 | | | Consumer Reviews
 | | ENOLOGIX's 100-POINT WINEMAKING RATINGS
Read our "consumers'" reviews of ideas and supplies being recommended or sold to California winemakers below. Reviews are comprised of both a numeric score between 50 and 100 points and written reviews by our users. No guarantee is made as to the accuracy or reliability of the information (please see our Copyright).
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| | | | Co-Pigmentation In Color of Red Wines-Boulton (JASEV)
Description: Dept. of Viticulture and Enology, UCD, area of senior faculty research regularly promoted to the wine industry as useful, even cutting-edge. ARE WINEMAKERS USING THE ANALYSIS TO MAKE ANY WINEMAKING DECISIONS ANYWHERE IN THE US?
Rating: 85
Category: Enology (Insitutional Wine Science) (list all categories)
Manufacturer: University of California, Roger Boulton
Submitted By: Enologix Client ,
Total Reviews: 12
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| | Reviewed By
Gordon Binz , Winemaker
Review Date
03/12/07
Rating
Liked
(top) | | I have had one good result with this idea, in so far as I copigment Viognier with Syrah. We used about 5 to 10 percent Viognier grapes. It was a controlled experiment a number of year ago.
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| | Reviewed By
ucgraduate , Winemaker
Review Date
12/27/06
Rating
Disliked
(top) | | Ideas taught at the university, which are dead on arrival in the Napa Valley, should be better vetted by the other faculty. This is one of those ideas.
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| | | | Cofermenting Rhone and white wines, including Viognier, does it add value to Rhone based blends. My sense is that it does not add value to California wines. I suspect the reason is that it is a very high risk and chaotic practice, largely because there are no benchmarks by which to judge results. Which is to say that there are no Rhone-White Grape cofermentation that are truly successful in the consumer marketplace. Yet, there are examples from well regarded Central Coast Rhone producers that have failed. In essence, cofermenting Rhone-White wine grapes is highly experimental. UCD enologists supporting the method are too reductionist, i.e. my theory must be good, so if you try it the result will be good. Summing up, the benchmarks by which we all judge Rhone wines, namely the Northern Rhones, are largely made without Viognier. This all being said, happy experments.
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| | Reviewed By
mrcwine , Winemaker
Review Date
07/22/06
Rating
Liked
(top) | | Does co-fermentation (specifically with Viognier/Syrah) have a tendency to go sluggish? Especially, if the Viognier starts going a little before the Syrah comes in, and is then mixed. Also, if the lots are not innoculated at the same time, due to different harvest dates, does an early ML ferment with the Viognier produce any problems with the Syrah fermenting?
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| | | | Our team is ambivelent about the Boulton's and Somers' fight over red wine color. Everyone knows Somers discovery of polymeric red pigments is the most cited wine research among fine winemakers. While Boulton's work is not in general use anywhere we know in the Paso Robles AVA.
Boulton is now trying to find funding for the Hildegard project. He wants to prove that Somers owes something to someone who was working in Berkeley. We cannot recommend supporting this effort.
Copigmentation is not popular. Even at UCD there are skeptics. Privately, Doug Adams has said it is insignificant in wines by the time they are bottled.
Dissappointed with Boulton in the Central Coast.
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| | | | From Wine Business Monthly, 2004
Somers vs. Boulton?
It has been said that academic research often advances over the slain theses of others.
Boulton's article prompted an unusual response from academic Chris Somers, who in an article appearing in the March/April 2003 Australia and New Zealand Wine Industry Journal said it "seems to contain strange interpretations and some dubious recommendations." Since retiring from The Australian Wine Research Institute in 1990, Somers has maintained his interest in enology and his book, The Wine Spectrum (1998) expands on his research to establish objective guidelines to red wine style and relative quality. The methodology, developed in the mid 1970s, was based on the concept of dealing with the intact wine to evaluate significant features of the color composition. Somers said Boutlon's ‘critical review' prompted him to make a further appraisal of the exceptional chemical features that are evidently responsible for much of the dynamic character of red wine.
"Roger Boulton, who had previously made no contribution to the subject in the open research literature, published an extremely long and devious article (20 pages) with no less than 129 references dating back more than a century," Somers told Wine Business Monthly via e-mail. "It was presented as a scholarly review in his Department's home Journal (2001)--the worst review I have ever encountered. I do not consider that it could have been published anywhere else. He has muddied the waters so much that I felt obliged to respond by what I claim to be a more logical account."
Boulton told WBM that the problem with Somer's assays for color measurements is that they do not incorporate the copigmentation aspect, and as such over estimate the anthocyanin content, especially in young wines. "This has been a major problem for research in young wine color for many years," he said.
"As you can see, there is sometimes conflict in the pathways of science, but truth will win out," Somers said. wbm
We need information about luxury winemaking. Information has always been a fuel for American artists, chefs and winemakers. Paris Cafe Society provided an aesthetic for our novelists. Lyon-based restaurateurs provided the ideas for our cuisine. In the 1970s California winemakers too, such as Robert Mondavi, traveled to France to fill an information void. French wine-farms and chateaux provided the recipes to start today's wine boom.
Disclaimers:
This is provided to enrich the forum discussion and its inclusion is not in association with a view.
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| | | | The idea of co-fermentation seems to have been mixed with co-pigmentation. UCD's Boulton has spoken of both in the same breath, and experiments with co-pigmentation include co-fermentation of white and red wines. This is unfortunate because winemakers try these ideas. Last year at a blind tasting there was a Syrah co-fermented with a Viognier, I recall it was an Alban wine, and co-fermentation seemed to ruin the wine which placed in the bottom quarter of a flight of ten.
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| | Reviewed By
kirkland , Winemaker
Review Date
01/16/03
Rating
Mixed
(top) | | It is an idea that I associate with winemaking where the idea is to add white to red wines such as Viognier to Syrah, or red to red. The analysis is dead at our company, in essence the value is in the the idea for winemakig not analysis.
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| | | | Maybe this idea dead? I am not hearing much at all about co-pigmentation at the international level; and whereas California winemaker were still mentioning it last year, this year it is not on winemakers' lips.
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| | | | We studied this in school, and I am a belivever in copigmentation. Now that I am making wine I have not seen it used to make wine.
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| | | | I am ambivelent about this method in winemaking. Why? Because the effective difference it makes seems insignificant.
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