How A Boutique Micro-Winery makes Wine

The craft of winemaking has inspired hundreds of thousands of people over the centuries. I mean, how hard can it be?.

On the surface, winemaking looks simple enough: you gather grapes, do the "I love Lucy" grape stomp, something to do with barrels and and then.... after some time has passed, “Voila!” You have wine.

Take some grapes.

Bottle them and win some awards. Easy peasy, no?

But what is winemaking really like?

In truth, winemaking is a process of acquisition, observations, sanitization, more sanitization, drinking, tasting, and all sorts of practices for the purpose of shepherding billions of microbes through the bewildering process of fermentation.

So, lets see what it is like... in photos.... for a boutique micro-winery to make wine.

Step 1: Harvest / Pick

Get fruit - which we buy and then go pick up.

We are winemakers, and not farmers, so this is where our story begins. We buy grapes (called fruit in the industry), usually from local vineyards here in the Santa Cruz Mountains. All within an hour drive from my place.

It's completely hit and miss on timing. The grapes ripen at different times, based on weather, water and other factors. Usually, I get a call saying fruit will be ready within a few days and then we have to scramble.

Usually, I go and drop off a bin in my little ranch truck. The vineyard manager will have their crew pick the grapes and put them in our bin (we own a few) and then we go and pick them up.

Technical info: 1 bin contains about 1/2 ton of grapes which yields about 60 gallons of juice.

Harvest! This is the start of the busy time for wine makers. It's usually mid Sep to mid Oct (not a good time to plan vacations).

Sometimes that doesn't work. We have to pick grapes.

We have one vineyard where we have to pick the grapes ourselves. Done that a few times. Not our favorite thing to do. But, it's very local, owned by a friend and he does have some good Zin grapes that we like.

Hey, at least we know what it is like to pick grapes (pictures are from the 2020 harvest - Covid times)

Step 2: Crush

Them grapes need to be processed

The first thing we need to do when we pick up the grapes is to process them in the crusher / destemmer. It basically separates the grapes from the extra stems, leaves and materials other than grapes (you hope to get minimal in the pick but you do get some). The machine also crushes the grapes slightly so the juice can start to flow out.

It is manual work - grab some buckets and put the grapes from the bin into the crusher.

The stems are basically compost.

Step 3: Fermentation

Once the fruit is crushed / destemmed, we put it in one of the bins and then add yeast.

At this point, the juice is called "must".

Yeast consumes the sugar in the grape must and then poops out ethanol. Grape must sweetness is measured in Brix and basically, 1 Brix results in 0.6% of alcohol by volume. So, a wine that starts at 24 Brix (that's the measure of sugars) will be about 14.5% alcohol when all is said and done (The actual concept is a bit more complicated, but this dirty fast version works!)

It takes anywhere from 7-10 days for the sugar to turn into alcohol i.e. for the juice to get to zero brix. Once the juice is full fermented it is no longer juice... it is now wine! Still called must.

We do punch the wine cap every day, twice a day. That means pushing the grapes back into the juice. While the wine is fermenting, carbon dioxide is released, which causes grape seeds and skins to rise to the surface. The grape skins is what gives the wine the color so we need them to be in the juice i.e. why we punch.

Step 4: Press

No, we don't stomp with our feet

The next step in the process is to press. This is basically what everyone thinks we do - you know, the I love Lucy stomping with feet. Seriously folks, do you want my feet in your wine? I think not.

Press is usually 7-10 days after Crush.

We use a hydraulic press. You take the grapes and juice and all from the bin and put into the press. You get free run wine, which is the juice that flows before you press the grapes, and then you close off the press and fill the bladder with water. That squeezes the grapes against the outer walls and you get the juice flowing out.....

The juice that runs free (without being pressed) is generally considered the purest, highest quality wine. It’s called “free run” wine and is kind of like the “extra virgin” wine. The rest of the wine is called press wine - we blend it all together since we are such a small producer.

The left-over grape skins, seeds and stems are called pomace (although we call them gross lees, which I think is incorrect)... - I put this into my compost pile and use it the following year in my veggie garden.

Step 5: Elevage - fancy french way to say "waiting around"

Hard work is done

Once the press is done, we put the juice (the must if you will) into oak barrels. We use French or Hungarian barrels for lighter wines like Pinot Noir and American barrels for heavier wines like Cabernet Sauvignon.

I do start secondary or malolactic fermentation at this time - that is where malic acid turns into lactic acid giving the buttery, softer taste in the wine. That takes about a month or so.

After that, the wine sits and ages in the oak. I check on it, on the PH and SO2 and a few other things... but basically, not much for us to do.

In February / March, we get together to "rack" the wine. That basically means pumping the wine out of the oak into a container (we use a large stainless barrel), cleaning out the crud at the bottom (called the fine lees) and pumping the wine back. That is a couple of hours worth of work, per barrel.

Step 6: Bottling

The final step

Being a small home wine maker, space is an issue for us. We basically need to bottle the wine before the next set of grapes come in. We don't have the space for extra barrels (or the money; oak barrels are expensive!).

So, that means we usually bottle in the Aug / Sep timeframe - right before Harvest and the cycle starting again.

Bottling is a very communal thing. It is fun!

We get all the partners, and spouses, together. We put together an assembly line and make it happen.

The wine is pumped from the oak barrels into a bottling rig - the one we have can take 5 bottles at a time. The bottles are then corked and boxed.

Empty bottles are called glass - filled with wine they are bottles.

There is definitely a bunch of tasting that happens as we bottle. It makes for a very fun afternoon.

Bottling dinner

This is a tradition. After the bottling, we all sit down and eat and drink under the trees at the big communal table. Salute. Another batch of wine is done!

That, my friends, is the whole process. Lots of work in the fall as we bottle, harvest, crush, press. Some work in Feb / Mar as we rack. And.. lots of waiting around.

One question that is always asked is how many bottles of wine do we produce?

Well... 1/2 ton of grapes gives us about 60 gallons of wine; which is what you need in each oak barrel. 60 gallons of wine is about 300 bottles or 25 cases. We do 3 barrels now (started with 1, moved to 2 and now at 3). That would be 900 bottles each year. That is a lot.

We are currently 6 partners (its gone up and down over the years, 2 of us started it in 2009) so it ends up being 150 bottles each. In one sense, that is a lot. In another, it is not. Most go through their allotment pretty fast - the wine makes great gifts.

Each partner also gets to label their allotment; their labels are as varied as each of them.

Oh... and the wine doesn't suck. It's won a few awards.

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