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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING December 2016 WINES&VINES 67 on at a glance. There's less to miss because their work is constantly before them. "Jared's desire to make sure each stage of the process is carefully monitored and carefully observed…is very much hands-on," Lapp said. "When you have just one big, open room where you can see everything happening, it allows Jared to see all that, versus a winery that has all these little cubbies on different levels." Similarly, the office of assistant winemaker and vineyard manager Miguel Lopez is located on the east side of the building, facing outward. This provides not only natural light, but offers a view of the vines and the crush pad as well as the production floor. Sorting underpins production Domaine Roy's 50-foot sorting line is the back- bone of Etzel's winemaking style. "The basis of our production is 1) make the best fruit that we can organically, and then 2) sort it to the point by hand where it's nothing but perfect berries in the fermentor, then it's native ferments pri- mary and secondary. That foundation is very important to us," he says. "It starts just outside the door. We load a bin, it's dumped, there's cluster sorting, and then after the cluster sorting there's berry sorting, right out here on the pad." The sorting line runs straight into the win- ery so that workers are sheltered during a sort- ing process that can take up to 90 minutes per ton. Since the barrel room is relatively empty at this point and well insulated by the hillside that surrounds it, it provides cold storage for incoming grapes until the line is ready. Etzel's fastidious, hands-on approach elimi- nates optical sorting as an option. "I demo'd an optical sorting system when I was in Cali- fornia. I decided that I didn't want to be an early adopter on it," he said, citing issues with The sorting line starts outside a 20-foot roll-up door and continues inside the winery, where workers are sheltered from the elements for cluster sorting and berry sorting.