Atlas Peak - Sorting Spring Mountain Cabernet

Today was supposed to be all about winemaking and what goes on in a tank filled with Cabernet Sauvignon. Then I realized that I skipped over how the grapes get in the tank.

All of our grapes that go into making Atlas Peak wines are hand harvested into 1/2-ton macro bins. These are bins that measure 4'x4'x2' and can hold about 1,000 pounds of grape clusters. The bins are then brought to the winery on a flatbed truck soon after being hand harvested in the field. Different than Pinot Noir that is usually harvested during the cool night hours, Cabernet can be harvest during the day. By the time the Cabernet harvest for Atlas Peak begins, fall has arrived, and the nighttime temperature as well as the daytime temperature is cooler. Cooler nighttime temperatures mean cool grapes arriving at the winery.

Once the grapes arrive at the winery they are placed in a hopper and they begin their trip to the de-stemmer where the berries are removed from the stems (hence the name). The de-stemmed Cabernet Sauvignon grapes are then dropped onto a sorting belt where the berries are sorted through by hand to remove any small stem pieces that broke off in the de-stemming process. This ensures that only the whole berries, broken berries, seeds, and juice end up in the tank where the grapes and juice will be transformed into wine. For me the stems are bitter and harsh in flavor. Because we do not want to extract these textures into the wine, we take this extra step to remove as many stem pieces as possible.

On Tuesday we will talk about what happens in the tank next.

Darren Procsal
Winemaker
Atlas Peak