Pressing Day

I absolutely love Pressing Day that comes at the end of two weeks of punching the must morning, noon and night. This day is literally a joy for all who participate... hard work accompanied by many, many smiles!

We start the day with cleaning and sterilizing literally everything that the wine will come in contact with. Buckets, wine torpedo, siphons, strainers, airlocks, the press itself and yes, even people's hands get sterilized with OneStep. I take this part very seriously as bacteria can cause a whole vintage to go bad, and chances are you won't know it until it's too late.

As part of the sterilizing I burn a sulphur stick in each demijohn using another homemade device. The stick is lit and then hung inside the demijohn. Smoke coats the inside walls of the demijohn for an extra layer of antibacterial protection.

Next step is to siphon the wine from the bottom of the drums without getting any of the must into the hose. For this I use a homemade wine torpedo and a commercial filter sock. I first dig a hole at the side of the must and then slowly push the filter covered wine torpedo through the must to the bottom of the drum.

The large siphon goes inside the filtered torpedo to extract the wine.

The process here has us emptying the first drum into manageable containers so we can use the first empty drum for blending just wine from two drums.

The empty drum is placed on the workbench and filled with filtered wine from both Merlot drums for siphoning into demijohns later after pressed wine is added in. The must is emptied into a big washtub and taken over to the press.

The must is then loaded into the press and the pressing blocks are carefully piled on to the pressing plate. We leave this part to Dad because he's really good at it.

Dad also does the first cranks... always.

As the wine is pressed, bucket after bucket gets added to the blending drum.

Once the pressing is completed, the "cake" gets broken up and dumped in the woods where all the little critters have a feast. People tell me to make grappa.... No thanks! LOL That's a whole other hobby strain I don't need. I do put word out every year that I have the pressed must for the taking... No takers to date.

Now that all the Merlot (2 drums) is blended, it is time to fill the demijohns which were previously smoked with sulphur sticks. Set a fan blowing across the top of the demijohn as it gets filled. You don't want to be breathing/smelling the sulphur fumes that get pushed out as the wine fills the vessel.

A strainer is added to the funnel... just because.

Once all the demijohns are filled I apply two chemicals to keep the wine safe from any possible bacteria and to prevent a secondary fermentation.

And then, as the last step, airlocks are added to each demijohn before we load all eight into the van for the trip to my wine room upstate.

 

After a nice dinner all together we make the drive upstate

and put the wine to bed in the wine room at Sylvan Run.

Over the course over the winter the wine will get racked two

or three times depending on how quickly the solids settle.

Let's make wine... It's good for you!