Gentle Handling
How We Do It
We are maniacal about quality and it starts with the grapes that we make our wines from. When sorting grapes fresh from the vineyard we have a rule, "if you wouldn't eat the grape don't make wine with it." We hand sort every grape from every grape cluster using modern conveying sorting tables. It's a labor intensive process but we wouldn't have it any other way.
Once sorted the grapes are run through a gentle de-stemmer which removes the grapes from their stems. In some vintages we may allow a percentage of whole grape clusters into our frementors which can impart a nice spice-box aroma and lift the flavor profile. In some years when the stems are too green we complete a 100% de-stem to avoid harsh green tannin flavors. Depending on the vintage some of the grapes are left intact as whole berries while a percentage are gently crushed to release precious juice.
