A nice view of Montalcino
One of the best parts about the wine school I go to in Florence are the field trips that we go on to see different wineries and producers. Here is the website if anyone is interested. Seeing and speaking with the producers has taught me so much about wine, that you can not find in text books.
Corte Pavone is an Estate owned by Austrian born Rainer Loacker. He also owns estates in Sudtirol(Alto-Adige) and in Maremma in Tuscany. Here, at Corte Pavone, he utilizes biodynamic principales to grow his grapes for Brunello di Montalino, Rosso di Montalcino, and an IGT wine.
Mr. Loaker is a great man and I would never discredit him. His Brunellos and Rossos are fantastic wines, but I do however find his philosophy contradictory. I’ve explained in a previous post how I feel about biodynamic wines. To me, if you believe in astrology and horoscopes than you can make biodynamic wines. He believes is certain “types” of days. For instance, there are fruit days, pruning days, green days, harvesting days etc. He also believes that there are little gnomes who live in the woods and somehow they have an effect on the production of wine. I was quite fascinated, but at the same had a hard time believing in gnomes. Producers like him look to the moon and starts to determine when to prune, harvest and bottle. He only uses yeasts naturally present on the grape for fermentation, he wants to be as natural as possible.
Mr. Loacker uses an interesting way of cleaning his cellar. He floods the cellar a tiny bit with water loaded with specific microorganisms that disinfect the floor. This process eliminates the use of chemical cleaning agents that he believes would contaminate the wine.
Here is where the irony comes into play. After his philosophical speech, we went down into the cellar. So now I’m thinking this place is going to be “hippie-like”. It seemed as though he was against the use of technology in his speech, but I was totally wrong. This cellar looked like a NASA laboratory. The pumps and vats were brand new and state of the art. The fermentation tanks had an electronically timed cap mixer that punched the cap down every 3-4 hours.The cap is the “head” that forms during fermentation that contains the skins and pulp. There was also a micro-oxygenator that he uses to sustain the wine and life of the yeasts. Here’s a description of what this thing does:
“The aim in micro-oxygenation is to bleed oxygen in at just the right rate–which may vary from 0.25 to 100 milliliters per-liter per month–without overexposing the wine to it. Costs, according to Smith, run about two thousand dollars per wine tank. The purpose is to bring about desirable changes in wine texture and aroma that cannot be obtained by traditional aging techniques. The goals of micro-oxygenation include the restructuring of tannins and mouthfeel, color stability, aroma integration, decreased sulfide and reductive aromas, and increased longevity potential. What it does not do is promote early release or premature aging of wine.”
You can the micro-oxygenator in te back left. Its that blue thing that looks like an oxygen tank. You can also see the the stainless steel poled on top of the vats. These are the cap breakers.
It just seems a little weird to me that a person can believe in gnomes and look to the stars for advice, yet he uses equipment that is found in a NASA laboratory(of course I am speaking sarcastically)…I will quote something that my friend said to me after the trip,”I believe in terroir, not religion.” I mean, that sums it right there for me. What are some of your thoughts and feelings on this?
Ever see a bottling truck in action? Check back tomorrow for the video!
