Update from the vineyards:
“As it is now, it seems that the heat wave has passed. Normally we harvest the merlot the last week of September and the first week of October and the malbec the first week of October onwards, everything depends on the weather and the degrees of sugar you want for the processing of the wines. We harvest the cab around the last week of October and the second week of November once again all depends on your brix (sugar level) desire. I already noticed a few grapes changing color within the next few days. Veraison (when the grapes turn red) will begin if the weather allows it and remains within 80–90 degrees, we will have an early harvest with a good balance of sugar, acids and pH.”
José Yanez, Director of Viticulture, V74 Vineyards
Getting weekly updates from the vineyards, which turns into daily updates in the vineyards, a final picking date is par for the course. We are now preparing to pick our grapes for the year and getting weekly updates from the vineyards. Picking can be done by big harvester machines that straddle the vines and literally beat the grapes off the vine. They can also be hand picked with special knives (which can be dangerous) or, in our case, with special hand pruners/clippers. With pruners, the fruit is removed from the vine intact and we help protect the workers.
Fermentation is where the “magic” happens. Fermentation is simple. You take grapes, expose them to yeast and you convert the grape sugars to alcohol with carbon dioxide as a byproduct. And then you have wine. Actually, it is not that simple.
Fermentation is an exciting time in the cellar. Once we have decided to pick, we need to get clear on what we do. Do we pick in the early mornings when it is cool, pick during the day, or night pick with big flood lights which is the coolest time to pick. We prefer to pick at night to keep the fruit cool as possible and cool in transportation. Grapes are typically harvested at night when temperatures are cooler, usually in the range of 50–70°F. This helps preserve the delicate flavors and aromas of the grapes, which can degrade in warmer daytime temperatures. The cooler nighttime temperatures mean the grapes lose less moisture through evaporation, helping to maintain the optimal sugar and acid levels in the fruit. And most importantly, we minimize oxidation. Picking grapes at night reduces exposure to direct sunlight, which can cause oxidation and premature breakdown of compounds that contribute to wine flavor. And if possible, we will arrange trucking with refrigeration to keep the fruit cool when it arrives at the winery.
Once in the winery with the fruit offloaded from the trucks, we have options to process the fruit before going into the fermenters. We can put them in a wooden barrel and stomp them with our feet (and yes some do this), hand crush them and push through screens, or run them through a crusher-destemmer machine. We do the latter in a crusher-destemmer machine called Pellenc. This is one of best in the industry and incredibly gentle on the fruit and includes optical sorting. Sorting becomes important in that we want only mature fruit, consistent fruit and no immature grapes or non-grape stuff.
When it comes to fermenters, there are many types with every winemaker having his favorite. We have access to stainless steel tanks with welded on tops and an open hatch, open top stainless-steel fermenters that can be “punched”, same with wooden tanks both open top and closed tops, and all in various sizes. Then there are “concrete” fermenters that have become more fashionable in the last, say, ten years. And yes, some old wineries in the past used concrete fermenters but, in most cases, have been replaced with stainless steel. Concrete fermenters come in many sizes and shapes from round, semi round, straight sided, slant sided and more. In our case, we prefer concrete as we feel these tanks produce the most elegant wines and we will be using an American made two-ton fermenter with straight sides and a three-ton Spanish concrete fermenter with slanted sides.
Before starting fermentation, the juice will be analyzed in the lab for sugar levels, pH, Total Acidity (TA), nutrients, and other. If the juice needs to be adjusted it is best before the start of fermentation. Once the juice is ready, we have the option to add a known yeast with proven results or use the natural yeast found on the grapes. We choose to use isolated yeasts, so we know what to expect. Once fermentation starts, one of the byproducts is the creation of carbon dioxide with bubbles rising up and also bringing to the surface all the grape skins. Those skins actually form a “cap” on the top of the tank and that cap needs to be submerged daily to leach out the color pigment that makes the wine red as well as to prevent any bacteria issues with the exposed cap. Working with the cap is also known as cap management and there are a couple of ways to do this. You can use a punching tool, like a hoe to push the cap down into the fermenting wine, drain the wine from the tank to another and then put it back into the original tank, or pull wine from the tank with a pump and spray the wine over the cap until it is saturated. This is what we do, and it is called “pump over”.
At the completion of the fermentation (all the sugar is consumed and converted to alcohol) the cap will drop to the bottom of the tank, and the wine in the tank is decanted off the skins and the skins removed from the tank and sent to a wine press. In terms of wine presses, there are options. Again, you can put the wet skins in a barrel and stomp on them with your feet, move them to a tank press with a bladder inside that inflates and squeezes the wine from the skins or use a traditional basket press. We prefer to use a basket press as this is the gentlest approach in our minds to pressing.
In most cases the pressed skins go to landfill or are used in the distillation process of the skins to produce grappa, a grape-based brandy. If you have never tasted a high-quality grappa, you need to. But learn how to smell and taste it. It makes a whole lot of difference. In the past, our red grape skins were used in the creation of the “Fast Tail” grappa next to our old winery.
Once the wine is moved to the final tank, it is left for a while to settle and then the wine is decanted into the waiting barrels for aging. We age our wines on average for sixteen months. The aging effort is also another deep discussion, and I will pick that up in my next blog.
