I started my morning walking in the vineyard and tasting Sauvignon blanc grapes from our Durbanville farm Phisantekraal. I have taken a picture of the view from the farm at 6 o clock. There were still too many green flavours in the grapes and will look at the vineyard again on Monday. We want tropical fruit flavours in our Sauvignon blanc.
After that visit I went to taste some Chardonnay in the Agter Paarl (Close to Paarl) and some old Bush vine Chenin blanc close to Klapmuts. It was still too early to find one of my favourite lunch time snacks at Klapmuts…a Potbelly homemade Chicken pie; it actually tastes like Chicken and is big, juicy with a thin, not flaky crust. Not flaky is good if you need to attend a meeting after having one of these monster pies. I can recommend a quick stop at the Potbelly if the urge for a homemade chicken pie ever come your way. I will definitely plan my day better tomorrow.
Harvest season is also about driving around, making quick decisions and being flexible and accommodating in your decision making. The grower, viticulturist and winemaker work together to decide on the day of harvest. I then need to make the final decision seeing that responsibility goes over to the cellar as soon as the grapes arrive. You would have heard before that “winemaking starts in the vineyard” and “that good wine can only be made from good grapes”. Well this is 100% TRUE. More about this at a later stage. This is the main reason why I spend my mornings tasting and driving between different vineyard blocks. The taste and analysis of the grapes then guide me in making a decision on the correct picking date.
Let’s continue our lesson in Winemaking 101. Lesson 2- Receiving of white grapes.
I have taken pictures of the process of receiving the Sauvignon blanc this morning. The receiving process for red grape like Cabernet Sauvignon will be different and will update this picture as soon as we receive red grapes. Let’s focus on whites for now.
Picture 1: Grapes offloaded in receiving bin.
Picture 2: This machine is called a destemmer. It separates the stems form the berries.
Picture 3: The stems are removed and given back to the grower; they normally use it again for making compost.
Picture 4: The grapes without the skins are pumped to a drainer (its work exactly the same as a strainer in a kitchen that you use for making rice or pasta). The drainer has little holes in the side and the juice can be collected in a stainless steel tank. This is called Free Run juice (the best quality juice)
The berries are then pumped to a membrane press. You can see a deflated white bag on the right hand side of picture 4. This bag will inflate and gently push the berries against the right hand side wall of the press. Juice will then be gently squeezed out of the berries and pumped into a different stainless steel tank. This fraction of juice is called press juice and of lower quality. This juice is slightly bitter because of the grape pips being damage by the pressing action (imagine the taste if you bite into a grape pip, this frank bitter taste is caused by tannins and something that is very important in red winemaking but needs to be eliminated at all cost in white wine making).
The press juice will be used for making distilling wine and will never be used in our wine ranges. The free run and press juice will then undergo a process called: Cold Settling.
The skins are removed from the press and sent to a factory that makes cattle feed and fertilizer.
More about cold settling tomorrow.
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