Syrah - Day 13 - Pressing the Must

Pressing the wine is quite a flurry of activity after mostly just waiting around for the must to ferment its sugar away. After only doing a few punch downs a day and enough tests to keep abreast of where the wine is in its primary fermentation, it's time for some action. Specifically, it's time to remove the wine (you finally get to call it wine), from the seeds, skins, stems and other detritus from the vineyard that made it into the must. This is accomplished by use of a wine press.

A basket press has not advanced much from previous generations of winemaking. It's basically a wooden big sieve that allows you to apply pressure to the contents. There are more modern options out there such as a bladder press, but for a batch of 400 pounds, that's overkill, plus half the fun of using a press is trying to figure out how to operate the mechanism and taking long enough to enjoy a few beers with your friends.

The basket press works when you start placing the contents of your fermentation tanks into it. A majority of the wine freely runs out of the press. The skins that are left behind still retain lots of wine, so once the press is full of the seeds, skins and whatever else (referred to as pomace), you start to press the contents. The key for pressing is not to press too hard. If too much pressure is applied that seeds crack or break, the wine will pick up too many sharp tannins and taste harsh. The press is designed to get as much of the wine as possible, but not press so hard as to crush the seeds and extract the undesirable tannins.



After the pommace's been pressed once it's called "the cake." The cake is a relatively solid block of skins seeds and grape pulp. However there are still portions to the interior of the cake that retain some wine, so you should stir up the contents and give them another squeeze. You're applying the same amount of force, but your attempting to get the grapes that, for-whatever-reason, didn't have all of the liquid squeezed out, another chance to contribute their wine to the final product. This is where a bladder press really shines, since all of the pomace is squeezed directly against the sieve portion of the press, the pressing process requires fewer time-consuming stirs and represses.

After the wine has been separated from the must, it's time to store it in airtight containers. Carboys are our choice. They are nonreactive, so they won't alter the flavor of the wine like plastic can do. Many vintners go with oak barrels, but seeing as we're relatively new at this and oak barrels are expensive, we're going with glass. Plus if we decide later on that we need to oak our Syrah, we can add oak chips, blocks, staves or balls to our wine and achieve close to the same effect at a much lower cost. Plus there is also the danger of over oaking the wine, which leads to the flavors of the fruit being overshadowed by the flavors of the oak. Oak barrels are also not airtight, they slowly evaporate wine, and therefor need to be regularly topped off. If the barrels of wine are allowed to get too low, the wine can oxidize.

Ideally each carboy should be filled to its neck. This creates the minimum amount of surface area for air to oxidize the wine. Just be aware there needs to be some airspace, since a little more fermentation still needs to occur.

Transferring the wine into the carboys is a pretty straight-forward affair. Capture the wine as it comes out of the press into a bucket and then dump the bucket into the carboy.


The sieve that we have in the funnel is a back up to the

press. It catches many of the particles that we will try and rack out of the wine in the coming months making it so we, hopefully, lose slightly less wine during each rack. Just be sure to clean the sieve when it stops draining well, nobody likes to see their wine spilling from the funnel onto the ground.

Once the last drop of wine has been squeezed out it's time to cleanup and get the wine stowed away. A thorough hose out of the press is necessary if you aspire to avoid the cleaning fee from the brew store renting the press. Be sure to get all the individual slats of the press and all the little corners that grape skins inevitably linger.

Finally, it's time to reward ourselves with Mexican. And don't forget to snag a taste of your wine. It's always good to remind yourself what all the time, labor and expense are for. Plus it's a good way to track the progress of your wine as it ages and under goes further fermentation. Nouveau wines are a worth a festival in many European countries, you might as well have your own private version with the freshest wine you'll ever taste as you clean up. Just don't have too much, the wine's flavor is only going to improve from here, as long as you do things right.

All that's left is ensuring you have the right space to age your wine. Air, heat and light are the enemies of wine. Air oxidizes the wine and gives bacteria the environment they need to survive and possibly flourish. Light will break down many of the desirable flavors you are hoping to develop in your wine and also provide bacteria with a better environment to grow. Notice how most wines sold in the store come in dark brown or green bottles. The reason behind that is prevent light damage to the finished product. Heat also breaks down flavors, it also can help bacteria grown if it's too warm. On the flip side, if it's too cold, the yeast can get killed before it finished the secondary fermentation or the (good) malolactic bacteria before it can break down the harsher acid flavors (though after secondary fermentation is complete, there are some good reasons to chill your wine). My garage is a little on the cold side, but we will be monitoring the temperature and make adjustment as needed.

Data on the must at time of pressing:
32 gallon: 1 Brix, 65 degrees F
20 gallon: .5 Brix, 64 degrees F
5 gallon: .25 Brix, 61 degrees F