Making a buttery Chardonnay?

I've secured 400 lbs of Chardonnay grapes this season. The wife's only request was to make Chardonnay. Her favorite (which we rarely ever get) is Rumbaur, which is a complete butter ball.

Any thoughts on what to do to in the making of the wine try to mimic this style?

Do some research now on your MLB and pick a good one that produces lots of diacetyl which is responsible for the butter taste.

Isn't D47 like the main "go to" for Chards?

That's yeast though. The butter notes/flavor comes from the Diacetyl produced during MLF from the MLB.

geek said:

Isn't D47 like the main "go to" for Chards?

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I haven't made a chardonnay, so I can't speak from experience, but the literature indicates one of the keys to maintaining the butter or diacetyl is that the wine must be racked and sulfited at the correct time. After malic acid is consumed and about half of the citric acid is consumed is when the butter peaks, leaving the wine in contact with lees without sulfite beyond this point will allow the lees to consume the diacetyl and you will loose the butter. The contradiction to this is barrel fermented chardonnays which are left on the lees until bottling, which I assume provides the rich creamy lees component, so the final bottling may be a blend with some reserve non-lees high butter chardonnay. I'm just speculating, so let us know what you find in your research.

Yep, timing is critical on this as the diacetyl will be consumed if left unchecked. SO2 addition at the peak diacetyl flavor is critical. MLF should be complete so you have to stay on top of fermentation progress. Can't just set it and forget it. Enoferm Beta is listed as a high dactyl producer if added post AF. Biolees addition can give it a creamy mouthfeel as well.

Thank you for the responses. I was planning on some oak and mlf, but I had not seen the criticality of managing the mlf timing, so I'll do some research there.

Funny, my wife told me to try a chard this season so this is an interesting read!

Hey Busa, how much were you looking to do? I think I have room left in the macro-bin, so I could check to see if the vineyard has more grapes available.

Sounds good, let's do it! LOL

Just a follow-up. We chose D47 and beta for mlf. Fermentation is just getting going. We did 900 pounds, lost quite a bit in settling, down to 45 gallons or so.

I can say that I did MLF on a Chardonnay juice pail from Harford Vineyard using VP-41, and it did not produce substantial butter. I probably missed that sweet spot, because I just let it go the whole way to completed MLF.

heatherd said:

I can say that I did MLF on a Chardonnay juice pail from Harford Vineyard using VP-41, and it did not produce substantial butter. I probably missed that sweet spot, because I just let it go the whole way to completed MLF.

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Did you try battonage at all?

Boatboy24 said:

Did you try battonage at all?

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I did not. I'll give that a try next time.

ibglowin said:

Yep, timing is critical on this as the diacetyl will be consumed if left unchecked. SO2 addition at the peak diacetyl flavor is critical. MLF should be complete so you have to stay on top of fermentation progress. Can't just set it and forget it. Enoferm Beta is listed as a high dactyl producer if added post AF. Biolees addition can give it a creamy mouthfeel as well.

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IB, could you explain this a little more. It sounds like mlf should be arrested, but you also mention "MLF should be complete"

Thx,
Ken

When the MLB have converted all the Malic to Lactic they will set their eyes on Diacetyl and start to consume it. So you need to stay on top of the MLF progress by Chromo and sensory (taste) and make sure to add the SO2 when finished and not let the MLB move on to other food sources.

In the beer world, where high diacetyl isn't always a good thing, if you leave the beer on the yeast it will absorb a decent amount of it as a food source as it goes inactive (almost like a hibernation).

I think the idea is to finish primary fermentation, add the MLB and as soon as MLF is complete, before the yeast and MLB can absorb all of the diacetyl produced by the MLB, sulfite and rack off of the old yeast (lees).

But then I'm applying beermaking knowlege to wine making, which isn't always one to one.

Edit: Sorry Mike. I was trying to see if I had the right idea, knowing you would eventually post...you beat me to it!

I've never tried it, but here is a Chardonnay suggestion from Lallemand.

I have to say, all of our Chardonnay @4Score, @busabill turned out pretty darn good. Blind tasting with commercial Chards have people not knowing which was which. We hit the target and I know my wife is requesting a repeat for this season. It will be entered in the state fair this year.

Yes I definitely think a Chardonnay repeat is in order this season!!