Making Wine – Part 1 – Processing

All right, hopefully at this point you’ve had a chance to see the harvesting of our 2010 Zinfandel from the Quartz Block in Amador County.  Once we delivered the fruit we immediately moved the bins into the cold room at Paradise Ridge Winery and gave it the night to chill back down after a long drive. Early the next morning, not quite 5AM but early none the less, we started the processing of our Zinfandel.

What that entails differs from winery to winery, for me one of the more arduous aspects of finding a winery to make my wine at this year was a facility that:

One, they’d let me do all my own work (not a normal situation for a custom crush client).

Two, they had to have a knowledgeable staff.  Now while I knew I would be doing all my own work the quickest thing that can ruin quality fruit is a facility that’s run poorly, the team at Paradise Ridge is awesome, and I knew that I would feel safe making my wines next to theirs.

Third, equipment, to make good wine  you just need to have great fruit, but to make wines that people will remember you need great fruit as well as great equipment.  Paradise Ridge knows this and while you watch the processing video you’ll see us working on what looks like a run of the mill sorting line, this is not quite the case.  At Paradise Ridge clusters of fruit go through the “Crusher Destermmer” and whole berries are fed down below to a conveyor belt; however in this situation the conveyor belt is a vibrating table that separates the berries and channels them down the line where they pass slots that allow for unsatisfactory fruit to fall beneath to be discarded, and we’re also able to hand sort out visually fruit that doesn’t meet our standards.  The tank size and ability to heat and chill our fruit is also ideal, overall they’re just what I was looking for in a winery (since I don’t have one of my own, any investors out there).

So, enjoy the video, I’ll be posting probably our most entertaining video tomorrow that shows first hand how a fermentation is handled and later this week we’ll be harvesting another great grape type, so lots of stuff going on, hope everyone is enjoying what I hope will be a nice long Indian Summer.