Wines and SpiritsTHE 2009 HARVEST IS STARTING SOON IN TEMECULA
Temecula vineyards prepare for the busiest winemaking occasion of the year.
It is approaching the season when Temecula vineyards begin their annual grape yield. In Temecula harvest begins a bit early due to the warm weather. Production time usually begins in the latter part of August with the white wines and ends by October with the yield of the last of the red wines.Â
Vineyard management and winemakers will be keeping a close eye on their vineyards over the next few weeks looking for the optimum level of sugars and flavor to decide when to start picking. Winemakers will spend the last couple of months getting ready for bottling as much as possible of their current stock to free up barrel and tank capacity and to get the chore out of the way before the chaos of gathering and crush (term used by winemakers for the processing of the gathering). Cellar management will double check to establish their winemaking equipment is in proper order and will begin appointing workers to help harvest the fruit and process the grapes into wine.
There are many different ways a winery may elect to yield and process the grapes. The proceeding is one example for a red wine with open bin fermentation. When it is time to begin, harvest crews will gather the fruit either by manually or with mechanical harvesters. When the grapes arrive to the crushpad (the location on the winery where the grapes are processed) they are loaded into the destemmer. The destemmer looks sort of likea tumble dryer. The grapes tumble inside the drum and the stems get spit out the side of the drum while the stemless grapes fall straight down into a bin. Once the grapes are free of stems the winemaker will combine yeast to the bins full of grapes and leave the must (grape juice containing skins and seeds) sitting to ferment. This series can take anywhere from 3 to 5 days. The extended amount of time the winemaker leaves the grapes to sit with their skins the more the juice can extract color from the skins. During the whole time of fermentation the winemaker will monitor the sugar levels of the wine to check the process and will repeatedly punch down the grape skins that go to the top and create a cap in order to reach good juice to skin connection. Once the fermentation is complete, the winemaker will press the wine to get ride of the skins and seeds and transport the young wine to tanks for secondary fermentation.
During secondary fermentation the wine stays in big tanks until the wine stop bringing about the gasses that form throughout this secondary phase of fermentation. The wine is then racked (the juice is separated from any sediment that separates from the juice as it sits) and placed into barrels for ageing.
As you can envision this whole procedure is one on the most labor intensive and critical steps in the winemaking procedure. This is the time of year when winemakers are very busy and look toward to a day of relaxation after harvest is complete. Many winemaking regions celebrate the closing of harvest with a day of celebration. Wiens Family Cellars of Temecula will celebrate the finishing of harvest with their yearly Wiensfest on 18 October 2009. The celebration for wine club members and their guests will feature a grape stomp contest, German goodies, a cultural German Oompah band, costume contest and plenty of Wiens award winning wine and craft beer.