Part 9 (1/2)

This means keeping the vines healthy. It means keeping the skins of the grapes intact. Federico winces. ”Once the skin breaks, that's the ball game.”

The vine must be protected from harm. The seriousness of disease and pest control is eloquently expressed by the Italian terms difesa difesa (defense) and (defense) and lotta lotta (fight). Of the three plagues that America inadvertently visited upon European vineyards in the nineteenth century-phylloxera, oidium, and downy mildew (fight). Of the three plagues that America inadvertently visited upon European vineyards in the nineteenth century-phylloxera, oidium, and downy mildew (peronospora) (peronospora)-the latter two still require constant vigilance and often intensive spraying. The traditional prevent-ive for peronospora peronospora is based on copper sulfate. Growers became so fond of seeing the leaves of their vines turn blue from this spray that more recent ones have been dyed the same color. We hear how, during World War II, growers melted down pots, pans, and even coins in order to obtain the necessary copper. We visit consultant Paolo Ruaro, shy and deliberate as he speaks, with whom we discuss such matters as organic cultivation. We watch Federico using pheromones in his fight against the grape moth larva. is based on copper sulfate. Growers became so fond of seeing the leaves of their vines turn blue from this spray that more recent ones have been dyed the same color. We hear how, during World War II, growers melted down pots, pans, and even coins in order to obtain the necessary copper. We visit consultant Paolo Ruaro, shy and deliberate as he speaks, with whom we discuss such matters as organic cultivation. We watch Federico using pheromones in his fight against the grape moth larva.

The buds break, the vine flowers, the fruit sets. Angelo is all smiles: 163 163 ”The vineyard is way ahead of schedule.” That means an early harvest, while the weather is sure to be good. But it is hard to believe that those hard green pinheads will ever be transformed into any kind of wine.

In August they suddenly become credible, turning red overnight (the invaiatura invaiatura) and starting to swell.

A shaded leaf annoys Federico. ”It's not working for its keep,” he snorts. It will also cause problems for the winemaker. He admires a cl.u.s.ter: not too big, not too tight, small grapes.

In the spring we saw a vineyard that had been destroyed by hail; now we drive by one where rows of vines have been knocked down by a violent storm. With Aldo Vacca, who wrote his thesis at the University of Turin on clonal selection, we go to an experimental vineyard devoted to that process. Aldo talks about clones while the differences stare us in the face. In Gaja's new vineyard at Serralunga, in the Barolo area on the other side of Alba, Federico points out the effects of management concerned with high yields and insensitive to the needs of the soil. In Asti, we visit Lorenzo Corino. ”We're ahead of the French because we fell behind,” he says with an impish grin about soil conserva-tion. ”We tried to keep up. Luckily, we had some problems.”

After the invaiatura invaiatura the grapes ripen rapidly. They swell and are more vulnerable. Drought is worrisome, but so is humidity. The difference between maximum and minimum temperatures is sometimes more than 20C. (”Fantastic!” exults Federico.) At dinner the subject of mechanical harvesting comes up. Angelo rolls his eyes. ”Machines don't think. How can they select grapes?” the grapes ripen rapidly. They swell and are more vulnerable. Drought is worrisome, but so is humidity. The difference between maximum and minimum temperatures is sometimes more than 20C. (”Fantastic!” exults Federico.) At dinner the subject of mechanical harvesting comes up. Angelo rolls his eyes. ”Machines don't think. How can they select grapes?”

As the harvest approaches, the winemaker leaves his cellar and takes to the vineyard more and more frequently. We meet Guido Rivella, born and bred in Barbaresco. We'll be seeing Guido scurrying like a monkey up ladders and across catwalks between fermentation tanks.

Measuring one or another component of a wine like a doctor listening to a patient's heart.

On the far side of forty, with thinning hair, Guido seems to be thinning all over. He is hard on himself. His wines get reviewed, compared, and even graded throughout the world. Given Gaja's reputation and prices, expectations are high. ”It's like the Juventus,” he sighs, referring to Italy's most prestigious soccer team. ”The Juve has has to win.” Calm and prudent, Guido is a foil to Angelo's pa.s.sionate activism. ”I come home from abroad wanting to change everything,” says Angelo. ”Guido puts on the brakes, plays the devil's advocate.” to win.” Calm and prudent, Guido is a foil to Angelo's pa.s.sionate activism. ”I come home from abroad wanting to change everything,” says Angelo. ”Guido puts on the brakes, plays the devil's advocate.”

Times have changed since Guido was growing up in Montestefano, 164 164 a cl.u.s.ter of houses less than a mile from the village itself. He recalls playing with his uncle's truffle dogs. Now and then they would dig up one of the tubers. Guido shrugs his shoulders. ”I never cared much for them.” His uncle didn't even sell them. The only merchant was in Alba, and the little he paid did not make buying a train ticket and taking several hours off from work worthwhile. ”Wine was just a beverage in those days,” remarks Guido. At the school in Alba where he studied enology and viticulture ”they were mainly concerned about avoiding spoilage.”

We follow Guido in his gray smock as he strides through Sor San Lorenzo, picking grapes here and there at random and crus.h.i.+ng them on his refractometer. He holds it up to the light and reads off a number on the Babo scale, named after a nineteenth-century Austrian. It's Baume in France, Brix in the United States, and Oechsle in Germany, but what they all tell you in the end is how much sugar the grapes contain.

”Twenty-two.” ”Nineteen.” ”Just under twenty-one.” As the French thinker Pascal wrote back in the seventeenth century, ”Are there ever two grapes exactly alike in a cl.u.s.ter?” Each grape has its own place in the vineyard pecking order according to its vine, its cl.u.s.ter (the nearer the trunk, the more sugar), its position in the cl.u.s.ter (the nearer the top, the more sugar).

We are reminded again that Nature could not care less about wine.

From her point of view, the most important part of the grape is the seeds, which ensure the survival of the species. But the more seeds a grape has, the less sugar and more acidity it contains. In a sense, the sugar is merely a surplus left over after the seeds have received all the nourishment they need.

Now and then, Guido tastes a grape, examines the skin, crushes it in his hand. (”The juice comes out already colored!”). He could pick now, but since it is so early (October is still a week away and the harvest usually takes place well into that month) and the grapes are healthy, he could also wait. Federico and his crew have accomplished their mission: Guido has a choice.

In his book Le vin et les jours (Wine and Days) Le vin et les jours (Wine and Days), Peynaud has an amusing chapter on ”all those good reasons for harvesting early” (”The weather forecast is bad: I'd better hurry before it's too late.” ”The forecast is good: I'd better take advantage of it while it lasts.”), for that has always been the great temptation. Yet the concept of ripeness is not a simple one. Sometimes less is more.

In 1978 the weather was so good that Angelo and Guido delayed 165 165 the harvest in another vineyard, Sor Tildn, until November 11. ”We were just showing off more than anything else,” Guido confesses. ”The old-timers were always saying that grapes weren't what they used to be, that you had to bring them in earlier nowadays.” But he regrets that decision. The '78 Sor Tildn is still hard and unyielding.

Guido has noticed that the first batches of grapes from San Lorenzo produce more supple wines, with deeper color and a finer bouquet, than later ones. The skin is firmer and releases less pectin, which makes the wine hard. He also wants grapes with more malic acid, which will later be converted into lactic acid and thus make the wine more supple.

”In the past, we lacked the knowledge, and maybe the courage, to harvest earlier,” says Guido. ”If the weather's good, we tend to feel it's a shame not to wait a bit longer.”

Tomorrow is the day. ”We'll start at seven-thirty in the morning,”

says Federico. ”If there's no dew.”

We start at the bottom of the slope. (”If it happens to rain later on, it'll be nastier at the bottom when we start working again.”) We catch some of the banter as we work our way up Sor San Lorenzo. (”When's Gaja going to install a sky-lift?”) Angelo Lembo, who came north to work at the Fiat automobile factory in Turin and has lived in Barbaresco for twenty years, instructs a newcomer: ”It's better to lose a few grapes than to let one rotten one slip through.” The cl.u.s.ters are put into plastic containers. (”They might not be as attractive as wicker baskets,” remarks Federico, ”but they're a lot more hygienic.”) We sit on the tractor as it hauls away the first load of grapes toward the winery.

As the grapes move through the ideally cool morning air, the mind imagines their magical metamorphosis into a gla.s.s of Sor San Lorenzo 1989. But it will be three years and many transformations later when bottles start to appear in wine shops around the world. The only other product of Barbaresco soil comparable in renown and price is the white truffle, which you can dig up, wipe off, and eat.

Making wine (”the fermented juice of grapes”) is simplicity itself; making great wine involves a seemingly infinite number of details and decisions. One could argue that winemakers do not actually make wine (those alchemical agents, yeasts, do), but this is true only in the sense that cooks do not cook food (heat does).

Yet much of winemaking can be seen as controlling the effect of a few crucial factors such as microorganisms (yeast and bacteria), oxygen, and temperature. Guido explains how winemaking has evolved in recent 166 166 times. There is both greater knowledge of the conditions affecting the major processes and the technology to control them. ”Sure, great wines were made here in the past,” he acknowledges, ”but only when luck had it that certain conditions occurred spontaneously.”

We follow the grapes as they are destemmed and crushed. The latter term is misleading. ”It's like squeezing an orange,” Guido explains. ”If you press too hard, you get bitter substances from the skin in your juice.” Indeed, the traditional crusher, the human foot, was a much more gentle piece of equipment than the first mechanical ones.

We observe Guido in his tiny laboratory with a beaker full of pale pink juice (in technical language, must). He measures the sugar and pH. We listen as he explains the importance of the latter.

Since sulfur dioxide is added to the grapes after crus.h.i.+ng, we have a look at its functions in winemaking. Guido is amused by the ”contains sulfites” warning familiar to American consumers. The warning would have to remain even if no sulfur dioxide were added to wine because it is a natural product of fermentation. But he is serious about using as little as possible. ”With present-day knowledge and technology, there is no need to use even half the amount that was common not so long ago.” Guido has made wines without sulfur dioxide, but prefers those with minimal amounts because they are ”cleaner,” have fewer off odors and flavors. ”After all,” he exclaims, ”you don't want to throw out the quality baby with the sulfur dioxide bath.”

The grapes are conveyed into large stainless-steel tanks. We learn about yeast: their role in the making of other beverages (beer) and foods (bread); the characteristics of different species and strains (baker's yeast, for instance, should be a strain that produces exceptionally large amounts of carbon dioxide so the dough will rise better); the isolation and cultivation of selected yeast strains that was begun by Emil Christian Hansen at the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen in the late nineteenth century.

Yeasts produce more than alcohol. (”Thank G.o.d they do,” exclaims Albino Morando, a researcher friend of Guido's. ”Otherwise we'd have weak vodka instead of wine.” Morando has the mind of a scientist and the hands of a farmer. He can talk for hours about manure, but he's also slung it.) They metabolize small quant.i.ties of other products, which contribute, favorably and otherwise, to a wine's character. Selected strains are the same the world over; wild ones reflect the local conditions in which they evolved. Similarly, the ripening agents of cheeses used to be specific to particular locations, such as the Emmental region in Switz- 167 erland and the caves at Roquefort in southern France. Selected cultures of molds and bacteria have made possible the production of ”Swiss”

and ”blue” cheese in other locations, and are generally used even in their places of origin to ensure consistent results.

Guido sees the choice between using selected yeast and giving the wild ones a free hand as one of the many occasions when a winemaker has to choose between safety and a little more complexity. ”You have to walk a tightrope,” he explains. He will be pleased when he decides that Sor San Lorenzo 1989 does not need the help of selected yeast, because ”there is is a difference, however slight.” a difference, however slight.”

Yeasts work better in some conditions than others. ”They're only human,” says Guido with a shrug. They need certain nutrients, even vitamins, and dislike extremes of temperature. When stressed, they produce higher levels of off odors and flavors.

We see again how the aims of nature have nothing to do with wine.

Yeasts ferment sugar to obtain energy for reproduction. Alcohol, which they produce in anaerobic conditions (in the absence of oxygen), is simply a waste product, and a toxic one for them at that.

In the frenzy of fermentation, yeasts produce much more energy than they need and the excess is given off as heat. As the temperature rises, they find it harder and harder to work. Sometimes they stop working altogether and the fermentation gets ”stuck.” No longer protected from oxygen by the carbon dioxide also produced by the yeast, the must is vulnerable to spoilage bacteria. In this way, even so prestigious an estate as Chateau Lafite found itself temporarily in the vinegar business in the scorching Bordeaux fall of 1921.

The tanks in the Gaja winery are equipped with thermostats that automatically switch on a cooling system when the temperature reaches a certain point. When Guido started to work for Angelo in 1970, fermentation took place in either large wooden barrels or even larger concrete vats built into the wall, neither of which dispersed heat. In 1971 the fermentation was galloping out of hand because of the heat. Angelo rented a minibus that sped back and forth between the slaughterhouse in Alba and the winery with huge blocks of ice. ”They weighed about a hundred pounds each,” says Guido, shuddering at the thought. ”And we carried them on our shoulders down to the cellar.” There he pumped the must through a tube wrapped around the ice to cool it down.

We note how modern cooling systems are another instance of wine's indebtedness to its country cousin, beer.

Much of what we learn about yeast comes from Vincenzo Gerbi at 168 168 the University of Turin's Inst.i.tute of Microbiology. We visit him with Aldo Vacca, who has brought Guido's pH meter to be calibrated.

The lab is full of sophisticated equipment, scholarly journals, test tubes full of wine. We look at yeast cells through an electronic micro-scope that magnifies them 740 times. (This sight was first beheld by the Dutchman Anton van Leeuwenhoek in the seventeenth century, but it was not until Louis Pasteur and the birth of microbiology two centuries later that the phenomenon of fermentation was understood.) Gerbi talks about yeast research and sets some common misconceptions straight.

In his white lab coat, with his measured and precise gestures, Gerbi is the very image of the scientist. It is to scientists that we owe our understanding of the processes involved in winemaking, but, like stainless-steel tanks and plastic containers, they still have no place in our vinous imagery.

We cannot see what is going on inside the tank, but there are signs that the fermentation is under way. The thermometer is rising. Guido opens a valve and a blast of acrid carbon dioxide a.s.saults the unwary nose.

Guido puts a tall gla.s.s tube on a table in his lab and pours some must and skins into it. This microcosm will be our visible version of what is happening inside the fermentation tank. We observe how the impetuous bubbles of carbon dioxide push most of the solid matter toward the surface of the liquid. We learn about the problems created by the formation of this ”cap” and the various ways of dealing with them.

Another crucial process, maceration, is taking place simultaneously with fermentation. The challenge for the winemaker is to extract the pigments and savory substances contained in the skins without extracting the astringent and bitter ones as well.

A similar problem is involved in making coffee, when only a fraction of the solubles contained in the coffee beans winds up in your cup. The method of extraction (filter, percolator, espresso, etc.), the fineness of the grind, the temperature of the water and the length of time the process lasts all influence how the coffee tastes.

We have a look at phenol compounds, the most important substances contained in the skins of our grapes, and especially anthocyanins (which give red wine its color) and tannins. Nebbiolo has an enormous amount of the latter (much more than Cabernet Sauvignon, for example) and relatively little of the former (similar in this respect to Pinot Noir). Guido exploits the fact that anthocyanins are water soluble, while tannin is extracted only by alcohol. He shoots the temperature up high 169 169 at the beginning of fermentation (before the yeast cells have multiplied to the point where a significant amount of alcohol has been produced) and then lowers it, thereby extracting a lot of color without excessive tannin. The longer the wine remains in contact with the skins, the more tannin is extracted. Guido drains off the Sor San Lorenzo 1989 after twelve days, as soon as the fermentation is over.

After the ”free run” wine has been drained off, the skins are pressed.

”Press wine” is dark and dense. From a second, harder pressing it is too coa.r.s.e to drink. By tasting samples we understand better what was still left in the skins.

Like Barolo, Barbaresco has long had a reputation for toughness.

”Toughness is indeed the essence of Nebbiolo,” declares even wine writer Jancis Robinson, who rates the variety as one of the greatest.