Left Coast Cowboys

Harvest and primary fermentation seem to get longer every year. I’ve been wine babysitting in Sonoma since early September with hardly a break. That means living out in the wilds with two terriers, a bobcat, a newly resident coyote and a whole lot of fermenting wine. But today, we got the last of our Cabernet grapes out of primary fermentation vats (where they needed three times a day punchdowns) through pressing and into enclosed steel secondary fermentation vats. At this stage, they can fend for themselves and I can return to the big city of San Francisco — just in time to prepare for a Thanksgiving dominated by Brits. But that is another story.

In the meantime, stop me if I’ve told you this before, but here’s how we get grape juice off the skins and out of the primary fermentation vats and into secondary fermentation in steel tanks. In case my first attempt at in-photo captions isn’t a success, let me recap: the crushed grapes and their skins have been sitting in those white vats fermenting. Now we pump and shovel them out and into the press. There the juice is pressed out of the skins, the skins are thrown in small bins to be composted. Meanwhile the juice is pumped by this complicated series of hoses across the crushpad, into Dr. Frankenwine’s Lab and into enclosed steel tanks, where the young wine enjoys its secondary fermentation.

Okay, captions a big fail. Let me recap below.

The juice is pumped from these primary fermentation vats. Then the skins, also called the Must, are shovelled with the juice into the press.

Once we have the bladder press full to the top with grape skins, we connect a hose that will fill up a cylindrical bladder inside the press. AND WE TURN IT UP TO ELEVEN!

Actually, we crank it up to 3 atmospheres of pressure. Roughly 45 lbs. per square inch.

Out pours more juice!

When you've pressed enough, you release the pressure by letting the water out of the bladder. A terrier will be waiting for this stage.

Now you have to clean the press, mostly with elbow grease. And transfer those pressed skins up to the compost heap.

That involves an ATV ride. Some participants will tell you winemaking should include more ATV riding.

We won’t even go into the post press clean-up which is very time consuming, very wet and very boring.

Except to terriers. "Yeah, turn on the hose!"

But this is the part that’s interesting to the people doing the work: a tasting of vintages present and past.

Here's our just pressed Cab and our Grenache/Mourvedre Rose. Both are tasting good. The Rose is a bit sweet but isn't done yet. That residual sugar will get fermented out.

Next a barrel tasting of our wines in oak.

Both Grenache and Mourvedre blends, which are just recently in oak, are tasting great already. Last year’s Mourvedre is not as good, but then the grapes weren’t mature yet. (That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.) Last year’s Cab is starting to taste more mature. But we think this year’s will be even better.

THE END!

(Well, not really the end, but the end of the most labor-intensive part of it: getting from Vine to Primary to Secondary.)

Today we tackled the Cabernet press and again, we were lucky enough to have Cousin John to help us. But that also meant two different presses as we are still in the throes of an interesting experiment. Andy and I are processing our Cab with UC Davis yeasts and modern methods. Cousin John, who we “paid” in grapes for his help with the crush, is defiantly Old Skool: sulfite-free, natural yeasts and keep the methodology as manual as possible. For instance, we use UC Davis college-educated yeasts for fermenting, while John trusts his grapes to leather jacket wearing, motorcycle riding, liquor store robbing wild local yeasts. (If you aren’t up to speed on this epic Battle of the Yeasts, read this.)

So our first task was to press Cousin John’s Cabernet, which meant dragging out all our old equipment including the old basket press.

Some would say the basket press extracts too much, including some astringency and herbaceous flavors. Not Cousin John, he wanted to press to the last drop of liquid.

Contrast that with our new Italian bladder press. A rubber bladder inflates with water and gently presses out the juice from the must, and conveniently turns itself off when the pressure is getting too much for optimal flavor.

Plus the Italian bladder press has that elegant Mondrian color scheme!

Meanwhile back at the Old Skool, it’s a complicated series of tubes, funnels and lots of manpower.

It takes two men and a terrier to handle this Rube Goldbergian system.

Meanwhile the kinder, gentler bladder press was considerably easier to man. But still required extensive hose-ery.

At this point, we took time out to taste the two different wines. Not surprisingly, even though they are both made from the same batch of grapes, two wildly different flavors.

Cousin's John is very fruit-forward and a bit astringent. Ours is more subtle with darker fruit tones.

That's 'cause John pressed the last ever loving drop of moisture out of his poor grapes.

But, we had to agree, both wines promise to be interesting in their own way.

And both are dark enough to stain a terrier's feet purple.

So with Cousin John’s wine in carboys and half our wine in a steel tank, we called it a day.

We'll see how Cousin John's delinquent yeasts make it through the next stage, malolactic fermentation.

With a good day’s work behind us, we repaired to the barn for a well-deserved cassoulet. But first a check on the Mourvedre and Grenache blends we just put into oak.

Ah, the sweet music of wine gently bubbling in oak barrels.

Find more pictures of today’s activities here.