Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 11
Digging Grapes
'Il faut le sortir maintenant,'
said Lucille urgently. Our oenologist had tasted the merlot
wines that were still on their skins. They had finished fermenting a couple of days before
and she had encouraged us to keep them on the skins for more extraction until her next visit.
Now I could see from her face that we had gone too far. We had to run the free-run wine off
and press the juice from the remaining grapes fast.
That evening Sean attacked the relatively simple first part; running the free-run wine off
the must. The grape 'must' is the skins and pips - and juice that is still inside the skins, rather
than the free-run juice. He ran the wine out of the fermentation vat by gravity into a giant
sieve placed in a 1,000-litre bucket, then pumped it into a new vat for maturation. Once the
free-run was just dripping he left the dregs to drain slowly through the night, getting up reg-
ularly to check that everything was going according to plan.
The following day we tackled the next phase; digging the grapes out to transfer them to the
press so we could extract the press wine. Press wine typically represents a fifth of the total
red wine produced but it can be a key part of the blend, offering more colour and tannin than
the free-run wine. This step required extreme caution because killer carbon dioxide is given
off during the fermentation and it lurks unseen inside the vats.
To chase the gas out I positioned two house fans above the vats. It was Heath Robinson
but it worked. Then I moved the wine paddle (like a single-sided canoe paddle but made of
food-grade plastic, used to stir wine), digging tools and cleaning equipment to the back wall
so we had more room to work.
Likemanythingsoverthatharvestperiod,digginggrapeswasmoredifficultthanitlooked.
Justmovingthemustpumpintopositionunderthevat'sfrontdoorwasnearimpossiblesince
it was so heavy. The must pump is like a miniature harvest trailer; about half a metre high
and wide and a metre long with a wide but short auger in its metal belly. This auger is suffi-
ciently powerful to pump hundreds of kilograms of grape must up the harvest pipe into the
press. When the must pump is in motion it looks peaceful, but one false move and it could
remove a hand or a foot or worse. Its powerful auger will crush and macerate anything that
gets in its way - just like what the harvest trailer did to part of Sean's finger. Once it was in
