Crushing Montepulciano Grapes
It is time to start crushing Montepulciano grapes since we have finished our last harvest for 2020!
Crushing Montepulciano Grapes
Today, we are using the fork truck to hold the bin. It's great to have it so high; it sure makes scooping easier! Christoph is scooping the grapes and John is picking the sticks and leaves out.
We are crushing a little over a ton of Montepulciano grapes.
The stems fall out of the crusher and into the white bucket. The crusher does a great job de-stemming.
All those yummy grapes! They look so good.
The crusher/de-stemmer separates most of the leaves, petioles (the stem of the leaf) and the rachises (the stem that holds all the grape berries together) from the grape berries.
The auger carries the berries to the crusher.
As you can see, we are also using one of the blue connectors from harvest so we don't loose any juice or berries in the gap.
Here comes the juice and crushed berries! Crushing is a fun process and it is nice and fast.
Time to Sit
Now the grapes sit on their skins and ferment away!
The skins will rise to the top, forming a layer, called the cap. During the fermenting process, we punch down the cap every day so the skins can get all mixed in again.
We keep the skins on the juice because this is where red wines gain most of their flavor and color.
The juice and skins sit in the bins, covered, so that the fruit flies don't get to them. They will sit, covered, until they are done fermenting. An easy way to tell when they are done fermenting is that the skins stop rising to the top. It's time to press when they are done fermenting!
Like what you read? Be sure to check out the links below.
Montepulciano and Aglianico Harvest 2019