Press Day
I don't know how long it takes other's to press. If someone knows a way to make it happen any quicker I'd surely like to know about it. Pressing is hard work.
It took us from 08:00 to 17:00 to move the equipment from the cellar (eight steps down) to the patio, siphon easily available wine from the skins, transport fermenters to press, load Cab Franc, press, press some more, press pretty darn hard, unload, and repeat with the process with the Carmenere, and reverse the load out.
And wash everything before and after, of course.
We used the All In One free run tube and mesh bag in the fermenter along with vacuumpumpman's tubing and valves. It did a great job. It pulled approximately nine gallons of free run wine out of the Carmenere fermenter in about ten or fifteen minutes. The Cab Franc produced roughly the same proportionally.
One thing to note: Carmenere is a tenturier grape. The color is heavy. It stained the tubing. It is likely that we will replace the tubing with new before the fall crush.
Then off to the press.
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We layered rice hulls along with the Cab Franc skins and remaining pulp. A scoop of hulls to a couple or three scoops of skins. We pressed hard, tasting as we went. Then broke for lunch. After lunch we pressed again. From about two thirds through to end there was an appreciable increase in tannin. But at no time was the tannin level objectionable. So we pressed as hard as we could. The pomace was literally dry to the touch. The pomace was placed back into the fermenter and transported back to the cellar.
The Carmenere press was pretty much a cookie cutter of the Cab Franc. The one difference was that, while the tannin levels were in line with the Cab Franc, the pomace did not come out nearly as dry. Call it damp. Not sure why, but with twice as much skins and pulp maybe the little press was simply at the edge of what it could do.
The yield: 13 1/2 gallons of Carmenere, almost 8 gallons of Cab Franc. Of course, there are heavy solids in all of the carboys so there will be some loss on first racking. Still, the initial yield is somewhere under thirteen pounds of grapes to the gallon.
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False wine:
The pomace from the Carmenere was placed back into the fermenter. The Cab Franc pomace was added to that. Ten gallons of water and twenty pounds of sugar went in next. Some liquid pectic enzyme, in an attempt to extract more color from the spent skins, and some Go Ferm to promote a quick start to the fermentation was added to the container. No yeast was added.
Two hours later I punched down the cap.
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