Red wine is fermented with the skins (because that is where the color and flavor are and after the fermentation is complete the wine is pressed to separate out the skins and seeds. Conversely white wine is typically separated from the skin and seeds before fermentation. As soon as the fruit is harvested it is pressed and only the juice is fermented.
White wine doesn't need the color and tannins from the skin, however we wanted a little bit of skin contact because there are flavors we wanted to extract from the skin. Gravity does a little of the work for us because the bottom berries break and release juice from the weight of the fruit on top, so you can see the juice start to puddle at the bottom of the bin.
After 24 hours of letting the de-stemmed fruit hang out in a half ton bin with dry ice, it was time to press it. This is an old school press that I borrowed. My partner Todd looks a little confused because neither of us had used one before and we weren't sure if we were putting it together right. We knew how to use it in theory and had seen others do it, but had not actually operated one ourselves. We decided the learn to use it the very second we needed to start using it. This was the first of many mistakes we were about to make.
Part of not knowing how to operate the press involved forgetting to borrow the level that lets you turn the press. So we tried with a wrench until it was obvious it wasn't going to work and then took a trip to pick up a lever. Next we loaded the press with the whole berries and as you crank, the top presses down and the juice is supposed to leak through the wooden slats and collect in the bucket. Well, that didn't happen. Mistake 2 was filling the basket too full. We got ambitious and filled it too full and could not press properly. So we had to empty about half back out.
Mistake 3 was not having proper drainage. The whole berries would compact and trap the juice, usually you can leave some stems in the basket to create channels for the juice to drain out. This meant that no matter how hard we cranked, we were not getting very much juice. My dad (who stopped by to visit because I told him we just going to be pressing "real quick") jumped in to lend some muscle but it was no use. All the effort was getting us nowhere.
At this point my dad had to go. With pity he looked at the mountain of work we had, looked at us and said a prayer on his way out. In 2 hours we had managed to get 15 gallons. With half a ton, we should have 80 by the end of it. Several hours after starting, we still had a long way to go.
So after he left, Todd and I re-evaluated and abandoned the press for a tried and true method. . . .
With sanitized rubber boots I jumped in the bin to stomp the grapes. Within a few minutes we were getting more juice from my stomping than the last 2 hours wrestling with the press.
Otherwise we were never going to get any juice out of the grapes and it was getting late in the day. Also, it was so much fun. At first.
I'm smiling for the picture because this was taken the first hour of stomping, but after 5 hours we were both very grumpy. Mistake 4 was grossly underestimating how long this would take us and not asking for help. Since de-stemming went well, we thought we could knock out the pressing in 2 or 3 hours (it took upwards of 7), and we also started in mid afternoon instead of first thing in the morning. The stomping didn't take very long but then we had to collect the juice and skins in a small bucket and put it through a kitchen strainer to separate the skins and seeds and then bucket the juice into 2 barrels.
And the most miserable part of winemaking is after the main job is done you have another giant task of cleaning up. The second most miserable part of winemaking is how sticky you feel all the time and how your clothes start to ferment if you dont wash them right away. I don't always get to wash my clothes right away. Gross.
-L
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