Harvest- Making the wine

The winemaking process is way more complex then I ever imagined. In my last post I described how the juice gets extracted from the grapes and delivered to the tank. At that point all you have is thousands of gallons of juice that is about 25-29 bricks, or about 12.5- 14.5 percent sugar. Very sweet! If left to sit, naturally occurring yeasts from the air and fields would eventually take off and start fermenting the juice giving you wine. This is not what the winemakers want to have happen though. Since the yeasts dramatically affect the flavor components of the wine, we want to add specific yeasts that will flavor it how we want. Every few days after the yeast has been added to white wines there are other additions that are made to control PH levels, acidity, to keep proteins down and to clarify the juice by dropping many of the particulate matter in the tank to the bottom, including dead yeast cells. This thick layer on the bottom of the tank is called lees and can often lend favorable flavor characteristics to the wine.

Red wine is made with a slightly more laborious process. At Brutocao Cellars, we have many wines that are produced in small lots. Often these wines have unique flavor profiles and are carefully blended together to make complex fine wines. All red grapes that come in go through a very similar process though starting with de-stemming and ending in the fermentation container, whether that be a large steel tank, a 2 ton plastic bin, or an open top stainless steel tank. When red grapes come in, they are left alone for up to a week before we do anything to them. This allows the skins to release lots of color, flavor, acids and tannins to the juice. Once the yeast is added, the labor intensive work begins. The grapes on the top of the tank are in contact with air, so juice from the bottom of the tank/bin needs to be pumped to the top. This is either done with a pump and hoses, or by hand with a metal plate attached to a pole. When the yeasts become active, the release of carbon dioxide as a byproduct of fermentation pushes the skins to the top of the tank forming a ‘cap’. If the cap is left to dry for too long it becomes susceptible to bacteria growth that will negatively affect the flavor of the wine. The cap needs to punched/wetted about 2-3 times per day for the duration of the winemaking process. (about 3-4 weeks for reds) With 20-25 tanks and 15 bins of red grapes, that is a lot of cap wetting. This was one of my main jobs while working at the vineyard this past summer.

Once almost all of the juice has been fermented, you essentially have wine. At this time, all of the juice needs to be drained to another tank and all of the skins shoveled out to bins and then pressed. On a good day, we could drain and press 2 large tanks, or we could do about 5 small open top tanks as long as they are the same varietal. From here, the wine is then stored in oak barrels for up to 18 months. The oak adds a lot of flavors and structure to the wine as well. More on oak to come in a different post.

The red grapes leave a nice purple stain on everything...