It's all part of the process...

The grapes arrive at the winery via huge trucks carrying anything between 5 and 15 tonnes. They drive up a small slipway to the receival bin, where the back of the truck opens up to release a huge waterfall of grapes. The grapes are all from different vineyards and some are huge blocks where others are small. One particular vineyard brought in 240 tonnes the other day to be processed, and it took pretty much 24 hours for them to be harvested, transported and processed to the tanks.



The grapes are slowly pushed out of the receival bin into a crusher where they are made slightly juicy but are still quite intact. The juice from the grapes is allotted to a particular tank, but to get it there, it is essential to press all of the juice out of the grapes. This is done in the press, where the cycle is around 3hrs to get a pretty much dry skin left inside the press. The juice is collected in a 600 litre metal tub and continuously pumped into the tank it is destined for.





Once the grapes are pressed the skins are discarded onto the back of a truck via conveyor belt. This pomace is used to make a low quality wine, by pressing it further. We do not do this ourselves...

There are a obviously a number of things that must take place to create wine once the juice is in a tank. There are additives, yeasts, more additives, sugar, etc, etc. There are analyses of each juice throughout the process and into the fermentation.

It is unimaginable how sticky one gets when processing such huge quantities of sugary juice. If you start to get tired, just take a sip of the juice out of the press and you'll have a sugar hit that will keep you going for at least and hour!

I am writing specifically about white wine here, in particular, Sauvignon Blanc. The reds to do not get processed in the same way. They do not get pressed, but are simply crushed, and left to sit on their skins. The red wine tanks are open topped and rather dangerous, as it is easy to fall in. If you did, it could quite easily kill you. It is essential to break through a cake of skins and fruit to circulate the juice and get as much skin contact as possible to allow the tannins, which are found in the skins, to give the body to the wine. Additions are made too, and fermentation happens in time.

The processes described above, are purely what happens through the first few weeks of a vintage. There are obvious elements that will take place over the next few weeks to a month, and the months to come, when the juice becomes wine. i am going to attempt to keep you posted of the progress that occurs, as and when it does...




Claudio, my fellow press fellow, from Sicily