Why Tulips Are Popping Up at Wineries Around the World

This story is from an installment of The Oeno Files, our weekly insider newsletter to the world of fine wine. Sign up here. Frequent visitors to vineyards are used to seeing roses at the ends of rows, but of late we have also noted tulips turning up in wineries around the world. We’re not observing them out among the vines as you might expect, but in the winery itself, where tulip-shaped concrete tanks are becoming more common every day. Made in Italy and gracing the production areas of wineries there as well as in California, Washington, Bordeaux, and elsewhere, the aptly named Tulipe helps to boost flavor and color extraction while allowing for micro-oxygenation without piling on oaky wood flavors. In California alone, the tanks are used in nearly 50 wineries including well-known Napa estates such as Ink Grade, Pine Ridge, Hall, and Dalla Valle and notable Bordeaux châteaus like Cheval Blanc, Beauregard, Haut-Bailly, and Kirwan. And although they are mainly utilized for red wine, famed Soave producer Pieropan has employed Tulipes for years, while Château d’Yquem in Sauternes recently added the fluted concrete tanks to its facility, according to Manu Fiorentini, owner and CEO of Itek Wine, who is the distributor in the U.S. for manufacturer Nico Velo. While some winemakers use the nontraditional shape for only a portion of their wine, Château Cheval Blanc cellar master Carole André has fermented the entire vintage plot-by-plot in tulips of varying sizes since the inauguration of the estate’s modern winery in 2011. “When we had the opportunity to develop the parcel-based winery, we chose truncated-cone-shaped tanks. This means that during a pump-over the cap can gently move down inside the tank and loosen up slightly,” André tells Robb Report. “Then, when the juice is pumped back over it, we can make better use of the grape skins.” Before implementing the approach, she and her team visited other estates and spoke with winemakers who were already using this technique. “Ultimately, it is about optimizing the extraction process,” she says. “The objective is not to extract more, but to extract better.” After primary and malolactic fermentation in tulips, André moves the wine into oak barrels prior to final blending and bottling. Winemaker Jordan Fiorentini of Epoch Wine Estates in Paso Robles first saw tulip tanks in Okanagan in British Columbia more than a decade ago after having worked with concrete cubes and eggs. Already a fan of the material but intrigued by the shape, she asked her husband Manu if he and his company could import the tulips into the United States, and today she uses them for every vintage of Epoch’s Sensibility Grenache blend and Epoch White and in some vintages for her York Mountain and Veracity Grenache. She likes concrete because she finds that keeping wine in stainless for too long can lead to a tinny or metallic character. “Concrete is fairly inert; however, I feel it highlights the mineral aspects of the wine,” she says. “The tulips are a vessel that, in a sense, ‘freeze’ the wine in a fresh state but also give it a mineral imprint. It keeps the wine fresh and elegant, without becoming too evolved in oak, thus capturing its purity.” After primary fermentation, Fiorentini puts her wines into oak barrels for malolactic fermentation and up to nine months of barrel aging, blends them, and then returns them to tulips for another year. “The Sensibility would be a heavier, less fresh expression of Grenache if it were aged entirely in oak. It would have more oxygen exposure in barrel over its aging process, which would allow it to evolve more,” she explains. However, “if the Sensibility were aged in stainless, I feel it would get more reductive than in concrete. Since the concrete is porous, it keeps the wine from becoming too reductive.” Josh McDaniels, CEO and director of winemaking at Doubleback, Bledsoe|McDaniels, and Bledsoe Family Winery in Washington and Oregon, was first introduced to concrete while working in Argentina with Paul Hobbs. He ages about 10 percent of Doubleback Cabernet Sauvignon in concrete tulips, while an additional portion is aged in concrete tanks of varied shapes. “Concrete occupies an interesting space between stainless steel and oak,” he says. “It gives us a neutral vessel; we aren’t looking for the flavor contribution of oak, but it isn’t completely inert in the way stainless steel is.” McDaniels likes the tulip shape for its influence on the wine: “There is a natural movement within the vessel that can help keep the wine and lees interacting without us having to manipulate the wine as much.” All the winemakers who use Tulipes agree that the combination of material and shape is what makes them such an interesting and effective tool. “Concrete is porous, so they allow a small amount of oxygen to come into contact with the wines during fermentation,” says Spencer Kelly, winemaker at Vice Versa in Napa Valley. “This results in a different aromatic and tannin profile than what we would have with stainless-steel tanks.” The circular base and slightly tapered sides allow for a thicker cap of skins at the surface of the tank, which allows us to precisely control the rate of extraction from the skins,” he explains. Working with a combination of stainless-steel tanks and concrete tulips for fermentation of his single vineyard wines from To Kalon and Steltzner vineyards, as well as for components of his Napa Valley cuvée called Spinning Plates prior to aging in oak, Kelly says, “It’s not about one being better than the other; it’s about matching a particular block to the appropriate vessel to achieve a balanced, delicious wine.” While concrete is a decidedly old-style material that has recently made a comeback, McDaniels points out that, ultimately, the vessel is simply a tool. “I’m not interested in using concrete because it’s fashionable or because it makes a good story,” he says. “We use it where we think it helps us preserve purity of fruit, build texture, and allow the vineyard to come through clearly.” From what we have tasted, in the right hands, these distinctively shaped vessels are doing just that. Do you want access to rare and outstanding reds from Napa Valley? 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