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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 68 WINES&VINES December 2016 the ability of the system to identify Botrytis- affected berries. He prefers to have people in contact with the fruit, perhaps tasting it and assessing it with the full range of senses. "When you have people there hand-sort- ing the clusters, they're touching it. And they can see if the cluster has Botrytis because when they touch it the berries are breaking apart in their hand, and they can just throw it away," he says. They're "using more of their sensory (abilities) to judge what is correct and what isn't correct." The sorted fruit moves through an Amos AMD 206 destemmer and then into small, plas- tic bins that are dumped into 2.2-ton JV North- west fermentors or 4.6-ton Nico Velo concrete tanks from Italy, which Etzel saw during a visit to Château Cheval Blanc in Bordeaux, France. "They have glycol embedded inside the con- crete, and they give a beautiful mineral profile to the wine. Very pure," he notes. Quick-connect manifolds around the perim- eter of the winery facilitate the transition from cold soak to fermentation by allowing a steady but rapid shift in temperature. This prevents the formation of ethyl acetate, which lends fruit characters to wine but can also, at high concentrations, be a fault. "It really allows us great control for the native yeast ferments," Etzel said. "If you can transition a little bit more quickly, you can minimize your ethyl acetates." The winery's glycol unit is a massive 65- ton beast from G&D Chillers Inc. in Eugene, Ore., that circulates glycol throughout the facility, assisting with temperature control. The piping has a high R value that ensures the system isn't putting out any more energy than necessary. Chardonnay grapes, by contrast, ferment in barrels as well as a 500-liter amphora kept in the mechanical room, where heat from the The barrel room also provides cold storage prior to sorting.