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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 52 WINES&VINES December 2015 to clients' requirements and stylistic prefer- ences. For his own wines, Shaps believes in the mantra "great wine is made in the vineyard," and tries to minimize the manipulation of the grapes. Natural gravity flow is used as much as possible during winemaking processes. Grapes arrive at the Wineworks in Mac- roBins or individual lugs, depending on the vineyard. In some cases, the grapes are held in a cold room where the temperature is chilled into the 40°s (°F), but all grapes are crushed and destemmed within 24 hours. A forklift from Clark Material Handling with a bin dumper feeds the grapes into a Sthik hopper from Euro-Machines, and the hopper vibrates the grapes into the Euro-Machines A-5 crusher/ destemmer. Some of the destemmed grapes go directly into tanks (or occasionally into bins) but if the grapes need to be sorted, they are sent to the C.M.A. Tommy, an automatic sorting system from Prospero Equipment that has both a stainless steel vibrating table and a PVC sort- ing belt. Wineworks has two presses from Euro- Machines, a Europress P34 and a Europress P52. White grapes are pressed within 24 hours, with the exception of Petit Manseng, which has some skin contact time. Enzymes are added to most grapes, and Shaps uses a wide range of enzyme products from Scott Laboratories and some from Laffort. He relies primarily on native yeasts. Again, the only exception is in ferment- ing Petit Manseng. Due to the variety's high levels of sugar and acid, Shaps starts the Petit Manseng fermentation with native yeast, then adds QA23 yeast from Scott Laboratories to make sure the grapes finish fermentation. White wines may finish fermentation in 10 to 14 days—or, since they are not inoculated, occasionally they may take several months. Red wines are crushed and destemmed as soon as possible, then placed in tanks for fermenta- tion. Shaps has both open-top and closed tanks, mostly from Prospero and Euro-Machines. Shaps explained that much of his equipment comes from Euro-Machines because "they're a local company and can provide service quickly. And it's the quality of the equipment as well." According to Joy Ting, Wineworks' enolo- gist and production manager, the winery often is working with approximately 150 lots of wine. "Consequently, we do most of our analy- ses in-house," she stated. "We do an analysis when the grapes arrive and go through the crusher/destemmer. We monitor fermentations and do a third set of analyses after malolactic fermentation." One specialized piece of lab equipment that Ting uses frequently is the Enolyzer wine analyzer from Unitech Scien- tific. It is a modified spectrophotometer that will do tests to detect malolactic fermentation, residual sugar and volatile acidity. Of Shaps' white wines, only Petit Manseng and Chardonnay are barrel-aged. The Petit Manseng is barrel-aged in French oak for eight months before bottling, with approximately one-third of it in new barrels. The Chardonnay is also aged in French oak, and depending on the vintage, 40%-50% will go in new barrels before it is bottled 10 months later. The barrel makers for white wine are Tonnelleries Damy, Billon, Ermitage-Berthomieu and Cavin. Red wines are all aged for 18-24 months in French oak. Malbec has the lowest amount of new oak at 33%. For Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, 50% are in new oak, and 50%-70% of the Petit Verdot and Tannat C M Y CM MY CY CMY K aacAdW&VSpecial48I1C201502press.pdf 1 9/10/15 3:27 PM A bin dumper transfers grapes into a hopper.