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54 WINES&VINES February 2017 WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT forklift, and the grapes are pro- cessed depending on variety and condition. Red grapes that came off the vine particularly clean are dumped directly into an elevated hopper that channels them di- rectly to a Puleo Vega 10 destem- mer from Carlsen & Associates in Healdsburg, Calif. The destemmed berries are then collected in larger ProBins or "T-bins" for fermenta- tion or smaller bins that are dumped into the open-top tanks. "If we look at the fruit and say, 'Hey, this is super clean: no Botrytis, no raisin berries.' We'll use this because it's less equip- ment to clean and less water and faster," Franscioni said. When the grapes do require a bit of hand sorting, the bins are dumped into a different hopper from Healdsburg, Calif.-based Criveller Group that empties onto a Milani sorting table, also from Criveller. A couple of in- terns stand on both sides of the table pulling out problematic clusters and MOG to separate channels that lead to waste buckets. The clean fruit lands on an elevated conveyor that drops clusters in the destemmer. Franscioni said the Milani shaker table did a particularly good job with undersized berries and raisins. "The thing we realized we really loved about it was we had quite a few shot berries this year (2016) and just undersized berries, and so the grates back there are great because the clus- ters are hitting it so hard and there's other grapes coming on it that will push any of those berries we don't like underneath," Fran- scioni said. Almost all of the grapes for the Roar program are destemmed aside from an occasional small lot of Syrah. "There's no must pump, so everything is done with gravity and a forklift," Franscioni said. "I like it that way. It actually seems a little gentler." M o s t o f t h e r e d s w i l l s i t through a five-day cold soak be- fore getting inoculated. Shapley adds yeast to almost all of the must or juice at the winery unless a lot's pH and YAN are good from the start and fermentation ap- pears to be starting on its own. The winery's glycol system is used just to chill the tanks, and each is fitted with a digital ther- mometer. Without hot glycol, Shapley and Franscioni impro- vised a method to warm the tanks from the bottom. They wrap the legs of the tanks with pallet wrap plastic and then put an electric space heater under- neath the tank. The plastic acts a s a n i n s u l a t o r k e e p i n g t h e warm air directly below the tank. "It works really well actu- ally," Franscioni said. Manual fermentation management Everything fermenting in T-Bins, half-ton bins or the tanks (most of which hold about 5 tons) is Shapley fills the Puleo SF-36 press with fermented red grapes. The same press is used for red and white grapes.