Winemaking Tips for the Micro-Winery

This is the second of a two-part series on making Pinot Noir. Read Part One: Making Incredible Pinot Noir: Tips for the Micro-Winery

One of the greatest and most challenging wines to grow in the vineyard and make in the cellar is Pinot Noir. For all its troubles, Pinot Noir can be one of the most rewarding wines to make.

It’s December. The cellar is quiet. The cacophony of harvest has faded. The wines have completed primary fermentation and are finishing in barrel. Now, we begin the slow journey through elevage – making decisions that will effect a wine’s arc of potability. It sounds like a heady task, but following a few very simple routines can result in a successful wine program.

It’s almost a cliché – the image of the winemaker sitting in some kind of laboratory perfecting the blend for a final wine. In truth, it’s much more hands on. Wine is made in the cellar, after all, using tried and true methods and careful handling.

For the commercial winery, the selections of barrels for blending can be very arbitrary – a final quantity taking precedence over a final quality. The micro-winery has a much greater incentive to strive for quality, having limited resources from which to create a final blend.  

When I taste a finished wine, I am coming to terms with a number of important quality characteristics that inevitably lead me back to the wine’s elevage – its creation in the cellar. When I taste a young wine in the cellar, I am reading the wine’s health and potential – how it will taste the best many months or years in the future.   

Off-the-clock, I enjoy certain winemaking styles and varieties more than others. But knowing and making wine are two entirely different things. The flashpoint of any decision in the cellar is not when a wine is treated or blended with another, but when the wine reaches the consumer.