Of course, wine is made in the vineyard, but as Winemaker Theo Zierock of Agricola Foradori shows us, it also requires interesting work in the cellar. In this video Zierock discusses the winemaking process, shows fermentation tanks, aging barrels, and a cellar filled with amphora.
This is fifth of six long format videos featuring Theo at Foradori.
Some highlights include
The new “dream destemmer”
Why there are different variations of Foradori wines under the same label.
The role of amphora in the aging process.
Don't miss this fascinating fourteen minute video.
Special thanks:
Transcript:
Note: Transcript was created by a third party service and I’ve endeavored to clean up the spelling of ‘wine words.’ There are also some Italian words that I have difficulty knowing how to spell. Any persistent errors are mine alone and not Theo Zierock’s.
Or, watch the video. It is awesome.
Theo Zierock:
You have some botrytis has started, but we still don't have enough alcohol or enough sugar to do. That's not cool. It will give the wine more largeness. I don't like. You see that Teroldego makes huge grapes. You just picked the smallest one ever.
I always say that we have three main vinification styles or processes. One is, the amphora vinification, which I explained then in the amphora cellar. One is the Lezer, so the light red we do, so it's 12 hours on the skins, mostly algo. There is a few red varieties that we have from old vineyards like Lagrein, Merlot, and we have some Schiava that also goes into the mix, but it's more of a stylistic vinification. So we do 12 hours on the skins max. So the moment the cab rises, we rack it, and then we press the skins. And obviously the wine on the skins is very dark, so we put it on the side, and sometimes part of it go into the Foradori. Some goes into the Lezer, but we have to be careful about the color as well there. And then after this short maceration, it goes wherever we have space.
So there's no carbonic maceration, but some stays in steel, some in cement, some goes into amphoras. It depends. It's really, it stays there until February, January, February. So it doesn't really matter too much where it stays. And the third one is what I say, the classic vinification we do, which is a pre-World War I vinification, which is the Manzoni Foradori, and the Granato. So, on the Foradori, it's one week to two weeks of maceration. On the Granato, 10 to 21 days. It always depends on the vintage. And then they go for one year the Foradori, and for one and a half year, at least, the Granato into big oak barrels, as it's always been done.
The Granato ferments in Troncau conical bins that I show you. And the Manzoni, the principle is the same, just that the big barrels are acacia, and it's only six months, and the maceration's between two and four days, depending on the vintage. If you have a denser vintage, then you might do less maceration. If the vintage is very crisp, and nice, and long, you can do longer macerations. So it always depends. But at least two days always. So, we don't have a direct press.
The grapes are weighted on the weight of my grandfather. So the scale is from 1901, so it's still the same. So you see the thing there, it's a mechanical weight. Then we process them here in the destemmer, the dream destemmer.
There is a vibrating table to separate the smaller parts. It goes down, up, and then there is a second table that sorts out the good berries. So it's actually the first year we use it. Before we only had the horizontal, simply this table with this table. So there is an added double process, which means an hour longer of cleaning the stuff afterwards. That's all it means to me. But obviously we have a easier way of separating... To make a good destemming of whole berries, or to slightly crush them. We have a better decision making on that, and we can have cleaner berries with the sorting tables. Then it goes into the fermentation cellar. So either outside here in the cement, or in here. In this case you have a...
This, basically, the case is submerged. This style there is a grid that keeps the cab underneath. So we need to do less patch downs, so we don't extract much. So we try to keep the Granato more elegant than it used to be. It used to be more extraction, more density, but it was more rustic. On the long run it took a long time to actually smooth out. With this process, and also with the semi carbonic on the whole berry, sometimes we're able to lift it up from the beginning, and it also doesn't mean that it ages less. You know what I mean? So it kind of, it's... So the Granato changed a lot since 2015, I would say.
Well, every vineyard is obviously vinified separately, and so every vineyard gets its own vat. So you have, basically, every containers contains a single vineyard, and which means that for Granato and for the Foradori, once the year has passed, we assemble the vineyards that we deem most likely. So there is Bordeaux cut to be made, which is always kind of interesting. By Bordeaux cut I mean, you have to find the balance with the different vineyards because they all keep a very different expression. This also means that we do at least two bottlings, and the first bottling and the second bottling tend to be very different. So the first bottling is the first one to come out, so it has to be the readier wine, or at least the ones that are a little bit more ahead in terms of openness, and so it's usually fresher and crunchier while the second bottling gets all the denser stuff.
So even for the Foradori itself, there are two different Foradoris, even though it's the same bottle, the same name. On the back above the alcohol, there is a little point, or two points, or no point, and depending on what you have, it means if there is no point or one point, it means it's the first bottling. If there's like two red dots on top, it means that it's the second bottling. So second bottling usually can withstand... Would evolve better, but it's also less crunchy. So right away, if it's the new vintage, and if it says... If it's one in the back, say like, "Okay, I can give, otherwise, I would keep it on site" because even the entry level one should have its time.
The cellar is very comfortable. You can smell that it's very fresh air, and the temperature is super stable because this cellar was built in a time, I think it would be the architectural golden age because you still have very massive material, so no shitty cement and stuff like this that deals badly with humility because cement and humility don't like each other. I don't know why the world hasn't understood yet because we still keep building everything with cement at the same time... So it's not as fancy as a carved chalk that is good, but you have also not only good building material, so antique building material, but you also have good engineering ideas in terms of airflow. How deep do you have to go? This is not a very deep cellar. So it means also that you don't really want too much temperature... That temperature has to be stable. It has to be stable.
But those two, three degrees give also seasonality to the wines, so it's not bad. So if the cold arrives, it's getting a bit colder here, so it's not just climatized. At the same time, it's not so deep because at the time people would die. Deep cellars meant dead grandparents. In most vineyards in South Tyrol, or in Trentino, if you ask, somebody in the family died in the cellar because you just faint, it's actually a good death. See you're too, "I'm a bit sleepy." Fall asleep because nobody's going to take you out. So they used to go down with the candle in the cellar, so when the candle would go out, they would run because it means there's not enough oxygen for you to survive.
This is the press, the leftover skin presses of the Manzoni. So, actually, there's also part of the Manzoni that was done here in Fora, which we don't declare, but who cares. It's usually very good. And here these are acacia casts for the Manzoni. And here is some more of the [inaudible 00:08:54] and the rest of the Granato 2021. And here we have Giardino. You see, for example, this is classic. Giardino [foreign language 00:09:04]. So this is the leftover... Obviously, every vineyard should go in its own vat. But then once you fill one up, and you have a little bit of that vineyard, there is always one barrel that has more things in it. And this is the stuff. So Giardino is the vineyards you've seen here. Fontansanta is a little plot of terra that we planted there. It's very small. It's never really, wow. And we have an old vineyard of Lagrein that goes into the Lezer, so that's in there as well.
It's a good moment because right now we just filled up most of the pots. So the Nosiola is mostly upstairs. The Pinot Grigio is already closed. So, the first five days of fermentation, they only have this cloth on top. So we fill them up to here, more or less. The fermentation starts, obviously, spontaneously. And at that point we do a punch down in the morning, early morning, once a day, and then we just recover it with this, and for five days it stays in this state. And then when the fermentation starts to slow down, we close them grammatically with the Enoch sleeves, and then we just stop them up. And that stays in there for seven to nine months, depending on which one. So this is Nosiola, so see the punch that would be like this? Just break the cap.
So you see some are whole berries, some are a bit squashed. It really depends on the vintage, how much we differentiate between keeping the berries intact or actually doing a little bit of... Well, we have a... I don't know how you call this. It's like [foreign language 00:11:25] very slight squeeze. It basically goes to, like a motor, like two keys then slightly squeezed them. Each lid is numbered for each amphora. So, amphora has its own handmade lid. Well, machine made, but hand, obviously, tends to fit perfectly. So we are lucky enough that we're in a region where you have a lot of good mechanical production because this is an area of the world where you produce a lot of car parts for German cars. So that kind of helps. So in order to do this, [inaudible 00:12:09] wire, just close them, and you top it up. So this was topped up in the end, and these were topped up this morning, but they already sucked it down because obviously evaporation is quite intense.
And so it consumes wine. So we have a cement vent where we do a week of maceration, and then we fill the Pinot Grigio, or the Nosiola, or the reds into this [inaudible 00:12:30] in these Enoch stands, and from there we top it up all over the year, and that's it. Then we rank it with the Enoch's cage with the pump in it. We pump them out. We assemble them in cement. They stay there for three months just to decant a bit. And then we go into the bottle, usually in July, and then in September, the wines are on the market. Well they're to be picked up, then depending on how quick each country is, they pick them up. And so, usually by January they're gone. And so we have space to then bottle the Lezer and the Manzoni, and then that is picked up, and then we're ready again for July. So, we have a flow that is dependent on movement.
THIS IS EPISODE #88 OF UNDERSTANDING WINE WITH AUSTIN BEEMAN
FOLLOW THE WINE ADVENTURE
EQUIPMENT I USE
FTC Compliance: I currently work for Cutting Edge Selections which represents Louis Dressner Selections and Agricola Foradori in Ohio and Kentucky, but this blog and podcast are completely separate from that business relationship.
