THE PRESSING

20 SETT.
It was a fruitful day, literally and figuratively. We started out with a meeting with our winemaker (future) and our agronomist and decided what wines to plant initially on our 3 hectares in november. 1/2 hectare of 6 different varieties to make something special and unique from this area. I will let you know as soon as possible which rootstock we are able to procure. We then made our 1st pressing of grapes! They had been fermenting, as you may recall if you have been following along, for over a week and the sugar level today was 0, so all the grapes' sugars were fermented into alcohol. We had to carry the must about 50 meters to our neighbor's shed where the "torchio" was located (or press in "american"). We probably pressed about 200 liters or a bit less of some really fine tasting juice which now will repose a bit in stainless steel before getting a chance to rest a bit more in barrique (french oak, of course). We then had the bright idea, actually Raffaele had the idea, to make a sort of Ripassa by pressing the not completely fermented must (remember my second harvest?) through the solids we just pressed and then continue a clean fermentation without skins and stems etc. This will save us cleaning the neighbor's press a second time, and should make a fine addition for our 1st 200 liters. Our hope after all this work is to have a full barrel of 225 liters with some left over for topping off when evaporation occurs. Then we will press the vin santo and put it in the stainless steel after the red is in barrique...
Much fun and excitement...
I get an early start tomorrow for puppy viewing and cheese.. I may be out of touch for the weekend, but here are the initial pix of the pressing.. we added a special filtering as you may see with spaghetti strainers! Ciao. buon weekend di nuovo! dwight