The Cellar

The cellar has 4 main areas.

1. The cool room where the grapes in their crates are rapidly cooled down to 5 degrees C

2. The fermentation area where the grapes are destemmed and sorted by hand on a conveyer before crushing, and where the must ferments in 12,000 litre open concrete fermenting tanks, small 500 litre plastic bins or 500 litre oak casks

3. The malolactic fermentation area where secondary fermentation occurs in the barrel, and

4. The barrel maturation area where the wine matures over a 22 month period before bottling

These 4 areas are isolated from each other and can be cooled separately with a complex air-conditioning system to ensure the correct conditions for the individual process required.

The cellar is constructed on 3 levels. The 14 x 12000 litre concrete fermentation tanks have been constructed on a raised plinth 3.2m from the floor of the fermentation area. This allows the press to be moved under the tank outlet so no pumping of fermented wine takes place while in contact with skins or pips. The barrel cellar floor is 1.5m lower than the fermentation area so the pressed wine flows under gravity into the settling tank before it reaches the barrels.

The procedure

We practice minimal intervention in our winemaking techniques. No cultured yeast is used at all. The yeast that causes the fermentation of the grape juice comes entirely from the skins of the grapes and the atmosphere of the farm. We believe these yeast make up part of our terroir, and as their populations vary from year to year, they will further help to express the conditions in the vineyard for each particular vintage.  A further benefit is that the indigenous yeast tend to ferment more slowly and produce lower alcohol levels.  They also have diverse populations and produce more complex wine.

Each block is vinified separately, and only blended with other blocks when we can properly judge their quality.

Harvesting is done by hand in the early morning, starting at first light (5.00am). The prevailing temperature is around 12 degrees C. The cellar is located in the middle of the lower vineyard so the grapes do not travel any distance once harvested. The harvested bunches arrive at the cellar door in small crates on pallets and are immediately placed in the cool room still in their small crates where they are cooled to 5 degrees C. When cool they are carried crate by crate to the destemmer and (unless they are chosen to be fermented as whole bunches) the grapes are carefully separated from their stems. The whole grapes are dropped onto a conveyor where they are sorted by hand. In the sorting process any unripe grapes, any stems or other unripe matter such as leaves are removed and discarded. The perfect grapes pass through a soft crusher which is set to simply break their skins and they drop into a bin. If the batch is a small batch to be fermented separately it will stay in that bin and go through the whole primary fermentation process in it. If the batch is a larger batch the crushed grapes are elevated using a peristaltic elevator and drop into one of the concrete fermentation tanks.

Fermentation starts slowly. As the natural yeast feed on the sugar in the grape juice they multiply and as they burn the sugar, turning it into alcohol and complex esters the must starts to warm up. The reason the grapes are cooled initially is to allow this process to start slowly and to take place under control over a long period. We use individual cooling plates attached to the cooling system to control the temperature of the must.

During the fermentation process all the tanks are punched down by hand at least once every 6 hours day and night to ensure good skin contact.

Maceration. All wine undergoes extended contact with the skins, in its fermentation vessel, in a sealed oxygen free environment before pressing. The actual period varies from 3 to 6 weeks, and is decided on by regular monitoring of the must.

Pressing is either done in a small wooden hand operated press or a larger bladder press depending on the batch size. The pressed wine settles for 24 hours in a sealed tank before being transferred to barrel.

The whole process is labour intensive and we can truly say all our wine is “hand-made”.