White wines retain their fresh aromatics at low temperatures, which prevent them from being boiled off, but ironically they also produce fewer esters at lower temperature. Matching fermentation temperature to yeast strain is a balancing exercise, an exploration that can easily take decades in the context of vintage variation. Interactions with grape source and clone, impacts on body and mouthfeel, response to oxygen or its absence, optimum fermentation rate for the desired time on the skins, flocculation characteristics, and rate of breakdown during sur lie aging are among the varied
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