As Washington State wine grows in stature internationally, winemakers continue tweaking techniques, including using ‘free run’ instead of pressed juice
WINES crafted from all free run juice are often touted for their potential to elicit the purest expression of the grape. What exactly is free run wine?
“Free run is most of the juice given up by the grapes due to gravity alone,” explains respected Master of Wine Bob Betz, advisor and consulting winemaker for Betz Family Winery.
“For reds, it’s typically obtained at some point during or after fermentation on the skins is complete, just by allowing it to flow from the fermentation vessel. Since it’s already wine, we refer to this fraction as ‘free run wine.’ The remainder is ‘press wine’ that is squeezed mechanically from the pomace.”
Betz perceives some notable nuances in free run wine versus press wine. “Free run is typically more pleasant, especially early on during maturation, because it has less tannin and lower astringency than press wine,” he says. “Free run wine is softer, more supple, rounder, and feels more concentrated than press wine, and is prized for its suppleness in crafting big-boned reds.”
These slight differences also carry through in the color. “After a period of maturation, free run wine most often can have deeper color than press wine. Often winemakers purposely make a final red blend only from free run wine, depending on variety, vineyard source, and winemaker preference.”
Additionally, free wine ‘fractions’ inform quality, not unlike press wine. “There are gradations of free run wine: that which is first to be drained from the fermentation vessel is different from the last of the free run to drip out,” elaborates Betz. “The winemaker can sequentially capture various fractions of free run wine and keep them separate in different vessels (typically barrels for reds), identifying them as such.”
Betz further observes that separating fractions allows smaller winemakers “the luxury of assessing the barrels individually during maturation, revealing surprising differences even between free run fractions, depending on when it was captured in the sequence. “
Tamping Down Tannins
Boutique Cairdeas Winery in Lake Chelan does just that. “At our winery, we keep everything as separate as possible,” says winemaker Charlie Lybecker, whose family-owned winery produces 10,000 cases annually.
“At Cairdeas, we make Rhone-inspired wines,” he says. “There are a lot of really nice, delicate flavors and aromas in the varieties that we work with, and we just want to be really careful about the extraction of bitter tannins, or bitter phenolics. For our winemaking style, we’ve found that we’re able to achieve the stylistic goals that we want to hit by utilizing that free-run juice. We use our press wine for our Diffraction label we produce, so it’s not wasted.”
Lybecker admits his protocols require more time and effort, but provide more blending options. “If we keep things separate, we may end up taking fermenter one’s worth of barrels and use them for Cairdeas wine like our ‘Tri’. We may take fermenter three’s barrels from that exact same lot and decide those barrels are better suited for another wine we make called ‘Consonance.’ So they both go into our ultra-premium tier wine. Keeping them separate, we may split them in two different blends.”
Purity of Free Run
Others winemakers simply favor the purity of free run juice. “We use only free run wine in our Matthews Reserves and Tenor reds,” say winemakers Alex Stewart and Hal Iverson of Avallé brands Matthews and Tenor. “It tends to have the best body, flavor, and texture for our style. Our press wine, which almost always gets declassified, tends to have a little less inherent balance—more tannin, less body and a much more rustic flavor profile. Less clean.”
However, they also admit that time on skins does change the equation a bit. “I will say that a major qualifier here is that we use 30-plus days extended maceration on most of our reds,” says Stewart. “By the end of that time, the berries have lost so much color, and they have self-pressed in a way where they are very deflated. Other producers may choose to have much less time on skins, and therefore the difference between their free run juice and their press wine may be less noticeable.”
Press vs. Non-Press
Conversely, some producers prefer combining free run and press wine. “The free run, to me, is less interesting when it has no press wine in it,” says winemaker Mike Januik of Novelty Hill/Januik Winery in Woodinville. “But an important thing to understand is, how your press fraction turns out depends on how hard you press it. We’re trying to find the perfect blend of free run and press wine together.”
Fellow veteran winemaker Charlie Hoppes admits his views regarding non-press vs. press wines have evolved since he started making wine in the 1980s.
“I think it really comes down to what press you’re using, and how big [of a winery] you are,” says Hoppes, founder of Fidélitas on Red Mountain. “For instance, when I was the red wine maker at Chateau Ste. Michelle, we always kept them separate, because it was just too hard to run multiple press loads back to back—we couldn’t move the hose to keep the press fraction with the free run on every lot that we were running.”
Currently, Hoppes doesn’t keep any press fraction separate at all with Fidélitas. “We have a basket press that doesn’t squeeze things as much, so the pressure is not as high.”
Sweet Spot
Ultimately, each winemaker follows their intuition when using free run wine. “There’s frequently a ‘sweet-spot’—an alchemy of flavors and textures that exists somewhere in the transition from free run to pressed reds,” says Brian Rudin, head winemaker for Echolands Winery in Walla Walla.
“Sometimes, you drain out the free run, and you find it supple, aromatic, perfect on its own. Other times, you start applying a little light pressure in the press, and you find just the little boost of grip or intensity you need. Sometimes, you don’t know until you start pressing.”
Consequently, Rudin and his crew press carefully, taste continuously, and scout for vintage trends to match finesse versus power needs.
In the immortal lyrics from country music legend Kenny Rogers’ hit song The Gambler: “You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away, and know when to run.”
Written by L.M. Archer