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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 40 WINES&VINES June 2018 "S o, three crush pads are what we have now," says winemaker Re- becka Deike as she walked past one of those new crush pads at Ferrari-Carano Vineyards & Winery's red wine- making facilities near Geyserville, Calif. Deike provided Wines & Vines a tour of the company's latest investment in winemaking, just as the buds on the nearby Cabernet Sau- vignon vines were beginning to emerge from dormancy. It was a sunny, beautiful spring day with temperatures nudging past 70° F, but as Deike spoke about improvements to the facilities, a semi cab hauling a flatbed trailer carrying two tracked tractors with spray rigs rumbled by in preparation for the "atmospheric river" that had been (accu- rately) predicted to dump several inches of rain and bring humid conditions to the North Coast. Those new buds would need a spray to keep mildew at bay in the estate vineyards, planted mainly to red varieties that are processed and fermented at the hilltop winery. One of the new crush pads at the winery was designed and outfitted by P&L Specialties and features a Heco-Pacific 7.5 ton gantry crane to off-load grapes brought in by gondola bins into a P&L Specialties receiving hopper and cleated incline conveyor emptying into a Puleo Vega 50 destemmer from Carlsen & Associates. The other new crush pad is much smaller, operates more slowly and is a result of another notable change at the winery, founded by at- torney and casino developer Don Carano and his wife, Rhonda, in 1981. In the summer of 2017, consulting winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown signed on to bring his expertise and magic touch to the winery's Cabernet Sauvi- gnon program. Deike said she thought Brown would want to use the older but somewhat gentler crush pad that replicates a gravity-fed approach to process- ing but at a large scale. Instead, she said, he walked into the new winery and fell in love with the new small-lot tanks that left space for more rigorous sorting with an optical sorter. Two estate wineries in Sonoma County Red and white winemaking at Ferrari-Carano have been split since 2004, when the red-wine operation opened in an estate vineyard of about 250 acres. The vineyard is near the top of a hill on the northeast side of the Alexander Valley above the River Rock Casino. White winemaking is done at the original winery and tasting room at the north end of the Dry Creek KEY POINTS The investment in quality includes new tanks and an optical sorter. An ongoing project is doubling the size of the winery's cave system. The older facility features a large conveyor on a swinging arm set above a semi-circle of tanks in a gravity-fed system. Ferrari-Carano Red Wine Production Facilities Hilltop wineries offer multiple options for processing red grapes By Andrew Adams TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT The new facility at Ferrari-Carano includes a new, high-volume crush pad on the outside of the building and a smaller setup including an optical sorter inside.