Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/62507
CO VER S T OR Y TECHNICAL REVIEW Vaslin Bucher Delta E2 crusher, due to be replaced for the 2011 harvest with an E3. Father-daughter winemaking team Ken (right) and Shauna Rosen- blum are best-known for their vineyard-designated Zinfandel. to have participated in tasting and blending sessions at an age she would rather not have put in print. After a detour into ce- ramics and sculpture, she came back and took charge of the new winery; her father now holds the title of director of production. Because of the size of the main processing room, the Rock Wall crush pad can be set up indoors, away from the elements. Red grapes, hopefully picked early in the morning, arrive in macro bins, get weighed and are dropped by a bin dumper onto a CMA shaking sorting table where bad clusters and foreign matter are picked off. Clusters then travel up a Euroselect eleva- tor/destemmer from Scharfenberger, whose movable fingers knock berries off the stems. A portion of whole berries goes on the bottom of most fermentation bins; a few varieties, like San- giovese, get a portion of whole clusters. The rest go through a Ledcor_Jan11.qxp 12/7/10 2:30 PM Page 1 466 Devlin Road, Napa, CA 94558 Tel: (707)257-5231 Fax: (707)259-1257 www.ledcor.com/napa "Wherever we go, one constant remains: excellence. Time after time, we earn our reputation by delivering quality projects and customer service in an effort to continually exceed our clients' expectations. ' International in outlook. Innovative in approach. Diversified in capabilities. Dana Estates, Saint Helena, CA Machine Stand Crushed fruit receives initial treatments, normally involv- ing powdered wood tannin and color-extraction enzymes, and heads for the cold room in macro bins for a three- to four-day cold soak. Most testing of juice and, later on, finished wine goes through an Oenofoss 4010 mass spectrometry analyzer, which measures Brix, fructose, glucose, pH, TA, malic acid, YAN, NOPA and several other parameters from a single small sample. The bins are then moved outside for a day to warm up, and then inoculated with commercial yeast. Rosenblum is fond of D 80, Rockpile, BM 4X4 and DV 10 from Lallemand/Lalvin, but she supplements these core yeasts with multiple other strains, using several for a given batch of grapes/wine. Since fermentation hap- pens in macro bins, punch downs (lots of them) are the order of the day, including twice-daily punch downs for the up to 400 bins stacked seven-high in the cold room. The crew uses a forklift to move them around for access. Temperature control is managed by use of a forklift, too: move bins inside, move bins outside. Pressing duties belong to a Europress Cool T34C, with a 3.5- ton capacity; for the 2011 harvest, a new 6-ton Europress P52 will come online as well. White wines receive somewhat less extensive sorting and go immediately to whole-cluster pressing. After a short period for settling gross lees, the two Rock Wall Chardonnays are both bar- rel fermented, mostly with French oak, about 20% of it new, and half the barrels are put through malolactic. Rock Wall is a barrel-oriented facility, but it has several 1,000-gallon tanks, which can be used for settling or blending, and others with fermentation capacity. Most of the tanks come Weed Badger® Precision Tillers and Mowers ROPS R/E Mount Up to $500 off shipping PLUS a Machine Stand & ROPS R/E Mount FREE with a machine purchase!!! Hurry - this offer ends 10/31/2011. REFRIGERATION SYSTEMS.COM 800-437-3392 • www.weedbadger.com Specializing In: • • • • Cold Storage Construction Refrigeration Installation Chiller Systems Energy Saving Equipment Retrofits phone: 800.604.5958 email: shane@refrigerationsystems.com 32 Wines & Vines OCTOBeR 2011