Grenache Grape-Crushing

Burdell Cellars got its feet wet making a wine from concentrate and some small batches of plum wines, but when the grape harvest came in early September, we were ready to make some legitimate, grapes-to-glass wine. The first step, naturally, was crushing one hundred pounds of Grenache grapes.

Here's what they look like close-up!

We got some friends together...

...poured some Carnot Cabernet...

...and got to work. Before we crushed the grapes, we had to de-stem them...

...and then it was time to crush. We're not big-time enough yet to have a crushing apparatus, so we improvised.

Once we had crushed all the grapes, we dumped all the juice and skins, along with about ten percent of the stems and seeds, into our fermenter. We dumped a crushed Campden tablet into the juice to sanitize it and let it sit overnight. The next day, we measured the initial sugar content (about 23 Brix) and pH (roughly 3.5). Then, we added activated yeast plus a little yeast nutrient to the fermenter, sealed it with the lid, and stuck in an airlock.

The shade of the wine--from light rosé to dark, tannin-y red--depends on how long you let the juice contact the skins and stems. We're aiming for a "medium-body" red, so we planned for about a 2-week contact time. We also set aside a batch of rosé that we separated from the skins and stems after only a few days. In the next post, I'll talk about the straining process where we removed the skins and stems.