One of the reasons our Chardonnay is such a big hit with winery visitors is its texture - nice and smooth with a round, full feel on the palate. One reason for this is regular lees stirring as the wine ages in the barrel. Aaron explains what this is and why we do it -
I was able to catch Aaron as he was doing a morning punchdown on the 08 Napa Petite Sirah. Done twice a day during fermentation, this is a gentle way of extracting as much flavor as possible from the grape skins and solids, while not allowing any bitter compounds to get into the wine.
After fermentation and pressing off the reds (see yesterday's blog post), the next step is settling the wines in tanks and then barreling them down for aging...
The key job for early this week at the winery is pressing out some of the red wines that have finished fermentation. This makes space in our limited number of tanks for more grapes as they are harvested later this week. Today Joe, Aaron and Jesse were pressing out one of the larger tanks we have, containing Dijon Clones Pinot Noir from the Green Island vineyard in the very south of Napa Valley. The video tells the compressed story of a long morning’s work.
The sequence is roughly as follows:
1. The free run wine is run/pumped from one tank to another; when this slows to a trickle, the tank door is opened.
2. The very wet grape pomace is shoveled by hand into bins.
3. The bins are in turn lifted up and emptied into the cylindrical bladder press.
4. More shoveling – the press can hold 5 or more bins of grapes.
5. Yet more shoveling – ventilating the tank is critical here, as the CO2 still in the tank can be suffocating; fortunately it is heavier than air and flows out of the tank, dispersing into the air.
6. When full, the press is rotated to even out the load of grapes; all the while more juice flows out into a rectangular tank at the bottom to be pumped to another tank for settling.
7. When the load is evened out, the bladder is slowly inflated to gently press the grapes against the slotted sides of the press, and juice flows out.
8. The press is run through a slow cycle of inflation up to 1-1.5 bars, to be as gentle as possible and not press out too many tannins and grape solids.
9. The tank and press are thoroughly cleaned, ready to do it all again tomorrow – one tank down! These wines are settled in tank for at least another day, and then put into oak barrels.
