What is it about wine grapes in particular that makes them so interesting as a fruit addition to beer?
“Wine has one of the truest senses of place, of terroir, of any product out there. It’s losing some of that among modern producers who are looking for intensity of flavor versus delicacy and nuance of flavor, but the great wines of the world are defined by where they are, more so than process or intention. You get a true singular expression of that location through those particular grapes in that location. There’s a beauty in that, I think.”
What does your process look like when working with wine grapes?
“We treat different varieties, and different vintages within those same varieties, differently depending on the character that the vintage and the grapes have given us. More often than not, we’ll destem and crush the grapes and then add them to secondary oak vessels. We use 1,000-liter oak casks for fruit fermentations, including grapes, and we’ll run mature beer in with that for refermentation.
“Occasionally, we’ll incorporate some or all of the stems, so basically do whole-cluster refermentations if we’re looking for a bit more structure to it—that’s the character that those provide. We have, on a couple of occasions for white varieties, pressed the juice off, where we felt that the skin would detract from the vibrancy of the juice.