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WINEMA k ING Innovations that buck the trends • Skipping the bother of cold soaks in the pinot-happy Santa lucia highlands; M • Keeping the stems in red wine fermentations in the Sierra foot- hills, and not worrying about whether they're green or brown; even the Anderson Valley warms up as the morning wears on, making it harder and harder to cool the fruit and juice and rul- ing out skin contact. Winemaker Jon McPherson at South Coast Winery in Temecula sounded like a kid with a new bicycle (or maybe new iPhone) about the acquisition of a closed- system, glycol-jacketed tank press made in Slovenia by the SK Group and distributed through AWS Prospero. "In an area like this," said McPherson, "with plenty of sun and heat, I can pick Pinot Grigio early in the morning, put the grapes into the press at 60ºF and have the juice come out at 50º. For aromatic whites, I can load the press and give them some cool skin contact. We do some Syrah for a bubbly, and we can crush it into the press, hold it cold, and extract with water, not alcohol." The press came in at the tail end of the 2010 harvest, and the advantages really kicked in with 2011. The last thing I expected to hear was a Pinot Noir winemaker who had given up cold soaks, but that's pretty much what Morgan winemaker Gianni Abate and I talked about. "We haven't much bothered with cold soaks the last five years," he said. "Winemaking is an art; nobody can tell you you're doing it wrong if the wine tastes good." At a production facility mak- ing 45,000 cases of wine, cold soaks can be a bother, and so what Abate does instead is crush the fruit, separate the juice from the solids overnight, settle the juice and rack it all back together for fermentation, getting rid of particle matter that can't add any- thing useful to flavor. "We still make good wine without cold soaks," he insists. Managing tannins On the red wine front, many folks had tan- nins on their minds. Bill Easton at Terre Rouge Wines in Amador County, for ex- ample, has gotten into stems. He tried in- cluding some whole clusters in the 1990s, and then got away from it. But now that any of the 16 winemakers interviewed for this column were happy to talk about innovations that run counter to current trends and fashions. Some examples included: • Taking aromatic whites out of stainless and putting them back in wood in the Willamette Valley; • deploying propane heaters, not overhead sprinklers, for frost prevention in Walla Walla; • Watching harvest Brix fall steadily on the Central Coast, and • undoing VSp trellising and going back to the sprawl in the ander- son Valley. OneBirdGardSuperPROWireless can control birds inupto48acres "Last year we got the SuperPRO Wireless. Had the starling flocks been there, we would have lost $20,000-$30,000 worth of grapes," Manager, Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards r broadcast distress calls up to 1000 ft in all directions. And one Controller/transmitter can control up to eight 4-Speaker Wireless Receivers. No need to buy 8 complete Bird Gard SuperPROs. Each 4-SpeakerWireless Receiver protects up to 6 acres. Buy 2, 3, 4, up to eight 4-Speaker Wireless Receivers. You get not only wireless speakers, but also the distress calls randomly jump from speaker to speaker keeping the birds from getting used to the sounds. One BirdGard SuperPRO Controller/transmitter & one 4-Speaker Wireless Receiver is $799. Each additional 4-Speaker Wireless Receiver that covers up to 6 acres is $399. More and more vineyard managers are replacing netting with the Bird Gard PRO series. The Bird Gard SuperPRO Controller/transmitter can JWB Marketing LLC birddamage.com 800.555.9634 BidGar Wielr ess d Wines & Vines JULY 2012 51