Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/62409
WINEMAKING Wente for crush, laboratory, barrel storage and bottling services in what Mirassou says boils down to a per-case cost. The Steven Kent wines are made by Claude Bobba, the Wente winemaker for the small-lot program, using protocols suggested by Mirassou. The La Rochelle wines are made by Tom Stutz, whose experience and winemaking style have an impact on both labels. For the several Pinot Noir lots, processing begins with half-ton bins being dumped into a hopper, which drops them onto a sorting line conveyor built by Wente staff. The fruit then goes into a Puleo Vega 10 destemmer-crusher. From there, the crushed fruit is pumped into waiting fermentation bins. This initial processing step is one that, in a perfect world, Stutz might do a little differently— with a destemmer-crusher that would leave more whole berries, and with the machinery elevated so that fruit would simply be dropped into bins below, not pumped, which beats up the fruit more than Stutz would like. The bins themselves are something Stutz brought to the operation. Each TECHNICAL REVIEW Steven Kent and La Rochelle use wood boxes with plastic liners for primary fermentation. The boxes hold 1.5 to 1.7 tons and can be moved and stacked with forklifts. has a plastic liner inside a plywood cube frame, holding 1.5 to 1.7 tons, purchased from Kings Canyon Wood Products. The bins were originally designed for nut harvests but have been adopted by several wineries. The plastic liners are perfectly inert, and the wooden frames radiate out some of the fermentation heat, helping keep temperatures down in range. After they were put to work for La Rochelle, the bins were adopted for the Steven Kent label, which had been doing stainless tank fermentations, and soon Wente made the same move for its small-lot wines. The bins are forklifted inside the winery and into the facility's cold room, which is both very cold (close to freezing temperature) and very, very large, with plenty of room to move everyone's wine around. Overnight, the grape temperature drops down into the 45ºF range. On the second day, the basic wine chemistry gets checked, and the bins get moved out into the general fermentation area. No initial sulfur is added, unless the fruit is highly problematic. La Rochelle uses no extractive enzymes, although, Stutz does use ColorPro from Scott Labs on some Chardonnay—not for color, but because, as a side effect, it 52 Wines & Vines JAnUARY 2012 QSEE US AT UNIFIED, BOOTH #1416g