Everything you need to know about vat vinification

Understanding Wine Fermentation in Vats

The Importance of Fermentation in Winemaking

To create excellent wine, one needs excellent grapes. While viticulture methods, terroir, and climate play crucial roles in producing great wines, the work doesn't stop there. Today, we take you beyond the harvest, into the world of winemaking. This stage begins once the grapes are brought to the winery and ends with bottling. The combined expertise of the winemaker and the estate's oenologist, along with a variety of techniques, offers numerous possibilities for the estate's wines. From maceration to bottling, each option shapes the wine's character. This stage is often imagined as the oenologist in the cellar, surrounded by oak barrels, listening to the vintage's progress and ready to guide the wine's trajectory.

The Winery: A Crucial Step in Winemaking

The winery is where vinification takes place, spanning several months post-harvest. Depending on the chosen methods, this stage can last from one month to over a year. Vinification involves a series of key steps that are quite similar across different wines. For red wine, these steps are:

• Crushing and destemming, which separate the stems from the berries.
• Fermentation in vats, where yeast consumes the sugar in the juice, creating alcohol and aromas.
• Pressing, which extracts the maximum juice from the fermentation marc.
• Aging, which involves storing the wine in various types of vats.
• Bottling.

These are the main steps for making red wines, with many actions required between each step. For white wines, the process starts with pressing since the berries are not left in contact with the juice during fermentation.

Each of these steps can be managed using different techniques, blending science and art to define the wine's structure. This is especially true for the aging stage, which can utilize vats made from various materials. These materials, as well as the vat shapes, influence the wine's evolution.

Types of Wine Vats

Wine enthusiasts are familiar with the iconic use of oak barrels. Vats are predominantly made from wood, stainless steel, and concrete. The choice of vat material has economic implications: wood is much more expensive than concrete, for example. This choice also impacts the wine:

• Wooden Vats: These allow the wine to "breathe" through interaction with external oxygen, favoring its development. Additionally, the wine's aromas and tannins interact with those of the wood, enhancing complexity.
• Concrete Vats: These have a porous structure that also permits favorable micro-oxygenation but do not impart external aromas to the juice.
• Stainless Steel Vats: These are completely airtight, preventing oxygenation and flavor exchange. They are often used for highly aromatic grape varieties that need no additional flavors.

These well-known effects primarily occur in cylindrical vats. However, the vat's shape also has an impact. There are cubic, oval, and trapezoidal vats, which can produce surprising effects. For instance, oval vats create natural vortex movements, ensuring continuous contact between the wine and fine lees, resulting in more body and intense flavors.

Vats play a crucial role in vinification. They house the freshly fermented wine and protect it during aging. The overview provided here is just a glimpse; many alternatives exist. It's this complexity that contributes to the beauty of wine.

FAQ - Tank vinification

What is vat vinification?

Vat vinification covers every step that turns grapes into wine, from crushing to bottling. The vat holds the fermentation, where yeast converts the sugar in the juice into alcohol and aromas, then shelters the wine during aging.

What is the difference between a stainless steel vat and a concrete vat?

A stainless steel vat is completely airtight: it allows neither oxygenation nor added aromas, which preserves the purity of aromatic grape varieties. A concrete vat is porous and permits favourable micro-oxygenation without passing on external aromas.

What is the difference between aging in a vat and aging in an oak barrel?

Oak barrel aging lets the wine breathe through contact with oxygen and adds the wood's aromas and tannins, gaining complexity. Aging in a stainless steel or concrete vat keeps more of the fruit and grape expression, with no oaky notes.

Why use a stainless steel vat for certain wines?

Stainless steel is chosen for highly aromatic grape varieties that need no extra flavour. Being airtight, the vat prevents any oxygenation or flavour exchange, which preserves the freshness and liveliness of the grape's own aromas.

Does the shape of the vat affect the wine?

Yes. Beyond the material, shape matters. An oval vat creates vortex movements that keep the wine in continuous contact with the fine lees, giving more body and more intense flavours than a standard cylindrical vat.