Cesare wrote:Future blog material

What's "natural" and what's manipulation? Is adding yeast manipulation? What about refrigeration, or protecting wine from air?. I have had one custom crush client who added some Mega-purple; IMHO it did not improve the wine. I think it has more potential for use in weak, insipid wines (and this is what characterizes low end wines, not any nasty flavors as the writer inferred). The same client did concentrating trials with reverse osmosis, but decided against using it; concentrating a wine doesn't improve it unless it's overly thin and weak on all counts.

A number of years ago a winemaker friend (who made all stainless steel fermented, non-ML Chardonnay went off on "manipulated Chardonnays" - barrel fermentation, ML, etc. I told him my point of view, that his winemaking techniques were more manipulative: juice centrifugation, temperature control, inhibiting ML, and that the more natural way was to just put juice in a barrel and let it do its thing.

I don't know if you can help, but I was tested for allergies and learned I'm allergic to "bakers yeast" and "brewers yeast". I know both are considered the same as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and I know that indigenous yeast is generally part of that same species, but for some reason I am less apt to have a reaction when I drink Pinot that is claimed to be free of commercial yeast. I also have good luck with the few filtered Pinots I can find. Is it possible that wild yeast and commercial yeast are different enough to affect me differently? Do you know of any method I could try to filter wine at my home, so I could drink all the bottles in my cellar instead of just the ones I know to be "safe"?

teddpotts wrote:I don't know if you can help, but I was tested for allergies and learned I'm allergic to "bakers yeast" and "brewers yeast". I know both are considered the same as Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and I know that indigenous yeast is generally part of that same species, but for some reason I am less apt to have a reaction when I drink Pinot that is claimed to be free of commercial yeast. I also have good luck with the few filtered Pinots I can find. Is it possible that wild yeast and commercial yeast are different enough to affect me differently? Do you know of any method I could try to filter wine at my home, so I could drink all the bottles in my cellar instead of just the ones I know to be "safe"?

My first question is do you know for certain that you have had this allergic reaction to any wine? The vast majority of commercial wines are sterile filtered, a process which removes all yeast. Pinot noir is actually the wine most often bottled unfiltered, specifically by small artisan producers.

As far as the question of wild yeast affecting you differently: wild yeast, by definition, are not Saccharomyes cerevisiae. Virtually all succesful "native", "wild" or "indiginous" fermentations are completed by commercial wine yeast strains introduced by unintentional inoculation.