Wines & Vines

Technical spoTlighT winemaking March 2015 Wines&Vines 35 opposite the winery parking lot and tasting room. At full capacity, the cave can house 750 barrels, which are stacked three high and arranged in single stacks along both sides of the cave. Ackerman said the barrels are filled and racked out on the crush pad, but the layout inside the cave allows for topping and sampling. "We stack them this way so we can run a forklift up and down the aisle," she said. "You can't turn it around, but you can run it up and down the aisle and then pull everything out with a pallet jack." Both ends of the cave feature large wood doors that were built with timber from an estate vine- yard. "They're made from red- wood trees that were already felled on our SkyHigh Ranch," Ackerman said. "They used to do some logging up there, and there was this huge redwood, and so we had them milled and they're beau- tiful solid wood doors." Throughout the history of Lazy Creek Vineyards, the winery has earned critical and commercial success with its dry Gewurztra- miner. The estate is still home to a small Gewurztraminer vineyard of 2.5 acres, and it's the only white wine the winery makes. The Gewurztraminer is destemmed, crushed and left on the skins for about five hours or more before being pressed with an old Co- quard membrane press that was used by the previous owners. Ack- erman said she prefers the basket press and only uses the Coquard for the Gewurztraminer and the rosé of Pinot Noir. The pressed juice is settled in a stainless steel tank before being racked to another tank for fermen- tation. The Gewurztraminer never touches oak. "We will always make Gewurztraminer," Acker- man said. "It grows very well in this area, and it is what put Lazy Creek on the map when the win- ery was first started." In-house bottling provides flexibility One of the first purchases Acker- man made when she took over the winemaking duties at Lazy Creek was a new GAI monoblock filler, which is somewhat unique for a small boutique Pinot winery, as most are typically serviced by a mobile bottler. Ackerman said she looked into working with a mobile provider, but part of the winery's charm is one of the drawbacks of the estate. To get to the winery, one turns off Highway 128, which bisects Anderson Valley, onto a small dirt and gravel road that passes be- The new winery building was completed in 2013 and currently produces 6,500 cases. S T R A T E G I C D E S I G N S T U D I O A R C H I T E C T U R E B R A N D D E V E L O P M E N T A P www.STRATAap.com S T R A T A D E S I G N P L A N N I N G M A N A G E M E N T WINERY PRODUCTION HOSPITALITY ESTATES A R C H I T E C T U R E B R A N D D E V E L O P M E N T www.strataap.com S O N O M A, C A L I F O R N I A 7 0 7. 9 3 5. 7 9 4 4 winesandvines.com/subscribe SUBSCRIBE ONLINE & SAVE! PRINT + DIGITAL MAGAZINE 12 ISSUES A YEAR FOR $28 winesandvines.com/subscribe

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