Press Day

As you saw earlier, the Tempanillo is done fermenting and when I measured the Syrah it was down to about 4% sugar so it is time to press and let the fermentation finish in the carboys.

We wanted to press on Thursday, Nov 3rd.  But Nate had to work during the day and at night I had won tickets to Rise & Shine; The Jay Demerit Story from Jay DeMerit himself via twitter.  So we pressed on Saturday.

Pressing is pretty messy, basically you are pressing as much wine out of the skins of the grapes as possible.  To do this we rented a press.  But first I had to prep the workspace, my garage.

Garage Prep involves moving Mercedes out of the wine press area.

Pressing the grapes should not take that long, in fact the time spent cleaning everything getting ready to press and then cleaning up after the pressing is much more than the actual pressing.  But you have to keep everything clean as random bacteria can really kill a wine.

30 Gallon Ratchet Press

If that press looks a little big, it's because it is.  When we reserved the press we wanted the small basket style screw press.  Instead we got the thirty gallon ratchet press.  Considering we were pressing about 10 gallons of must at a time, this led to some improvisation involving blocks of wood and some extra muscle.

But we got it to work, action photo of wine coming out of the press right here.

Finished, now time to clean up.

After we finished, it's time to clean up.  Which again took about as long as it did to actually press.  And I was privileged enough to do this solo as Nate took the press back, getting it in well under the 4 hour $20 rental fee.

16 gallons Syrah, 5 gallons Tempranillo

And there is the finished product.  Next I need to rack this off the remaining gross lees, which will most likely take our 21 gallons of wine to 20 gallons.  If you look closely at this wine, the bottom is a different color.  This is the little bit of sludge (gross lees) left over from the press.  We will rack the wine off this in 24-48 hours.