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2 0I1N E U N IK II N G W 4 MA F ED The winemaking process After careful field selection that removes unwanted grapes, stems and leaves, the optimum clusters and berries are sorted by hand before and after de‐stemming. After light crushing to crack the berries, they flow by gravity into tanks for fermentation. Mondavi has fermented in barrels in the past, but this year the tannins were strong enough that he felt that was unneeded. In general, he's backing away from the laborious process in favor of utilizing the larger wood tanks. From pre- to post-soaking, including fermentation, the wine has a total maceration time of up to 35 days. During this time, the wines are pumped over daily. Each tank has its own Graco air-operated pump with permanent piping. Air pumps use no electricity and operate at a specified pressure the winery controls. "Both of these things give us peace of mind when the pumps are operating unsupervised, i.e. no shortages to worry about, no pumps losing prime, no hoses exploding, no pumps breaking, no seed screens being blinded, etc.," a winery spokesman said. After completing fermentation and maceration, the new wine is drained—not See us at Unified booth #1142 These 4-ton oak tanks are reminiscent of the larger vessels at Robert Mondavi Winery. pressed—from the oak tanks into 100% new small, French oak barrels for the malolactic fermentation. The lees are kept with the wine in-barrel for an extended period to enrich the body and texture of the wine. They are stirred with a conventional barrel-stirring wand at every topping until the first racking, usually in August. The wine is clarified slowly and naturally through traditional settling and racking techniques with no filtration. In total, Continuum wine spends 20 months in barrel. (Continued on page 64.) Win es & Vin es ja n ua ry 20 14 61