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CO VER S T OR Y No need for a basket press? Some winemakers have developed ways to obtain the advantages of basket presses using membrane presses. Doug Fletcher, who supervises winemaking for Terlato Wine Group, which includes Chimney Rock and Rutherford Hill in Napa Valley, San- ford in Santa Barbara and Alderbrook in Sonoma County, worked with press manufacturer Diemme to do this. The press program applies pressure in steps, delaying application of the next pulse until the must is expelled. They also can avoid the tumbling action that is felt to rough up berries and seeds and extract more solids. Winemaker Matthew Glynn uses a basket press at Acacia Winery, which specializes in single-vineyard varietal wines. On the other hand, she said that yields are much lower, even if you compare the output to settled juice from a membrane press. In some cases, if a lot of grapes come in at once, she has to use the blad- der press as well as the basket press. "The basket press can only handle 5 tons, while the bladder press can take 18 tons." Stephanie Putnam, winemaker for Raymond Vineyards in Napa Valley, is an- other who takes this approach: "We don't have a basket press at the winery right now. What we do is mimic a basket press with our bladder presses, which essen- tially gets us exactly what we're looking for—more gentle squeezing without any turning of the press." She added, "From what I understand, those who have basket presses feel that the quality of the 'press fractions' is much higher with less bitterness, so it allows them to use more of the press fractions versus a normal press." She added, "For bladder presses, the big improvement is the creation of what they call 'stepping' functions that allow the winemakers to manipulate the programs to keep constant pressure and remove tumbling sequences, if desired." "We do press fractions on our blad- der presses, and the characteristics of the year dictate how we use them. Sometimes the press wine is quite nice and with a little fining is useable for our other programs." Some other winemakers don't see what the fuss is about. They don't use presses for their better wines. Jason Exposto of Futo Wines has a basket press, but he doesn't use it for his high-end wines (though he does use it to extract press wine for other purposes.) "It's not part of our program," he said, though he has found a basket press to be excellent for other tasks such as dessert wines that he's made elsewhere. Doug Fletcher goes even further. "I haven't used press wine in our top wines for years," he said. "We just use the free-run juice." 34 WINES & VINES NOVEMBER 2012