Punching down in commercial quantities?

[Metric farmer]

I'm curious, in a commercial operation does someone literally punch down the fruit 2 - 3 times a day, or is there another method employed to facilitate this?

 

[crushday]

Depending on the size of the operation, there are many methods of cap management. Check out this article: https://wordonthegrapevine.co.uk/ca...e beginning of,and arguably more elegant wine.

 

[Jim Welch]

I’ve seen video of very large vats, about 25’ in diameter with a motorized 4 bladed stirrer stirring the must

 

[mainshipfred]

I'm curious, in a commercial operation does someone literally punch down the fruit 2 - 3 times a day, or is there another method employed to facilitate this?

All the wineries in my area so physically punch down 2-3 time a day. On occasion I'll help and it does wear you out. I can do 4 or 5 but that's about it.

 

[Neb Farmer]

I've seen wineries in Washington that manually punch down caps when the wine is in 'dumpster-size' bins, and I've seen them doing 'pump-overs', too, where the must is pumped up from the bottom of the bin and flows up to the top of the cap. But one way or the other the cap is kept wet and the must gently cycled.

 

[Nebbiolo020]

It is usually done manually we do our fermentations in Macrobins and will do punch down in the bins 3x a day with a steel punch down tool.

I like a lot of punch downs to minimize risk of microbial cap growth and to extract more color and tannins for longer aging.

 

[EastsideWinemaker]

I saw that process in middle size winery in Eastern Washington (about 160K gallons of overall tank capacity). Must is fermenting in forklift-able SS cubicals, about 5 x 4 x 4 feet. And they have +/- 30 - 50 of them. And every morning winemaker and hist assistance started from punch down (assistance) and sugar/temp measurement (wine maker). Most likely, the same happened in the middle of the day as well.

 

[Nebbiolo020]

I saw that process in middle size winery in Eastern Washington (about 160K gallons of overall tank capacity). Must is fermenting in forklift-able SS cubicals, about 5 x 4 x 4 feet. And they have +/- 30 - 50 of them. And every morning winemaker and hist assistance started from punch down (assistance) and sugar/temp measurement (wine maker). Most likely, the same happened in the middle of the day as well.

One of the wineries I worked for years ago had 4 big open top round stainless fermentation tanks we had one of those drivable lifts and would get on it and use a steel punch down tool. We also did some fermentations in macrobins at that winery all white wines were fermented in barrels or stainless fermentation barrels in the barrel room.

Here’s a photo of the tank. That’s Syrah in it.

Above second photo is Merlot at the new winery last year prior to crush. Best fruit I have seen in a long time 2023 was amazing.