Cellar work
on 05 November 2015
Harvest was completed a month ago and now we are hard at work in the cellar preparing the wine.
Arneis 2015
Currently the Arneis tanks are undergoing bâtonnage, the process of mixing the lees (the dead yeast) with the wine. Wine is aged on its lees in order to enhance the aromas and flavor of the wine. In the vast majority of cases wines that undergo bâtonnage show greater intensity as a result.
This is especially true with barrel-fermented wines as micro-oxygenation favors the breakdown of yeast, knowns as autolysis. This produces wines with greater body, texture, and complexity.
Some Nebbiolo and Barbera tanks still contain the skins and seeds, which float to the top during fermentation to form the cap. To extract color, aroma, flavor, and tannin and to keep the cap wet we perform the process of pump over. The must is drawn up from the bottom of the fermentation tank through a pump and transferred to the surface to wet the cap. Keeping the cap wet also ensures the wine does not turn to vinegar.
This is done once a week.
For some tanks the cap has already been removed as the malolactic fermentation is complete. Those wines are aging barrels.