September 17, by amarch34 1 Comment. Tanks before vendanges and on Friday. Cellar work becomes the focus of vendanges as more and more of the cuves are filled. The grapes pass through a variety of actions to produce the wine. Hopefully this post will help to explain some of these actions. White grapes are usually pressed quickly after entering the cellar to get the juice without too much contact with skins which would colour the juice.
Orange wines, becoming more popular every year, are made by such contact, macerating the juice on the skins, to extract colour and tannins. To prove I do some work!!
After sorting, red grapes are sent to the tanks either destemmed or in whole bunches as I have described before in this series. That decision would be influenced by the quality of the grapes and what Jeff feels will be the best for that particular harvest. In either case, as with orange wine, the juice sits with the skins, flesh and pips for a while to extract colour, flavour and tannins.
Busy cellar; Louis putting the destemmer to work. Too much skin contact becomes counter productive though. As fermentation begins the grapes become hot and it easy to extract too much tannin for example which will make the wine tough and harsh. Yeasts which feed the fermentation produce lees as they die off and these can become a cause of rot and off flavours unless removed.
The juice goes into another cuve where fermentation will continue without the risk of going off. The marc can be used for distilling alcohol. The marc might then be lightly pressed, producing more juice which can be added to the original juice, adding more tannin and alcohol.
