Photos from Crush 

Preparing the barrels for the '02 wines

The first grapes of the season arrive.  Coby & Nathan run the fruit through the crusher/destemmer.  The stems come out this side, the crushed fruit is pumped into fermentation bins on the other side.

Nathan fills the fermentation bin with crushed Syrah

Clay supervises from atop the forklift!

Syrah in the fermentors.  Red wines are always fermented with the skin and juice together, to extract the color and flavor held within the grape skins.

This is a bucket full of frothing yeast.  They are almost ready to add to the crushed grapes.

Four times every day during fermentation, we push the skins back down into the juice, and stir up the fermenting wine.   Note the cleverly designed punchdown tool!

Sending out the cellar club wines in early September

Bruce pouring wine at the Tasting Bar

Misty Morning in the Edna Valley

Getting ready to press off the Syrah and first lot of Pinot Noir.  This is after about 7-10 days of fermentation, with punchdowns 4 times daily.

Dumping the fermentors into the press

Now the press is full of the grape skins, and ready to be tumbled and pressed.

We extract about 95% of the wine just by tumbling the press, and letting it drain out of the skins.  We follow this tumbling with a series of gentle pressings (the highest pressure we use is about 10 p.s.i.,)  and more tumbling, to distribute the skins evenly.  It takes us about 40 minutes to press a load of red wine once the press is loaded.

The wine collects in the press-pan, and from here it can be pumped to barrels or tanks.

After pressing, the dry grape skins, or Pomace is removed from the press.  Here, Nathan is getting ready to take a load of pomace out to the compost pile.  After 10 months in the compost pile, it will be ready to spread on our gardens.

This is Gewürztraminer, just in from the vineyard.  White wine grapes are pressed as whole clusters before fermentation, which separates the skins from the juice immediately.  This keeps the juice clear, and prevents it from picking up the red color of the skins.

The Gewurztraminer juice is pumped directly from the press to a settling tank.  It is rapidly chilled to around 35 degrees F, and kept overnight.  This allows heavy solids to come out of solution and fall to the bottom of the tank.  The following day, we can move the clear juice to tanks or barrels for fermentation.  (Notice the ice crystals forming on the outside of the cooling jacket.)