Beyond the Vineyard: The Messy, Bizarre, and Violent Path to Your Wine Bottle

A wild and woeful journey: Turning grapes into wine

Forget the romanticized image of strolling through sunny vineyards or sharing a candlelit glass. The journey of a grape from the vine to your bottle is a bizarre, messy, and frankly, a little violent affair. It's a tale of sorting, destemming, crushing, pressing, bubbling chaos, and careful handling that transforms simple fruit into a complex and sometimes finicky beverage.

The grape harvest: A race against the clock

The winemaking process begins with the "crush," the moment grapes are picked from the vine. For the freshest grapes, harvest happens in the chilly, dark hours before dawn. Workers rush through the vineyards, racing to get the grapes off the vine and to the winery before the morning sun can heat them up. Think of it like grape thieves in the night, pilfering fruit under the cover of darkness. The grapes arrive at the winery in massive bins, and for some high-end wines, they are still sorted by hand, one berry at a time. It's a level of meticulous dedication that makes you wonder if they secretly name each grape. We know Lacie would!

The art of the crush and stomp

Historically, grapes were crushed with human feet, a practice known as grape stomping. Today, it's mostly a fun, messy festival tradition. The modern industrial method uses machines to gently break the grape skins and release the juice, creating a soupy mixture of juice, skins, seeds, and stems known as "must". For a red wine, the winemaker keeps the skins and juice together so that the skin's color and tannins can transfer to the liquid. For white wine, the juice is quickly separated from the skins to keep it light. It's the difference between a long, leisurely soak in a tub and a quick rinse in the shower. This crush pad is the entry point into the wine cellar, where this nectar will receive deserved attention for months.

To stem or not to stem

Destemming is the process of separating grape berries from their stems as part of the winemaking process, typically done immediately after harvest to prevent undesirable flavors and aromas from green stems. This is accomplished using a mechanical destemmer, a machine that uses rotating fingers or paddles to gently knock grapes from the stems, allowing berries to fall through holes while stems are separated. While essential for most red wines to control tannins, the decision to destem varies for white wines and certain red varietals like Pinot Noir and Gamay, which may be fermented as whole clusters. 

Pressing on

We’ve now reached the bifurcation point in winemaking with respect to still, white and red wines. Exciting, isn’t it?! Pressing grapes is the process of separating the juice or wine from the solid parts of the fruit, such as skins, seeds, and pulp—known as "must". The press separates the free-run juice (the liquid that flows out without any pressure) from the solids. For white wine, pressing occurs before fermentation to prevent the juice from picking up color and harsh tannins from the grape skins. For red wine, the color, flavor, and tannin are extracted from the grape skins, so pressing happens after fermentation is complete. 

Presses come in several different forms ranging from basket press (not commonly used today) to Horizontal Screw press and/or Bladder presses, which rotate, just like your drier, to even distribute the pressure and flow of juice. Typically, the pressing of grapes takes between 2-4 hours, so there’s plenty of time to look forward to the next grape bins to come in and start sorting!