The Vineyard Receival Process in Pictures

Step 1: Grapes are brought up to the semi-outside sorting line in bins straight from the vineyard. 

 

 

 

Step 2: The bins are loaded individually and dumped onto the sorting line, where we sort them by hand as they move along a conveyor belt.

 

        

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 3: The conveyor belt goes through a second-story door and dumps the grapes into a destemmer which, as its name suggests, separates the grapes from the stems and dumps the grapes into plastic fermenter bins or a giant gravy boat. (That's actually the term they use)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 4: For white wines, the grapes go into a the gravy boat and are immediately pressed for juice. For red wines, the grapes are stored away in their fermenter bins to gain color and ferment before they are pressed off of the grape skins.

 

 

 

Step 5: We clean up in a three hour process that never fails to soak me head to toe, though I'd say that's my due to my own inadequacies at operating our leaky hose and/or my desire to do things as quickly as possible even if it means getting a lot of grape seeds in my hair. On the big pinot days, it looks like a massacre occurred on the sorting line. Also, our drain system leaves much to be desired, resulting in a fairly smelly cesspool situation to which we really have no solution. 

 

 

 

Step 6: Go home and shower. Then repeat.