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WINERY & VINEYARD EQUIPMENT 38 WINES&VINES June 2016 Tom Beard bin washer to clean bins once they've been dumped and emptied of grapes as well as a Scharfenberger inclined belt conveyor for cluster sorting. The conveyor leads to the Bucher, which empties onto a Milani shaker table used for berry sorting. The whole system is designed to process grapes at around 2.5 tons per hour and be efficient and simple enough to be managed by just one employee. The crush pad at the new Epoch Estate Wines facility in Paso Robles also features a Pellenc destemmer and Iso-Flo shaker tables by Key Technologies. After grapes are de- stemmed and sorted, the grapes are collected in stainless steel bins that are dumped into open-top, concrete tanks through a stainless steel hopper designed and built by custom metal fabricator Steve Rinell & Associates. "We don't like to pump must," said associate winemaker Peter Turrone. (Read more in the October 2015 issue.) Michael Shaps Wineworks, the winery and custom-crush facility in Charlottesville, Va., has steadily expanded since 2010. The most recent expansion (see the December 2015 issue of Wines & Vines) occurred after Shaps bought out his partner in 2014 and included a new crush pad and winemaking cellar. The crush pad is designed to handle half-tons bins or lugs, and most grapes are dumped into a Sthik-manufactured hopper that feeds into an A-5 crusher destemmer. If needed, some grape lots undergo addi- tional sorting with a C.M.A. Tommy table. Almost everything on the crush pad came from Prospero Equipment. Presses When equipping the new MacRostie winery, Bridenhagen chose a Sutter EPC 25 mem- brane press rather than a basket-type press. She said she realizes using such a press runs counter to what's more commonly found at other Pinot wineries, but she likes getting a little oxygen into the wine when it's still young. "I like to air it out; it cleans it up a little," she says. Bridenhagen also conducts about 100 small-lot fermentations of just 1 ton each, and the Sutter EPC can handle small lots like a basket press. "You can literally press 1 ton of pomace, which is not very much fruit, but that is in line with fermenting everything separately," she said. "You might as well be able to press it all separately if you want to." While Benovia's expansion was all about adding extra space for Pinot Noir production (see the May 2016 issue of Wines & Vines), winemaker and part-owner Mike Sullivan also purchased a new 80-hectoliter Willmes membrane press from Scott Labs for all of his Chardonnay pressing at the winery's older facility. The new press can accommo- date 5 tons of whole-cluster grapes and has made white wine production much easier. "That was a nice addition, a good invest- ment," he said. "That helped us out a lot." Basket presses remain quite popular, es- pecially the Bucher Vaslin JLB, which is a key piece of equipment in many new wineries. Kosta Browne Wines opened a new winery in 2013 in Sebastopol, Calif., and bought a second JLB for its new home. Winemaker and founder Michael Browne said the press could process 5 to 6 tons in one 45-minute cycle. "The quality of the press wine is way better, and we can turn this thing all day." Larger volume production, of course, re- quires larger presses. Crew Wine Co. in Yolo County, Calif., purchased a new Diemme AR 150 press as part of a 100,000-gallon wine production expansion. Tanks and fermentation management Several of the wines produced at Epoch in Paso Robles are made with Rhône varieties, which winemaker Jordan Fiorentini said do exceptionally well fermenting in concrete. The winery made a big investment in the material, installing 10 custom-made tanks by Vino Vessel in Paso Robles as well as a few eggs by Nomblot and tulipes by Italian supplier Nico Velo. Law Estate Wines, also in Paso Robles, first crushed grapes in its new winery in 2013. Winemaker Scott Hawley opted to install 22 concrete tanks from Santa Rosa, Calif.-based Sonoma Cast Stone. Hawley had compared concrete to steel and oak and decided to go with concrete because of the material's effectiveness as an insulator, and because it works well with Rhônes. The custom-designed, unlined concrete tanks have a bit of taper, which causes a slight convection current in the juice that keeps more fluid in the cap, making punchdowns easier. Once fermentation is complete, the pomace can be raked directly from the bot- tom hatch of each tank into the basket of the winery's JLB press. (Read more in the November 2015 issue of Wines & Vines.) Cairdean in Napa installed 36 new stain- less steel tanks by Criveller, and most of those are equipped with a VinWizard system that monitors and controls temperature as well as operates an automated pumpover system on most of the closed-top tanks. As- sociate winemaker Cody Stacey said the VinWizard system makes running pumpovers during harvest easy, and it lets the winery's The winemaker at the new MacRostie Vineyards & Winery chose this Sutter press because it does not require a minimum press load and can therefore handle very small lots.