>> NARRATOR: It lifts the
spirits and intoxicates the senses.
Gods were created for it, now robots bottle it, and
sometimes its cost can make a prince a pauper.
Not bad for something that we shake, stomp, and hide
underground. Now, "Wine" on<i> Modern Marvels.</i><font color="#FFFF00">
Captioning sponsored by</font> <font color="#FFFF00">A&E TELEVISION NETWORKS
It's known simply as "crush."</font> The annual fall harvest of
grapes that marks the beginning of California's winemaking
season. >> JEFF STEWART: We usually
start harvesting grapes in September.
It's a time of year where all of our hard work, from an entire
year, kind of comes to fruition. It's kind of the Super Bowl for
us. >> NARRATOR: Every year, in
winemaking regions around the world, millions of tons of
grapes are gathered, either by hand...
or by powerful mechanical harvesters that shake the vines
into submission. In California alone, more than
three million tons of wine grapes are harvested annually.
But the decision to machine or handpick is just one of many
that every winemaker must make. At Buena Vista Carneros, for
example, the harvest is done only by hand, and occurs at
night to preserve freshness. >> STEWART: The warmer the
fruit comes into the winery, usually the less fruit
intensity you'll have in the final wine.
So we're really, really big fans of getting out there when
it's cold. Get the fruit in here and...
and take care of it from there. >> NARRATOR: At the winery, the
grape clusters are quickly sorted, then they fall into a
de-stemmer, where a series of beater bars gently knock the
grapes from their stems. Once separated and cleaned, the
grapes are now ready to become wine.
Grapevines are among nature's great survivors, and often
thrive in places where little else will grow.
Initially divided into red and white, there are literally
thousands of grape varieties in the world, although only six--
Riesling, sauvignon blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot,
and Cabernet Sauvignon-- account for 80% of all American wine
sales. >> JIM LaMAR: Each grape imparts
different flavors into the wine, depending on how juicy the
grape is, how thick the skin is. Some of the grapes are very
aromatic, some are not. Some of them have better color,
more tannin-- the astringent, puckery flavor that is common to
wine. >> NARRATOR: But, no matter
their color or variety, all wine grapes will share a common
destiny-- fermentation-- one of nature's remarkable processes.
As the grapes grow on the vine, they develop sugars within as a
by-product of photosynthesis. Only the grape's elastic skin
protects these sugars from a naturally occurring yeast that
forms on the grapes' exterior. When the grape skin is broken,
or "crushed," the yeasts assault the sugars, consuming them in a
fury that results in alcohol. >> BO BARRETT: If you took these
grapes, and we put them in a bucketful in the back of your
car, and you stomped them a little bit, about a week
later, in your garage, you'd have some wine being made.'d
That's pretty amazing. >> NARRATOR: Today, presses of
all sizes are used to extract the grape juice and begin
fermentation. To what degree that juice
remains in contact with the grape skins, and even seeds, is
crucial to the character of any wine.
>> STEWART: With a white grape, we'll separate the juice and
the skins immediately, and that juice will ferment by itself.
With reds, we actually ferment the skins and the juice all
together, because everything that makes a red wine what it
is, is in the skins. The juice itself is clear, it's
colorless, it doesn't have the true flavor of the varietal, so
the character is really in the skin.
>> NARRATOR: French scientist Louis Pasteur was the first to
clearly define the biological process of fermentation.
Although the mystery of wine fermentation had taken
generations to solve, its intoxicating effects had been
known throughout time. >> LaMAR: Well, they found
sunken jars in present-day Iran that they dated to about 4,000
to 5,000 years B.C. >> NARRATOR: Nearly every
civilization since has made wine a centerpiece in its religious
and cultural life. The Greeks and Egyptians spread
winemaking throughout the known world, and the Romans became its
first great merchants. But, throughout the ages, no
civilization has been more passionately associated with
wine than France. Beginning in the 11th century
A.D., French monks were the first to make detailed studies
of the complex relationship between wine and the soil and
the climate in which it grows. Over time, the monks walled off
parcels of land that consistently produced wines of
greater subtlety and flavor-- parcels that today still make
the most expensive wines in the world.
Remarkably, many of those vineyards were located in the
thin, mineral soils along slopes and ridges, where
growing conditions were harder. This reflected a concept we now
call "stress." >> STEWART: It's a concept that
winemakers and grape growers come back to because a vine that
struggles really does produce wine with more intensity and
more... more color and more structure.
And the stress from the rocky soil here-- from the lack of
water, from the wind that we see on a... on a ridge top like
this-- really adds to the intensity of a wine.
>> NARRATOR: Buena Vista Carneros is the oldest premier
winery in California. But, in the 1990s, a wave of
the vine-killing insect phylloxera swept through the
Napa and Sonoma valleys, forcing Buena Vista to replant 30% of
their vineyards. >> LaMAR: Phylloxera became a
problem in California in the early '90s, so they had to end
up replanting a lot of the vineyards, all at the same
time, which was very costly. But it also gave them an
opportunity to capitalize on the improvements in viticulture
in the last 20 years of the 20th century.
>> NARRATOR: One of the most important improvements is
precision farming. Hi-tech tools, like digital
aerial photography, gave those at Buena Vista a view of their
vineyards otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
>> MELISSA STAID: Our background is actually in remote sensing
of other planets... so, studying the moon and Mars-- NASA
technology. And so we wanted to apply that
same technology to the earth. >> NARRATOR: Using images taken
at 10,000 feet with a four-band digital camera, companies like
Vine View Imaging create a series of maps based on thermal,
near-infrared, and other color spectrums.
These maps reveal much about the condition of the vineyards.
For example, because of the intense sun, vines must cool
themselves or their basic chemical functions begin to
fail. Healthy vines will evaporate
water through their leaves and roots, and appear in this stress
map in light green and yellow. Vines that are struggling are
in the red and brown regions, while the dark green areas are
under-stressed, and not working hard enough.
Bringing all the vines into better balance may mean a
simple adjustment in irrigation. However, if the pattern
persists, it may also signal a need to replant the block with
a different type or variety of grape, and what was once a
single vineyard must then be farmed as many.
>> STEWART: Well, right here today, across the 800 acres that
are planted, we have 167 different blocks, and each of
those blocks, we really farm as an individual vineyard, so we
don't think of this as an 800-acre vineyard.
It's really 167 little vineyards, and you have to
approach it that way, because the needs of this block are very
different from the block next door where you have different
soil types, you have different water-holding capacities, and
that's really the beauty of what we've done here.
>> NARRATOR: Construction of each new vineyard block requires
other hi-tech tools to precisely define their physical layout.
>> TIM GOETZ: Basically, what I do is I come out to a new
development vineyard, or even an established vineyard, and I use
the GPS to shoot off the satellites in space to map out
the area that they're going to plant the vineyard.
>> NARRATOR: GPS units lock in where the vine rows are spaced
and planted, and also position irrigation pipelines, manholes,
and other practical elements. Once this work is completed,
all that is needed are the vines themselves.
>> BOB HERRICK: This is a typical grafted grapevine that
a vineyard here would use to plant for their vineyard.
And it's composed of really two different plants.
One, it's the root stock, which is the bottom part here, and
then we call the scion wood, bud wood, or we call it
fruiting wood on the top. >> NARRATOR: When young, these
two independent vines are joined together in a process known as
"bench?grafting." The new graft is dipped in wax
for protection, then raised for one year, in the nursery, until
it's replanted in the vineyard. >> CRAIG WEAVER: This point
here-- here's where the graft was made at Mr. Herrick's
nursery and, from this point down, obviously, is a root
stock, and then we grafted a scion, or bud wood, on top of
this. In this case, it was Pinot Noir.
>> NARRATOR: There are 16 distinct root stocks grown at
Herrick's, each offering the winemaker a potential match for
the various soil conditions at his winery.
The fruiting wood is chosen both for the type of wine the
winemaker wants to produce, as well as for the climate and
weather of the region where the winery is found.
>> STEWART: Here in Carneros, it's a very cool region.
You can see, today, it's a fairly gray morning.
We get a lot of fog. Very, very cool weather,
typically, compared to some other growing regions.
So that's driven us to really focus on what we consider
cool-climate varietals. Chardonnay, Pinot Noir are the
classic cool-climate varietals around the world.
>> NARRATOR: But even then, within varieties like Pinot Noir
or Chardonnay, there exist distinct strains, known as
clones. In the vineyards at Buena Vista,
there are currently 25 different Pinot Noir clones
planted. >> STEWART: Each of these clones
will have a different characteristic, different
flavors, maybe a different ripening pattern.
And the whole goal for us is to match up that exact clone on the
perfect spot. And that's how you make the
best wines. >> NARRATOR: Grapevines require
four years to bear useable fruit.
The first grape buds appear in March.
For the next seven months, growers keep a diligent eye
over every inch of the vineyard, constantly measuring
growth and stress patterns. >> WEAVER: Six inches depth,
we have a very, very dry 18% moisture.
>> NARRATOR: By the fall, each block of grapes has developed
unique characteristics of flavor, acids, tannins and
color. These blocks are then harvested
and fermented separately, in order to form the building
blocks of the wine to come. >> STEWART: Well, by keeping
each vineyard block, or little section of the vineyard,
separate, through the winemaking process, it allows us to put
different blends together at the end of the year.
You might have one section of the vineyard that gives you
really great cherry and berry flavors, and you might have
another section that gives you really good, kind of earthy,
complex flavors. Well, we can take those wines,
blend them with all their brothers and sisters, and come
up with a wine that's more complex, more interesting, and,
in the end, tastes better in the glass.
>> NARRATOR: What took the French monks centuries to
discern can now be manipulated and fine-tuned in a matter of
years. In less than a decade after the
phylloxera wave, Buena Vista Carneros is again making
award-winning wines. But technological innovation
isn't confined to just the vineyards.
It's in the winery, as well. "Wine" will return, on<i> Modern
Marvels,</i> here on the History Channel.
>> NARRATOR: We now return to "Wine," on<i> Modern Marvels.</i>
They're one of the industry's biggest players, yet outside of
the wine business, few have heard of them.
>> BOB STASHAK: This is a 94,000 square foot facility.
It houses three bottling lines. Two of the bottling lines run at
240 bottles per minute, and the latest line we added runs at
about 200. So you combine all that
capacity, we can kick out 55,000 cases of wine a day.
>> NARRATOR: Founded in 1974, Bronco Winery produces more than
20 million cases of wine annually-- a leader in what is
called the value wine business. >> FRED FRANZIA: Good wines
should be something you enjoy with good food and you should
be able to afford to do it everyday.
That's the name of the game. >> NARRATOR: Of Bronco's 40-plus
labels, only a few sell for more than ten dollars a bottle.
Their most famous brand, Charles Shaw, is popularly known as
"Two Buck Chuck." That's right-- two dollars a
bottle, which wine-drinkers enjoy at a rate of 5.5 million
cases annually. >> LAMAR: It caught the ear of
the public, and caught their palate and their pocketbook, and
so people were buying wine by the case and, and drinking it
regularly. >> NARRATOR: Less than an hour's
drive from Bronco's high- powered bottling facility is one
of Napa Valley's most historic wineries-- Chateau Montelena,
famous for its handcrafted wines.
>> BARRETT: The wine industry has a nice pyramid and there's
the mass, bulk producers that are making lots and lots and
lots of cases. And that's a part of the
industry that's good because it brings wine at a good price to
a lot of people, but what we do is we're making what we consider
handcrafted or estate wines. Part of what you're paying for
is the love and the labor of these people trying to make
every single bottle of wine special.
>> NARRATOR: Together, the value-driven Bronco and
Montelena's handcrafted vintages reflect the two primary trends
of not just California wines, but of winemaking around the
world. When California State Senator
Alfred Tubbs founded Chateau Montelena in 1882, he envisioned
a winery in the tradition of the great French estates.
By 1896, Montelena was the fourth largest winery in Napa,
but Tubbs' legacy was cut short by the advent of Prohibition.
For wineries across California, the Temperance Movement meant
the end. >> LAMAR: There were over 700
individual wineries in operation prior to Prohibition,
and less than 50 or 60 survived Prohibition.
>> NARRATOR: But if Prohibition had brought a close to the first
great era of California winemaking, its repeal began
another. Science and technology were
applied to wine-growing as never before, as the wine industry
sought to regain consumers. Vineyards were planted on a mass
scale and innovations devised at colleges like the University
of California at Davis became standard.
Today, that innovative spirit still echoes in powerhouse
wineries like Bronco, which owns more than 35,000 acres across
nine California counties. >> FRANZIA: It's all dealing
with today's technology and applying it into the, uh,
science of making better products in a more economical
way to keep those prices down and keep those imports home
where they should be. >> NARRATOR: Here, grapes are
shaken from the vine via a fleet of 43 mechanical harvesters.
At a typical rate of ten tons per hour, 80 men would be needed
to pick the equivalent of just one harvester on an average day.
During crush, 300 trucks arrive daily at Bronco's winery--
one about every three minutes during the harvest process.
A series of 30- to 50-ton presses turn the grapes into
juice. A typical press is a large
cylindrical container with a rubber membrane affixed to the
interior walls. This membrane is steadily
inflated with air pressure to extract the juice, which flows
into circular, perforated drain channels.
Full pressure is maintained for only a few minutes, before the
membrane will deflate and the residue will be removed.
High-powered centrifuges then eliminate nearly all remaining
solid waste, enhancing the quality and speed of the wine's
development. Fermentation occurs over 12 days
within this sea of 45 to 54-foot tall storage tanks, capable of
holding more than 80 million gallons of wine.
Once ready, the wine is shipped to another Bronco facility,
where it is quality-checked, bottled and then corked.
>> STASHAK: We call them "jaws." It's like a diaphragm almost--
in a camera-- because what it will do is, it'll squeeze or
constrict around the cork and then it squeezes it smaller than
the opening of the bottle, right?
And then a plunger, just a metal rod, comes down and shoves the
cork into the bottle. >> NARRATOR: When Bronco owner
Fred Franzia's grandfather opened his first winery in the
San Joaquin Valley, the hope was to sell a good bottle of wine at
a fair price. Today, Bronco delivers on that
dream at a rate of 240 bottles per minute.
>> FRANZIA: I'm a firm believer the consumer is the smartest
person out there and he knows what he wants and we've got to
find out, as suppliers of the consumer, the products they want
and what they want to pay for. And if you give 'em good
quality, a good value, they find it.
>> NARRATOR: In 1972, lawyer Jim Barrett purchased Chateau
Montelena and began to revitalize the winery.
In only a few years, his efforts would make history.
In 1976, a British wine merchant in Paris organized a blind
tasting test that pitted world- class, historic French wines
against the new wave of American upstarts, including a 1973
Montelena Chardonnay. Despite a panel of all French
judges, the Americans won every category.
>> LAMAR: They beat the French wines, and this was quite a
startling thing. >> NARRATOR: Now known as "The
Judgment of Paris," this single event transformed world
perception of California wines overnight.
>> BARRETT: That one event, that tasting in the summer of 1976,
suddenly, the barricades to the marketing of handcrafted
California wine dropped in one day.
>> NARRATOR: Today, Montelena's commitment to handcrafting wines
extends from their exceptional vineyards to the winery.
No detail in the process is overlooked.
When fermentation is complete, all of Montelena's wines are
stored in oak barrels-- whites for eight to nine months, reds
for upwards of two years. Many of these barrels are
handcrafted at Seguin Moreau, one of the world's historic
cooperages. No glue or nails are used to
construct them, and the type of oak from which they're made
will produce distinct flavors in the wine.
>> JOHN FORSTER: French oak has quite a bit of tannin that it
brings to the wine. It brings a sweetness,
complexity and structure, which are all things that are good for
big, red wines or white wines. It gives them longevity.
It gives them length in the bottle.
American oak is known for its aromatic characters-- a lot of
vanilla and spice, and it sort of is also known... it fills in
the middle of a wine very nicely.
>> NARRATOR: As the wines age in the oak, Barrett and his team
taste them constantly. >> Cruising along nicely.
>> BARRETT: Take a look in December and see what we think.
>> NARRATOR: Once the wines have reached the desired richness,
blending begins, a process that takes weeks.
>> BARRETT: Even if you liked the first blend, you say, "Man,
this is fantastic," we still have to go back and make sure
that we couldn't do something better.
>> NARRATOR: Altogether, the creation of a Chateau Montelena
wine takes a minimum of one year for whites, and two for reds.
That commitment to quality is a hallmark for many wines--
including the king of them all, champagne.
"Wine" will return, on<i> Modern</i> <i>Marvels.</i>
>> NARRATOR: We now return to "Wine," on<i> Modern Marvels.</i>
Champagne, the king of wines. Born in silent and humid
cellars, its sparkling character and intoxicating bubbles are
the very essence of celebration. >> LAMAR: The carbon dioxide
that's formed during the fermentation process, um,
evaporates, is allowed to escape, but in champagne, it's
trapped in the product, and it's only released when the bottle is
opened. >> NARRATOR: To understand this
remarkable wine, champagne must be thought of as a place as well
as a drink... a region of France with its own
unique geography and history. Throughout the centuries, every
French king maintained vineyards here, and the wines became a
staple of their coronation ceremonies.
But Champagne is located at a more northern latitude than
Quebec, Canada, making it one of the coldest wine centers in the
world. And because of this northern
locale, a unique pause in the wine's development occurred
during winter... when the cold stopped fermentation until the
spring thaw. >> NARRATOR: Once opened,
pressure within the barrels caused the wine to froth, a
phenomenon that French winemakers, including the fabled
monk, Dom Perignon, spent decades trying to reverse.
>> LAMAR: Dom Perignon was trying to remove the bubbles
from champagne. The English discovered that they
liked it, and they've always been the best customers for
champagne and sparkling wine. And, um, probably without their
interest, there wouldn't even be champagne as we know it-- it
would be still wine, no bubbles. >> NARRATOR: In 1811, the French
champagne house of Perrier-Jouet was founded, born appropriately
of a marriage between the daughter of a vineyard owner and
a cork maker. They immediately began to export
their champagnes to England. By then, champagne was cellared
in bottles rather than barrels, which captured the CO2 gasses--
in essence, carbonating the wine.
In less than a generation, Queen Victoria herself had embraced
Perrier-Jouet, and it has remained a favorite in British
circles ever since. >> NARRATOR: Champagne is made
from three varieties: Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and
Pinot Meunier. >> NARRATOR: Through two
pressings, fermentation and blending, these remarkable
grapes are handled just as they would be for still wines.
Juice from the first pressing, known as the cuvee, is
considered the finest. In champagne, consistency is
prized above all else, and the new cuvee is blended with
wines from previous years to ensure every bottle of
Perrier-Jouet reflects what is known as the house style.
Only after the blend is finished do the bubbles come.
A second fermentation is induced by the addition of new yeast and
24 grams of sugar to each bottle.
The yeast again consumes the sugar, but unlike in the
frothing oak barrels of old, the resulting CO2 remains trapped
inside the wine. For three years, the dying
yeasts will continue to impart flavors to the wine.
During the final year, the bottles will be turned and
elevated eight times a day, in a process known as riddling.
Riddling encourages the dead yeasts to settle into the neck
of the bottle. Although not harmful if
consumed, the yeast simply isn't very pretty, and so it's
removed, in a process known as disgorgement.
In traditional disgorgement, a single blow of the winemaker's
tool causes the cap on the bottle to explode, catapulting
the yeast out. To maintain the distinct
qualities of this remarkable wine, strict laws assert that
only those wines grown and made in the Champagne region can bear
the name "Champagne" on their label.
Annual production is also limited, ensuring quality, while
also guaranteeing that labels such as Perrier-Jouet will be
in constant demand. But that hasn't stopped French
winemakers from reaching out to other parts of the world, where
technologies now bring new meaning to old methods.
Consider the advanced automation at Mumm Napa, producers of one
of America's most popular sparkling wines.
Here bottles of sparkling wine are filled at a rate of a 120
bottles per minute. Sophisticated computer programs
oversee state-of-the-art riddling machines that move
large containers of the sparkling wine a fraction of a
turn at a time. Only six to eight days later,
the neck of the bottle is frozen, capturing the yeast in
place. When the bottle is mechanically
opened, the frozen yeast pops out in the form of an ice plug--
one of many remarkable solutions to age-old problems.
>> NARRATOR: But France isn't the only land steeped in
tradition, nor where the past and future combine to make a
world-class wine. "Wine" will return, on<i> Modern
Marvels.</i> >> NARRATOR: We now return to
"Wine," on<i> Modern Marvels.</i> They're called "stairways to
heaven," centuries-old vineyards carved into the steep hillsides
and rugged canyons of Portugal's Douro Valley.
Rising as high as a thousand meters above the river below,
these terraces were built from the very rock and schist that
made the Douro one of the most uncompromising landscapes in all
of Europe. Yet here, in this once remote,
defiant place, nature and history have conspired to create
one of the world's most treasured wines: port.
>> RUPERT SYMINGTON: Well, basically, port is a fortified,
what we call a fortified red wine from this region of the
Douro Valley of Portugal. The grapes have been crushed,
just like for a normal table wine, but we've actually stopped
the fermentation halfway though, by adding what we call
brandy. by adding what we call It's like a 77%-alcohol-by-
volume grappa. And by adding brandy, you kill
the yeast off, so you end up with a wine having about half
its natural sugar. So the wine is semi-sweet, with
a slightly higher alcoholic content than standard red wine.
>> NARRATOR: No one knows who first added brandy to wine-- a
process now called fortification-- but what is
clear is that the impetus came not from an ancient winemaker's
cellar but was born of geopolitics, empires and war.
>> LAMAR: Port was actually invented by the British as much
as, uh, the Portuguese. >> NARRATOR: Beginning in the
17th century, perpetual conflict with France led British
merchants to seek out alternative sources of wine,
especially in Portugal. >> SYMINGTON: Some of the
original port wines were actually wines sourced on the
coast of Portugal, and as the market developed, people's
tastes got more sophisticated, and merchants started coming
upriver, trying to find better wines.
And the Douro Valley-- which is some 70 or 80 miles from where
we are-- to the coast, the wines from this region were considered
fantastic. The trouble is, the whole trip,
the journey downriver, then would have to be shipped a
couple of days to England, and the wine, having come that much
further, would spoil. So that's when they started
adding brandy, and that's what, you know, helped preserve the
wine and make it famous. >> NARRATOR: The additional
brandy ensured that wine shipments from the Douro made
the long journey to England. Continued unrest between Britain
and France spurred demand for port, and led to the rapid
transformation of wine production in the Douro, well
into the 19th century. Winemakers, for example, began
to define proper wine-to-brandy ratios... that not only made
the port more stable... but also created truly unique flavors and
character. Wines were no longer transported
in resin-lined goatskins, but rather in large barrels, known
as pipes, still the standard measure of port today.
In the spring, these pipes were loaded aboad small skiffs
known as "rabelos" for the dangerous journey from Douro to
Oporto, from where they were shipped to England and abroad.
Today, a new revolution is underway, led by companies like
the Symington Family Estates, the world's leading port
producer. The Symington family can trace
their roots in the industry back 13 generations, to the very
founding of the port trade in the 1600's.
They now oversea 24 "quintas" where famous ports like Dows,
Warre and Grahams are born. >> SYMINGTON: We've got about
three million vines now, um, under our management and
ownership. >> NARRATOR: And while they're
fully aware of port's rich heritage, their focus is very
much on the future. >> SYMINGTON: This is the Quinta
Dos Malvedos Winery. Malvedos is a property that has
been associated with the Graham port brand since 1890, and this,
these buildings were where the original port was made from the
Malvedos estate. Traditionally, port was made by
foot-treading and a bunch of people, about 20 people, would
into a tank and literally stomp it by foot.
>> NARRATOR: Foot-treading was first practiced by the
ancient Romans, who recognized that small, thick-skinned
grapes, like those grown in the Douro, needed to be crushed
firmly quickly, to initiate fermentation and extract the
optimum flavor and color. Traditional presses simply did
not apply the same direct pressure as human feet, which
ground the grapes into the floor of the stone tank known as a
"lagar." In the 1960s, the Symingtons
installed a auto-vinification system that uses pressure built
up during fermentation to maximize extraction.
But for the finest ports, the system just couldn't match the
juice tread by foot. And so the family made a
long-term commitment: to design and build a robotic lagar.
>> SYMINGTON: It has four plates that slide over each other
hydraulically. There are silicon toes on the
end of the plates and those silicon toes will literally
grind the skins against the floor of the tank.
The feet themselves are temperature-controlled.
They're heated up to 37 degrees centigrade, the same as the
human leg. So you've got a warming effect
in the feet. They also can work all night, if
they have to, whereas the humans would only do it for two or
three hours in the late evening. >> NARRATOR: Once fermentation
has brought the wine to the desired sugar levels, the
fermenting wine is drained into a storage vat where the neutral-
flavored brandy is added. >> SYMINGTON: We add about one
part of brandy at 77% alcohol by volume, to about four parts
of must, which is at about 7% alcohol by volume, so if you do
the math, it works out a wine about 19-and-a-half, 20% alcohol
for the finished blend. >> NARRATOR: Once it is settled,
the wine will travel downriver, where it will be judged for
flavor, clarity and other characteristics.
>> SYMINGTON: Well, we'll take some of these lots and then
we'll put them on the bench and try and put them together in
such a way to make something really great.
Occasionally, you'll have one individual blend which is great,
but we believe, like, you know, two plus two can add up to five
in our business. You can really put two things
together and make something even better than the sum of the
parts. >> NARRATOR: In general, port
can be divided into two fundamental styles: ruby port is
aged in oak, then bottled after three years and features a
bright red color and general fruitfulness.
Conversely, tawny ports are aged in oak at least six years,
during which time their color and nature transform.
>> SYMINGTON: The longer you leave it in barrel, the wine
goes from that purply red color and it fades into a lovely nutty
kind of amber-brown color. >> NARRATOR: In rare years, when
all the conditions are exactly right, port winemakers will
declare a vintage year. These wines spend only two years
in oak before bottling, where they will be left to mature for
decades. Vintages such as the 1970 and
1955 Grahams are among the most cherished wines in the world,
not simply for their flavor, but also for the sense of history
and place they evoke. And for some, those are
qualities to be treasured above all else, especially in one of
the world's great cellars. "Wine" will return, on "Modern
Marvels," here on the History Channel.
>> NARRATOR: We now return to "Wine," on<i> Modern Marvels.</i>
It's perhaps the world's most famous restaurant: La
Tour d'Argent, located on the Right Bank of Paris in the
shadow of Notre Dame. Founded in 1582, La Tour was a
favorite meeting place of King Henry III, who often stopped by
after hunting along the Seine. Legend holds that it was here
that he learned to eat with a fork.
Since then, the restaurant has served the rich and powerful for
centuries. Not surprisingly, 30 feet below
the restaurant itself, is perhaps the world's finest wine
cellar, one that dates back to the 1820s, when the restaurant
was rebuilt after being burned during the French Revolution.
>> DAVID RIDGWAY: The oldest wine bottle is an 1845 now.
Unfortunately, the 1811 comet year from Lafite got broken by
one of my cellar men. We had to get rid of him.
>> NARRATOR: Currently, the cellar holds upwards of 450,000
bottles, including all of the most prized vintages in French
wine history. >> RIDGWAY: An 1868 Grelarose.
Grelarose is a San Julien Cabernet-based wine, and that
is, like, amazing to imagine that.
Still... still with us. >> NARRATOR: The cellar's
temperature naturally ranges no higher or lower than 53 to 59
degrees, while the humidity stays fixed at an exacting 75%.
It's considered the most technically perfect cellar in
the City of Lights. Aging is one of wine's greatest
traditions. Yet, even today, no one knows
exactly what happens to wine as it transforms over time.
Some of have theorized the chemical elements within the
wine, primarily the tannins, bond with other compounds.
Others suggest those same compounds are broken down.
What's clear is that the aromas and flavors become more
numerous, layered and sophisticated.
>> RIDGWAY: Two days ago, we had a bottle of vin Clos du
Chene 1885. And the nose was so pungent.
You're talking about a complexity, maybe 50-60
different aromas and they all come at you slowly and sit.
It's so... it's magical. >> NARRATOR: In fact, so prized
are these complexities, that have been willing to
risk their lives for them, including the former owner of
La Tour d'Argent, the father of the current owner.
In 1940, Claude Terrail was a young French soldier stationed
south of Paris when the Nazis began to march on the French
capital. >> RIDGWAY: Just before the
Germans arrived, he flew into Paris and he, with one of the
staff members, one of the cellar men, bricked up about three-
quarters of the cellar. They covered it with dust and
made it look as if it had been here for several centuries.
>> NARRATOR: Today, only some bits of mortar remain where the
fake wall once stood and baffled the Germans for more than five
years. But the full scope of the
courage shown by Monsieur Terrail can still be felt and
seen and tasted in the rare wines within the collection--
still evolving, still a living history.
>> RIDGWAY: The time and the effort that's been taken to keep
it this long, um, the wars, the, the the strife, the famines that
have gone around it, and it's still here.
It's still here today. It's very moving.
>> NARRATOR: While only a few cellars in the world can boast
of 1845 vintages, private collectors are building their
own cellars where wine, technology and personal
histories are joined. >> DAVID NIEDERAUER: I had seen
an article in<i> Wine Spectator</i> about Paul Wyatt and it showed
some of his cellars maybe 15 years prior to that, and I'd
always had in mind, I said, "You know, someday, I'm gonna have
myself a cellar by that guy." >> NARRATOR: For over 30 years,
Paul Wyatt has been a pioneer in the creation and construction of
private cellars. >> WYATT: There are two kinds of
cellars: there are cellars that just store wine.
They're like shoeboxes. You want to keep shoes in a box,
that's fine. People do that.
There's lots of people that have them in cheap racks.
All the racks on the market work to hold wine, but this is more
than just a statement about the person whose cellar it is.
It's a statement about the wine collection.
>> NARRATOR: This cellar is designed to highlight the
owner's 4,500-bottle collection, including his rare collection of
Chateau d'Yquem, perhaps the most treasured white wine in the
world. >> NIEDERAUER: We collaborated
on the design of the cellar, and I wanted to have a place to
show the Chateau d'Yquem and the way that it changes color as
it ages, so we designed this light box.
It has a low temperature in there and it's fine for the
wine, and, at the same time, you can see the beautiful colors as
the colors change. >> NARRATOR: Temperature,
lighting and security are all computer-controlled and no
detail has been overlooked. The entire rack system is made
of redwood and stands more than nine feet tall and nearly
four feet deep. Most remarkable of all, it's
free-standing and self-supporting; nothing is
fixed to a wall. >> WYATT: Also, we're deep in
earthquake country and this whole system is not fixed to the
room. It's sitting on the floor and
it's quite flexible. And it's going to move a lot in
earthquakes. It's a very live system.
>> NARRATOR: But even amid all the technology, the real star
remains the wine itself. >> NIEDERAUER: A lot of people
have never heard of the labels that I have.
Uh, that makes it really fun, too, when it comes to
sharing is that you have something that the other people
have never tasted. It is an obsession, a passion.
I never could believe that I would be hooked so, so deeply on
one particular thing like a crazy little bottle of wine.
>> NARRATOR: According to a recent study, 90% of all wine is
consumed within the first 24 hours of purchase.
Truth be told, less than five percent of the world's wines are
designed to age more than five years.
The rest are meant to be enjoyed much sooner.
So, drink up. <font color="#FFFF00">Captioning sponsored by
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