Pressing the 2012 Cab Merlot.

Today was "Surprise the ferment is done and we need to press right now" day.

Small rotary style basket press.

For those of you keeping track at home, ferment was declared over 7 hours shy of one week after inoculation.  Clearly our experiment with the heated closet and speeding up the ferment was successful.

Press took less time than we thought it would be mainly because we had the good press this time.  This was good as I had a soccer game for the Men's team at 9 PM and Nate didn't want to stay up all night pressing.  Here is the same post from last year, notice the horrid ratchet style press:  http://tobinblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/press-day.html

Notably we pressed last year on November 8th, this year on October 22nd.

Here is the final product now in our bulk aging facility:

Behind you will see portions of the 2011 Syrah recently bottled.

In addition we also have the six gallons of rose.  So approximately 550 pounds of fruit yields 36 gallons before we rack off the gross lees.  I anticipate that we will end up with 30 gallons after the racking.