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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 68 WINES&VINES October 2017 per ton and folks don't blink at $10,000 per ton. Araujo said including the land, construction and equipping the winery, the total investment comes to around $30 million. Because he and his clients are using such ex- ceptional grapes, he wanted a facil- ity to match that quality. The administration building houses offices as well as a spacious room for a lab that will eventually contain all the equipment needed for extensive wine analysis. Araujo said all analysis is still being sent out to ETS Laboratories this vintage, but he expects to have the new lab fully equipped in time for harvest 2018. Araujo and his team are par- ticularly proud of a large techni- cal tasting room that offers plenty of light from large windows that provide a view of the winery's estate vineyards. Araujo notes Raymond owns the vineyard ad- jacent to the north and also re- cently redeveloped it with clean, virus-free vineyard material, and both are Biodynamic. Kinsman said the technical tasting offers a place for serious sensory analysis, blending trials or hosting members of the trade and media. As it's totally separate from hospitality, it provides on- site and client winemakers ample room to taste through their wines. "That's part of the problem when you're using custom space. Often times it's just custom-crush space, whereas here you have access to hospitality and to a technical tast- ing room and lab," he said. "This is actually the winery that each of our custom-crush clients want or aspire to do." The winery is supplied with water from two plentiful wells, and wastewater is treated with a new Clocina system. Treated win- ery wastewater is used for land- scape and vineyard irrigation. Gray water and sewer is treated with a separate septic system. The crush pad is accessible from Zinfandel Lane and provides ample room for forklifts to unload bins from both sides of trucks. Located right next to the crush pad is a cold room that can accommodate stacks of fully loaded half-ton bins. Kins- man said the room is designed to offer cold storage for all the winery clients and can hold a total of 100 half-ton bins, or 50 tons of grapes. He points to the 2011 harvest as an example of a year when every- one was rushing to get their grapes off the vine and into the winery. "We wanted a space where if ev- eryone needed to bring their fruit in in a hurry, we could bring it in, stack it up to the rafters, keep it cool and process it just as quickly as we possibly could." The room can be cooled as well as heated if a client needs to re- start a stuck fermentation or get some barrels through malolactic. During the rest of the year, the room is used to store the crush pad equipment, which is designed to offer the gentlest and most thorough sorting with the least amount of people. Precise and gentle processing Grapes are dumped on a full-ton d o s i n g h o p p e r t h a t f e e d s a 1 6 - f o o t - l o n g c l u s t e r s o r t i n g table. It would be the first stage in the process if the grapes ar- rived in small yellow bins. Wolf Welding & Fabrication built the hopper and other custom wine- 5739 NATURAL BRIDGE AVE. ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 63120-1696 TELEPHONE (314) 381-2828 FAX (314) 381-5908 1-888-WE-R-RACKS (1-888-937-7225) www.titanrack.com email: komoran@titanrack.com TITAN-RACK A DIVISION OF TITAN TUBE FABRICATORS, INC. Double Bar Four Barrel Rack Double Bar Two Barrel Rack Half Rack Removable Center Rack • Central Location SAVES MONEY in Freight • Move more Barrels, cut handling time • Utilize air space, save floor space • Prevent product damage • Powder coat paint Over 30 years of experience in solving material handling needs Why Pay Freight From California? Let Our Central Location, ST. LOUIS, Save You BIG Money Portable Steel Barrel Racks From St. Louis TitanRack_Nov09.qxd 9/29/09 10:50 AM Page 1 Providing leading wine makers with stainless steel barrels of high quality, durability, and design. phone: 800-216-4901 www.skolnikwine.com • email: sales@skolnik.com "I never thought anyone or any machine could sort better than our ladies, but this sorts better and three times the speed, so we can process three times as fast." —Bart Araujo, Wheeler Farms