JEFFERSON VINEYARDS

June 15, 2018

Viognier 2016

(Charlottesville, Virginia) $30

Lovely and fresh with just the right edge of delicious bitterness. Thomas Jefferson would have been proud.

A buttery flavor in wine is most often the result of:

A. Bâttonage

B. Extended lees contact

C. Malolactic fermentation

D. Oak aging

C.

While many people think that buttery flavors in wine are derived from new oak, they are actually the result of diacetyl, which is a by-product of malolactic fermentation. (For its part, malolactic fermentation is the process by which crisp malic acid in wine is converted to softer lactic acid). Chardonnays that have undergone malolactic fermentation often have considerable diacetyl and therefore a pronounced buttery taste. Bâttonage means lees stirring in French, from bâton French for stick.

Wine … changing even as we taste it, delivers a message with meaning only in our response. If we are in the right key when we receive it, our eyes will shine and we shall radiate pleasure.

—Gerald Asher
American writer, The Pleasures of Wine

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