Of Pomace & Drunken Turkeys On The Last Day Of Harvest 2011

Last Saturday, November 19^th, we pressed off the final batch of grapes for the season. In this case, the grapes were Cabernet Sauvignon that we received from the Kirk & Osgood vineyards on the 10^th of the month. Lots of people have asked me to give an overview or explanation on how we make wine, what we do that is different from the norm, so it had been my intention this year to capture all steps in the winemaking process with photos to accompany our blather about our perverse Le Cuvier approach to the process. Alas, it was a wacky harvest comingled with construction on the new winery, & the proverbial back was tightly pushed up against the equally proverbial wall, so the best of intentions fell into the giant pile of other projects in want of doing.

In any event, with the last press load at hand, I decided to capture at least this final part of the fermentation process, & I have done so via a series of photos below. Ultimately (AKA, “in the sweet by & by”), we will have an entire section on the Le Cuvier web site devoted to describing all aspects of our winemaking, from vineyard pruning right on through to the cold dregs of the year when wines go dormant . . . or at least that’s the plan. And here we are with a start, even if the start is at the end, but fair warning: unless you are an absolute Wine Geek, or a gearhead who enjoys instructional videos, you may find what follows singularly boring. No matter.  Here will be revealed all of the steps we go though on the day grapes are pressed off to barrel.

Virtually all wineries ferment their wines to dryness on the grape skins. That is, they want all of the grape sugars used up & otherwise metabolized by the yeast before pumping their young wines to barrel or tank for aging. In large part this is done in the interest of extracting as much color & character as possible from the grape skins. In our case, since the early 1990’s, I have been draining & pressing our fermenting wines to barrel when the sugars are still way up around 15%. Given that we pick our grapes when the sugars are in the range of 25%, this means that we drain & press off our juice to barrel when it is less than half way through the fermentation process. The reason? I find that the mouth feel & breadth of expression in wine made this way is much grander, both for reds & whites, when they complete a major part of their fermentation in barrel. Surely there must be a scientific theory somewhere that elucidates why this is so, but I have not discovered it, & personally don’t have a clue. Trial & comparison has simply shown me that this level of added richness only comes from this process. So this first photo shows the very actively fermenting Cabernet being drained into a grape bin from an open top fermentation tank:

The next shot give a clearer sense of the mechanics of the setup. Wine is drained via the big hose on the left into a bin that has itself been modified with its own valve at the bottom front, through which valve the wine continues on its way by virtue of the mystical force of gravity directly into barrels down in the barrel room below:

 

I should have included a view of the set-up inside the bin before I began draining the juice into it, but I didn’t, so here is a shot of the strainer-like contraption we have in the bin to prevent grape berries from following the juice down into the barrels:

 

And the hose trails off & drops down a hole in the floor:

 

With very actively fermenting wine, you can only fill barrels 2/3 or so full because otherwise you will lose a great deal of wine as it foams & churns in an attempt to escape. The photo in the heading at the top of the page captures a barrel foaming over, meaning that some days you just can’t win. However, within a week or two after going into the barrels, the fermentation will have largely run its course, & the wines will settle down. At that point we can top up the barrels, but that’s later, & here comes the hose down into the barrel room where Robin is set up with his filling wand:

 

in this photo little or no wine is still draining from the big hose so I’ve removed a few of the door clamps along the bottom lip in order to allow the last of the fermenting juice to drain into the bin. Occasionally, the big hose valve will become plugged with grape skins giving the false impression that the tank is empty of juice, so it’s rather important to first determine that the tank is indeed empty of juice before removing all of the door clamps . . . that mistake is generally only made once:

 

Normally, a fermentation tank is designed to be tall because a tall tank will (obviously) be able to hold much more fermenting grapes than a short tank, given the same tank diameter. Thus the taller the tank, the more efficient the use of floor space & the greater the processing “throughput” during harvest, but that efficiency comes at a price because skins float. The taller the tank, the thicker the floating “cap” of skins, & the more difficult it is for the fermenting wine to extract color & character from the skins. In the interest of being able to process more grapes within the limited floor space available, wineries tend to buy tall tanks, but of consequence they need to keep forcing their fermenting juice into contact with the grape skins. This is done through various forms of manipulation which attempt to either push the grape skins down into the juice, or by pumping the juice over the top of the skin. The process of pushing and pumping continues until the fermentation is complete, & often beyond that stage, because otherwise there is not enough contact time for the juice to extract good color & character from the skins. One is assured, however, of gaining a fine degree of undesirable coarseness in the wine through this process.

By comparison, here is a shot of our tank with the door off. Before draining the tank, the level of fermenting juice in the tank would have been just above the upper lip of the door, so you can get a sense of how the skins & berries are in full contact with the juice. Think of it this way: fill a water glass 2/3 full with water & then add a couple of inches of BB size floating beads on top. That would illustrate a typical fermentation tank with a thick cap of floating skins, made all the more buoyant by CO2 gas given off by the fermenting wine. Now take that glass with floating beads & water & pour it all into a broad soup dish. Now you will have a thin layer of beads on the water & an illustration of how our tanks achieve sweet intimacy between skin & juice without the need to trash everything about. Though the way we use our tanks represents a very efficient & gentle way to extract the essence from the skins, it is all a terribly inefficient misuse of floor space, & I fear that we will never be awarded an industrial medal for maximized throughput. Indeed, we dump a maximum of 3 tons of grapes in our tanks, tanks that can comfortably accommodate 7 tons. But if we attempt to ferment more than 3 tons of grapes in our tanks, we begin to quickly see the wine’s intensity & character diminish:

 

Robin shoveling. I’ve lost my license to shovel:

 

A shot off the shovel just because it is beautiful to behold:

And here is a close-up of what is going to be dumped into the press. At this stage we have already extracted about 85% of the juice via gravity draining to the barrels directly from the fermentor tank, but as you can see here, many of the berries are still round, plump & lascivious, & are clearly in need of being encouraged to give up their goods:

 

Viewed from the fermentation tank, you can see our grape hopper across the room with the discharge end centered over the opening of our grape press on the right. The grape hopper will feed the shoveled bins of skins into the press:

 

Study of bald headed man on forklift dumping fat, juice filled skins into the hopper:

 

The grape hopper has an auger, essentially a giant screw, which turns slowly & in so doing gently pushes the still juicy skins towards the press:

 

The business end of the grape hopper feeding skins into the opening of the press:

 

Here the press has received all of the skins & berries that were shoveled out of the fermenting tank into bins:

 

Now a shot of the press with doors in place & sealing the opening of the press:

 

Deep, dark, lovely, luscious, the fermenting wine is seen draining from the press into an aptly named “drain pan” below the press:

 

And one again you have the hose, the same hose draining down through the same hole to the barrels waiting below, but this time draining from the press pan:

The press having done its job, & the press pan removed, bins are placed under the press to collect the pomace (pressed skins):

 

Then with the doors off & with the press rotating, pomace drops into the bins:

 

Here is a view of the inside of the partially emptied press through the door opening.  The press is essentially a horizontal, drum shaped sieve that closes when filled, & which has a diaphragm or bladder that pumps up with air from one side, thus putting pressure on the skins on the other side of the diaphragm, & thereby squeezing out the juice. The diaphragm can be seen to the left & top in its retracted position. It is retracted via a vacuum pump that sucks the bag up against the solid half of the press drum. Slit-like perforations can be seen on the other side of the drum (bottom & right) through which juice drains down into the press pan:

 

Ah, yes! Here we have pomace being shoveled into a garbage bag. Why is Robin doing this? Because at the end of harvest we embed some large pieces of gamey flesh deep into the pomace, there to marinate for a week or so in the fridge. To do this one needs first remove non-essentials like milk & greens from the fridge to make room. Since we have pressed off the grapes at the height of fermentation, there will be ongoing activity from those skins, residual juices, fruit smells & alcoholic fumes, all of which transmute the flesh into something wondrous when roasted. In this case it was a leg of lamb & a haunch of goat.

 

The bins are used again to take the pomace via forklift out to our composting pile:

 

And here a lovely view of pomace (purple) & stems (brownish green) from the earlier de-stemming process seen as the last of the day chills towards what I believe is called “the gloaming”:

 

And finally, the wild turkeys mentioned at the outset. Unfortunately, I did not capture them by photo in full flock where you would have (without exaggeration) seen a grouping approaching 100 in count. The reason the above pomace pile looks in disarray is because it is, & that is the case because the turkeys have discovered the pile, & have taken to kicking about to uncover whatever morsels turkeys favor. They have also discovered that they enjoy alcohol, for the pomace is decidedly alcoholic. The photo I failed to get was of a large group of about 30 toms running about in circles, leaping into the air to bump chests in a drunken display not unlike what you can see at any local sports bar of a Saturday night. Interestingly, the drunken turkeys were all toms. You can tell toms by the single feather hanging lose at the base of the neck. Who knows where the hens were, but there seems some good evidence here to the effect that the males of various species, whether feathered, fur covered, or smoothed skin, all display a similar predisposition for the puffing out of chests accompanied by a certain swagger when gathered together to enjoy a little drink:

Comments

[the sister]

Shades of the 60s. Positively lovely! Didn't read, just scrolled as the colors (tweaked I would imagine) were too magnificent for the experience to be "dulled" with words! As a brother of mine once remarked, I shall read in the sweet by and by!

[Your "brother"]

John, you are a great narrator. You are so good in explaining things that even a dimwit, like me, can follow you even without your fantastic photos. They are superb. continue taking them. By the way this was the first time I took the time to imbibe slowly and attentively one of your postings. I'm glad I did. Cheers!