My dad and his buddies – we have a growing fan-base of wine-making help – took the day off to buy our grapes up in Philly from Lenny Procacci. We’re aiming for a bumper-crop this year: we bought 6 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon and 14 of Sangiovese grapes, which we’ll blend together to make our “Super Tuscan” blend. We also got 20 cases of Red Zinfandel to make our “Original Zin”, bringing us to a grand total of 40 cases.

My dad took some great pictures of the process, which I thought I could use to explain it here. First we wash the grapes, then we crush and de-stem them, leaving them soaking with the skins (the grape skins are what give wine its color) in the primary fermenting tubs. Surprising fact: the only difference between red and white wine is that red wine ferments WITH its skins, white without. When I was a foolish young lad, I always thought that the green grapes you see at the grocery make white and the purple make red: not so, as it turns out. Since we prefer reds, we let the skins commingle a while in the juice.

This first step is accomplished with the help of the appropriately named “crusher/de-stemmer” – a smart little farm machine that knows how to kick out stems and seeds into a garbage bag and sort the skins and  that tasty, tasty juice into the primary fermenters.

After a week or so of initial fermentation –the particular quality of the grapes, their sugar content, and the weather dictate how long it takes – it’s time for step two, the press (device pictured above).  This is used to squeeze every last drop of juice out of those grape skins, leaving just juice to put into the secondary fermenters. 

We’ve always used a series of glass vessels in different sizes, from 3 to 14 gallons each, for the secondary fermentation, but this year we made an investment in “The Twins”: two large, beautiful, stainless-steel fermenters with floating tops (to keep the air away from the precious juice). They cut down on the back-breaking labor in a big way, so we can now keep upping our production over the years.  That’s what we call “scalability” here at TradeKing.  ;)

Fermentation is a fascinating process, too. We go for natural fermentation versus adding yeast. If you buy quality grapes with enough sugar content, and the weather and production environment cooperate, you can let that sugar basically cook itself naturally and turn into alcohol over time. This year’s unusually warm weather made fermentation go a lot faster than usual, but JD has also had cold weather hit early and stall the proceedings, only to have fermentation kick back in come springtime. Low-sugar grapes and cold weather can drive you to adding yeast, or you can just bide your time until a little warmth eases that natural fermentation along. So far, we’ve always been able to keep it all natural.

Right now we have 110 gallons fermenting in the Twins. After we filter it for the first time in a month or so, it should come down to about 100 gallons of wine, or 500 bottles’ worth, after spending some time in freshly toasted American Oak barrels. We were able to toast our hard work this year with a few bottles from last year’s stash – the first time we’ve had one batch of wine last through the year until the next batch.

Salut! Here’s to this year’s new wine, and drinking our own vintage all year long.  I’ve had a fair amount of wine in my day, and ours is definitely my favorite.

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