The last of the red grapes

The red grapes are finished! The last of the Pinot came in from Martinborough this last weekend, and they passed along the sorting table with little fanfare except for a few hoops of happiness to not have to sort anymore. While it's understood by all that our sorting goes a long way towards ensuring the quality of the wine by taking out anything unsavory (disease, leaves, etc), it's still not any fun. But as long as I'm on the subject, I'll show a bit of what we sort out.



So I've told you all a bit about pumpovers and punchdowns, but I'm not sure I expressed how tough punchdowns can be. You are basically taking a 2-meter long pole with a plate on the end (all stainless steel), and using that to mix 8 tons of fruit. Oh, did I mention that the fruit, once it is fermenting, forms a incredible solid layer of skins on the top of the tank called a cap? And that therefore, to mix the tank, you have to break through the cap? Then move over a bit, and break through the cap over there, and so on, until all of the cap is broken up? It's a damn good workout. Depending on the form you use, it works out your arms and shoulders and back a lot, your chest a bit, and your legs considerable (largely from having to balance on the edge of the tank, while you are moving around your plunger).


Another job that can be an amazing workout is the "digout." It's a part of the greater operation called a "drain and press." When a tank has finished fermenting, the juice which is at the bottom of the tank (below the cap) is drained into a bin, from which it is pumped into a clean tank. When the juice is all drained out, and you are left with just skin and seeds, the dig-out portion begins. You open the door and shovel out just enough grapes to be able to see light come through from the top of the tank. You then stick a fan at the top, so that it is blowing fresh air into the tank. You do this because a fermenting tank of grapes produces a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) which has a nasty habit of killing people who breathe too much of it. So we air out the tank lest we fall victim, and once it's safe, we drop into the tank like winemaking paratroopers armed only with shovels. And we dig that sucker out. One guy digs shovelful over shovelful out of the tank and into bins, and the second guy uses a forklift truck to bring the bins over to the press (where a special machine tips them into the press). Once the tank is completely dug out, and all of the grapes are in the press, they are.....pressed! Thus, a drain, and press.

So today, we had a massive work order: to drain and press three tanks. We could have done the simple thing, and set up three independent drain-and-presses. But there were complications requiring some thought. Two of these draining tanks were to have half of their respective juices go into initial receiving tanks, and the rest of both tanks would go into a third tank. The third drain tank would also, in its entirety, go into this same third receiving tank. Since a tank has only two inlet valves, not all three tanks could go into the tank at the same time...unless we used a T pipe to feed two tanks into one line. But if we were going to bother doing that, why not just do a double T and have all three tanks go into the same tank? And the first two tanks that were being split up, just have a T at the receiving tank with two valves and just switch the flow direction when the tanks were sufficiently full? Confused yet?


It was, I must say, the most complicated and glorious setup ever seen by the world of wine. While I was certainly the accomplice in the creation and realization of this masterpiece, I have to give credit to its mastermind, Drew Pickering. Here are some pictures to show it off.

Well that's all for the moment, because as usual I am dog tired after a twelve hour shift. I'll finish the plot by saying that once we had drained and dug out these three tanks (I dug out two of them, quite a good workout), the press went well. We sqeezed it lightly to get the good press wine ("good wine" being very technical terminology), then squeezed it harder to get the last litle bit of bad press wine, which is actually still quite good but can be grippy and drying on the palate, and which is therefore kept separate. Keeping it in a separate barrel is kind of like putting a potentially sick person in quarantine and under observation until it can be ascertained that they aren't going to infect other people. The "bad wine" might end up being good after all, and it can be added back to a final blend, or if it really is bad, it might end up going with the lees filtered bad wine from my last blog.