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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 70 WINES&VINES October 2016 and after four or five days, Osborne warms the juice by wrapping the tanks in heated blankets. He notes, however, "It doesn't work very well." Depending on the Brix of the juice and the ultimate style of the wine to be made, Osborne may sweeten the juice either by adding white granulated sugar or blending in a higher Brix juice. Deacidification also takes place before fer- mentation. "My philosophy is to do a little of everything: a little water, a little deacidifica- tion, a little sugar, some blending," Osborne said. "Using a little bit of several methods helps avoid the major drawbacks of any one particular method." He added that he rarely needs to deacidify any of the red wines. "The only cold-hardy red wine we make is Mar- quette," he stated, "and that acid can be man- aged in the vineyard." With the white wines, he adds yeast to kick off the fermentation, but the strain varies from year to year. He noted, "I've had good success with basic Prise de Mousse yeasts," or he may add either Lallemand's Champagne yeast or a Laffort yeast. Fermentation usually takes two to four weeks, and the white wines rarely go through malolactic fermentation. Osborne decides when to filter the white wines depending on the style of the wine. "If it's a sweet wine, we could filter before fer- mentation is complete," he said. "If it's a barrel-aged white, it might not be for a year." However, typically white wines are filtered using their Della Toffola crossflow filter a day or two after fermentation is completed. Most white wines are bottled six to 10 months after harvest. Osborne currently has a small amount of Chardonnay in oak, and he plans to keep it there for 10 months before bottling the wine. Like the white wine grapes, the red grapes arrive at the winery in lugs or MacroBins. Grapes that come from places like California, including Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon, arrive in MacroBins that have been chilled and shipped immediately to Four Daughters. All red grapes are sorted by hand and then dumped into the Precisa 50 crusher/destem- mer from G.W. Kent. After crushing, the grapes are put into one of the 2,000-gallon SK red fermentors from Prospero Equipment. If those tanks are in use, the grapes will be fermented in 225-gallon MacroBins. Fermentation is usu- ally kicked off with Lallemand's D-254 yeast and normally takes anywhere from five to 10 days. If the grapes are in a red fermentor, a sprinkler from G. W. Kent is used for a couple of hours per day, according to Osborne, or by doing a rack and return one time per day. If the grapes are in a MacroBin, they are punched down three times per day by hand, using a punch-down tool. After fermentation is complete, the wine is pressed using the SK pneumatic membrane press and goes into French oak barrels from reWine (located in Salem, Ore.) for eight to 24 months, depending on the variety. All red wines are filtered using the Della Toffola crossflow filter prior to bottling. Now that the cider production has been moved into a separate building, the production facility is being converted into a "boutique" winery. Osborne has hired an executive wine- maker, Daron Ford, and "winemaker one," Car- rie Gurule, who works only on the wine side. The cidery One of the first questions about Four Daughters cider is: Where did you get the name "Loon Juice?" According to Osborne, the name came to him while he was on a fishing trip in north- ern Minnesota. "I wondered, what would hap- pen if you got lost there, in northern Minnesota? What would save your life?" He noted that the Swiss have St. Bernard dogs with small barrels of brandy that save people in the Alps. "It had to be alcohol," he continued, "and I wanted to use Honeycrisp apples that were patented by the University of Minnesota for our cider. The loon is the state bird, so if a loon came to the rescue, it would bring 'loon juice.'" As the Four Daughters' website says, "Despite our name, Loon Juice contains zero traces of loon. Because that would be gross. Instead, all our cans contain the perfect combination of nature and fun—two things we can all agree on. Everything starts with the best-tasting apple around: the Honeycrisp." As many apples as possible are sourced from orchards in Minne- sota, but as the quantity of Loon Juice produced has increased, the winery has had to get some Honeycrisp apple juice from Wisconsin, Iowa, Washington and, in the summer, from Chile. During Four Daughters' first year of cider production, the product was exclusively offered in the tasting room (top). The new Barrel Room (bottom) can double as an event space seating up to 300 people.