62 WINES&VINES January 2016
TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT
arrive at the winery in half-ton
bins. Some of MacRostie's source
vineyards include Goldrock Ridge
and Hellenthal in the Sonoma
Coast and Bacigalupi, Thales, Dut-
ton Ranch and Wohler in the Rus-
sian River Valley. The winery still
produces a Pinot Noir from the
Wildcat Mountain Vineyard that
Steve MacRostie planted in 1997
in the Petaluma Gap area.
A forklift driver will dump the
bins into a hopper with inclined
sorting table by Santa Rosa, Calif.-
based P&L Specialties. The sorting
table dumps into an Armbruster
Rotovib destemmer from Scott
Laboratories in Petaluma, Calif.
Bridenhagen said she likes the
machine because the destemming
motion can be finely tuned to the
size of the grape berries and how
easily they're pulling off the ra-
chis. "It has two motors: one that
vibrates and one that spins the
cage, so you actually have two
points of control," she said.
Destemmed grapes are col-
lected in the fermentation bins, or
Bridenhagen will set up the sort-
The Armbruster Rotovib destemmer separates berries from stems with two motions.
