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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING September 2015 WINES&VINES 49 Rack & Riddle general man- ager Mark Garaventa said the Healdsburg property was just a shell when they acquired it, re- quiring a complete build-out. Ex- tensive construction included erecting new interior walls, creat- ing new offices, paving, installa- tion of a new exterior tank pad, truck scale, purchasing new tanks (more on that later) and installing the bottling lines. The price for both winemaking sites came in at $8 million, with financing pro- vided by Exchange Bank. A third location about 1.5 miles north of the Healdsburg winery is devoted strictly to lab services and sparkling wine sitting on tirage—all of the Rack & Rid- dle's sparkling wines are made in the traditional method. Garaventa said there are between two and six people working there at any given time. All of Rack & Riddle's employ- ees from Hopland were offered positions at the new facilities, and Garaventa said about 80% made the move. While overseeing 65 full-time employees and facilities at the three sites has its challenges, Lundquist said the separate winemaking areas came with a bonus: the ca- pacity to crush an extra 1,500 tons. Separate locations, separate capacities "When we were in Hopland we were at 6,000-6,400 tons," Lun- dquist told Wines & Vines. "Now we could do 7,500 to 8,000 tons" because the two main locations each have different—and sepa- rate—production caps set by local officials. "It's great to have the op- portunity to potentially expand," although hitting capacity would require more tank space than is currently available. When Rack & Riddle took over the Geyserville facility, the winery was permitted to produce about 475,500 gallons of wine per year. Expanding the adjacent leach field allowed Rack & Riddle to increase capacity at the 50,000-square-foot winery to 750,000 gallons. Mean- while the 67,000-square-foot Healdsburg location is permitted to produce 950,000 gallons of wine per year. Of course some clients crush their own grapes and bring their must or wine to Rack & Riddle for fermentation, tirage, bottling or all of the above. Rack & Riddle produces around 1.2 million cases of still and spar- kling wine per year; custom crush makes up about 70% of total pro- duction, and 30% are bottles sold as shiners. Factoring in bulk-to- bottle and grape-to-bottle clients, "Sparkling is starting to run closer and closer to 50%" of Rack & Rid- dle's total production, Lindquist said. "At one time, sparkling was dominating." Lundquist and Faust both had experience in the sparkling wine business before starting Rack & Riddle: Lundquist was general manager at J Vineyards & Winery, while Faust served as CFO for Piper Sonoma, one of Rack & Riddle's first clients. The founding partners tapped winemaker Penny Gadd-Coster— who had eight years of experience making wine at J Vineyards and 13 years at Jordan Vineyard & Winery—to head winemaking op- erations at the Hopland site. Today Gadd-Coster serves as ex- ecutive director of winemaking for Rack & Riddle, where she alter- nates between the two winery properties. A day in the life All wine grapes processed by Rack & Riddle go through the Geyser- ville facility. The 50,000-square- foot winery is the center of action during harvest, but during the off months it is a much less bustling location and used as storage for aging wine in 4,000 oak barrels. Approximately one-third of trucks arriving with just-picked fruit dump their cargo directly into an off-street hopper from a pull-out on Highway 128. A hy- draulic lift allows staff to tumble 2-ton gondolas of grapes for red table wines and whites into the hopper—or use a forklift to tip the bins' contents inside. For the remaining fruit, deliv- ery trucks drive down behind the main winery building, stop at a weigh site and load whole clusters directly from the truck to the presses. Rack & Riddle employs a Bucher Vaslin 320 press, which has settings for sparkling, to press Bottle necks are dipped into liquid nitrogen prior to disgorging. Two-ton bins are dumped into a hopper off Highway 128 in Geyserville, Calif.