I’m fascinated by the details of a Napa Valley winery aging their red wines 60 feet down on the seafloor. Mira Winery and winemaker Gustavo Gonzalez were inspired by European counterparts which have been experimenting with aging wine in the salt water and light deprived environment of the ocean. Mira Winery made US wine history when divers placed four cases of their 2009 Cabernet in specially designed cages and sunk them in Charleston Harbor.
The goal was to test the affect of ocean aging the wine compared to aging the wine in warehouses on land. The major elements that affect wine include temperature, humidity, pressure, iight and motion.
“Winemaking is an art and a complicated science” says Gonzalez. “With several factors impacting wine production, aging is traditionally done in a very controlled environment to ensure an optimum outcome. With this experiment we’re testing the impact of unpredictable tides, waves and temperature on the wine’s taste.”
When pulled up from depth experts tasted the wine to gage the aging process. They compared with underwater wine to wine aged on land and declared “it was like magic.” it’s a whole other element for adding diversity to the flavors that already exist in wine,“ says Gustavo. “The wine tasted drastically different from the onshore version which was a big surprise for me because it had not been in the water for that long, but it tastes noticeably different and not just to a trained palate, but to an average palate.”
This is amazing science and represents the kind of progressive winemaking we love at The Black Bottle. You can check out the details in this You Tube link: