Wines & Vines

February 2018 WINES&VINES 53 TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING Few bells and whistles The production facility is a simple structure with a large open area for winemaking; two temperature- controlled barrel rooms and an- other area that can be used for private tastings. "It's a great, sim- ple winery," Vidrine said. "It's not a bells-and-whistles winery; it's an intentional and flexible space de- signed for making great wine." Current production is between 8,000 and 10,000 cases, but the w i n e r y c o u l d a c c o m m o d a t e around 15,000 cases. "As it's de- signed now, it's nice there's flexi- bility; we can move things around easily," Vidrine said. When harvest is done, Vidrine can put all the support infrastruc- ture and tanks into storage and then have a big empty space he can use as needed. "If we had tanks in here full-time, then they'd just be in the way during bottling season," he said. With everything portable, the winery's bottler, Signature Mobile Bottling, should be able to back into the cellar to make the bottling process easier and more efficient as well as protected from the weather. "There are some of us in wine production who just do not want to paint ourselves into a cor- ner," he said. "The idea here is we can optimize the space we have and not have lots of space that's unused during the year." The crush pad is on one end of the winery and covered by an overhang extending from the building. Grapes are harvested by hand into half-ton MacroBins that are delivered to the winery on tractors, typically early in the morning so the fruit is as cold as possible. All of the harvest equip- ment is from Fairfield, Calif.-based Euro-Machines, and the first step is a dosing hopper that empties onto a sorting table that leads to a Euro Select destemmer. Vidrine said he likes Euro-Ma- chines in general because the sup- plier is eager and willing to work with the Oregon wine industry and quick to provide service or advice on how best to use its ma- chines. He likes the Euro Select because of its multiple variable- frequency-drive motors that power two sets of paddles. "It re- ally delicately knocks off the ber- ries, so there's lots of control when it comes to whole berries going in to the fermentor," he said. The destemmer empties onto an elevated conveyor that in turn dumps directly into 2-ton, open- top tanks by JVNW, a tank manu- facturer based in Canby, Ore. Vidrine particularly likes the small, fully jacketed tanks that also feature valve screens, tem- perature probes and variable-ca- pacity lids. "When we drain and press, we drain right out and then tip right into the press, so there's no dig-out on these," he said of the small tanks. Vidrine also has 3- and 5-ton fermentors he uses for larger lots and when he wants a different tank ratio to adjust maceration. "It's very useful to have a few dif- ferent dimensions to work with." The press is a 35-hectoliter Europress that can handle about 3 tons of red pomace or 2.5 tons of Chardonnay, which undergoes whole-cluster pressing followed by 24 hours of settling before fer- menting in oak barrels. Vidrine is still getting to know the vineyard and said he purchased barrels from at least a dozen dif- ferent coopers in 2017. He said he's learning how to match vineyard blocks as well as clonal selections of the vineyard to particular coo- pers. All of the oak will be French, and with medium to lighter toasts and tight-grain staves. "We don't want the structure of the barrels to drive the wine but to support the wine, and that goes for Pinot and Chardonnay." Helping Vidrine in the cellar is assistant winemaker Ana Man- theakis. She received her master's degree from the University of Cali- fornia, Davis, and worked harvests at in Oregon, Argentina, New Zea- land, Australia and France before returning to her native state for her first full-time job. Mantheakis previously worked at Barrel 42, where she helped produce some of the Irvines' ear- lier vintages of wine. "I actually punched down their Pinot in the past," she said. "I've known them for a while, and I'm thrilled to be working for them." The winery's small lab is equipped with an Anton Paar densitometer, Thermo Fisher

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