Notes From The Winemaker

03.22.06 Winery Equipment Plans 2006

If you run a small business you know what I am talking about - you wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night with a hundred things racing through your mind, asking yourself "what is it going to take to make this happen?" - whatever "this" is at the moment.

At the moment, for me "this" is completing the move of the winery from Shingle Springs to Sonoma. This process started just before harvest last year and I was unable to complete it before the rains set in for the winter. The rain all along has been the biggest issue with the Shingle Springs winery - there is no pavement around the work area, and once the ground gets wet no forklift or truck can get in.

So I still have four tanks, an open-top fermenter, several T-bin fermenters, a bunch of barrels and some cased goods that need to be moved. The tanks and barrels are full of wines that need to be sold in bulk. Assuming that it stops raining someday soon, getting the bulk wine sold is the rate-limiting step in the overall process.

But once I get the tanks empty and clean, getting them moved is a non-trivial proposition. Two of the tanks are floating-head types, and a third is covered with an old corrupt insulating foam. The former have to be disassembled, transported intact and re-assembled in Sonoma. The latter is going to need to be sandblasted to remove the foam, and refit with new stainless steel port terminations before I can set it up in the new winery.

And then setting these tanks up in the new winery is going to be interesting. I am sharing the facility, and the two winery operations have already established their own working footprints in the space. Bringing in these new large pieces is going to be disruptive, and also will require some extra expense for plumbing and catwalks.

On top of this, I have an older tank press that I started to refit last year, but ran out of time during harvest and then out of weather. It is going to need to be sandblasted and repainted inside, then fit with a new bladder and controls before harvest this year.

Finally, I am thinking about the new tank space I need for the coming vintage. Last year the anomalously short Pinot Noir crop was a bit of a blessing as the low tonnage allowed me to conduct all my ferments in T-bins. That is not going to be an option if we have a normal-sized crop this year. I need some new and larger fermenters just for Pinot production.

In addition, I expect more Rhone grapes off our Estate vineyard in 2006 than we had last year. I can control this volume through crop-thinning and grape sales, but only to a degree. I would not have trouble selling Grenache and Mourvedre, and perhaps not much trouble selling Counoise and Tannat. However, the Syrah market has been soft for several years now and I expect it to remain so.

Last month I spoke with several stainless steel fabricators that supply the wine industry about the possibility of building some square 3-ton fermenters for us this year. Every one of them gave me a delivery date AFTER harvest. Holy shite! It seems that everyone in the wine industry who was caught short on tank space last year has already booked the fab shops for this year. I would not have imagined that 7 months of lead time was too little.

This has me thinking very seriously about another option - oak fermenters. Very traditional, but open-top oak fermenters are very a la mode these days for production of ultra-premium wines. And exposure to the new wood during fermentation does make a positive difference, particularly with varietals like Pinot and Syrah (and Sangiovese and a few others I am not making). I believe we have fruit that merits this treatment, but I question whether we can support a bottle price that justifies the extra expense.

The problem with oak fermenters is twofold: first they are more difficult than stainless to maintain and sanitize, and second they are consumable - they need to be replaced every three years or so, for the tank to contribute beneficial extractables to the wines during fermentation.

These questions are moot until I hear back from the cooperages -- will they build tanks to my specifications for a reasonable price, and can they deliver them by harvest?

posted 3/22/2006 05:12:00 AM