We decided to keep the four yeast fermentations separate, and one batch we will keep the free run and press run separate.  We started with a little 4-gallon #25 wood basket press to press batch #1, which was fermented with ICV-D80.  The wine was terrific, though surprisingly spicy!

This basket has a racket to push the followers down over the must to press out the wine.

With the basket press, after the first press we “fluff up” the must to get the most efficient pressing.  The second press is not as much pressure as the first, though.  As we loaded the bottom of the fermenting barrel, we were careful to keep out as many seeds that were at the bottom as possible.  Crushed seeds can add bitter flavors to the wine that we don’t really want.

We decided just to do the first batch with the basket press, and do the rest with the bladder press.  Needless to say, the bladder press was much more efficient.  We also decided to keep the free run and press run for batch #2 separate.  This wine was fermented with Pasteur red.  The color of all of the wine is a beautiful dark purple, though the second batch was the deepest, darkest color.  It just happened to also be the one that had the most vigorous fermentation, with lots of foaming and the highest temperature.  The wine had a wonderful fruity flavor, without much spice, in sharp contrast to batch #1.

We loaded the must into the press, and gathered 6 gallons of free run juice first:

After 6 gallons of free run wine (the wine that comes off before pressure is applied) was collected, we loaded the rest of the must into the press, again being careful to leave as many seeds as possible in the can.  The lid was secured and the water turned on until the flow of pressed wine slowed, then we turned the water back off and released the pressure.  We dumped out the pressed pomace and moved on to the next batches.

Lots of seeds left behind

The next 2 batches went fairly quickly.  Batch #3, fermented with ICV-D254, was everyone’s favorite.  It had a perfect balance of fruit and spice with solid mid-palate and notes of cedar.  Batch #4 was fermented with CLOS, and was somewhat unimpressive after the first three.  It wasn’t bad at all, but lacked any bold, special character.  It was very nicely balanced with good fruit and light spice, and will definitely benefit from oak addition.

We finished pressing in about 2 hours, but it was a messy process.  We spent another half hour or so cleaning up the presses and most of the cans, and covered the top of the pressed wine with plastic wrap to settle out overnight.  Tomorrow we’ll pump off the settled, cleared wine into carboys and start MLF.

Everyone's hands will probably be purple for a few days!

A toast to the mess!

Our 2010 Syrah from Live Oak Vineyard in Fallbrook fermented fast, and the brix were below 5 by the next week.  We decided to go ahead and press out the wine before it was completely dry so that we could do it on a weekend day. We took a quick brix test and an obligatory taste before we started pressing.

The brix were at 1, 3, and 0 in the three cans.  Definitely alright to go ahead with pressing!  We got everything set up, and had an early casualty — apparently if you grab the metal cage of the press the wrong way, it cuts your finger like a knife.

We didn’t have the full crew that we usually have, and so we forgot several details about setting up the press.  First, we forgot to put the bag over the grate before we started putting grapes into the press, and so juice splattered everywhere until we remembered.  Also, we forgot to attach a hose to the release valve, and water spewed all over the table the press was sitting on.  At least we did think to keep the water from getting into our freshly-pressed wine, and eventually remembered to put a hose there.  And, we forgot to stop seeds from dumping into the press when we emptied out the last of the must into the press.  But, it all worked out and we got it all pressed in a decent amount of time.

Free run juice -- running all over the table because we forgot the cover!

When we were done we had about 40-50 gallons of pressed wine, and stains all over various parts of our clothes and body.  The wine will sit in the trash cans for a few days to let the gross lees settle out before we rack the wine into our new 50-gallon Flextank (plus, it hasn’t arrived yet!). After that we add malolactic bacteria and wait for about 3-6 weeks for MLF to complete.

By request, I brought some homemade cheeses to sample paired with their wines. I had some queso fresco, 1-month aged colby, and 3-month aged manchego. The manchego was the sharpest, and went very well with the 2006 Private Reserve Estate Syrah and the 2008 Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon. These 2 wines are grown on their own vineyards, whereas other wines may be from San Diego county or other parts of California. We tried several different wines, they were all great, but these two were definitely among our top favorites.

Sam then took us around the winery and gave us a little history. Her family bought the winery in 1927, during prohibition. The winery is surrounded by olive trees, which kept the winery going until it could legally make wine again.  Unfortunately, the olive trees are under attack by a fruit fly, so olive oil production is now on hold.

The original harvesting machinery and winemaking equipment is still on the grounds, which I found very fascinating and intriguing.  Below, the original crush pad.  On the right (now filled with barrel hoops) is the bin where the grapes were placed to be fed up the chute into the crusher destemmer.

The crushed grapes then fell down the shoot below and was carried to the fermentation tanks to the left.

The fermenting grapes were punched down and stirred with a big, heavy metal rod with a kind of rake at the end.

SoCal Wine Diva demonstrates heft of antique punching/stirring tool

Original wine presses

This is not the working crushpad, though, now they have really spiffy modern equipment in another barn.  They have been making wine with the same basic processes for 3 generations!  They will be harvesting several tons of five different varieties of grapes from around San Diego county in the next few weeks, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah.  A few weeks after harvest and crush they will press out the wine with their super-cool press.

Stirring syrah must

Uber-cool wine press at Bernardo Winery

Wine being pressed at Bernardo Winery

Behind the original crushpad is the original barrel barn.  Giant redwood tanks are now used to hold port, sherry, and vinegar.  A 65-year-old tawny port will be released soon, and Sam said it is incredible.  That is a long time to wait, for sure!

On the wall of the barn is the ghost portrait, where the original painting has faded into the wall.  Sam said at different times the eyes will be looking in a different direction than you thought it was before.  I had to agree, just from the few minutes we were there!

After our tour, we ate at Cafe Merlot. The food was great, the service entertaining. They make a mean sangria, too.  Then we cruised around the village a little more, checking out the glass blower.

We wandered out to the vineyard to check out the vines there.  Zinfandel and muscat were growing in the back, but most of the grapes used for the Private Reserve estate wines are grown in Ramona and other San Diego county locations.  The fruit hanging on the vines were quite ripe, ready for harvest.

It was a great day all around.  Bernardo Winery is definitely a great place to spend a few hours and taste some great wines.

With four different varietals in various stages of progress, as well as the last of the 2008 merlot to bottle, every weekend is going to be quite busy for a few more weeks.  Since I was out of malic acid tests last weekend when the primitivo was racked, sulfited, and oaked, I took a sample out to make sure it was done with MLF, and happily the results showed that malic acid was not detectable.  Then I moved on to test the syrah, which did not start MLF with the VP41, further proving how sensitive malolactic bacteria are.  Last weekend I inoculated the syrah with some fresh ELIOS MLB in addition to a sample of merlot undergoing active MLF, and it looks like that did the trick — the chromatograpy test shows about 40 mg/L lactic acid, positive for active MLF!

Next I needed to deal with the 2008 merlot, which I plan to bottle next weekend.  Since it did not successfully finish MLF last year, I treated it with lysozyme to make sure there were not little bugs hangin’ around to start fermenting in the bottle some time in the future.  I also added another dose of K-meta to make sure it was properly sulfited for long-term aging.

Once all that was done, it was time to head over to the office winery to check on the 2009 merlot MLF and press out the petite sirah.  The lactic acid test on the merlot did show that MLF was also progressing, hooray!  The PS was at about 0.5 degrees brix, so fermentation was not complete, but close enough — we needed to do this on a weekend.  Dave will take care of racking off of the gross lees and start MLF during the week.  Finally, done for today!

We got a REALLY big press, it holds 90 liters, and we could actually fill it with 2 whole cans of must before starting the press!

We got through all 9 trash cans and cleaned everything up in 4 hours, in spite of all the trash talk.  I covered all of the juice with plastic wrap and put a layer of CO2 over the top to help protect it until we pump it into the barrels and start MLF in a few days.

On the note of MLF, it’s the second week of MLF for the primitivo and syrah.  Since the syrah had not yet kicked off MLF last week, I tested for lactic acid formation again in that wine.  I then tested malic acid levels in the primitivo, since it had started converting malic acid to lactic acid last week.

Malic acid levels have dropped to about 160 mg/L in the primitivo, which is showing good MLF progression.  The syrah, however, still doesn’t show any detectable levels of lactic acid, so this one doesn’t seem to be moving.  We’ll be picking up fresh MLB and nutrient for the merlot when we go pick up our Petite Sirah this week, so we’ll get a little extra for the syrah.  Although it is the same packet of MLB I put into the primitivo, it was added about a week afterwards.  This bacteria is very sensitive and could have gone bad already, so hopefully a fresh dose will do the trick.  Either way, both wines look lovely!

Since pressing 1500 pounds of merlot plus the incoming 1000 pounds of petite sirah with a one-gallon basket press did not sound exciting, we all went in on a 90-L bladder press. Our new addition arrived today! Good timing, too, the merlot is already below 11 brix and falling fast.

I got everything set up and started pressing the primitivo after retesting the brix, which were at 0 for both cans.  It took about 4 hours total, it’s quite tedious with the basket press – the must gets poured in until the basket is about full, then the lid gets screwed down to press.  The lid is then taken off and the must is “fluffed” with a fork, then pressed again – these steps are repeated 2-4 times, until the pomice left in the basket feels dry.  The trick is to not press too hard, which could pull out more bitterness and crack the seeds;  and also not to press too lightly, and lose wonderful juice and phenolics that make the wine exceptional.

The pressed pomice came out of the basket like a layer of cake, and I noticed that my bowl of pomice looked rather yummy:

When I was finished, I had about 24 – 25 gallons!  I was not expecting that much, but it’s a good problem to have!  Since my pH was a little high before, I rechecked the combined juice – still up at 3.87.  I went ahead and added tartaric acid to try to get the pH closer to 3.6, and ended up at 3.65.  I’ll check it again after I pump it off of the gross lees in 2 days, just before starting the inoculation of malolactic bacteria.  For now, I covered the surface with plastic wrap and put a layer of CO2 over the top to protect it.

I turned to one of my favorite resources, “The Winemaker’s Answer Book” by Alison Crowe.  She is the “Wine Wizard” writer for Winemaker magazine.  So far, every little tedious question I have or decision to make has been in that book.  And, it didn’t let me down today, there are several paragraphs dealing with when to press and how to decide to do an extended maceration (besides the fact that you don’t have time to press!).  She suggests tasting some of the grapes left in the must to see if they taste green (in which case you should press) or if they taste like they still have some “goodies” to give back to the wine (and then wait).  I don’t know about any goodies, but those grapes definitely taste like bitter crap – eewww, yuck!  Looks like we’re pressing tomorrow!

Lot B merlot FINALLY reached zero degrees brix.  What a relief!  Lot B, with the Pasteur red yeast, took a whole week longer than lot A, with the RC212 yeast.  It should be interesting to see how different they taste.

I borrowed a gallon basket press from another home winemaker I met the day we picked up the grapes, Ray Schnorr.  He devised a cool drill attachment to drive the turnstile on the press so that I don’t have to spend an hour turning it to press down, and another hour to unwind it again.  He’s brilliant, and I was SO glad to have that little gadget by the end of the day.

Time to get started!  At least I knew what a mess it would be after the big press.  I poured the must in to the basket.  Again, there was a decent amount of free run.

Adding must to the press

Must in basket before putting on pressing lid

It squirted all sorts of ways out the sides of the basket as I pressed down.  I ended up wrapping all around it with plastic wrap, which worked nicely.  Ray told me to press it down, then kind of loosen it and stir it around then press again.  I had read that if you pressed too hard, though, extra bitter stuff would be pressed out too.  So, the first batch pressed, lot B, was not pressed as dry as lot A, after I got more confident.  It wasn’t quite the solid cake that the bladder press made, but it was pretty dry.

This pomace I put into my compost in the back yard, and by the end of the day, the whole yard smelled like a winery.  After about 4 hours of pressing, the kitchen was a disaster.

Post-press kitchen disaster

But, with almost 14 gallons of lovely merlot, it was worth it.  Plus, my first taste of each of them.  Lot A is VERY hot and alcoholic and very dry, almost acidic on the to