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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 80 WINES&VINES November 2016 and the 2016 office, same footprint. If you split the winery down the center it's bookended where both halves are identical, and we're split right down the middle from the (vineyard) row here all the way the way to the back of the cave. Everything is nice and balanced. Probably because I'm not, so I can control this. I can't control what's between the ears." Completed in time for the 2016 harvest, the winery is situated to the north of the barn. The crush pad is on the opposite side of the winery, but wide, 11-foot-tall doors provide access from the crush pad to the winemaking cellar on the first floor of the winery. "The goal was functionality," Davis said. "Let's build it so fork- lifts can go anywhere, or ATVs, but aestheti- cally you can't tell." Outside of the main entrance to the cellar, tucked beneath the terrace of the tasting room on the second floor of the winery, is a large granite sphere that floats on a cushion of water. The 5,000-pound chunk of South African granite was crafted in Germany and is known as a kugel ball. "It's like a big ball bearing, it just floats," Davis says. "Isn't that amazing, the hydrostatic pressure of water and its ability to lift a 5,000- pound ball with like three-thousandths of an inch clearance between the base and the ball?… I designed this, and I wanted an artistic repre- sentation of a grape and a leaf. I'm a big kid so water, ball, shiny, pretty, you know." A place to make wine Behind the kugel ball and large doors, the cel- lar can be reached along a corridor lined with alcoves displaying huge geodes and other crys- tals. The cellar was designed by veteran wine- maker Cary Gott, who has helped design and launch several Napa Valley wineries. Gott is also the consulting winemaker for other Napa wineries in addition to Davis Estates. In design- ing the winemaking area, Gott said it needed to be beautiful to match the winery's hospitality areas but also an efficient facility. "We have to make great wine in these beautiful wineries, so it is important that you work with an archi- tect that understands wine production, and it's not just some weird winery design out of their non-informed head," he said. "I've done that before, and it was difficult at best." Gott oversees day-to-day winemaking op- erations along with cellar master Jordan Jef- fries. He also is charged with the winery's Zephyr program that features wines produced with grapes from hillside vineyards. The wine changes each year, but Gott said in general he selects barrels "that are firmer in texture, style and body," and which receive an additional six months in the barrel before getting bottled with more than two years of élevage. Philippe Melka consults with Davis on Phase V, which is an allocated program made with, as Davis puts it, "the filet cut" of grapes from estate and other Napa Valley hillside vineyards. The cellar is equipped with 24 tanks—eight each of oak, concrete and stainless steel—and all have their own pump-over apparatus con- trolled by the Gen II Super Control winemaking and temperature-control system by Middle- town, Calif.-based Refrigeration Technology Inc. "I kept all of the electronic controls out of this room so you're not staring at control pan- els. Because for a lot of the year, not much will be going on this room, so all of the controls, all of the systems, are all behind the tanks," Gott said while on the same tour with Davis. Each tank does have a classic dial thermom- eter, but Gott said the Gen II system, which provides far more information than just tem- perature, can be accessed via a smartphone, laptop or through the central touch-screen display in the winemaking offices. The system monitors each tank, and the winemaking team can use it to run or schedule pumpovers as well as add oxygen, as needed. "I'm not afraid of software and technology, so what we wanted to do was take old-school winemaking and merge it through that new technology and come up with the best process," Davis said of the system. "We figure it will save us about 150 hours a week, once we get going, in labor" The tanks range in capacity from 3 tons to 4.5 tons. Tonnellerie Radoux produced the oak vats, equipped with a stainless-steel door on the bottom to make removing pomace easier as well as an improved set of stainless steel coils inside the tanks to move hot or cold gly- col. The concrete tanks are by Sonoma Cast Stone, which also did the patterned concrete pillars that support all the tanks and have been impregnated with epoxy to keep out unwanted bacteria. Santa Rosa Stainless steel supplied the jacketed stainless steel tanks. Beneath each tank is a 1 hp Alfa Laval pump that is controlled by the Gen II system and runs pumpovers as needed. Burgstahler Machine Works in St. Helena, Calif., installed the pump- over systems and much of the other winemak- ing equipment. Gott said all of the fermentations in the cellar will be managed through pumpovers, but he also will be doing several open-top pun- cheon fermentations and some small, portable- tank ferments in the winery caves. He said he still needs a better understanding of the estate vineyards to know which lots match best to the particular types of tanks, but he figures the best grapes will be heading into the oak vats. One of the more impressive pieces of equip- ment at the winery is what's referred to as the "praying mantis." The machine is a conveyor elevator used to move sorted and destemmed grapes in to the tanks. The machine, designed by St. Helena, Calif.-based Wayne Burgstahler, has a sump at its base, and the long conveyor portion is set on a hinge that allows it to be lowered to be moved in and out of the cellar. The blocky base and long, thin conveyor give the machine an appearance not unlike the large insect. Burgstahler also used a new material for the conveyor belt that does a far better job of trans- porting juice as well. "That will actually pull liquid and put the liquid in as well," Davis said. "We don't lose the liquid as we put it in the tank, so we get whole berries and the liquid." Whole berries are collected in stainless steel sumps on the crush pad and then moved by fork- lift into the cellar, where the sumps are dumped into the conveyor that then moves them up over the catwalks at the top of the tanks and dumps them through the top hatch. It's the gentlest way of moving grapes, but the winery also has a must pump to move berries to tanks that way. The winery cave is fitted with multiple connec- tion points for portable tanks used for small-lot fermentations. CODY GEHRET PHOTOGRAPHY Cellarmaster Jordan Jeffries demonstrates using the Gen II winemaking control and monitoring system.