[Music] hello everybody welcome to the wine with jimmy channel i hope you are all very much tickety-boo and doing well so welcome to the channel about wine education so here at wine with jimmy we deal with helping students really learn and feel confident around topics of the wset level 3 and level 4 specifically now in this series we are looking at something called explaining wine terminology so from time to time i release a video which students often ask me to really explain in greater detail because they find it potentially a little bit more challenging to understand it so here we will be looking at the process of semi-carbonic maceration something which definitely could be a part of your level three examinations when specifically you're looking at beaujolais or at your your wine production section of the wset level 4 diploma now if you do have any comments or questions or concerns you can get in touch with me here at wine with jimmy by the social media that you see at the bottom of every slide or because this is available on the channel here at wymajimi on youtube you can actually comment below me please make sure that you click the subscribe button as well to get all of our weekly updates on wine study materials so also you can go across to wine with jimmy.com which is my wine educational portal where you can find and subscribe to the wonderful area which gives you lots of access to things like multiple choice questions short written answer questions revision sessions flash cards and of course exclusive video content to help you with your studies okay so let's begin talking about semi-carbonic maceration so this process will fall under the category of whole berry or bunch fermentations it is the most common of the whole berry or bunch fermentations so i'll focus here exclusively uh in this present presentation just on semicarbonic of course there are others as well such as carbonic maceration but here we're just talking about semi-carbonic now it's called semi-carbonic maceration because really it is a part carbon dioxide maceration and then a part yeast fermented driven style so it's a bit of both so that's why we call semi the carbonic part of it is because carbon dioxide used to be called carbonic air and that's where the carbonic section comes from so let's talk a little bit here about um actually to begin with what kind of grapes we need then we'll get into the aims and then eventually we'll get into things like the process uh step by step so first of all why makers can either choose to use whole bunches of grapes or hold these stemmed grapes of course when thinking about wine production and also to use either entirely uncrushed fruit or just a small proportion of in within a crushed fruit fermentation if whole bunches are used the grapes must therefore if they are used for fermentation must be hand harvested they will need to be intact with their stems as they come into the winery if whole bunches of grapes are used it's also very important that the stems of the bunches are fully ripe stems could add flavors and sometimes you might actually see wines having a spiciness or a herbal element due to the stem inclusion however unripe stems can actually add unpleasant green flavors astringency and bitterness in the final wine style so if we are hand harvesting and using with stems we will need them to be ripe enough for the processes that we'll go through okay so next up then what is the aim of the process of a whole berry or bunch fermentation so notice here we're still talking about whole berry or bunch fermentations i will start to go to semi-carbonic very soon but i'm just giving you an overview of the processes at this point now the objective of a whole berry or bunch fermentation is to create an oxygen free environment for the uncrushed fruit so that's why here you'll see that oxygen has a big line through it on your slide this lack of oxygen has many outcomes the grapes will change from aerobic respiration to an aerobic metabolism okay in the anaerobic process some of the sugar in the grapes can be converted to alcohol and this occurs without the involvement of any yeast and this is referred to as intracellular fermentation okay so that is the process of producing some alcohol but without the yeast component to it how does this happen well we're going to talk a little bit here about the role of malick acid and the role of glycerol in this style so malic acid within the grape is broken down to create ethanol this can reduce the malic acid levels up to around fifty percent five zero fifty percent lowering of course the total acidity and raising the ph of the must or the wine so this is what we're showing you here so malic acid is being reduced on the left hand side the ph is being increased and the ethanol small amount of ethanol is produced at this time also glycerol levels will increase we talked about the role of glycerol in wine components and we talked quite a bit about the fact that glycerol is more common in things like sweet wines where you have botrytis but also there is some produced via this processed by this method and that can add texture and a range of distinctive aromas are also produced as well um and they're classically things like kirch and banana and bubble gum and we'll look at those a little bit later okay now let's go through just a slide here on the historical stance of semi-carbonic maceration and then some sort of form of economical factors as well so it is likely that semi-carbonic maceration happened accidentally when a winemaker left their grapes unattended for too long in a closed environment a closed container of some description so this of course will create the environment that we're about to go through that we need for this process to occur semi-carbonic is likely to have happened first and therefore is the oldest technique of whole berry or bunch fermentations it's used to produce very young fresh and fruit forward styles which are very much readily drunk and very very much drunk in an early stage of their life they also can be chilled and specifically a lot of these wines are made in quite warm areas moderate warm or even hot areas so the fact that you make a very fresh fruity red which could be chilled suits the locality so it really suits the domestic market certainly in those summer months it is also in terms of an economical stance a very quick style to produce and often many of the examples are released within the same year as the harvest and this is really the economical angle here because the wines can be released before other wines and of course produces a good constant cash flow for the winery that is attempting these styles so of course if you look at beaujolais nouveau in the beaujolais region in sort of central south france then these beaujolais novos are released at the end of november the third thursday of november and that's before the year before really the other wines may be released such as the village wines for example and that means of course there's good cash flow coming into that winery immediately after harvest and going into the next year as well okay so there is certainly an economical angle certainly where the countries produce this style so let's go through the process now which of course many of you are very excited to understand because it is something that certainly wset has a propensity to ask questions about certainly when of course we're looking at say beaujolais as a question so first of all then we'll see here we've got a vat on the left hand side and currently this vat is open okay now whole bunches of grapes which of course have just been hand harvested will be placed into this vat so this will be immediately after the hand harvest now there'll be no pressing no crushing or de-stemming they are intact whole bunches at this point now of course they are in a container and there's going to be some pressure created at the bottom of that vat due to the weight of the grapes within that vat and that pressure will cause the grapes and the clusters at the bottom of that vat to start to burst so that's what we've identified for you on the left hand side the grapes will begin to burst and you can quite clearly see it in the graphic there as well okay so what's the next step so the ambient yeast or the wild yeasts that we find on the skins of the grapes will transfer form the natural grape sugars which have been released due to them being crushed they will be converted into a bit of alcohol at the bottom of the tank during fermentation of course carbon dioxide is produced and that is then released and it forces out the oxygen that's what i am attempting to show you on the left hand side in the diagram again so carbon dioxide is produced and the oxygen which is there is forced out and that's really because carbon dioxide is heavier and denser than oxygen and that creates an anaerobic environment free of oxygen full of carbon dioxide now yeast of course when it starts to ferment will need oxygen for the traditional alcoholic fermentation of course it no longer has that so it is not possible to continue the fermentation under those conditions so the fat will be very quickly sealed around that point and in essence the grapes begin to absorb the carbon dioxide and the anaerobic environment encourages a carbonic maceration or this is what we can call an enzymatic or biochemical fermentation and that's inside each of the intact berries really the grapes in essence begin to eat themselves their enzymes begin to eat themselves as they have no living environment no living oxygen so during this biochemical fermentation a small proportion that's around two to two point five percent alcohol of the is produced from the malic acid so that malic acid is converted to ethanol and that's what we are showing you at the bottom of that diagram again and that's through the enzymes and this is really where the foundation box for those compounds in classic semi-carbonic macerated wines that produce those kind of curshy bubble gummy characteristics the pigment and the tannin is absorbed at this moment by the pulp because in essence those berries are bursting so the tannin and the um the color the pigmentation or what we call the anthocyanin is absorbed by the pulp making it a very pinkish purple color but really it's the color which is absorbed here tannin is very minor very little tannin and that's really due to the environment not being anywhere near as warm as a normal fermentation would be so there's very little extraction of tanning but good color will come through not a dense color but that kind of pinkish purplish color which is quite typically associated with these kind of styles in essence the berries have died at that point and the process will begin to shut down at that point okay so what about what happens now then because we haven't produced a huge amount of alcohol it's around two to two point five percent at that point okay so what do we do so the free run juice is drained off at around two to two point five percent alcohol and of course that's not high enough there's a small proponent of alcohol at that point and there's some uh well a lot of juice at that point so that will be drained off and that will require yeast to be added to it to ferment it to bring it up to normal wine alcohol levels so yes you've drained off the juice so what's left in that vat is a pulp of skins and stems and all those kind of things with some juice again the remaining grapes will be pressed so the remaining grapes will be pressed to obtain press wine and they can be pressed at a number of different days after so you could find that they may be pressed only one two or three days after contact with the skins and that's very common for most generic beaujolais or beaujolais nouveau for instance if it's a little bit more like maybe five to nine days uh before being pressed that's often for things like beaujolais village and then maybe somewhere around sort of eight or nine to 15 days contact with the skins and then pressed that will be for the cruise as you will expect more of that contact as you go down that list as i've just gone through will mean that you will have greater extraction in that press wine of color and of tannic structure as well okay now um during enzymatic fermentation the grape berries will actually burst as we mentioned and that will release that bit of juice into the fat that juice will need to go under a yeast driven fermentation as well and basically what happens is of course you will then blend into the the press wine will be brand blended into the free run wine those two components are blended together another reason why you would call this a semi-carbonic maceration because you have partially um partially free run and that is what has gone through quite a bit of a yeast fermentation and then the enzymatic biochemical section of that which is the pressed juice of the pressed wine which is finally produced okay so that is your process there please remember that the more skin contact with the press element is what will be really given to things like village level and crew whites so what is the resultant style then well resultant style in terms of characteristics is certainly low tannin so we find low tannins we find good acidities but some of those have been reduced certainly the malic through the process and we'll find some nice bright colors but not necessarily deep but that will really depend on the amount of skin contact in terms of the press wine element of the style we also find very fresh fruit flavors typically things like strawberries and raspberries and cherries which are all identified there on your slide very classically one is called ethyl cinnamate which is that very strawberry element in the style but also the cherry can be a bit more cursey and that's what you've got in the picture there things like banana produced as well so these quite interesting ester compounds and then things like bubble gum or candied sweets as well are produced via this process where in the world do we find this production well it results in wines as we mentioned with fruitiness and with a softer mouthfeel than normal crushed fruit fermentations and it's used for varieties like pinot noir malbec tempranillo gamay kargenyan plus many others now in terms of where in the world of course burgoyne sort of general level generic burgundy will potentially have semi-carbonic macerated fruit for pinot noir uh certainly things like pasay tu kran as well in burgundy beaujolais of course is really the hot spot for it it's the classic area for semi-carbonic maceration across most of the styles from really the sort of generic beaujolais and beaujolais nouveau and even up to crews not all of them of course but uh it can be that way the south of france certainly in the longer dock you'll find a lot of cargenian which is made as a semi-carbonic method and in la rioja in northern spain specifically areas around the alavesa which is your basque part of rioja you will find that there are semi-carbonic styles also made here it's quite a traditional style actually by some some winemakers and there's it's kind of making a comeback with younger wine makers too to produce these real bright fruity expressions which can be a counter point to the really complex and tertiary-led reservers and grand reserves so that is in la rioja and of course this is just europe but of course it's been adopted around the world you will find producers in places like south africa australia and others around the world are adopting the semi-carbonic macerated method so i hope you have found this video on wine terminology useful to help you with either your wsct level 3 or level 4 studies as always if you do have any comments questions or concerns you can get in touch with us you can do that via the question uh sorry the comment section below this video on youtube or by the social media that you see at the bottom of every slide or direct at www.winewithjimmy.com as you'll see here on this slide where you'll find my very useful e learning portal and there is a snapshot of what you may find if you register as a student for the e-learning portal this student here has actually registered for the level one two three and level four stuff which i don't think you'll be doing if you're watching this video but maybe you would like to register for maybe the level three and level four where you'll find exclusive video content huge amount of study aids such as flash cards revision sessions short written answers and multiple choice so they're all found there but really the exclusive video content is very very useful the level three for example we have over 110 videos on there and that is counting from may 2021 and that's always being added to every week and the diploma also has lots and lots of video content well if you do find yourself in the wonderful united kingdom and in old blighty here in london then come and see me you know i've got schools and bars so come and see us for a class a glass or a bottle i've been jimmy smith and see you very very soon goodbye hello