OK, so at this point in the wine making the must doesn’t really taste like albariño, but my point is simply that the yeast makes a lot of foam when we mix it with the juice ready for seeding. Preparing yeast to make wine is not a secret process – first we hydrate it using warm water (usually around body temperature 38°C or 100°F), and then, over an extended period, we add grape juice from the tank to ‘equalise’ the temperature between the yeast mixture and the juice in tank. For example, if the tank temperature is 15°C and then we add the yeast at 38°C the shock of the sudden change in temperature would simply kill most, if not all, of the yeast. The method therefore is to reduce the temperature of the yeast solution in increments – 5 degrees at a time. We do this by adding juice from the tank, waiting for the yeast to ‘acclimatise’, and then adding more juice – it’s quite a long process. Once the yeast solution is within a few degrees of the tank temperature we can finally add the mixture and start to make some wine!

Of course the other part of the equation is the strain of yeast that we actually chose for seeding. These days there are so many new and different yeasts, all claiming to enhance your wine in different ways. When the salesman arrives with his catalogue of yeasts he more or less asks “what flavour do you want?”. In these circumstances our answer is always the same – we want the flavour of albariño please! In other words we normally chose a fairly neutral yeast in order that the character of our grape variety shines through (otherwise there would be little point!) Having said that, there are some new strains of yeast that claim to enhance this varietal character, and in this case we always make one or two tanks using these to see if they really do match the claims of their manufacturers. In recent years we haven’t found one…. but we always keep and open mind.

OK, so at this point in the wine making the must doesn’t really taste like albariño, but my point is simply that the yeast makes a lot of foam when we mix it with the juice ready for seeding. Preparing yeast to make wine is not a secret process – first we hydrate it using warm water (usually around body temperature 38°C or 100°F), and then, over an extended period, we add grape juice from the tank to ‘equalise’ the temperature between the yeast mixture and the juice in tank. For example, if the tank temperature is 15°C and then we add the yeast at 38°C the shock of the sudden change in temperature would simply kill most, if not all, of the yeast. The method therefore is to reduce the temperature of the yeast solution in increments – 5 degrees at a time. We do this by adding juice from the tank, waiting for the yeast to ‘acclimatise’, and then adding more juice – it’s quite a long process. Once the yeast solution is within a few degrees of the tank temperature we can finally add the mixture and start to make some wine!

Of course the other part of the equation is the strain of yeast that we actually chose for seeding. These days there are so many new and different yeasts, all claiming to enhance your wine in different ways. When the salesman arrives with his catalogue of yeasts he more or less asks “what flavour do you want?”. In these circumstances our answer is always the same – we want the flavour of albariño please! In other words we normally chose a fairly neutral yeast in order that the character of our grape variety shines through (otherwise there would be little point!) Having said that, there are some new strains of yeast that claim to enhance this varietal character, and in this case we always make one or two tanks using these to see if they really do match the claims of their manufacturers. In recent years we haven’t found one…. but we always keep and open mind.