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WINEMAKING TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT 32 WINES&VINES July 2018 the rooms being so well sealed and ventilated was that Starr and associate winemaker Evyn Cam- eron were able to shut the doors during the wildfires in October 2017 and keep the ambient smoke away from the wine. Swapping out the standard filter media in the ventilation system for combi- nation HEPA and charcoal ele- ments, they were able to clean the smoke from the winery air in six hours, Starr said. The winery has numerous win- dows, some placed high up on the walls so that ambient light pro- vides enough illumination for most normal daytime cellar work. In addition, when interior and exterior doors are opened, there is a clean line of sight through the whole building and out to the es- tate vineyard stretching to the Napa River. Even though most of the crush operations happen inside the cen- tral room, the contractors laid a wide concrete and gravel drive- way around the building, large enough to allow a mobile bottling line, tractor-trailers picking up case goods and large fire vehicle to circumnavigate the winery when necessary. Crush operations inside The Crocker & Starr crush equip- ment is light and mobile enough that Cameron and cellar master Samantha Johnson can roll the pieces into place in the middle of the winery's central bay in less than 15 minutes using only their muscles and a manual pallet jack. The whole operation takes place inside to keep the fruit cool, and the doors are closed to keep fruit flies and yellow jackets at bay. Starr said she intentionally se- lected the pieces of the processing chain from multiple suppliers. "We spread ourselves around instead of having one full complete sys- tem," she said. "I didn't want to compromise one piece just to have one great, fantastic price that I might have gotten from a single manufacturer. So I asked some of the suppliers if they would give me stand-alone prices, and they were pretty cooperative." Vineyard crews deliver the grapes in stackable 40-pound boxes by API Kirk containers and 4-feet-by-4-feet Macrobins. Then, for red-wine grapes the flow goes up one elevator, down through a destemmer, over a shaker table for sorting and then up another eleva- tor to the tops of stainless-steel tanks for fermentation. The first elevator, a 4500 model by Diemme Enologia, lifts the whole bunches from a grape- receiving hopper supplied by Col- lopack to the top of a Bucher Vaslin Delta Oscillys destemmer, which opens wide for mainte- Cabernet Franc and Malbec age in combination new and seasoned French oak.