Before the invention of mechanical rotary destemmers in the 1920s, removing the stems from bunches of grapes prior to fermentation was so laborious that it was common practice to ferment whole bunches of red grapes, stems and all, rather than just the destemmed and crushed berries – but this was essentially because...
A whole bunch of stems
Monday 27 May 2024
• 1 min read
Stemmy has become so popular as a tasting term that Julia had to add it to the stems entry in the latest edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine. What's the story of whole-bunch fermentation? Above, Clonakilla's co-fermentation of Viognier with whole-bunch Shiraz (credit: David Reist, Clonakilla).
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