Paul borrowed a bladder press from a buddy of his, luckily for us.  We set up outside of the office and hooked up a hose to the press.  Everything got sprayed down with sanitizer, then we started scooping the must out of the trash cans and dumping it into the press.

There was actually a lot of free run wine, but we didn’t get fancy and separate free run from pressed wine – too much extra work for the first go.

Next the top was put on:

A bag was put over the grill so that the wine would go into the trough and into the collecting bucket, and not squirt all over the place.

When the wine stopped flowing, we disassembled it to start over.  The remaining pomace was a solid cake.

Everything got hosed down and resanitzed.  It took a few hours, but not bad for 55 gallons of our wine and another 35 gallons for a separate batch.  Thirty gallons was pumped into a new American oak medium toast barrel, the rest was put into various containers – a 15 gallon keg, 6 and 3 gallon better bottles, and one gallon glass jug.