7Springs

Pinot Noir clones 459 and 115 were ready and picked by Friday 17 February 2012 and the grapes arrived at the cellar in good condition!

Workers are ready and all excited to start sorting the grapes!

Getting the de-stemmer ready. This machine removes the berries from the stems of the grape bunch. The stems get discarded and the berries get pressed before it goes into the fermentation tank.

 

The grapes are always handled with care, from picking to the last sorting on the sorting table. Here any grapes that are not up to standard will be discarded.

 

 

 

At the sorting table good care is taken that not a single substandard grape slips through those fingers.

 

Grape pickers and grape sorters alike enjoy being in the vineyards and around the cellar, doing what they do best, working with the grapes!

 

“Let me take that one out! It’s not good enough to go to the tank.” Winemaker, Riana, making sure that only the best Pinot Noir grapes end up in the tank.

 

The discarded stems of the grape bunches are not forgotten, they get taken away to the compost heap where they will then get recycled back into the vineyards.

All crates are carefully washed, rinsed and stacked till the next picking.

 

 

Young, but perfect Pinot Noir grapes just off the sorting table and on the way to the tank. Before going into the tank our grapes go through a mash-cooler. This brings the temperature of the crushed grapes down to 15 degrees Celcius before they go into a process called cold soaking.

 

Grapes and juice, called the must, in the tank, ready to start natural fermentation after three days of cold soaking. After the alcoholic/first fermentation is done you now have wine. Next is the malolactic/second fermentation and from there our wine will be transferred to 2^nd and 3^rd fill French Oak barrels  where it will spend approximately 10 months.

 

 

 

 

See you soon with an update on our Chardonnay!