Maceration work at Philippe Pacalet

Punching down the cap on Ruchottes-Chambertin Beaune, Burgundy
I had recently to go to Chalon-sur-Saone for a family issue (my sister lives there) and while there I thought that I might stop briefly at Philippe Pacalet's facility in Beaune on my way back to Paris. There are a few people I'd like to visit in the region but I hadn't more time to spend than a short break in Beaune on the way back, and Philippe Pacalet, who was going to proceed to a devatting following a semi-carbonic maceration, has his facility located at only one-minute walk (really, 60 seconds !) from the Beaune train station. So this was a great opportunity for me to see how a devatting looked like at Pacalet.
An interesting thing to note is that there are today just two winemakers who still make wine in downtown Beaune, Fanny Sabre and Philippe Pacalet, the latter making wine as you may know from rented vineyards spread throughout Burgundy (he doesn't own any of them).
I came with my mind focused on devatting and ended up seeing much more, like when Mickael (pictured above) climbed into an open tronconic vat to punch and foot-stomp the cap, something which helps mix smoothly the juice and the skins as well as release more juice.

Maceration vats Now I could see these open-top wooden vats in action ! Covered with an unglamourous black plastic sheet to prevent the light from sneaking in and to keep the CO2 inside, the grapes were going through the mysterious maceration, this early-fermentation process where the alchemy between the juice, the skin and the wild yeasts makes wonders. Each of these tronconic vats in the vat room were holding a future cuvée of Philippe Pacalet, from the humble village wine to the more sophisticated terroir. Impressive view. I didn't try to lift up one of the black veils here, I feel it would have disturbed the game (I'd feel bad to be the one hurting one of Pacalet's wines...) and bowing the head in there to see what was going on could also have made me inhale the dreaded CO2 in high concentration. So I looked from a distance, waiting for what they were going to do on one of these vats.
See the upside-down red cone : this is to protect the hole through which the new wine will flow (using a hose) by gravity into the casks below. Johan with Philippe Pacalet The first people I met in the chai were Johan (Philippe Pacalet’s chai master), then Hortense who is an intern who is studying in a wine school for a DNO diploma, plus Romain and Mickael who work full time here, Mickael having joined the winery very recently. Philippe Pacalet arrived in the vatroom after a while and showed me around.
Johan tells me first that the harvest (which began august 29) was made by a 50-people-strong team overlooked by Philippe and himself. The sorting of the hand-harvest was done on the vineyard and brought in 20-kilo boxes to the chai where Romain and Mickael put them whole-clustered into an open-top fermenter, the size of which depending of the weight of the batch, some batches making barely 2 or 3 casks, some being more voluminous. The grapes will remain a couple of weeks in the fermentation tank, without SO2 addition, protected by the CO2 produced by the maceration/fermentation. After then, there’s the devatting stage, when the grapes are manually taken out of the vat and loaded into the press. Philippe Pacalet doesn't want to use a conveyor belt, so the grapes are pitchforked into buckets, then poured into the press. The juice which has accumulated in the bottom of the vat has been pumped into a resin vat where the press juice will be added too later, then the whole juice will go into the casks in the cellar beneath by simple gravity for a quiet end of fermentation on the indigenous yeasts. Stomping the clustered grapes Mickael walks literally on the grapes, bringing the Ruchottes-Chambertin juice at the surface. Mickael is a new recruit at Pacalet and I guess going directly to the heart of the thing is a great initiation. Note that he makes sure to keep the head out of the vat in case some CO2 remains trapped in there (although the risk is much smaller with these small vats). For the bigger fermenters he is more cautious and usually puts the security belt on (attached to a security wire running along the ceiling), so that he can be taken out briskly if he faints. Foot cleaning This looks very Japanese, the simple cleaning tools with the water and the sandals. Imagine you just walked and pedaled deep into fermenting grapes, almost immersed yourself inside, with all the positive healthy side of this spa, and then you ritually rinse yourself between the tronconic vat, many people would pay for this luxury... Vat before emptying Johan showed me first a relatively-small vat of which he pulls off partly the black-plastic cover, so that we can see the grapes (this is the one which was later foot-stomped by Mickael, not the one on this picture above). This wasn’t a big-volume cuvée here, just the equivalent of 3 barrels (pièces), each barrel needing between 15 and 17 boxes of grapes. The volume of the load has contracted with time, the grapes being crushed by their own weight. This small volume was a Ruchottes-Chambertin Grand Cru which they usually vinify in the very small open tank (and the oldest in the chai) in the far end of the vat room which you can see on this picture (the small grey vat), but it was a bit short for the 3-cask volume that they had this year. For the bigger volumes like for their Village-Appellation cuvées (Gevrey or Pommard), they use bigger, 50-hectoliter tronconic open tanks.
The pic above shows a Gevrey-Chambertin fermenter before the devatting process. Checking the grapes For this Gevrey-Chambertin Villages which they are going to devat today, the alcololic fermentation is completed and they are going to pitchfork the clustered grapes into the press which they pulled along. This vat was initially filled to the top, but with time the grapes' own weight shrinked considerably the volume, ending with barely half of the vat occupied by the grapes, much of them having turned into juice. Philippe Pacalet says that the volume issue is one of the reasons why these whole-clustered macerations in open vats have been left on the side in many Burgundy wineries and replaced by destemmed-grapes vinifications in modern vats. But in the way they got higher temperatures because of the absence of the stems and they were obliged to control the temperature with coils. With this whole-cluster maceration, there's no need to regulate the temperature or to use a pneumatic press, there's a natural balance in the exchange of fluids between the mass of clusters and the flowing juice which doesn't translate into spiking temperatures.
Here, the fermented juice resulting from the bleeding of the grapes under their own weight and from the foot stomping is first being pumped away into a resin vat, along with the juice of other open tanks of Gevrey-Chambertin which will make this cuvée. The press juices will come last, before the entonnage, the filling of the casks. 2 days later. Usually, there’s 3/4 of free-run juice (jus de goutte, resulting from the bleeding and stomping) and 1/4 of press juice respectively. The press stage is symbolic, actually, meaning that they press very little out of the grapes in order to get only the good part of the juice and not what gets out at standard pressures. The stem has a drain role here too. From the vat to the press This Pinot Noir which is being devatted has been harvested september 2 (this visit took place september 20) with a natural sugar level of 11,6. For comparison, the Ruchottes which was harvested september 15 had a sugar level of 11,9, barely above instead of a nearly two weeks wait. Philippe Pacalet thinks that this may have to do with nights that were too hot in the late season, which somehow impeded the sugar build-up. This heat is why some weeds like the Millepertuis blossomed twice this year. The phenolic maturation on the other hand was good, but this led to a disprecency between the phenolic and the alcoholic maturations. This is something, he says, which is common on certain southern varieties like Mourvèdre ort Syrah.
On the whole, they’ll still have wines here between 12° and 12,5° in alcohol, like they got in 2002, a vintage with which they had good results, he says. Reaching the bottom They punch the cap twice a day in the maceration/fermentation open tanks. In the beginning of the process, the grapes make very a compact block, not very easy to break and move, so this needs the full weight of a worker, that’s why Mickael climbed into the vat for the stomping. This is full of CO2 and you have to be very careful when you do this job : never put your head for example under the ceiling-level of the vat when you just begin to work on it because the color-less, odor-less CO2 is in there. There’s an electric cable system called ligne de vie above the vats which allows another operator to lift quickly the fainting worker out of the vat in case of problem, considering of course that the worker had put his security harness in the first place. For the devatting, after a few minutes of pitchforking the grapes out, it's safer because the CO2 has been moved away with the grapes. Philippe Pacalet says that he’s doing the foot-stomping thing sometimes too, when he hasn’t caught a cold like now.
On this picture you can guess the "cage" under the grapes in the bottom of the vat. I'll explain a couple of pictures below what is this "cage". From the fermenter to the press (one-minute video) The cage This thing is the cage. Don't you think it looks like these coffers on pirate ships with bullion inside ? It has been now taken out of the vat, but during the maceration/fermentation time, it lies horizontally and firmly-attached to the bottom of the open-top vat, connected with a wide hose to the tap fixed outside. When you open the tap to let the juice out, the cage plays the role of a big filter, it prevents the solid parts, the skins, seeds and stems from accumulating behind the opening and blocking the juice. This wooden cage is made by Marc Grenier (the cooper), like all these wooden tronconic vats (some of them are actually old vats renovated by Marc Grenier). Nearly empty Here Mickael even kneels in the bottom for the last grapes, he wouldn't try to crawl that deep at the beginning because he would almost certainly faint with inhaling the CO2. The wood on the inside of the open-top tank seems to be impregnated with wine, and it's very interesting to see that by yourself to feel what a maceration really is.
You can guess on the right the vacuum cleaner which will be used after everything has been taken out. At the end, they'll use a hand-held air dryer to get the remaining humidity out. This is it ! Now, the job is almost complete : the vat is empty.
This year, Philippe Pacalet says, the important thing was to keep healthy grapes until the harvest time. It rained from july 17 to early august, then this warmer weather settled. Maturities were kind of blocked for some time and waiting didn’t add much. Having waited some more like they did for the Ruchottes, they gained only something like 2/10 or 3/10 of a degree, but they lost some acidity. Regarding the health of the fruits, there was a bit of rot here and there, plus some hailstorm wounds on some grapes. This year was strange, he says, the Gevrey grapes being riper than the Pommard ones, very unusual.
This year was precocious for sure but he didn’t want to wait more for the harvest because he considers that this unusual vintage was more typical of the south when he looks more on the terroir and minerality side. He thought that if he waited too much, the heat and the falling acidity would change the minerality in a bad way. That’s why they began to harvest end of august. And for the few vineyards which he decided to harvest later (like the Ruchottes, harvested september 15), there’s been one week less of maceration, with a total maceration length of 2 weeks instead of 3 for the others. This is because the grapes harvested later lost some acidity in the way and they wouldn’t stand the usual maceration time. Brushing the inside with wine A last, important thing is the preparation of the vat for the next 11 months of inactivity. No water at all to clean the vat, just a bit of...red wine and a guy expert in the handling of a brush. Mickael is going to brush patiently the inside of the vat, working in circle from the top and going down progressively. And he really brushes hard, using the wine like soap. Philippe Pacalet told me that they will also use a sulphur wick before putting the vat to rest until the next harvest. Before the next harvest in 2012, they will just hose the vat with water a week or two before D day to get the wood tight again before the maceration. Also, the water used in the chai is going through a complex filtration system to get all the chlorine out, after which it gets an ultra-violet treatment. Video of the brushing When I'm watching this video I can't but be jealous of this wooden vat : not only did it impregnate for weeks with an aspiring wine, gulping large amounts of it into it's wood veins, but now it gets in half an hour more Pacalet wine that I'd dream to drink in a year... I thought for a second to lure Mickael at the other end of the vatroom on a false pretext (I think I saw a leak in that tronconic vat over there !) and discreetly fill myself a magnum from the bucket before he returns, but I was a coward and I didn't dare... Sampling Gevrey Chambertin 2011 Philippe Pacalet may have heard my silent yearn because he offered me to taste a few wines. I was surprised to check by myself that the wines were pretty well advanced, more wines than fermenting juices.
First, Philippe fills glasses from the resin vat where the juices of the Gevrey-Chambertin Villages are being blended from the different tronconic vats (before being filled into the casks, beneath in the cellar). Good time to taste, he says. The weather is bright and sunny with high pressures (this was the beginning of an incredible 3-weeks of perfect weather all over France which lasted until now, in early october...).
The malolactic fermentation has started, here, he says. He prefers that it doesn’t finish in the vat so that the color can stabilize. It will continue safely in the barrels.
Nice nose. Already a wine, supple and firm. Beautiful red We taste the Echezeaux from a tronconic vat, Philippe made the equivalent of 6 casks of it. Darker color, here, without the lightly-milky look of the previous wine. The malolactic fermentation hasn’t started yet. It’s always a mystery, he says, this malolactic fermentation which starts on its own. He reminds me that he doesn’t add any SO2 during the vinification as well as at the arrival of the grapes (there may a bit added at bottling, it depends of the vintage). He likes when the malolactic gets through as late as possible.
Nice fruit in the mouth. This is also already a wine, impressive. 12,5° too. Like Jules Chauvet used to say, he adds, alcohol isn’t a sign of quality in a wine. Second mouth : very nice, neat wine. Hortense tops up the whites Hortense is on assigment with the whites, topping up all the casks so that there’s wine right beneath the bung. Now that the alcoholic fermentation is completed, they’re going to seal the casks tight with the bungs, after filling them to the top. There’s indeed something very feminine in this care with the complement filling of each barrel, like if these bulging wooden things had their dinner at home after sweating their wine around all day. Hortense has a couple dozen of small containers at her disposal, which serve as a reserve-wine base for the topping-ups.
This room with the casks of whites is on the street level, so that it remains at a warmer temperature more suited for the fermentation. They also can heat the room if it’s too cold outside. Philippe Pacalet says that when you’re working on reduction, you must keep the cask room above a certain temperature. The reduction gives more depth to the wine, and gives them a particular minerality edge. This year though, the temperature went too high and they had to move all the casks at some point for a few days to the air-conditionned part of the chai. Later, the casks will go down to the élevage cellar beneath, using the elevator. That's where they'll get their malolactic fermentation.
I think to Hortense, being an intern at Pacalet is a good training in many regards, even if there’s not many things to do on the wines, when you think twice about it. DNO training at the wine school is probably (I would even say for sure) more oriented toward intervention and techno-enology with use of correction additives and lab yeasts, not really what is practiced here. I forgot to ask Hortense if she landed here by chance or if she asked purposedly to make her internship here. I think this is the latter option of course.
Sampling an unexpected white : Aligoté We’re tasting some Meursault first, taken from a cask (no notes, sorry).
Philippe Pacalet says that this year he is making some Aligoté and he is very excited about it. He made 3 barrels of Aligoté, from an old vineyard. He had had Aligoté in the past but had sold the vineyard (he owned this one). The one he works on now belongs to a friend, the one who rents him also a vineyard of Charlemagne. It’s important that these Aligoté vines are old, he says. He had a hard time finding what he wanted, either they were in a bad location, in the plain, or too young. These ones, if they were Chardonnay, would be Pernand-Vergelesses, it’s a good terroir. He thinks that this Aligoté will make barely 11° in alcohol this year, but it’s perfect for Aligoté, and he’s again very excited.
He offers me to taste it, which I gladly accept, and he goes to one of the 3 casks for a sample [picture above]. The color is very bernache-like. It’s dry, he says, they just stirred it to finish the last remaining sugar and bring some air in, which is why it’s yellowish and turbid again. Tastes great, with the grape- juice side playing with the acidity. Makes you want to see the final result in a few months from now... Johan checking the juice The press is a very simple one, Philippe Pacalet bought it second-hand. It’s non-pneumatic, they don’t need a pneumatic one as they keep the stems, they use it manually, switching it off repeatedly to let the juice drop in the pool beneath. Plus, a pneumatic press is really expensive and anyway they have no use of the pneumatic feature. For the whites, they need juices with turbidity because on the élevage on lees, and this one makes a good job in that regard. For the reds, this press gives limpid juices with the whole-clustered grapes and they’re very happy with it. Winemakers destemming everything often need a sophisticated press to extract the juice, but not with this whole-clustered vinification. Plus, here, Philippe Pacalet says, most of the juice is free-run juice, with the long maceration and the foot stomping, so the press part which with this very shy-type of pressing, will make a small proportion of the whole.
Johan is literally listening to the juice falling from under the press to decide when he'll stop the rotating press for a few minutes. As soon as he stops the machine, the juice flows much harder for a minute and then slows down, and after a few minutes Johan switches the machine on again. He will do that maybe thirty times along this 3-hour pressing, the stems inside the press load playing the role of a drain making the flowing of the juice easier.
About all this juice falling in the pool under the press, Johan says that there's no problem with the oxydation : the wines has been through weeks of maceration and the alcoholic fermentation is basically over with the malolactic on its way, and it can stand oxygen pretty well, there's a natural protection with the alcohol. And if it can stand this first oxydation, it will stand without risk the future ones. Let's remind that there's no SO2 added during the vinification at any moment. The gravity hose in the cellar The gravity at Pacalet is as simple as what you see on this picture : when it's time for the wine to go into the casks, they use this hose with a tap at its end and just fill the barrels, the wine pouring smoothly from the vat at the street level
We also tasted a rarity : a white Nuits-Saint-Georges, made with a Pinot Blanc. He made 4 casks of this wine. Nice pleasant drink with grape juice notes. The yellowish wine looks to me as if there was still sugar in there, but it’s dry, he says. The suavity gives an impression of remaining sugar when there’s actually none. Interesting if a difficult exercise for me to interpret a wine at such an early stage.
Philippe Pacalet tells me an interesting thing : they fill the press (the same 30-hectoliter press, they only have one) with the whole-clustered grapes and tread them with the feet right there in the press, through the openings. This takes more time but that’s important, because the juice flows on the tannins and this makes some sort of pre-fining which is not neutral. Speaking of the press types, he’s not in favor of the vertical presses which make too much oxydation and need more manpower to operate, which isn’t really justified if you look at the result. Something they don’t do with the press is rebéchage, meaning when you reverse the press in the middle of the pressing to turn around the pressed grapes within and resume the pressing. They never do that, they just stop from time to time to let the juice flow. This makes a slow-motion pressing, lasting about 3 hours, he says. Filling the barrels Johan now fills a line of casks with the wine. The redish hose is connected directly on the resin vat at the street level, and it flows in there by gravity without any pump intermediary. His headlight helps him spot when the cask is nearly full, that's when he slows down the filling with the tap. The wine will now continue its vinification process here (particularly its malolactic fermentation), in the cooler temperature of the vast cellar. Bungs ready Philippe and Monica 31-0:40

Comments

[Hunter Goss]

Thanks for this peek into Burgundy. I am really enjoying your almost 'real time' account of this year's harvest.

Wish you could have recorded perhaps a 'song of the Pinot Noir' while it was fermenting to go along with your very fascinating earlier post.

It would be interesting to have such recordings analyzed to see if different grapes each have a unique 'song'.

[George Wroblewski]

Punching down the cap looks like real fun. Hope to try it one day. Very interestin post.

[vincent schmitt]

I don't like carbonic macerations at all!!!!
It yields amyl acetate and very poor aromas. This technique is used for cheap Beaujolais wines.