Wednesday, October 17, 2007

It aint perty!

So now you get a little behind the scenes view of what happens to those grapes after they've been picked and transported to the winery. The bins in the picture are filled with grapes and represent about half of the amount we crushed this day. Before the grapes are crushed, they are sorted and any leaves, sticks, or MOG (material other than grapes) are carefully removed by well trained experts. The grapes and stems are then fed into the crusher destemmer where the grapes are removed from the stems and then crushed and pumped into the fermenting bins. As you can imagine it is a messy job and quite sticky too. Into the bins we'll add yeast, nutrients, and as needed components to adjust acidity and pH. In about a week, after a lot of punching down, we'll have wine! Then comes pressing. More on that later...stay tuned.

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