06/14/2026
At Turtle Run Winery, the scientific discoveries never stop. This one, I had to wait a few years to try. See the carboy on the back right side? See how much darker it is? Well, 2 hours later, it is much closer to the color of the center carboy. See the bottles? Time to explain the science. In the early 2000's perhaps 04 or maybe 06, I wrote a nice little hypothesis on yeast fermentation, aerobic and anaerobic. The hypothesis was quite simple. Start a fermentation with fresh juice and at a very specific point during fermentation, you could take oxidized wine, pour it in, and the yeast will remove the oxidative stress. I've done the experiment four times and it works every time. Wines on the wine list that have used this technique include The Mammatus, Adagio Blanc, Simply White and our sometimes tasted Cabernet Sauvignon 2025 and in the barrels Tempranillo. Simply put, the complexity and fruitfulness is quite captivating. But there was something I was exceptionally curious about this technique I created on my own. I was very interested in scope, scale, and an aged compound in older wines called esters. Diamond is on the left, a variety we use to make Open My Mind among other wines. The center and right carboys have Geisenheim, a Riesling hybrid. The center Geisenheim and Diamond have 1998 Sauvignon Blanc wine added to the fermentation, that's what that bottle between the two carboys has on its label. Both carboys were filled 3/4 full of fermenting juice so a full 1/4 of the carboys contain sauvignon blanc. The one in the back was 2/3's filled with fermenting geisenheim juice and the other 1/3rd of the carboy was filled with 2001 vignoles, 2004 chardonel, 2006 Summer Solstice (traminette-chardonel). The back right one that looks brown from heavily oxidized wine is now, as I type this, very close in color to the diamond carboy. That's only two hours. Two...hours. All three carboys are bubbling like crazy. I am gaining incredible fermentation knowledge, but I am really wondering about the stability of those old esters and if they will hold up or will they be gobbled up by the yeast. No clue. No hypothesis. That's why this is so geeky fun!!
