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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING March 2017 WINES&VINES 49 edge of the family's properties to deliver the fruit for top-qual- ity wines. The action plays out on the crush pad, the most visible part of the production facilities. Situated at the south end of the winery with a striking view of Okanagan Lake, the 7,500-square-foot work- space doubles as a hospitality area and performance stage when it's not receiving grapes. Harvest in 2016 lasted six weeks, winding down Oct. 13. A week later, the area was pristine. "In a winery, cleanliness is above godliness," Fitzpatrick says. "Everything's going to be on show, so everything has to be put away, looked after and done properly." It's tough to make a crush pad complicated, but a clean approach defines Fitzpatrick's vision. "Crush is just very repetitive. You want to make sure you keep it as simple as possible because it's repeat, repeat, repeat," he says. "For me, simple is best. You want it to be tried and true, and you don't want things to break down." Grapes arrive at the crush pad in MacroBins. A small quantity of red grapes come north from Os- oyoos in half-ton bins, while fruit for sparkling wine comes in from the surrounding vineyards in lighter, quarter-ton bins that ensure gentler treatment of the clusters. "Merle just brings it in by tractor, drops it off here, and then we use the forklift here to weigh and dump and process," Fitzpatrick explains. Proximity to the vineyard gives Fitzpatrick an ability to pick and choose what comes in and what stays on the vine, eliminating the need for a sorting table. "We can be very particular about what goes into our bins," he says. "Any sorting that we need to do—if there's something we don't like, we can deal with it here. We don't have a sorting table, per se.…It just goes into the press, and away we go." Fitzpatrick specified a Willmes press for the winery because he considers it the gentlest technol- ogy available. "We had tried a number of dif- ferent presses over the years, and we thought that would be best for the sparkling wine," he says. Similarly, three 5,000-liter Al- brigi tanks not only look good, they have the technical require- ments Fitzpatrick was seeking, particularly jacketing for tempera- ture control. Temperature control is some- thing Fitzpatrick emphasizes—not Fruit from the Fitzpatrick property arrives at the crush pad in quarter-ton bins.