Winemaking: Tradition and Technology
Artisan wines start in the vineyards. Our growers manage their vineyards to ensure that the yields are kept below 4 tons per acre. This provides us with fruit that is intense in flavors and character.
During the harvest, the grapes are carefully harvested to not damage them and to ensure the best fruit is selected for the making of our wines. Early morning harvest keeps the grapes cool until they reach our winery a few hours later. When the grapes arrive at the winery, we go through an additional hand sorting process to remove any remaining material that doesn’t meet our standards.
Whole berries along with those that go through our crusher de-stemmer are converted into must and flow by means of gravity to our fermenting bins.
We cold soak the must for up to 5 days, allowing an initial fermentation from native yeasts before the addition of cultured yeasts. In order to extract the maximum color and flavors, we punch down the must by hand several times each day until we are ready to press .
The must is gently basket pressed, and the wine is left to settle for a few days before it is racked to the barrels.
Our Pinot Noir will age in French barrels from Rousseau and Seguin Moreau coopers, half of which is new, and half of which is one-year-old. Our Syrah primarily ages in Saint Martin and Seguin Moreau cooperage. These wines also receive an even mix of new and one-year-old barrels.
Our artisan wines will age for 10 to 12 months before hand bottling. We then allow the wines to rest and age for 6 months before their release.
Mobile Bottling: What took days now done in hours
On August 12th Lost Canyon Winery bottled 1400 cases of our 2005 wines. We bottled the Las Brisas and Morelli Lane Pinot Noir as well as the Trenton Station and Stage Gulch Syrah. We have chosen to age the Saralee Pinot Noir and the Alegria Syrah in the barrel for an addition four to six months. We were so pleased with the results from the 2004 Alegria that we decided to repeat the strategy this year in addition to adding Saralee to the program.
This years bottling was a significant departure from our past practice when we decided to hire a mobile bottling line. Until this year we bottled our artisan wines using our own small bottling line. The process would normally take six days to complete, but with the help of the mobile bottlers we completed the work in one day. The pace was fast requiring 10 people to cover each of the stations. The one downside to this year’s procedure was spending less time with our many friends and volunteers. I must admit the saving in time was a major aid to our aging bodies.
The professionalism of Mobile Wine Line very much impressed us. They arrived the previous afternoon and spent time assessing the situation and coordinating our next day’s activities. We arrived the next morning at 7:00 AM only to find that Mobile Wine Line staff had been up since 4:00 am sterilizing and preparing their equipment. We began bottling at 8:30AM and watched their trucks pull out of our driveway by 3:00 PM. We had only a few minor mishaps during the day.
We experienced a Lucy and Desi moment when cases started coming off the truck so fast they began to fall off the conveyor track. Fortunately, we only lost a few bottles and the day was considered a complete success.
