Lecture 12: The Container Counts! And Cap! (Wine-making #4)
Seriously? Even the type of vessel used for holding the fermentation fluids makes a difference for the finished wine? Indeed! In this lecture we cover the major fermentation vessels (including glass, wood and stainless steel) and their effects on the wine making process. This includes the impacts that new vessel technologies have brought to bear in the creation of whole new entire wine styles on the world stage. The concepts of the cap and pigéage are also covered in detail.
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Video Transcript
Fermentation options numbered tray.
That's three for you English speakers.
Let's name this one the container counts and so does the cap.
What what what's that you asked? The cap? Yes, we'll
cap off this mini lecture talking about what a cap is.
Just put it in perspective for you, this is the
third in our winemaker options series, those series of things that the winemaker has a decision in, that plays a hand in, that can radically affect
the flavors and aromas of the finished wine. We started with number one, the maceration and must
manipulation that the winemaker does. Two, the
the beastly yeastly choices for primary fermentation that the winemaker chooses.
And now three, what type of vessel will the winemaker choose to ferment their wine in?
Really?
The vessel?
Boy, are you gonna give us a whole lecture on a container?
Yeah, it actually is radically important.
Why would that be?
Well, since we've been dealing with a liquid in our winemaking processes,
at least for most of this and certainly for the rest of these processes, liquid.
And we're always going to have to employ a vessel or container to hold that liquid so
it doesn't spill out all over the place and we lose our wine.
We need to contain our juice or must at all times during all process,
This is during the juice extraction, during must manipulation,
during the primary fermentation, during a possible secondary fermentation,
even during maturation, that is the aging of the wines and barrels.
All of these things are containers.
And different container types are made of different materials.
And different materials have different properties.
And different properties can affect the beverage in very different ways during any or all of the processes
I just named. So what container the winemaker chooses to employ different parts of the process is an integral part of the
finished style of the wine that you have at the end of the game.
It's actually way more important than you think of. Now just to put it in a perspective here of some brief vessel history.
Humans have been trying for 10,000 years to figure out better better ways to hold stuff
and to hold liquids in particular and they've gone from open pits to crevices in rock to earthenware
crocks and earthenware pots and even earthenware huge underground vessels. Remember back when I
was uh did that little thing on orange wine I showed you a picture actually of something called
a caververie I think, and it's like a six foot tall
earthenware pot that they buried underground and packed full of white grape must
and then sealed off the top and buried it so that it was temperature controlled. Yeah, and once they figured out how to
fire
earthenware products they had clay.
And finished fired clay that's way less porous and even better at holding stuff.
so they have clay jars to clay amphora, this pointy kind of vase looking things which were employed for fermentation, but also
aging and transport of wine for centuries during the ancient world.
And then some smart folks figured out how to design a barrel out of wood.
And once they got that then they started making bigger barrels out of wood.
Then they made gigantic barrel tanks out of wood. And in today's world, awesome technologies have spawned things like stainless steel
little tanks and even plastic buckets and plastic bins, glass, I forgot glass, glass jars and
and carboys of all shapes and sizes have been employed to hold in liquids,
but also we're talking about fermentation and wine,
hold in liquids and
