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58 WINES&VINES January 2016 A busy harvest day at the new MacRostie Winery & Vineyards facility entails about 10 tons of grapes. That may not sound like much, but the small production team at the winery near Healdsburg, Calif., also manages up to 100 differ- ent fermentations over the course of a harvest. The owners built the structure to produce vineyard- designate Pinot Noir in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County, and processing a few tons of grapes is often bracketed by conducting dozens of pumpovers and punchdowns on small-lot fermentations. But that is exactly what MacRostie winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen envisioned when she helped design the winery that was built just in time for the 2015 harvest. "I am totally vineyard-driven, and I love how each vineyard, each block, each chunk of vines is different. So, knowing that it wasn't less work but more, I was like, 'How can I split these into really small ferments and keep everything separate?" she told Wines & Vines during a tour of the new winery in late October. Keeping everything separate means that all the wines ferment in 1-ton "Super Ts" or 48s by Mac- roBin. This enables Bridenhagen, who has been working at MacRostie since 2011, to set different processing and fermentation protocols for each tiny lot of grapes. "We bring in about 100 tons of Pinot, so I'm literally doing about 100 different fermentations." MacRostie Winery and Vineyards After building a national Chardonnay program, a well-known Sonoma winery constructs a new facility to focus on Pinot Noir By Andrew Adams TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT KEY POINTS Finished in 2015, the new MacRostie wine- production facility is dedicated to Pinot Noir. The winery has the space and equipment to accommodate up to 100 small fermentations. Each small-lot fermentation is managed, pressed and aged separately. KATHRYN MACDONALD