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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING January 2016 WINES&VINES 61 some initial grading and site prep for a winery but decided to sell the site. In 2013, Bridenhagen was promoted to the post of winemaker and took part in plan- ning the new winery. "The treat for any wine- maker is that I then got to go, 'OK, I have this space to build a Pinot Noir facility, so what do I want?'" In addition to the Pinot-production facil- ity, the property on Westside Road in the Russian River Valley includes the MacRostie Estate House hospitality area set on a hilltop overlooking an estate Pinot Noir vineyard. The winery is situated to the rear of the estate house. Both the winery and estate house were de- signed by San Francisco, Calif.-based architec- ture firm Gould Evans and built by Wright Contracting of Santa Rosa, Calif. Designed for Pinot Noir and flexibility A key design element of the winery is that it provides flexibility to accommodate the high number of small fermentations. One of the flexible features is a large cold room near the crush pad that Bridenhagen can use to store grapes so that she's not forced into picking decisions because of the weather or a lack of tank space. "With all these small fermentations, the flexibility I'm looking for is kind of the story of this winery. I was just trying to find as much free flex space that I could isolate and cool or heat…just to keep the temperature and timing decisions that are the bane of the winemaker's existence to be really easier to make." The cold room can keep harvested grapes stable until the winery has a place to put them. "This is for the days when there's a rainstorm on the horizon and you need to bring in 30 tons of fruit and we can't process that much in a day." The area can also be used for cold soaks. During the recent harvest, Bridenhagen said she could store destemmed grapes in the 1-ton bins for more than a week. The must stayed at a cold 40° F and didn't require dry ice or ad- ditional sulfur dioxide. "I actually pushed it to 10 days just cold soaking prior to fermentation, and there was no risk of wild fermentation," she said. "It was pretty amazing, no extra sulfur and no extra dry ice." A separate cooling system keeps the room at a steady temperature. Simpson Sheet Metal in Santa Rosa and Refrigeration Technology in Middleton, Calif., designed and installed the winery's heating and cooling systems. Bridenhagen said she will do everything from destem and begin fermentation on the same day to putting the must through an ex- tended cold soak. Using a variety of methods allow her to experiment for quality but also assess the various protocols and determine what's best for a particular vineyard or how to achieve certain style goals. "What I also like about doing these separate fermentations is you can just layer. Maybe you do blend it all together, but they're all different to start and you can layer complexity, which is pretty fun." The grapes are typically picked at night and Winemaker Heidi Bridenhagen ROBERT HOLMES