The Science—and Superstition—of Serenading Wine and Vines
Greg La Follette’s harvest order of operations goes as such: prune the vines, thin the shoots, pick the grapes, play the bagpipes.
Before La Follette founded Sonoma’s renowned Marchelle Wines, he was a professional bagpipe player. After loading the last of the grapes into the press, he’ll bring out his beloved instrument. “The cellar has great reverberation and I think the wines like it,” he says.
In Burgundy’s Santenay AOC, Marc Jessiaume and his son Jean-Baptiste play classical music (“only Mozart or Bach”) while their white wines coalesce in barrel. The floating concertos help stimulate malolactic fermentation and remove stress from the cells, they say, resulting in exceedingly elegant Chardonnays.
Though it may sound eccentric, these winemakers aren’t the only ones serenading their wines.
In Texas Hill Country, Canada Family Vineyards’s Brenda Canada sings to her vines. Montes in Chile plays Gregorian chants constantly to the barrels, which sit in a semicircle—a shape that promotes serenity—in the cellar.
Clearly, the trend is growing—but is there actually any science to back up the benefits?
The High Notes of Music and Wine
Winemakers who engage in these practices have found anecdotal evidence of its effectiveness in producing higher quality wines.
Jessiaume specifically chooses music tuned to 432 hertz (Hz) frequency, or Verdi’s A. Monks use the scale for meditative chanting. Wellness practitioners, life coaches and other holistic health enthusiasts swear the frequency helps with healing. “It’s the music of life,” says Jessiaume.
Small-scale studies have shown that the frequency can decrease heart rate and manage anxiety and stress.
“Your body is 80% water,” he continues. “So is wine, right? We’re all made up of cells with metal, minerals and amino acids. Music is the best way to pull out all the stress in our cells, whether human or wine.”
He rests speakers on top of his barrels and plays Mozart’s Une Petite Musique de Nuit. “Never rock and roll,” he says. “Nothing would happen during fermentation.”
He decides when the wines are ready by testing them with the ding of a tuning fork.
In Sancerre, small speakers dot Cyril de Benoist’s Domaine du Nozay vineyards. Classical music, also played at 432 hertz, is piped through as the grapes ripen and grow. “It stimulates the molecule of the plant and helps with sap circulation,” says de Benoist.
Since starting the practice, he’s noticed music aids in healthy plant growth (though it doesn’t help prevent disease or other maladies).
The chords continue into the cellars. He’s fiddled with his speakers and removed the exteriors so the music (also classical) plays without actual sound. It’s the vibrations that matter, he believes. “I find music helps stimulate alcoholic and malolactic fermentation,” de Benoist says. “I stop when fermentation finishes—after that, music will start creating other problems.”
In the same vein of thought, he’s also a big believer in amphoras and other round vessels, which keep yeast moving and dancing.
La Follette finds the benefits of bagpiping extend beyond the potential science. Piping is a ritual for him and his team. “I’ve found over my career that having happy employees who are engaged, satisfied with their work and have rituals that are comforting and have meaning will end up making better wine,” he says.
The bagpipes are also a crucial chapter in his story. He was the shift piper on the Queen Mary and still plays at Highland games and funerals of friends. “At the price point I sell my wines, people are not just buying the beverage,” he says. “They’re buying into my story.”
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A Soundtrack for Spirits
Fermentation nerds outside of the wine world also swear by custom soundtracks played during their aging process. Copper & Kings in Louisville, Kentucky, plays a staff-selected mixtape to their barrels. Genres flirt between hip-hop, soul and rock: Bob Marley, Broken Social Scene, Chaka Khan and The Pixies make appearances.
The theory is, the more the subwoofer thumps, the more the liquid is interacting with the barrels and picking up its flavors.
Metallica’s Blackened whiskey is aged to a playlist of the band’s biggest hits. Specifically, the songs are played at low-hertz frequencies in a process the brand calls Black Noise sonic-enhancement.
That fact certainly makes good press release fodder, but the brand (and band) swears that the vibrations caused by the galloping drum riffs and frenzied shredding help the liquid pick up more flavor and color from the oak barrels, therefore speeding up the aging process—essentially the opposite of calming effects of Mozart or Bach.
The Science Behind the Sound
Claims of sonic aging can certainly cause the skepticism meter to go off. It can feel overly new agey or like a viticultural decision made in a marketing office. But science has found evidence that music can help fermentation along.
A 2011 German study on fermentation showed that “green music”—-classical music with a base of earthly sounds, like birds, water or wind—increased the growth rate of starter cultures.
Yamamoto Miso in Niigata, Japan, found that exposing its brewing miso to music (via underwater pool speakers in the tank) cut fermentation time in half. They’ve sent the data over to Shinshu University to analyze the data to better understand how, exactly, it impacts the fermentation process.
Music can also affect how you taste wine. In 2008, Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh performed a study on Montes’s wine to see how each varietal was perceived when music was playing. When powerful, heavy music was played (like Carmina Burana’s O Fortuna), Montes Alpha Cabernet Sauvignon was perceived as 60% richer.
What about in the vineyards? When Dutch vintner Bas Huisman of De Reestlandhoeve started playing classical music to his vines, he found some of his yields quadrupled—from roughly 700 liters to 3,500 to 4,000 a year. He had tried pruning and fertilizers, yet only music helped his Solaris vines thrive. He now has a Spotify playlist of classical hits running 24/7.
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A Japanese study documented in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture tested out how different genres of music affect fermentation. Classical music made the fermentations bloom and come alive. Somewhat unsurprising, elevator music (i.e. muzak) produced the same results as no music at all. Heavy metal? Stopped the fermentation entirely.
Huisman has also found anecdotal evidence to support the latter. “Heavy metal makes a mess of nature’s symmetry,” he told a Netherlands newspaper.
“There’s a lot of reasons for this,” explains La Follette. Heavy metal is jarring and conflicting: “You have a lot of discordant notes and chords that create tensions in living things.”
“You can have tension and release,” he continues. “Think of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony—everyone has seen Fantasia. The characters are out frolicking when a storm comes in and the music switches to a minor key. It produces tension. The storm ends and they switch into a major key.”
Now think of a great glass of wine. “There’s a little bit of tension on the entry and great resolution in the finish,” he La Follette continues. “Tension and release.”
Weighing Science and Skepticism
Can music have a distinguishable impact on a wine? Some studies point to yes, but it’s also hard to squeeze such a philosophy into such a yes-or-no box. Perhaps it’s similar playing classical music to babies in the womb—rumoured, but never proven, to help develop cognitive abilities. But it couldn’t hurt, could it?
“The benefits of bagpiping could be all in my mind,” says La Follette with a laugh. “I’ve made a lot of great wines over the years and who’s to say what actually makes a difference—it could be the way I do batonnage, the temperature gradient in the cellar or sampling lees to see how they are doing.”
Or maybe it is the music.
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