Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [62]
“Is it, Raymond?” said Mrs. Hanbury-Tenison. “In what sense?”
“Made from my own grapes,” he replied.
“And where are your vines?”
Raymond Flower gestured modestly down the hill beyond the dusty lane and across to where the land rose again.
“There,” he said. “Not two hundred yards from where we are sitting.”
She raised the glass to the light; swirled; inhaled; tasted.
“Really,” she said. “Two hundred yards?” A gleam of pure and joyful mischief came into her eye. “Doesn’t travel very well, does it?”
Is there still a place for feet in winemaking?
IN OLDEN TIMES, grapes were crushed by foot; there are masses of illuminated manuscripts and tapestries showing the vendange or harvest, with people treading grapes in round wooden tubs. Alas for tradition, there are very few places left in which this occurs. There are small producers in Burgundy, the Loire, Germany, Languedoc, and Rioja that do, and biodynamic producers are sometimes tempted and occasionally succumb, but the only serious treading for commercial production takes place in the Douro in Portugal. More than tradition is involved, however: it is actually the best way of crushing the grapes for premium port.
For port, the grape must, or juice, is fermented for only two days, at which point grape spirit (aguardente) is added to stop the fermentation while there is still a lot of sugar present in the must. (According to Maurice Healy in Stay Me with Flagons, the 1897 Sandeman vintage port was fortified with Scotch whisky.) This means that the must spends a much shorter time in contact with the skins than is normal for red wines—ten days for a fine red Bordeaux but no more than forty-eight hours for a port—and because this is the period when the color, tannins, and flavor compounds leach from the skins into the must, the maceration process must be as vigorous as possible.
Until the 1960s, every farm in the Douro had a winery equipped with a lagar, usually built from granite, which was about two feet deep and anywhere from ten to thirty feet square. This is where the grapes were crushed and the fermentation took place. At those farms where lagares are still used, the process is fundamentally the same. The lagar is filled over the course of a day by pickers dumping their baskets of grapes into it to within about ten or so inches from the brim, although at some places they might go through a hand-turned roller-crusher first. The grapes are then trodden by the vintagers. The human foot is ideal for pressing grapes, because it breaks them up without crushing the pips, which would release bitter flavor compounds into the must. The number of men is also important, because fermentation can be hastened or retarded by the heat of their bodies helping the working of the yeasts. Ideally, there should be two men per pipe (2,180 gallons).
A good tread results in a deeply colored must, with fermentation beginning at the outset, not, as with red wine, after the crushing of the grapes is finished. To ensure this, the treading is done in stages. First comes the cut or corte. The men line up in three or four rows, shoulder to shoulder, and with arms linked. They march on the spot, while the man in charge of the group of pickers sets the rhythm by shouting “one-two” or “left-right,” their feet crushing the grapes against the stone floor of the lagar. This is dead monotonous. Periodically, the lines will move one step backward or forward in order to crush a new set of grapes. This goes on for two, or more likely three, hours. Then, at about 10 P.M., liberdade (freedom) is declared, with cups of aguardente and cigarettes handed out. Treading is continued, but now to the accompaniment of an accordion (real or recorded), or a drum, or a local group providing folk tunes. Depending on the amount of aguardente drunk, the treading can become quite lively, and certainly the treaders in their shorts will have purple pulp up to their thighs. This dancing around has a purpose beyond indulging high spirits: whole grapes are colder than the must, and often in corners, but also