LaBelle Winery’s Sparkling Wine Program Featured In WineBusiness Monthly – June 2025 Publication

About WineBusiness Monthly’s “Trials & Troubleshoots”: This technical forum discusses how viticulturists, winemakers and technical leaders overcome wine production challenges by using science and observation to provide insights on how to grow better grapes, make better wines, improve efficiencies and reduce environmental impact. Bryan Avila is the co-founder of the Vintners Institute

TRIAL LEAD: Melaney Shepard, winemaker, LaBelle WINERY

Amherst, New Hampshire — The 2022 harvest marked Melaney’s twentieth in the wine industry. She started making wine at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC in her early 20s and never looked back. Having completed her Winemaking Certificate from UC Davis, she has experience with all aspects of winemaking, from harvest to bottle, including the production of grape and fruit wine, as well as ciders and meads. Shepard first joined LaBelle in May 2021 and recently returned as the senior assistant winemaker in February 2022.

LABELLE’S BUBBLES

This article follows winemaker Melaney Shepard’s approach to continuous improvement and how she adopted a yeast counting system for the winery’s growing sparkling program while managing production operations.

LaBelle Winery offers a wide array of sparkling and still wines from a myriad of fruits beyond the grape. The full diversity of fermented fruits means that fermentations are going on for most months out of the year, and each has its own characteristics. The ability to do a wellness check on a fermentation by observing actual viable yeast in the proportion required is likely to provide the winemaker with a few extra hours of sleep throughout the year. This article also discusses how the Oculyze system has been adapted to support quality needs with other labels, such as low-pH cranberry wine fermentations.

TRIAL OBJECTIVE:

New Hampshire’s LaBelle Winery adopts the Oculyze system to expand their sparkling wine program and monitor quality management methods during tirage.

TRIAL DESCRIPTION:

LaBelle Winery started their sparkling wine program using hemocytometry. Due to time constraints, they had ETS Laboratories monitor cell viability, during tirage, to save time and improve consistency and accuracy over hemocytometry.

Soon after, LaBelle found success with their sparkling wine program and was in the market for the next scale of technology which would provide an in-house solution to check the fermentation status of the wines that were undergoing secondary fermentation during tirage. During regular production of the wine, the Oculyze Cell Counting method was evaluated alongside ETS Labs’ method on LaBelle’s 2022 Chardonnay Brut.

• Reference Method: ETS Labs Flow Cytometry

• Trial Method: Oculyze Cell Counter

ETS Labs, a commercial wine lab based in St. Helena, Calif., uses an advanced flow cytometry method, which provides fast and reliable data, and was used as the production standard and reference method to evaluate the performance of the Oculyze system.

Key Metrics:

1. Concentration: The number of cells in solution should measure at least 106 per milliliter of sample.
2. Viability: When used with the Methylene violet stain, the Oculyze Cell Counter can detect the percentage of alive to dead cells; this percentage can then be used, as a multiplier of the cell concentration, to get a viable cell count. According to Melaney, greater than 85% viability indicates a healthy number.
3. Budding Index: A crucial indicator of yeast health during fermentation. The number of bud scars on the viable cell indicates how many times that yeast has budded. More bud scars represent an older cell that has undergone more rounds of cell division.

The Oculyze system was able to provide the confidence Melaney needed to know that her secondary fermentations were proceeding with a low level of risk. The chart above shows that the cell concentration at the beginning of tirage in August 2023 was well over the 1 million viable cells (> 106) required to start tirage at 65.28 x 10 and ended 20 months later at 1.84 million cells, only 75% of which were viable. This makes sense as the yeast are nearly done fermenting in the bottle and are just about ready to be disgorged. As with flow cytometry, the Oculyze system layers on its budding index which starts at 16.47, ramps up to 18 and 22 between the months of September and December, and finishes with the younger generations of cells which demonstrate a youthful average of a 4.17 budding index.

According to Melaney, this technology has been highly successful for the LaBelle Winery quality program. Long story short: the quality of results was accurate enough for LaBelle’s quality management needs, and could be run in-house, providing operations relief in the form of labor savings and efficiency. Melaney said that during her tirage week, she gained a full day and a half from not having to do analysis manually-about 25% savings for each week. She also mentioned that the simplicity of the system made it easy to cross-train other employees in the winery during busy work weeks.

This upgrade increased the scalability of their quality management and troubleshooting capabilities within their estate sparkling winemaking operation and made it much easier to directly view the viability and vigor of various fermentations going on at any given time of the year. For LaBelle, it has led to improved insights, less reactive quality management and better wine quality.

Post-Mort Q&A with Melaney Shepard

What was the motivation for trialing the Oculyze Automated Yeast Cell counting technology? What technology were you using before to count yeast viability?

Shepard: We started our sparkling program in 2022, and yeast counting accuracy was crucial to ensure fermentation in the bottle. We tried out yeast analyses but could not get our results back in a timely enough manner. We needed more real-time results. I’m trained to use a hemocytometer with a microscope for yeast counting, and we still needed to find a faster and more efficient way to count yeast if we were going to scale this program. The sample size is so small, the human error is crazy high, and it takes time to do it right. We’re looking for something fast and accurate that more than one person could be trained to do. Given the price of flow cytometry, we could afford to give the Oculyze system a shot.

Which varieties or wine types did you choose for your pilot trial and why?

Shepard: Our sparkling program was the primary reason we set out to trial the Oculyze system. If it didn’t work for these, we could not justify the purchase. We started with the Chardonnay for our Brut, Seyval Blanc for our Demi Sec and the Baco Noir for our Rose. I now use it for many different wines. We make a cranberry wine that is notoriously hard to ferment. With a pH of 2.6, it is prone to the fermentation becoming stuck. With the Oculyze system I can make more calculated and data-driven decisions to ensure complete fermentation.

How did you design your trial? What parameters did you measure to evaluate the differences between your previous system and the Oculyze system?

Shepard: Our evaluation methods were straightforward. At the time of tirage we took several samples from our 2022 Chardonnay Brut program. First, we compared the quality of the results as compared to what we were getting from our reference lab. If we were within the same order of magnitude of cells, we would be satisfied. Most importantly, we needed the confidence to know that we could switch methods without compromising wine quality. I also witnessed first-hand just how long it took to run them and got a feel for whether we could cross-train folks on this method.

Who else worked with you on this trial? What were you and your team’s initial hypotheses before beginning the experiment?

Shepard: We are a small but rapidly growing winery, so it was just me on this experiment. I wear a lot of hats in the winery, so the potential time savings with the Oculyze product was particularly attractive to me, assuming I could trust its results.

Did you encounter any difficulties during the trial? If so, how did you address them?

Shepard: I can’t emphasize how easy it has been to adapt the Oculyze microscope into my everyday work. There were no difficulties when starting, because it is so easy to use.

What was the most important outcome of the trial that fellow winemakers and enologists can use?

Shepard: The main difference with manual counting of yeast, using the hemocytometer and a microscope and the Oculyze system, is that the Oculyze product gives not only the yeast count and viability but also provides the percentage of budding index. A high budding index means happy yeast. I also know how much human error plays a part using hemocytometry. Automating yeast counting and integrating data collection reduces the time spent on manual counting and the potential for human error. With the ease and speed of using the Oculyze system, workflow is increased, and the quality of the wine is assured.

It was crucial for our sparkling program. I could not have done it without it. I could measure the yeast and get the 3% of viable yeast cells that I wanted (3,000,000 cells per 100/mls). It worked out perfectly because it all sparkled nicely in the bottle at 6 bars of pressure. That was the best outcome I could hope for.

I’ve been making wine with the Oculyzer for two full years now. My biggest issues are not with the sparkling wines, though. It’s getting the acidic cranberry wine to finish fermentation! Since we also make fruit wines, we have juices coming in most months out of the year, so I use it all the time now. Without viable cell counting, it’s easy to freak out and re-inoculate lots for no reason. Are the cells dead or do they just need a little more nutrients? Being able to answer these types of questions quickly for this and other ferments allows me to make more informed decisions. It’s nice to have this capability but for an order of magnitude cheaper on price.

Were the results as you predicted or did anything unexpected occur?

Shepard: We just ran the Oculyze system alongside a few hemocytometry results and ETS analyses that we used as a reference check. Honestly, I didn’t expect it to be so easy to implement and use. Once you run the samples, you log on to their website to access your data and analyses, and I can download PDFs and upload them to the Vintrace software when I want to document troubleshooting lots.

How did this trial impact your wine quality program and operations? What was your team’s impression of your quality assessments?

Shepard: Adopting the Oculyze system allowed for better consistency in fermentation and nutrition timing for overall wine quality and ease of fermentation.

To read the full article, please visit WineBusiness Monthly’s website by clicking here.

About LaBelle Winery:

LaBelle Winery has provided guests with award-winning wines since its founding in 2005. Since 2012, when its flagship facility opened in Amherst, the winery has offered outstanding cuisine, entertainment and venues for private events and weddings. LaBelle’s Amherst location is home to the winery’s production facility, The Bistro restaurant, a tasting room and wine and gift shop.

LaBelle’s Derry location opened in 2021. The Derry property is home to Americus restaurant, golf and mini-golf courses, an event center and a market offering prepared food and beverages. A tasting room and a sparkling wine production facility opened in Derry in May 2022.

Along with award-winning wines, LaBelle has created a gourmet culinary product line called The Winemaker’s Kitchen. Products are currently available at both of the winery’s locations.

LaBelle Winery Amherst is located at 345 Route 101 in Amherst, New Hampshire.

LaBelle Winery Derry is located at 14 Route 111, Derry, New Hampshire.

Visit LaBelleWinery.com for directions and hours of operation.

For questions or media inquiries email michelle@labellewinery.com