What Makes a Winemaker

The image some people have of a winemaker is a person who sits around all day sipping various wines from different casks until inspiration, or a headache, strikes.

But those who take courses in enology at accredited wine-making schools know that wine is far more than romance, history and artistry. A good winemaker must also be a chemist and microbiologist with a working knowledge of physics, botany, geology, meteorology, plant physiology and entymology.

Then there is the story I heard a few weeks ago of a Sonoma County winemaker, otherwise entirely competent, who was fired for failing to learn to drive a forklift.

Wine educators say a winemaker must make some 200 decisions on each batch of wine before the cork is finally, with a loud ga- chunk , plunked into the neck of the bottle. A misstep in any one decision, no matter how small, could create a problem somewhere down the line. Fortunes have been lost by such little errors.

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For example, back in the late 1970s, a cellar worker at Freemark Abbey Winery in the Napa Valley accidentally blended some Cabernet Sauvignon into a tank of expensive Chardonnay. The pink-tinged Chardonnay had to be sold off as bulk white generic wine instead of being bottled and sold as fine Chardonnay.

Jim Lapsley is a continuing education specialist in the Department of Viticulture and Enology at the University of California, Davis. He teaches courses about what can go wrong in winemaking; many of his students already work in wineries. I told him the story of the winemaker who lost his job because he couldn’t drive a forklift.

“It’s true. A good winemaker has to be part mechanic,” said Lapsley. “At most wineries, you have to know how to do basic electricity, plumbing and carpentry and change the parts on a bottling line. That’s as important to good wine as having a great palate.”

I asked him if winemakers really had to make 200 decisions before bottling a wine. “Is it that few?” he asked. “Hey, maybe it’s a 1,000. I think you only had 200 decisions to make when winemaking was a lot simpler, years ago.”

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Among the other traits a good winemaker should have, Lapsley said, are a keen ability at sensory analysis, an understanding of statistics and scientific experimentation and people management skills. But chemistry and microbiology are at the heart of it.

“Dr. (Maynard) Amerine (retired chairman of the enology department at UC Davis) says that wine is a chemical symphony,” he said, “and if that’s so, it needs a conductor who can make all the parts play correctly so the wine tastes harmonious.”

The way to play those melodies--to make great wine consistently--requires an almost fanatical attention to minute details, Lapsley said. I called a number of winemakers to ask their opinions of the winemaking process. Chuck Ortman, winemaker at Meridien Vineyards in Paso Robles: “Number one is the vineyard and making the decision of when to pick. I especially like going through the rows, tasting berries for flavor components from different blocks.

“At lower Brix (sugar levels), you see flavors starting to develop. And waiting for the flavor to come up is nerve-racking. It’s a waiting game that makes your stomach go around. You look at the skies all the time, worrying about rain.”

Fermentation has its share of decisions, but the questions really begin when the bubbling has stopped. “Before we go into the barrels,” he said, “we taste the different tanks and make this or that decision--’Oh, this tastes like the berries we tasted in the vineyard, so should this go into new oak, or one-year-old oak?’

“You have a set pattern on how to make each wine, sure, but you have be flexible. And I’m fortunate that I have a staff large enough to handle the details. But when I get short on people, we go out and hire more people to get the wine into the barrels on time.”

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Gary Farrell, whose Gary Farrell Wines are among the best in California, said winemaking is basically a matter of getting great grapes and doing as little as possible to them, so he won’t make a wine if he can’t get the right grapes. “I didn’t make any Sauvignon Blanc in 1993 or 1994 because I couldn’t get (Tom) Rochioli’s grapes,” he said. “I can make good Sauvignon Blanc from other grapes, but Rochioli’s is so special I’d rather not make Sauvignon Blanc when I can’t get them.”

Jim Clendenin, winemaker at Au Bon Climat in Santa Barbara County, said procrastination is the bane of even the best winemakers.

“For me the types of decisions aren’t as important as the timing stuff,” said Clendenin, “and that becomes incredible during certain times of the year. The winemaker who leaves everything to the last minute and then gets behind an eight ball suffers.

“And it can happen to the best winemakers. He may not have enough staff and there’s too much to do. I really think most wineries are like that. It’s a constant dilemma, a constant battle to do things when they need doing.”

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Clendenin said he just bought a grape press that takes 25 tons at a time. “It’s twice as big as the one at Byron (Vineyards). And we don’t need it that big, theoretically. But we really do need it--when it’s time to move, you have to move. Speed and fast footwork, that’s the key to good winemaking. Whatever talent you have, if you can’t execute the decisions, everything can be lost.”

Winemakers say that most of the major and minor decisions in a winery are not learned at school. Nor are they learned during harvest. They happen as a result of a winemaker tasting his own wine and saying, “I could have made this better.”

They say most new choices are based on reading technical texts showing results of experiments, such as the use of different yeast strains to ferment Chardonnay. They also learn by talking with colleagues, attending technical symposiums, visiting other wine regions and playing host to visiting winemakers.

That and plenty of wine evaluation. Dennis Martin, winemaker at Fetzer Vineyards, said years ago that the winemakers who taste only their own wines aren’t doing their best job. “If you taste only your own wine, you can get cellar-blind,” he said, meaning that a winemaker’s frame of reference then is merely his own handiwork, for better or worse.

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Martin and a number of winemakers from northern Sonoma County meet regularly to blind-taste a wide range of wines from other wineries. Occasionally the group tastes wines that are not even commercially available in California, such as a tasting a year ago when they sampled New York State Chardonnays.

“We have to know what’s out there, what the consumer is buying,” said Nick Goldschmidt, winemaker at Simi Winery.

All this tasting must be done in the “off-season”--that is, evenings and weekends.

Every winemaker I spoke with said one decision is critical: when to harvest the grapes. The late Andre Tchelistcheff once said that in the weeks before harvest, every winemaker should be walking in the fields, tasting grapes. “That’s where the wine is made,” he said.

When the harvest is imminent, with wrinkled brows winemakers take to the fields, sampling grapes and beginning to plan for every eventuality. And all of them say the same thing: Every time you think the worst is over, just wait. Mother Nature throws you a curve.

Says Clendenin, “There isn’t a crystal ball in this game that works.”

Wines of the Week

Mumm Napa Valley Blanc de Noirs Brut ($14)-- Strawberry and spice notes in a faintly pink, quite dry wine with loads of character in the finish. A handsome wine for ringing in the New Year.

Sutter Home Fre ($6) : A blend of 75% Chenin Blanc and 25% Pinot Noir, this de-alcoholized bubbly has great spiced apple aroma and a hint of floral notes. Just a hint of sweetness is appealing. It’s great for Asian foods as well as designated drivers.

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Ask Dan Berger

* Talk Cabs and Zins with Times wine writer Dan Berger on the Wining & Dining bulletin board on TimesLink, The Times’ online service. For information on TimesLink, call (800) 792-LINK, ext. 274.