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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING November 2017 WINES&VINES 83 large breezeway that bisects the production area, to the mountains behind the building. Grapes arrive on trucks that drive around to the rear of the winery, where half-ton MacroBins are unloaded and weighed before being brought to the breezeway that serves as the covered crush pad. "The winery was built for functionality. So this huge breeze- way, as we call it, is our crush pad, and I couldn't think of a better way to do it," Beranek said. A cold barrel room provides extra room in case some grapes need to wait for processing be- cause of weather or other harvest c h a l l e n g e s . " O n e t h i n g w e learned at Outpost is that it's great to have lots of options," Dotzler said. "You never really know what's going to happen." Because Rivers Brown and his clients are working with some of the best vineyards and vineyard crews in Napa, Beranek said the grapes come in exceptionally clean and require little to no cluster sort- ing. Bins are dumped into a hopper that feeds an elevated conveyor by P&L Specialties that empties into a Bucher Vaslin Delta Oscillys de- stemmer that sends berries to a Key Vitisort optical sorter. The destemmed and sorted berries are then moved to tanks with a Moyno progressive cavity pump via a 3-inch must line that empties through the top hatch of each tank. Mending Wall and the custom- crush clients don't necessarily have assigned tanks, but because Rivers Brown oversees everything, winemaking decisions aren't rushed because of logistics or needing to turn tanks. The winery also has the capacity and tank space to handle many small lots from different vineyards or indi- vidual vineyard blocks. "We work with a lot of small, high-end vineyards with very small blocks, and we keep everything separate; that's why we have all of these small tanks," Beranek said. All of the winery's 39 stainless steel tanks are from Santa Rosa Stainless Steel and range in capac- ity from 1,000 gallons to 2,500 gal- lons. Each of the tanks are fully jacketed and have individual hot and cold glycol hookups. Heating and cooling the tanks is controlled by a VinWizard system that Beranek can control and monitor from his desktop, a tablet or smartphone. In addition to the VinWizard system, the winemaking team uses InnoVint winemaking soft- ware to generate work orders, track lab analysis and also gener- ate harvest weight tags. "It's great because it's in the cloud, so Frank can look at it from anywhere, Thomas can look at it from any- where," Beranek said. The winemaking offices also have space for a few pieces of lab equipment including a spectrom- eter and free sulfur machine. Unlike other new wineries in Napa Valley, the tanks do not have their own dedicated pumpover systems because Rivers Brown and his team prefer the more la- borious process of setting up each pumpover by hand. "We want to smell the wines and touch the wines and see how they're doing every day during fermentation," Beranek said. That constant sensory evalua- tion also plays a major role in press decisions. Beranek said Rivers Brown often prefers to press reds a little sweet and let the wines fin- ish in barrel. That decision is based on the vineyard, vintage and how the wine is tasting and smelling. "It's based on taste," Beranek said. "Every day (Rivers Brown) comes by, and we taste tanks and he says, 'Let's press that.'" Pumpovers are usually done with an air pump supplied by Wagner Process Equipment. Carlsen & Associates supplied the Waukesha pumps for more gentle transfers or rackings. The winery is equipped with two membrane presses (a Sutter ESPC 35 and Europress) that are used interchangeably for white or red wines. Two barrel rooms offer two dif- ferent temperatures, so freshly pressed reds or fermenting whites can be stored warmer than wine resting through extended aging. Behind the winery are two large water tanks. One is filled with well water for fire suppres- sion, and the other gets filled with winery wastewater that has been treated with a Lyve system is then used for irrigation. Pumpovers are run by hand, but the temperature of each tank is monitored through the Vinwizard system. One of the two barrel rooms at the winery. The rooms can be set to different temperatures.