When I arrived at Walnut City Wineworks over a month ago, my eyes immediately fell on WF1 (white fermenter 1, we assume), a 2000+ gallon oak fermenter whose age is unknown, 25+ years maybe. She was one of the most recent additions to the facility after Michael Lundeen, the winemaker, took his post at WCW about 10 months ago. As you saw in the previous post, most of the Pinot Noir fermenting is done in individual one and a quarter ton fermenters—this, on the other hand, has room for maybe 15 tons.
My first week also involved cleaning it. Scrub brushes, hydroxycarb, sulfur-citric, a power washer, and lots of steam, and this big mama went from smelling like slightly funky potential, to offering the softest, most gentle elder oak spice aromas you could ever pull a sniff of. Once it was dry, we sealed the entry points and left it, not really expecting to return to it this vintage—but it was ready, nonetheless.
[Horacio working through the mid-day punchdowns. When fermentation begins, CO2 is released, pushing the grape skins to the surface forming a cap. The cap is remoistened 3 times a day with punchdowns.]
This has been a large harvest, hence my lack of postings; actual tonnage deliveries continue to blow out expectations, day after day, and our massive lot of one and quarter ton fermenters have shrunk to almost nothing, filling up all the available space with Pinot Noir ready to transform. The task of readying cold, late-October fruit sitting passively, for a roiling of busy yeast cultures has become a full-time job, as the warm pump-overs proceed for as many hours in the day as the glycol heater can handle.
[Labels.]
3 days ago, with the arrival of another 20 tons of Pinot Noir from the Robinson Vineyard looming, we started looking again at the woodie fermenter, and this time out of necessity, not just with the prospect of experimentation. The biggest problem we were facing, and by we, I mean Michael, was getting the destemmed fruit into it. The opening at the top, while big, just couldn’t accommodate a forklift dump. We also had no stainless steel hopper to guide the fruit in. Pumping the fruit in is possible, but unrealistic and damaging.
We needed a big ass funnel. A reciprocating saw and an old poly holding tank was the answer.
Right now, about 10 tons of fruit sits inside that fermenter, an incredible sight looking in. Fermentation should start in the next few days as naturally occurring yeasts will bring this mass to life. While the end result will be the same, the process, in comparison to the small fermenters we’ve been dealing with up until this point, will be quite different. Our biggest battle will be cooling rapidly rising temperatures as the immense amount of activity occurring within those walls will jog the mercury skyward if left unchecked. We expect cold glycol panels and cooling pumpovers to occur around the clock for the former and a couple times a day for the latter.
[A view from the top. I sat on a pallet of cases up in the mezzanine as the first two bins were dumped. 20 bins later we were exhausted and Ulises deserved a metal for a masterful feat of forkliftsmanship. He made it out just in time to take his daughters trick-or-treating.]
Time for sleep. ‘Till next time…
-Rob.
