Time To Wine

After a long travel day (from Ireland) and a good nights rest, our grapes came in from California and we had to crush and de-stem them.  We are making two kinds of wine this year with the anticipation of reserving one of them.   To “reserve” one just means that we are going to let it sit in a barrel for an additional year, allowing it to “barrel age”.  The two types of wine we are making are Brunello and Cabernet Sauvignon.  Here is a video of the beginning, we took close to 1,000 pounds of grapes and sent them through the crusher and de-stemmer machine.  Here you see us mixing the grapes up to even it out and add some chemicals to the must.  Then after a week to ten days as fermentation slows down, we have to press the grapes (click here for a vid. pre-press) and get as much of the juice out as we can.  In this video you see Mr. Cocker and I moving the grapes to the press by the use of the high tech bucket! And this video shows the wine getting squeezed and transferred to the stainless steel holding tank.  Now the wine will sit in the steel tank for 48hrs before they move it to an oak barrel.  The idea of waiting is to allow some of the solids to fall out of the solution and in the tank and not in the oak barrel. (solids just means dead yeast cells and anything else that was dissolved in the juice).  Lastly the cool thing with the grape press is that in the beginning when the wine is sort of free flowing out the wine is still a bit sweet, but as water pressure is added to the press the last bits of wine that come out are much more dry and tannic, tasting like a very good but young wine.