Topping up / Refreshing Question

[Andy Velebil]

The Scion discussion made me think of something I've not previously considered. Before I get to that I want to put out the disclaimer this post/question is not about Scion.

Topping up and/or Refreshing a barrel of Port is obviously done in one way or the other. We've heard producers say they use the same vintage, some other vintages, and some a combination of the two when topping up / refreshing barrels. But I've heard of more than one winemaker within the industry (Port and Cali wines) say they top up their barrels with the same vintage. However, that same vintage of wine/Port is stored in a glass or plastic sealed container. Thinking about this, since it's stored in a very different environment (sealed glass or plastic instead of a wood barrel) it obviously must age differently, presumably at a far slower and far less oxidized rate. So my question is...

If a Port producer stores the same vintage of Port in a vessel, say a large glass or plastic sealed container, and uses this wine to top up the barrels each year, do you consider that refreshing or just topping up with the same Port? Whatever your answer is please explain?

[Eric Ifune]

I would call it topping up, since it is originally the same wine. Now the quality of the topping wine would be quite different from what's in cask since it would have been kept in an anaerobic enviornment. This may confer an advantage to the aging of the wine; but, to me, the wine is still of a single vintage. I know Ficklin in California does this as well. To me, refreshing is using a younger vintage. Maybe it's just semantics, but a different topping vintage makes the original wine not a single vintage.

[Derek T.]

I agree with Eric. I think the critical factor here is the integrity of the claim to have produced wine from a single vintage. Storing wine from one vintage in two, three or a hundred different ways and then putting them all back together and labelling a wine as being from a single vintage is perfectly valid.

Derek

[Rob C.]

I agree with Eric. I think the critical factor here is the integrity of the claim to have produced wine from a single vintage. Storing wine from one vintage in two, three or a hundred different ways and then putting them all back together and labelling a wine as being from a single vintage is perfectly valid.

Well if we're talking about colheitas, grapes from a single vintage is one critical factor but, unless i've completely misunderstood the category, the process of wood-ageing is an equally critical factor.

At the extreme, if you put a load of juice for 50 years in the glass or plastic containers mentioned by Andy and then just added a token amount of wood-aged juice from the same vintage at the end of the process, i wouldn't regard that as a Colheita....

To take another extreme version of Andy's example (albeit purely theoretical!) - if Dirk Niepoort believed his stocks of 77 Colheita were flagging and could be perked up by the addition of some of the 77 juice stored in the Garrafeira bon-bons, would that count as just "topping off"?!

But if you are topping up your barrels at a rate of 3% per year from the glass or plastic containers to cover natural evaporation - well to me that feels different. Though perhaps it is not strictly accurate to say that it has been exclusively aged in wood (since the average "time in wood" of the juice left after 50 years would be significantly less than 50 years - someone with a maths degree may be able to calculate what!).

[Roel B]

But if you are topping up your barrels at a rate of 3% per year from the glass or plastic containers to cover natural evaporation - well to me that feels different. Though perhaps it is not strictly accurate to say that it has been exclusively aged in wood (since the average "time in wood" of the juice left after 50 years would be significantly less than 50 years - someone with a maths degree may be able to calculate what!).

So, if we use t as the amount of years that have passed, Wn the amount of wood-aged wine of age n. W0 is the amount of reductively stored wine added each year - we assume that this wine does not change while stored, but it does start ageing after being added to the wood barrel.

at t=0 the barrel will contain 1W0
at t=1 (after the first year) the barrel will contain .97 Wt + .03W0
at t=2 the barrel will contain .97^2Wt + .97*.03Wt-1 + .03W0
...
at t=N the barrel will contain .97^NWN + .97^(N-1)*.03W(N-1) + ... + .97*.03W1 + .03W0

or: .97^NWN + sum[n=0..N-1] ( .97^n * .03Wn)

at t=50: approx 22% 50 years wood-aged wine, 0.6 % 49 years wood-aged wine, 0.7% 48 years wood-aged wine .... 2.8% 1 year wood-aged wine and 3% 0-years wood-aged wine.

For a wine that is topped up in this fashion for 50 years the average time/age in wood is only 25 years. After 100 years of topping up 3% each year the average time of the wine in wood is just slightly over 30 years.

Roel.

[Moses Botbol]

Using the same vintage of port, but aged differently than the rest of port is technically "the same vintage", but loses the spirit of "topping off" to me.

[Andy Velebil]

Thanks for the answers so far. I'll wait a bit longer then chime in with my own answer. Hopefully more people will post their thoughts on this.

[Mahmoud Ali]

Wines from a single vintage are often a blend of different varietals. It is often stored and aged in barrels and vats of differing ages. They are then blended and bottled. If a portion of the very same vintage wine is stored in a smaller and perhaps neutral container is this really so very different from the blending that normally takes place before bottling. To me this kind of "addition" is topping up, perhaps not unlike what happens with vintage Champagne after disgorging.

Using wine from a different vintage, usually younger, is different and that is what refreshing should be refered to. Just my two bits.

Cheers...................Mahmoud.

[Shawn Denkler]

Topping:

For a large lot of wine with many barrels, a barrel is used for topping and the balance left (which may not be very much) is put in small neutral containers. At the next topping the wine in small containers is used up first then another barrel is used and broken down. So the actual amount used for topping from small neutral containers is a very minor percentage.

However a winemaker with only one barrel has the balance of the wine in small neutral containers and using them is adding a large percent of neutral wine to the barrel. This is offset by just aging the barrel a few weeks longer. So in the end the wine has the same amount of total oxidation as the big lot example mentioned above. Thus topping done with the same year and lot would not be considered to be refreshing at all.