Wednesday 3 September 2014

Bubblegum and Banana

We're picking our Syrah tomorrow morn at Gentilini in Kefalonia, and I have a cunning plan...
 
I've always been interested in carbonic maceration (cabmac), and I've pitched an idea to the powers that be, which allows me to run a bit of an experiment using the technique on our Syrah.
 
Cabmac is used widely in Beaujolais, its a technique that preserves and enhances the fruity flavours in red berries, whilst slightly altering the pH and lowering malic acids. Its achieved by not crushing your grapes and inoculating the juice with yeast as is the normal way of producing alcohol (yeast convert sugar into alcohol), but instead leaving the grapes on their stems, in whole bunches, and dumping them in a tank absolutely rammed full of CO2, then sealing the tank and leaving it for around a week. The grapes are starved of oxygen and enzymes inside of the unbroken grapes start to convert the sugars into alcohol as well as esters (fruity flavours). They'll only achieve around 2% abv during this process, but its all about that subtle fruity edge. The grapes will eventually disintegrate and will be crushed and inoculated with yeast in the normal way, but it should have a subtle hint of raspberry and cherry, and even banana and bubblegum in some cases!
 
The whole process should be finished by the time I'm done in Greece, and I'll ask the guys here (nicely) to cold and heat stabilise the wine for me, then ping me over a few bottles to glorious Blighty at around Christmas time!
 
Presents sorted. No refunds. 

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