Grape Pick Up

We buy the grapes by the pound from the vineyards.

We pick out the leaves from the grapes before they go up the conveyor belt.  At the top, they go into the machine to remove the stem.  The grapes are cracked and dropped into the bin while the stems are disposed of in a separate container

We add dry ice to the grapes to keep the temperature low for several days.  This process allows the grape juice to soak up the color from the skin of the grapes

We slowly raise the temperature of the grapes and kick off the fermentation process by adding yeast. This process converts the sugar in the grapes to alcohol.  This process takes a few days to complete.

There is no I Love Lucy episode here.  We use a bladder press to squeeze out every last drop.  We pour the grapes and juice in the press.  When it is full we put the lid on and slowly increase the water in the balloon in the middle.  That balloon pushes the grapes to the screen squeezing out the juice

A few times a year you need to rack the wine.  This process involved removing the wine from the containers and throwing away any sediment on the bottom.

After all the fermentation processes are done and the wine has been racked twice it’s time to put the wine in the barrel.  If the barrel is neutral (no longer gives off the oak flavor), you will need to add oak sticks.

The last step before bottling is to filter the wine to make sure it is clean.

Before we can bottle, we need to make sure all of the bottles are cleaned with SO2 water and completely dry.  We use the wine tree to help us do that. I am always afraid the tree is going to fall over.

This is a multi-step process that includes: Filling the bottles, Measuring to make sure the wine is at the right level, Corking the wine, placing the sleeves on the bottles and sealing them, labeling, and finally place the bottle in the wine cases.