Please forgive any errors in the description of the process. Those who know me well understand that I'm not at my best explaining anything technical or scientific.
After we picked the grapes Matthias drove to the cooperative. Here, he has positioned the trailer onto a rotating platform.
The grapes will be dumped into this receiver pit onto a horizontal lead screw.
The grapes are emptied into the pit which has a 12,000 kg limit. Matthias brought 582 kg of grapes on this day.
The screw begins its work.
The rotors turn the grapes ...
mashes them ...
measures by weight which determines sugar content ...
The computer tells which quality the grapes are. The higher the sugar content, the higher the quality.
This chart shows the quality designation for sugar content. The price increases from top to bottom as quality increases. The price for middle to medium high quality is usually from about 60 cents (Euro) to 80 cents (Euro) per kilogram.
The next stop for the grapes is the masher where they will sit for three to four days. A big tumbler turns them and gets rid of the stalks. These are the stalks from Ljuba's family's grapes.
A lot of stalks accumulate throughout the day.
The trailer will be washed once here, twice at home and then disinfected.
The cooperative contains the winery, wine shop and museum.
This sculpture is on the stairs leading to the museum area.
The fermenting process begins in these huge tanks. This is a dangerous period as gas builds up which can be fatal. Only professionals deal with the grapes now.
The liquid is drained and filtered, and the juice is poured into wooden barrels
like these although some use steel casks nowadays. The barrels are made of oak and are commonly used three or four times in a 12 to 14 month period.
It is already wine, but it can be left indefinitely in the barrels. Although the wine shouldn't be poured into bottles for a few months, the wine can wait a year or 20 years in the barrels. Red wine stays longer in the barrels than white wine. White wine grapes have a shorter process. In the masher the grapes are immediately pressed and then removed; if the process is done right away with red grapes, the vintner will get a white red wine.
Some of the highest quality wine are displayed.
The wine shop where the winery's products are available.
I thought the prices were quite reasonable. Eliminating the middleman certainly saves the consumer money.
Ljuba said the grapes we picked that day will go into a cuvee, or blended wine, like this one.
Some of the winery's products have won awards.
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