Digging Out Red Tanks

Digging out a red tank after fermentation is an incredible workout! As you can see, it's a team effort. Our red wines are fermented as whole grapes. Over the course of the fermentation, the grapes break down giving the fermenting wine it's color, flavor, texture and aroma. When all the sugar has been converted to alcohol and CO2, it's time to separate the wine from the skins. We do this by pumping any liquid out to a new tank and "pressing" the rest of the wine from the skins that are left behind. Getting the skins out of the tank is one of the most laborious and dangerous jobs in the winery. It's very important to make sure the tank is well ventilated, it doesn't take much residual CO2 to do serious damage to a worker. It takes a couple of people digging from the outside(Alfonso and Mila pictured), one person shoveling from the inside (Hudson pictured) and a couple more people moving bins of skins into the press. About an hour later, you have a brand new tank of wine. All of our grape "waste" is composted and reused in the vineyard. Not much goes to waste around here. After this tank is finished, we only have about 90 more to do! (We haven't told Hudson that yet....)