Daily Decisions

A Harvest Diary

Friday September 13th three days post harvest and it’s time to inoculate the Pinot Noir. For me with red wine the decision is not whether to inoculate with a selected wine yeast, but rather which strain or strains to use. I went through a period early in my career in the mid to late 80’s when I eschewed using selected yeast entirely believing erroneously that this made for more interesting wine. I’ve come to a more nuanced understanding since then. After some spectacular fails with uninoculated reds, I now think that red wines should always be inoculated. White wines are a story for another day. The ecology of yeast in wine is a complex one, and even when you are employing a selected strain research has shown that many many other yeasts are active in the ferment. I don’t think that by using a selected strain that I am sacrificing complexity. But I do believe that I am assuring that I will be able to extract the flavors from the skins and seeds that I desire.

So, the decision for the two fermentation

bins is - do I use the same yeast for both or a different one for each? I know from experience that there is a yeast that is “best” for Pinot Noir. This is RC212 which was selected in Burgundy to extract and preserve color and tannins. I’ve used this yeast and trialed it against many others at full scale over hundreds of fermentations. It’s excellent! In order to get the deepest most profound wine from these ferments I’m tempted to use it for both. But, there’s a part of my winemaking intuition that always argues for complexity. I know that having two distinctly different ferment flavors from this vineyard will make for a more interesting wine down the line. So I opt to use RC212 for one bin and Montrachet yeast for the other. Montrachet also known as UCD 522 was selected from the Pasteur Institute in Paris by UCD. It’s been around for a very long time - I’ve been using it since my first vintage in 1979. It needs careful tending or it will produce reduced sulfur aromatic flaws. But, used correctly it results in classic and complex wine.