Confused on OLD WAYS and NEW WAYS. To add or NOT to add YEAST?

My family comes from what is legally called "the old country" Austria/Italy - It is a long family tradition to brew wine. I frequently brew batches the common "modern" way adding sulfites and yeast, yeast nutrient etc. (mmmm....... killer stuff too)

My family about had a heart attack that I was brewing this way! (Of course old people from the old country!) They told me NO NO NO! Never add yeast. They use the natural colonization of yeast in the brew. and they never ever use sulfates etc. These old people brew the best wine you could ever put your lips too.

I guess my question is.......... Is it okay to heat wine to a boil 3 days after adding fruit? How does it work when you don't add your own yeast? And finally, some insist that I leave the fruit in the fermenter until it rises then i siphon it off..... im worried that will leave a rot taste in my wine....... what should i do?

Stuck between the old and the modern ways.......

bump - ah come on! some of you old brewers must have brewed batches without pitching commercial yeast!

Hey man, sorry I missed this post yesterday, I'll give you my opinions and preface it by saying I work at a small farm winery in Colorado.

Is it okay to heat wine to a boil 3 days after adding fruit?

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I've read about this and I would wholeheartedly say 'NO'! Cooking anything changes the flavours and lowers the aromatic quality. Considering the amount of tannins you can extract from pips and seeds I would go on to say 'HELL NO!'

How does it work when you don't add your own yeast?

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Wild yeast in the air colonizes the must and - hopefully - eats all your sugar. The thing to remember with yeast is that not all strains are the same; some can't live in environments higher than 8% ABV, some can't synthesize their own Amino Acids. The wrong wild strain in your wine can make a potentially great vintage turn into drano. The reason why your familia and so many wineries and bodegas go 'au naturale' is because the air is filled with yeast strains that have been making wine in that winery for decades or even centuries. Once a successful strain takes hold in a place the air and the dust crawl with viable yeast cells for years. What is considered a wild yeast really is a very gentle and tame guest that has been working away unseen for quite awhile.

some insist that I leave the fruit in the fermenter until it rises then i siphon it off..... im worried that will leave a rot taste in my wine....... what should i do?

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What are you making? Extended macerations (when the skin and the juice hang out together) can be as long as a month during fermentations, with some places actually leaving the skins in the wine for TWO WEEKS after fermentation ends, pumping over the whole time. This is true only for reds, of course, and is the only way you really get nice colour extraction in your finished product. If you want an easy drinker skin contact can be as short as one to two days, and is usually the case when making Beaujolais.

Something to remember is that you get no extraction if you let the skins settle to the top of the vessel and go dry. the skins have to be in contact with the liquid to get anything good to happen. Once or twice a day you have to 'punch down' the 'cap' or even pump the juice from the bottom over the 'cap' to reintegrate the slurry.

Good luck mate!

Re-reading your original post -- it sounds like you have never made wine from grapes... Probably from kits or buckets of juice....
This works just fine and makes a consistent, predictable wine....

But.. Making wine from grapes is amazingly easy and worth trying out if you can get ahold of good ripe grapes....

The simplest grape wine recipe ever is:
Put super ripe grapes in a bucket.
Mush grapes in bucket
Cover with an old Tee-shirt....
Stir daily to knock the cap back down.
After a week or 2 - the cap "Falls" and it is ready to rack off into the secondary.
You gotta strain out all the pomace, but leave the cloudy yeast....
Then, you ferment it under an air lock for a while...
Rack it off the lees a few months later, then let it sit and condition a while.... Bottle a year or so later.

Notice... You NEVER EVER EVER cook it! You are relying on the yeast that is on the grapes -- it isn't coming out of the air... It's the powdery, dry stuff all over the grapes.....

A more "Modern" twist on this is to mush up the grapes, then use sulphite and pectic enzyme and yeast nutrient and commercial yeast... but the rest of the process stays the same.....

This more "Modern" wine preparation has 1 big thing going for it......
Consistency! You know that if you use sulphite to sterilize the must and D47 yeast and your grapes -- you will get 1 sort of wine every time....... It won't taste exactly the same.. but it will be predictable every time....

But.. Don't think that Sulphite is "Modern" -- it has been used to sterilize wine musts since before the beginning of the Roman Empire... Not exactly New!

Then... Most "Commercial" wine yeasts are really just yeast strains selected from old vinyards and bred commercially.... They are "Real" old European strains.... Bred for thousands of years at those European vinyards to be resistant to Sulphite and to ferment consistently......

"Old" methods do work just fine -- especially in Europe where the yeast living on the grapes is WINE yeast used for a thousand years.... Here in the USA, it's far more inconsistent... for many, many reasons... like the vinyards are 20 years old... build on an old pig farm.... or they don't make wine and return the pomace -- they just sell grapes.... or whatever....

Even in the days of Old, though.... it was inconsistent..... Sometimes the wine was awesome, Sometimes it was OK... Sometimes it was terrible moldy, infected sludge, Sometimes it was vinegary....

Thanks

John

Just to add to Truckjohns post, I recently went to a relatively new winery in NC that was started on an old tobacco farm. The wine, although done in the "modern" ways, still tasted of tobacco.

Grapes grown on the same plot of land for centuries vs. grapes grown in an old tobacco field...huge difference.

Wow all really interesting stuff. Thanks you guys.

truckjohn you are right I have never brewed from grapes. I do use alot of wild fruit and I combine methods that my great grandmother used, but i don't use wild yeast. I prefer to use purchased yeast which as you said is nothing but the good old stuff anyway.

Duganson: All great advice. I really appreciate the reply. I think I have a better idea what to try next between what you and truckjohn say about the fruit floating on top. And no more heating up the entire batch on the 3rd day. Thanks man!

my basic method goes:

mash fruit and dump over it sterilized water. cover. after 24 hours add campden tablets. after 2 more days go by strain out the fruit and add sugar and yeast.
I do an open fermentation for a week or longer then move to a secondary and however much racking it takes to clear it well enough for bottling. I don't add campden tablets again. i just bottle.

I always get great results with an amazing difference after 3 then 6 then 12 then REMARKABLE difference at 18 months.

remember too that the wild yeast strains in pocatello are different than the old austrian land...different climate/temperature too!

Yeah - I think it would be a cool Christmas gift to give back some of that yeast from the old country to some family members.... the trick would be to trying to explain to them that they actually did use yeast! wild yeast! and that the yeast i am giving them is the good old stuff.

Do some reading here:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp

There is an immense amount of knowledge on all things wine.....

Personally, I wouldn't try to explain what or where or how to them... I would just present the wine as a gift and enjoy some with them.....

I believe it would be a huge mistake to try and "Re-create" some ancient European wine and try to sneak it by them -- you just can't do it here...... Wrong grapes, wrong soil, package yeast, different vats, different feet, different aging tuns, different aging cave, etc...... They will compare it against their fondest memories of the best wine they ever had back home... and though it may be a fine wine in it's own rite -- it won't be quite what they remembered.......

Do your best to make a first rate high quality home made wine... Enjoy it for what it is.... It will be different than their "Old Country" wine -- but it is *SUPPOSED* to be different..... You don't want any confusion about that.....

Thanks