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TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT WINEMAKING March 2018 WINES&VINES 49 of punchdowns by the light of his propane- powered forklift and quickly left. The ferment- ing wine was in half-ton MacroBins and 2- and 3-ton portable, stainless-steel TranStore tanks by Custom Metalcraft. Cohn was able to do punchdowns once per day for the next few days, but he didn't linger long because of the smoke. "It was ugly," he said. "It was not pretty here and very stressful." Eventually he was able to rent a generator and started to get back into a regular harvest routine before power was fully restored. Cohn figures he wasn't able to use 13 tons of grapes due to excessive smoke or because the fires made harvest impossible. Prior to the fires, Cohn had been settling into the new facility. The space is essentially a large, open square with roll-up doors on one end. During harvest, the crush pad is set up in front of those doors, leading directly into the cellar. Helping Cohn in the winery is assistant winemaker Garret Cosenza, who is a native of New Jersey and holds a bachelor's degree in biochemistry with an enology certificate from California State University, Fresno. Cohn buys grapes from a variety of grow- ers who deliver them in half-ton bins. One of his major purchases for the new location was a vibratory sorting table from P&L Spe- cialties. "This was fantastic," he said of the table. "Easy to clean, no worries, never had a problem with it." Bins are dumped into the hopper of the sorting table that leads directly to a Bucher Vaslin Delta E4 destemmer. The grapes are never crushed, and Cohn also doesn't use a must pump. "It's just gentler," he said. "Why beat the grapes up one more time?" S o r t e d a n d d e s t e m m e d b e r r i e s a r e dropped directly into small tanks or bins that get dumped into larger stainless-steel tanks. The four large tanks were made by now- defunct Modern Stainless Steel and came with Cohn to the new winery space from his former operation in the East Bay area. A metal catwalk, installed after the 2017 vintage, provides access to tops of the tanks, and Cohn uses a punch-down device by RS Randall and Co. for cap management when the tanks are being used for fermentation. Prior to the catwalk and punch-down device, Cohn foot-tread all the red wines, which al- ready would have been a bit of a challenge, and was more so based on the percent of whole clusters used. Depending on the vine- yard, Cohn said Zinfandel can range from 10% to 20% whole clusters, Syrah can be up to 60% whole cluster, and Mourvedre is typi- cally 100% whole-cluster fermented. Cohn framed out a corner of the winery to use as a cold room. During harvest, he'll use it to cold-soak destemmed red grapes in bins and KEY POINTS Veteran winemaker Jeff Cohn moves into his own urban winery in Sonoma County. Open space offers room for puncheons and a variety of fermentation vessels. The Rhône and Zinfandel specialist fo- cuses on making fresh wines with finesse. mm "Having the new tasting room in downtown Sonoma has really changed the playing field for us. I only see things getting better as we keep building name recognition." —Jeff Cohn, Jeff Cohn Cellars