A change of season, a change of laws  1 August 2006

Martin Moore welcomes a hint of spring as well as regulations allowing for alcohol reduction

 

I was sitting up on the Bastion of the cellar the other evening, glass in hand, looking out over Table Bay where the sun was setting on one of those gloriously clear Cape winter days. Around me was an all-pervading silence deepened by hardly audible birdsong. But despite all the peace and quiet and the chilly night air I suddenly had the feeling in my bones that deep down in the damp soil new life was stirring in the roots. Things were waking, welling up to the surface. There was an almost tangible excitement in the air. And I instinctively knew: A new season was upon us! (Sorry, one easily gets carried away when sitting there all on your own.)

No, it is not the end of winter. In a day or two the heavy rain clouds will drift in again from over the Atlantic and disgorge their precious load over the Durbanville hills. And so it will carry on well into September. For it has been a wonderful winter, with abundant rain, the best in several years, and cold enough to put the vines properly to sleep. (So cold, in fact, that snow fell this year not only on the higher mountain slopes but for the first time in decades also on the plains of the Karoo, covering towns and hamlets and causing endless excitement in the lives of my six- and four-year old boys.)

Reducing the alcohol in wine
Earlier this month the Department of Agriculture legalised the reduction of alcohol in wine, following in the footsteps of Australia and the United States where this is established practice. I won’t bore you with the details of how this is done for it gets too technical, but by using these techniques you can reduce the alcohol content of a wine by up to 3%. Because it is an expensive process, it is sure to be used only for high-end wines. I have no experience of the process, but it is said it in no way affects the quality, flavour or structure of a wine.

The need to reduce alcohol levels is a direct result of steadily rising alcohol in wine, which has now reached anywhere from 13% to 16% - this while a health-orientated lifestyle is on the rise that says: Less alcohol, please! To put this into perspective: the alcohol content of most fortified wines such as ports and sherries is between 18% and 21% -  I even have a muscadel in my cupboard of 16,8%. So such high alcohol in wines consumed in larger quantities than dessert wines is clearly worrying.

There are two main reasons for the higher alcohol. The first, and most important, is winemakers everywhere are leaving the grapes on the vine longer than in the past to achieve optimal ripeness and the higher concentration of flavours it brings. However, the longer the grapes stay on the vine, the higher the sugar levels can go and thus also the alcohol. At the same time, many of the yeast strains in use today ferment the sugars more efficiently than their predecessors. Previously, every 17 grams of sugar produced 1% of alcohol by volume but these new yeasts need 16,5 grams of sugar to do so.

Ain’t so steady!
If a wine is well made and all the components properly integrated, one is not really all that aware of the high alcohol when drinking it. However, it does tend to overwhelm the palate somewhat, and can reduce instead of enhance one’s enjoyment of food. The real problem, of course, is when you try to get up after a few glasses of such a wine to discover your legs all of a sudden ain’t all that steady! So yes, I am very much in favour of lower-alcohol wines and fully support the moves to legalise the reduction of alcohol.

But somehow doing it mechanically once the wine has been made does not appeal to me. As winemakers we always claim that wine is made in the vineyard. If that is indeed so then in my view the vineyard and not the cellar is the place to correct the situation. One area in which a lot of work is now being done is canopy management where we try to use the leaf cover in such a way that we still bring the grapes to optimum ripeness but without allowing the sugars to increase to the same extent.