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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING September 2015 WINES&VINES 51 the grapes destined for still white wines and sparkling varieties. The winery destems red fruit and presses the must in one of two Diemme AR 150F presses or two Bucher Xpert 320ICS presses. From this moment on, Rack & Riddle is following winemaking procedures set by its winery cli- ents. "For the most part it's not their team of people" processing the grapes, Gadd-Coster ex- plained. "We are providing the team of people but using their protocols." To execute these orders on such a massive scale, Gadd-Coster has six full-time winemaking staff- ers on her team. "Mainly my focus is with the sparkling wines, and then we have winemakers that oversee the still wines as far as the maintenance of them, the fermen- tation of them, working with the clients to bring their work orders into completion," she said. As a result, there is no single yeast strain, malolactic bacteria supplier or aging regimen that the staff of Rack & Riddle adheres to. These decisions are made by the winery's clients, who also choose barrel manufacturers and toast levels independent of Rack & Riddle. Tank space The winery has had clients produce as few as 250 cases and as many as 100,000, Lundquist said, add- ing, "I don't know that we have a size restriction on biggest." Delegating tank space while managing such a diverse group of needs is an intricate dance for Rack & Riddle, with tanks varying in size from 500 gallons to 50,000 gallons. "We generally know how many tons are coming in, and with that we generally know how many gal- lons we're going to get out of that. So it starts from there and moves forward if lots are going to be combined or not," Gadd-Coster said, adding that tanks designed for pumpovers and punchdowns are usually reserved for red wines and must. At the Hopland facility, tanks of all sizes were outfitted with hydraulic pumpover systems, something Rack & Riddle is still considering at its new facilities. "We're still in the process of changing, updating, upgrading with the move," the winemaker said. Rack & Riddle inherited most of the tanks at its Geyserville facil- ity upon moving into the old Mur- phy Goode winery. The quantity and size of tanks purchased for the Healdsburg site were chosen based on the winery's experience in Hop- land. For example, the 6,400-gal- lon tanks and 13,000-gallon tanks are equivalent in size to the tanker trucks used to transport wine from Geyserville to Healdsburg. Assembly of the company's six 50,000-gallon tanks and dozen 25,000-gallon tanks was done on- site in Healdsburg. "The tanks are so big that you really can't drive them down the road," Gadd- Coster said. "It's too wide and too long." A team of fabricators spent weeks assembling the tanks at Rack & Riddle, stacking the stain- less steel rings from Santa Rosa Stainless and Quality Stainless vertically until they reached the specified height. The tanks are wrapped in PolarClad foam and plastic insulation. Gadd-Coster insists cleaning such a behemoth is no different from cleaning a smaller tank; it's SELL TO MORE GROWERS The Wines & Vines Grower Online Marketing System (GOMS) enables users to create and save highly customized grower searches, and export results into advanced report types, data exports and mailing labels. (866) 453-9701 • winesandvines.com/OMS SELECT RECORDS BASED ON: SELECT RECORDS BASED ON: SELECT RECORDS BASED ON: region varietals acreage grape sales new vineyard The Healdsburg space has tanks that hold from 500 to 50,000 gallons.