March 2000 Visit
Nashoba Valley Winery

Nashoba Valley has been turning out fine wines in New England for quite a few years, and their winery tours are always extremely informative. The special one held last week was no exception, as it went into details of fermentation and tartaric crystals.

Nashoba recently received a German Still, meaning they can now create high-alcohol desert wines with distilled alcohol instead of using high alcohol fermentation. These are the two main ways of creating a high alcohol wine. It is considered better for the end product to distill the higher alcohol portion - if you simply add more sugar into the wine to allow the yeast to ferment more alcohol out of it, you risk diluting the full flavors of the wine.

Larry Ames, the winemaker, led the tour, discussing the differences between hard cider, still wine, sparkling wine, and dessert wine, which has 14% or more alcohol. He explained how yeast interacts with the sugars naturally found in grapes to create alcohol and carbon dioxide. Whites are pressed and then fermented, the skins having been removed. Reds are fermented on the skins, to give them more flavor and color.

Larry also explained about tartaric crystals - the harmless 'cream of tartar' residue that sometimes forms when a wine gets too cold. Some wine drinkers think they are glass or dangerous, so many winemakers cold stabilize their wines - dropping them to 26F - to allow those crystals to settle out of the wine before bottling.

The opposite problem is when a wine becomes to warm - the sediment in this case is usually drawn out at the winery with egg whites, bentonite fining, gelatin or isinglass.

Larry discussed the ways sparkling wines are made, and the costs involved. Oak barrels for aging wines cost around $600, and usually last for a 5-6 years. This is part of what makes oak aged wine cost more, and be more of an investment for wineries than stainless steel aging. However, the vanilla flavors and oxidation benefits often outweight these costs. As a side note, Larry added that the color of brandy comes from the oak aging - the liquid is actually stained by the oak.

We greatly enjoyed the food and tasting at this event, and brought home a case of our favorites. If you get the opportunity, visit a tour at your local winery. You'll learn quite a bit, and probably enjoy yourself as well!

Dateline: 03/26/00

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