaustive experimentation with them and have found some to very useful in crafting a long-lived wine. For example, I like using a very tiny amount of enzyme that was isolated from tomatoes to enhance color and release more anthocyanins (the color molecules in wine) during my cold soak prior to fermentation. Many additives I’ve done away with or tried a few times and eschewed. I used to use different yeast nutrition than I do now – I’ve switched to all organic nutrition since 2019 and I’ve been pleased with the results.

(By the way, almost nothing that gets added to wine stays in the wine itself, it used to craft it and then is consumed by the yeast or racked off once you clear the wine from the barrel. There has been a lot of advertising that confuses consumers and many industry professionals on this point.)

I’m a craftsman, I will continue to hone my craft and I’m so grateful you’re on this journey with me as I do. Winemaking is not grapes falling off a truck into a barrel. It’s much more than that, and I love explaining those things to consumers. However, no matter how many conversations we have or how many of my podcasts you listen to, we won’t cover it all. So much of it becomes instinct over the years and there are still so many things about wine even the most experienced researches among us have yet to uncover. Which is why it is still such a majestic beverage.

Drink great wine, organically farmed, bottled in light weight containers and ship when the weather is cool.

-Kira Ballotta

*I feel like I need to add another note here. Tools and additives that are dangerous to the consumer are not allowed and I believe ardently in that rigorous and continued oversite. I wish it was applied more broadly in the U.S to the cancer causing glyphosate (Round-Up) as it has been banned in the following countries: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Malawi, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, St. Vencent and the Grenadines, and Bermuda.