The Guardian

Wines of the week

From Marmite to Muscadet, dead yeast cells add plenty of flavour.

By David Williams

Château de la Petite Giraudière, Muscadet Sèvre et Maine Sur Lie France 2021 £8.25, The Co-op

Dead yeast cells in wine. It doesn’t sound particularly appetising, not even for those of us who love Marmite (made from the dead yeast cells, or lees, left over in beer production). So why make a big deal, as some producers do, of harnessing wine lees in a drink that is supposed to be all about the flavour of grapes? The reason is that lees can play an important part in bringing creamier, weightier texture and more savoury, yeasty flavours to some white and sparkling wines. Indeed, sometimes the practice is crucial to a local style, such as the white wines of Muscadet on the Loire estuary in western France, where ageing on the lees or ‘sur lie’ brings the subtle salty-yeasty dimension you find in brisk dry whites, such as Château de la Petite Giraudière.

Some lees naturally fall to the bottom of the fermentation vessel and are generally separated from the wine immediately. Others, known as the fine lees, will remain suspended for longer in the liquid, and some winemakers will leave them in for days, weeks, months or even years depending on the style of wine they’re after. That might include a process known as bâtonnage, stirring the tank to agitate the settled lees like tea leaves. Extended lees ageing is a common way for winemakers working with zesty whites to add something a bit different – in Spain you will often find producers making a ‘sobre lías’ cuvée as a step up from their everyday bottling, as in the satisfyingly substantial, but still citrusfresh and succulently peachy Viña Lareira.

Spain 2021

The wine style where the effects of ageing on the lees is most evident is traditional, bottlefermented sparkling wine – the method, most famously used in champagne, where a wine is given its second, fizz-bringing fermentation in a bottle. It’s the lees that brings out that range of flavours that have us thinking of a baker’s shop: fresh bread, brioche or, on the more savoury side, sourdough or Marmite. The champagnes of Charles Heidsieck are among the most stylishly arresting examples of the rich, boulangerie flavour spectrum: the house’s gorgeous non-vintage Brut Réserve (£44.95, ndjohn.co.uk) spends up to four years on the lees. Catalan cava producer Juve & Camps is similarly committed: its sourdough toasty Reserva de la Familia is aged for 36 months on lees.

Spain 2017 £19.99, Harvey Nichols

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2023-03-26T07:00:00.0000000Z

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