It is widely assumed that to make a wine lighter in alcohol, all you need do is pick the grapes early. Simple.
If only it were. In Sauvignon Blanc, for example, what might taste smooth on the tongue at 13 percent alcohol becomes hard and acidic at 9.5 percent. The grape’s mouth-pleasing grassy signature transforms at a much lower alcohol into something more vegetal, to the point of tasting unpleasant.
With lower alcohols, wine tends to perform a 360° backflip in the mouth, which is a problem for New Zealand winemakers, who have ambitions to be the world’s top producer of premium lower alcohol — defined as less than 10 percent alcohol by volume — and lower-calorie wines by 2021. “We are seeking to own this category,” says Dr David Jordan, viticultural scientist and programme leader of lighter wine research at the 2017 Romeo Bragato Conference in Marlborough.
The research is a NZ$17m ($12.3m) seven-year study being conducted under the auspices of New Zealand Winegrowers with joint funding from the Ministry of Primary Industries. Now in its fourth year, the study has so far revealed that premium wine drinkers in New Zealand and five of its major wine markets — Australia, UK, Sweden, Canada and the US — have a growing taste for lighter wines. New Zealand is one of the biggest supporters of the category, with domestic lighter wines representing 2.6 percent of total wine sales.
“For most markets,” states an interim report, “consumers of lighter wines skew slightly female, typically enjoy drinking premium wine two to five times a week, and are more likely than average to drink New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.”
Ambitions for smallness
The New Zealanders are nothing but ambitious with the project. The quest to make wines lighter in alcohol must be done entirely by “natural” means, without any resort to artificial manipulation.
Eighteen makers are involved in the trials, mostly from bigger companies such as Villa Maria, Selaks (owned by Constellation Brands), Wither Hills (Lion Nathan) and Stoneleigh (Pernod Ricard). But also included is the leading player in the field, Marlborough-based Forrest Wines, who has done more than any producer to explore the style. It is Forrest that those in the research programme looked to for guidance. “We started in 2006 and the first year we picked Sauvignon Blanc at 19 brix (10.6 baumé) and for us the wine was unripe,” says Beth Forrest, daughter of the winery’s founders, Drs John and Brigid Forrest. “We were battling high acid and there was a thin palate.”
Beth and her father attended the International Riesling Symposium in Rheingau in 2007 and inspiration struck. “They [German makers] were struggling with rapid sugar ripening in their Riesling in the advent of global warming, and they had started trials on vine manipulation, taking the leaf ratio crop back to slow down soluble sugar accumulation in the vine,” explains Beth.
Back home, the Forrests introduced vine leaf removal to shock the vines into slowing down their rate of sugar accumulation. Today, canopy reduction — vines are trimmed at veraison to half their size — is one of the mainstays of the New Zealand lighter wines programme, reducing alcohol, acidity and aggressive green characters. Looking at soil type and irrigation methods has also been rewarding. Deep soils with high water-holding capacity accumulate sugar more slowly, while short periods of no irrigation at key vine growth stages has been shown to delay sugar accumulation without affecting yield or quality.
When it comes to tasting the results of the lighter wine research so far, some producers are clearly doing better than others. Villa Maria 2016 Lighter Private Bin rosé (10 percent alcohol) is the company’s top-selling rosé, and tasters at the Bragato Conference were hard pressed to fault its colour, crunchy cranberry, raspberry flavour or length.
The real test comes with a grape like Pinot Gris that depends on ripeness for its textural appeal. Two 2016 Gris wines shown in the tasting — Wither Hills and Stoneleigh — had a true-to-form profile. But Sauvignon Blanc was the most inconsistent in the tasting and appears difficult to deliver in a lower alcohol form.
Greater knowledge
In the winery, winemakers involved in the trials have uncovered two important contributors to a quality lighter wine: the presence of oxygen early in a wine’s fermentation can reduce ethanol by around two percent, compared with oxygen-stripped juice. Ethanol can also be reduced by manipulating how yeasts — one group of yeasts can respire sugar, a process that does not result in ethanol formation.
The second major breakthrough has been the role of skin contact. Not only can skin contact influence wine texture and aroma, but it could be a potential substitute for the loss of texture and body in lighter wines.
Once New Zealand has developed its lighter wines, it needs to sell them. Originally labelled “Lifestyle Wines”, they’re now known as “Lighter Wines”. Will they take off? There are three more years of trials and research before the market will decide.
