FAR HILLS, N.J. /PRNewswire/ — There’s a reason why winemaking is sometimes referred to as “mud pies for grown-ups.” Pressing musts, particularly on a small scale, is tedious, messy and labor-intensive. It requires careful attention to balancing yields against harsh tannin extraction.
The ideal pressing system creates a thin, well-drained static cake to which low pressure is gently applied. Thick press cakes require high pressures and/or mechanical redistribution of the cake either by hand or by motorized equipment.
Conventional small batch presses are poorly designed. Most vertical basket presses have steel bottoms and force juice through a foot or more of pomace through side slats at great pressure, resulting in harsh tannins and poor yields. Some use water bladders which spread the pomace to a thinner cake. This is an improvement, but when 50 psi water pressure is employed, once again harsh tannins result.
Horizontal basket presses aren’t much better. They tumble the cake repeatedly while beating it with chains, repeatedly pressing at higher and higher pressures.
The GOfermentor single-use system not only eliminates punch-down labor and water consumption during fermentation, but also presses the wine for you at the press of a button. The system’s innately gentle pressure and well-engineered filtration system ensure that excellent yields, 150 gallons/ton, are obtained with the richest, softest tannins possible.
This pressing action is performed in a single, steady motion. Since the cake is static, it acts as a filter, so this action also results in good clarity and low lees and other solids, thus minimizing sulfide production in the receiving vessel and optimizing settled yields. This happens automatically, so that it is literally impossible to obtain harsh tannins from a GOfermentor.
The best part is once you finish pressing, you just remove the bag containing the spent pomace and throw it out. No cleaning. Put in a new bag and you are ready for the next fermentation.
The first bottle is a white wine from 2004. He makes only two wines, one red, one white. The white, 100% Chenin. Six years in barrel before bottling, then, in the case of this wine, four more years before release. Robert asks about skin contact (Xavier speaks no English, I translate as best as I can). No skin contact. We discuss the press regime and fermentation for 30 minutes. In great detail. He uses an old champagne press with a capacity of about 500 liters– very small, and exactly the same capacity as our presses at Tenbrink. A typical day during the white harvest has the following rhythm: wake up, harvest as much fruit as the press will hold, bring it back to the winery (“where do you do the work?” I ask, pointing to the overgrown yard and the complete absence of what we would call a crush pad. “Where you can,” he says with a smile). Load the press. Begin pressing. Go past midnight. Adjust the pressure. Assess. If all seems good, go home. Sleep, wake, return to the winery, release the pressure, break up the grapes (“Whole cluster?” “Yes. We do not crush or destem anything”), re-apply pressure, go harvest fruit, return, unload the press, begin the cycle again. They work with about 3 vineyards typically but make 3-4 passes in each vineyard. There could be a dozen days of pressing; sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. They break up the cake of compressed grapes only once and gently. He wants as little friction and trituration as possible. There is no breaking up of the fruit on the way into the press or in the press as we do (“makes the fermentation too fast,” he explains. “Oh yes, how fast? What counts as a rapid fermentation for you?” “Three weeks.” Ah, that is rapid. What is the optimal time for you?” “A few months . . . . A year.” “Ah yes, we call those ‘French Fermentations.'” He smiles.)
Tasting With Emilien Boutillat
