making reds

Red wines derive most of their color, flavor, and rich texture from phenolic compounds found in grape skins. In our winemaking practices, we strive to maximize those elements, which help us produce deeply colored wines with depth of flavor. Clonal selection and judicious irrigation in the vineyard produce smaller berries with a high concentration of phenols. Warm fermentation temperatures extract these compounds from the skins and release them into the wine. This gives us the building blocks. Early exposure to oxygen during the fermentation and extended barrel aging transform those raw building blocks into a great wine.

harvest

At Medlock Ames, grapes are harvested by hand. Hand picking ensures little damage is done to the grapes and pickers are able to reject unripe fruit. Grapes are collected as quickly as possible in small 30lb tubs, and delivered to the winery by 11:00 AM. The objective is to prevent any premature fermentation or oxidation by keeping the grapes cool and intact.

shaker

Once harvested and delivered to the winery, the grapes are raised up to the Mezzanine and gently dumped onto a vibrating shaker table for hand sorting. The vibrating table provides a steady flow of grapes into the crusher/destemmer.

crusher/destemmer

The crusher/destemmer separates the stems from the cluster and gently breaks open the berries to release their juice. The must – a combination of juice, skins and seeds – falls onto a conveyor belt where it is sorted again and finally allowed to drop into an open top stainless steel fermenter.

stainless steel tank

After leaving the crusher, the must is cold soaked in stainless steel tanks. This extracts as much color and flavor out of the skins as possible before fermentation begins. Fermentation occurs either naturally, or by adding yeast to the must, which consumes the sugars in the grape juice, and converts them to alcohol. The tanks are fitted with a cooling jacket through which coolant is pumped to export heat from the fermentation. The fermentation's bubbling action pushes the skins to the top of the must. To extract the most flavor from the skins, the cap must be mixed into the fermenting must frequently. Many wineries perform a mechanical pump over. This can shear seeds and skins, contributing a bitter character to the wine. We use a gentler method. Several times a day, a large pneumatic plate slowly pushes the skins back down into the juice. These punchdowns occur throughout the fermentation, which lasts for roughly two weeks.

basket press

After fermentation is complete, the juice is allowed to drain out of the fermentation tanks. The remaining seeds and skins are then transported to the basket press. As its name suggests, the basket press consists of a press plate and a basket, which constrains the skins and releases the juice.

aging

After pressing, the wines are transferred via gravity flow into oak barrels where they will continue to develop, to age, until bottling. Our barrel cellar is situated below-grade, taking advantage of the earth's natural cooling system and creating an ideal environment for aging. Our wines will spend roughly a year and a half to two years here before being put in a bottle with the Medlock Ames label.