Timelapse of Pressing Grapes in a Wine Press

Описание: This video shows the process of pressing the wine. In red wine production the grapes are crushed, de-stemmed and then left in a container to ferment for between 7 and 25 days. This is called initial fermentation. In our case NO chemicals, yeast or sulphites are added. We use the the yeast which naturally occurs on the skins.
In the initial fermentation there is a high concentration of sugar which causes a rapid fermentation and the wine can look like it is boiling. The gas that is emitted is carbon dioxide. It is in this phase that red wine picks up its colour from the grapes. The longer the wine remains with the skins the more full bodied the wine will be.

As we are in the south of Spain with lots of sunshine the strength or alcohol content is quite high. This batch started with enough sugar to reach 15%.

We normally leave the wine with the skins for over 20 days but I was told that this is much too long so I decided to press the wine after only 7 days. It will be interesting to compare the difference.

The video is a time lapse of the wine pressing process. We are helped by Chelsea from Finland and Kat and Paul from the USA not to mention Shep the dog. All the utensils have to be as clean as possible and we normally wipe surfaces with a rag soaked in sodium metabisulphate to kill any microorganisms.

You can see that we take the wine from the plastic barrels and then put the mixture of skin and juice into the press. The liquid is then taken into the room behind and it is put into a stainless steel container.

No chemicals of any kind are added to the wine. The wine starts to be drinkable around May of the following year or about 8 months after pressing. It is ready for bottling about 1 year later when all the sugar has been converted into alcohol.