Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/766392
WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 76 WINES&VINES January 2017 for M. Draxton Inc., a wine company in Healds- burg, and before that he worked in winemaking for 12 years at Jordan Vineyards & Winery, where he rose to the post of associate winemaker. Getting those tanks ready came after Du Preez realized he wanted to completely rear- range a bay of 10 open-top and seven closed- top fermentation tanks from Santa Rosa Stainless Steel. The tanks were to be installed inside the winery's main fermentation area, but Du Preez decided it would be easier and quicker to get them set up outside, near the crush pad, and have a working winery in the middle of a construction area. "We literally flipped all the tanks to the outside from the inside," he said. The winery has 20 5.5-ton tanks, 18 9-ton tanks, five 550-gallon portable tanks and five 1,000-gallon tanks from Santa Rosa Stainless Steel. Most of the larger tanks have a 36-inch hatch on the top that is large enough so that they can function as an open-top but then be sealed for extended maceration or used as storage tanks. When those tanks came online, Du Preez said he then had the tanks ready to receive grapes. The crush pad is equipped to receive grapes in half-ton bins that are dumped into a hopper with an elevated conveyor that feeds a Bucher Vaslin Delta Oscillys destemmer. Clients can pay to have the grapes receive another round of sorting with a Bucher Vaslin R1 optical sorter or bring in their own workers to man a 20-foot- long table for further hand sorting. Du Preez said the winery is set up to handle all grape varieties and all types of winemaking processes. Sugarloaf currently has three presses that include a large 20-ton membrane press by Bucher, a 50-hectoliter press by Sutter and a Carlsen & Associates basket press for small lots. He said he liked the Carlsen & Associates press because his staff could move it around the winery to make draining and pressing easier, and its size makes small-lot pressing quick and easy but also means the larger tanks can get pressed with just two or three loads. "It makes it really quick and simple," he said. Even with just a small number of clients and limited production capacity in 2016, Du Preez said they handled everything from white wine fermentation to small-lot, whole-cluster reds and larger scale Bordeaux wines that went from the destemmer straight to the tank. "We literally had the whole gamut of winemaking," he said. An automatic pumpover device didn't get installed in time for the 2016 harvest, but Du Preez and his team will have one ready for 2017. He also plans to add another red grape process- ing line and possibly another optical sorter. Winery specialist Steve Martin Associates was the designer and general contractor for the project. The winery spans nearly 60,000 square feet, and when Wines & Vines visited, workmen were building the catwalks inside the main cellar space. A bank of larger tanks that can hold up to 9 tons also will need to be moved. Du Preez and his team hooked the tanks up to power and glycol connections that had been designed for portable tanks just so they could use them for the 2016 harvest. In addition to the tanks by Santa Rosa Stain- less Steel, Du Preez also will be able to offer his clients 15 smaller open-top tanks by JVNW in Canby, Ore. The tanks hold about 2 tons and are fully jacketed yet can be dumped with a forklift directly into the basket of a press. The winery offers a total of 13,000 square feet in barrel-storage space and also has two climate-controlled rooms to enable clients to run warm Chardonnay barrel fermentations or help red wines get through malolactic fer- mentation. There's an additional cold room that can be used for storing bins of grapes until the production team has the space or time to process them. The main storage area can house 4,000 barrels stacked four high. Du Preez wanted a large open design to make moving and stacking barrels easy. Large air handles keep the air in the room circulating and maintain a constant temperature of 58° to 60° F. Two other rooms can be kept at different temperatures for tasks such as barrel-fermenting Chardonnay or push- ing reds through malolactic fermentation. "We have a lot of flexibility in the design," he said. Racks and barrels are up to what the clients bring, but the winery does have 100 of the four-post Barrel Safe Cellar Racks. "I really like these racks. They are unbelievably safe and really easy to stack," Du Preez said. Another room, separate from the main barrel storage area, is used for barrel work Sugarloaf Crush has more than five dozen stainless-steel tanks in a variety of sizes and styles from open- and closed-top tanks to portable tanks hooked up to power and glycol connections. An automatic pumpover device will be in place for the 2017 harvest.