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WINEMAKER INTERVIEW 88 WINES&VINES November 2017 S pottswoode Estate in St. Helena, Calif., is a Napa Valley classic: Wine grapes were first planted there in 1882. The current estate was established by Jack Novak and his wife, Mary, who started out as grapegrowers. Following her husband's death, Mary Novak (who died last year) founded the current winery, 100 years after grapes had first been planted there. The collection of buildings dating from the 1880s exude a sense of history. Spottswoode celebrates tradition, but it has not been bound by it. The winery has been an innovator over the years. The Novak family has farmed the estate vineyard organically since 1985, and it was certified in 1992. More recently, Biodynamic practices have been introduced. The winery recently has been renovated, and state-of-the-art equipment has been added. Supervising both vineyard and winemaking is Aron Weinkauf, who has been with Spottswoode since 2006, when he became assistant winemaker under Jennifer Wil- liams. Weinkauf, who graduated in 1999 from Berry College in Georgia with a degree in Spanish, developed an apprecia- tion for wine while studying in Spain. When he returned to the states, Weinkauf enrolled in the viticulture and enol- ogy program at California State University, Fresno, and graduated in 2005. He worked at Ficklin Vineyards and Paul Hobbs before joining Spottswoode. Weinkauf developed a deeper interest in viticulture at Spottswoode, and he became vineyard manager (in addition to his winemaking duties) in 2009. Two years later, he became the fifth head winemaker in Spotts woode's history. Q You've been using an optical sorter for several years. What are the advantages? Has it im- proved quality? Are there any disadvantages to using it? Aron Weinkauf: We began using a state-of-the-art Weco Optical Sorter in 2014. His- torically at Spotts woode, sorting was a very slow, very labor-intensive pro- cess that required 10 peo- ple standing on a sorting line to process approximately 1.4 tons an hour. With our new system, we can process 5.5 tons an hour with just four people working the sorting line. And be- cause the machine does the lion's share of the sorting, our team can focus on being even more exacting in their final sorting decisions. There are many benefits to this approach: It allows us to keep the sorting day to a sane and safe six to seven hours for our team, and it frees up several team members, allow- ing them to focus their attention on other crucial areas such as analysis during harvest. And, if faced with heat events or the threat of rain, we are able to quickly process a much larger amount of fruit, with no sacrifice in terms of quality. In fact, the quality has been great. With three different cameras, including infrared, our optical sorter analyzes every berry to identify and eliminate unwanted grapes and plant material. We have also found that it rejects signifi- cantly less fruit, and yet it does this without sacrificing quality. When we were using manual sorting, a not-insig- nificant amount of great fruit would get discarded with lesser quality fruit, as some of the good would go out with the bad. That has been reduced by about a third. Since we've been using it, our optical sorter has met, or exceeded, all of our expectations. In terms of disadvantages, there are really none worth mentioning. Q Along with the optical sorter, you've started using a new destemmer. What have the advantages been? Weinkauf: Our Weco Optical Sorter was part of a complete upgrade to our grape-processing system, which also in- cludes a Bucher Vaslin Oscillys and two shaker tables from Key Technology: one for cluster sorting and another for berry sorting. Beyond being able to process up to 5.5 tons per hour with far fewer people on the sorting line, these tools have other advantages: They are more precise, they reduce losses, and because we can use high- pressure equipment on them, they clean up quickly and easily, with a 40% to 50% water savings. Q Spottswoode recently renovated half the win- ery. What changes did you make? Weinkauf: While we did not change the footprint of the building, we renovated and modified over half of our tanks, with an increase in 2,000 gal- lons of tank holding. We also added a new control system. We replaced old cement tanks with three new stainless steel tanks that together have a capacity of 4,500 gal- lons. One of the tanks, which was made by JVNW, has extra insulation with multiple ROBB MCDONOUGH A CONVERSATION WITH Aron Weinkauf How new equipment transformed grape processing at Spottswoode's estate winery By Laurie Daniel