Red wine, which ferments on its skin, needs to have its cap, or solids punched down two or three times a day. Punching down pushes the solids, which rise to the top, into the fermenting juice below. Color comes from the skins but that is not the only thing extracted — tanin, flavors and much more – are also part of the receipe.
In our regular Stainless Steel fermenters we use a mechanical punch-down but in these small portable fermenters it is all sweat. These small tanks hold a ton and a half and once filled are placed in our giant cold room to bring the temperature down to 45 degrees and permit cold contact between juice and skin before the start of fermentation.
The worker below, a friend of Winemaker Bruce McGuire, is an MD who frequently drops by and is immediately put to work — a warning to those who intend to ’drop by’. Many of these small lots end up as our vineyard designated wines and are carefully monitored from start to finish. We hope the good doctor, present at the creation, will ’drop by’ for the final evalaluation.
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