Unless disaster strikes, we do not purchase commercial yeasts or inoculate our wines with any cultures. We endeavor to remain the grateful spectators of the yeasts that come in with the grapes and live in the winery and its equipment. But disaster does strike–often because we opened some door to it. This year we have had to inoculate some of our red fermentations to compensate for the devastating effect of having over-heated the musts early in the fermentation. But even commercial yeast operate on their own schedule–not ours. We recently spent two nights shuttling back and forth to the winery, stealing an hour or two's sleep at a time, in an attempt to keep up with the development of our mercenary yeasts and introduce them into the wrecked fermentations at exactly the right time.

As I write this, we are still waiting to assess the success of our efforts.

[above, written in december 2007.
The wines finished beautifully. All of the reds from 2007 were dry within a year; two of the whites remained stubborn—one finished after 18 months, the other was bottled with a tiny bit of residual sugar.]