Burst Bubble

Disaster struck today (well, maybe “Disaster” is overly dramatic…) – the bladder on our main white wine press blew out while pressing a load of Chardonnay grapes. Modern wine presses operate under air-pressure; you can imagine a large, perforated tube with a balloon inside. We load this tube with grapes, then inflate the balloon, which squeezes them gently against the sides, allowing juice to run out through the perforations.

This is a really good way to extract clear, high-quality juice from the grapes with a minimum of tearing of the skins and minimal release of color and tannin compounds into the wine. However, just like any balloon, these membranes are subject to being torn, punctured, or just wearing out over time.

This is what happened today; it is hard to tell whether there was some imperfection in the membrane itself, or if a sharp object (such as a wire or a clip from the trellis system,) started a tear that eventually caused the whole bag to blow open. This is a pretty good tear, nearly 8 feet long parallel to the long side of the membrane – I’ve not seen one this big for a long time. It is much more common to get a puncture or pinhole that can be patched up pretty quickly. Replacing the bladder is a messy, sticky, and hot job if you have to do it in the middle of the day – you have to climb inside the press and undo about a thousand bolts (it seems like,) and then pull it back out the manhole, clean and lube the inside of the press, and reattach the replacement. Luckily we have a replacement on hand, but now we are running without a backup until we can get another replacement sent over from France (at about $7000-9000!!) So we have to be really careful and hope that we make it through the rest of the white wines, in particular. We have about 420 additional tons of white grapes (other than late harvest) yet to come in, so we need to get a bit more mileage out of this press!

So far we have taken in the following tonnage: Chardonnay, 297.72 tons. Pinot Gris, 19.88 tons. Muscat Blanc, 49.23 tons. Sauvignon Blanc, 40.23 tons.

Reds will be a bit further off – maybe late next week at the earliest. I think that Zinfandel and Tempranillo will be likely to be the first red wine varieties that come in.

For more harvest photos, click this link.