Thursday morning I arrive at the winery at 7.30 and Luciano is waiting for me. I am already somewhat nervous – today is the day I close on a new home in Denver, so I am a bit distracted. Luciano greets me warmly, then looks right at me and says: “Emilio, up to this point has been fun and games. Now we get serious. On tank number three, I want you to do the delestage. Get to work.” He sits himself down on a milk crate, crosses his arms and waits for me to get moving. Gulp. Ok, ok, delestage – draining the liquid off the skins into a clean tank, then pumping the liquid back over the solids really forcefully to amplify the extraction process. In this process, the wine is passed trough a rough steel strainer to catch seeds and skins, then pumped over into a clean tank. I set up the huge bucket under the tank valve, with strainer and brush ready, the pump and hoses to get the liquid into the new tank, set up the power, check the closures on the second tank. Everything looks good to me. I turn to look at Luciano, who has not yet said a word – his arms are still crossed but he is watching me intently. I have no idea if I’ve forgotten anything, and he isn’t giving me any hints. I gently open the main valve and beautiful purple liquid begins to pour out through the strainer. (The pictures show Luciano demonstrating this process to me earlier in the week.) Once the bucket has partially filled, I start the pump and adjust it to match the rate of liquid coming out of the tank. The fermenting juice gets a LOT of air this way. 
While the liquid is passing though the strainer, I am supposed to use a traditional old twig brush to sweep the pips and solids out of the stream, and dump them into a bucket as they accumulate. At first, this is easy, but as the liquid lowers the floating cap of solids, a lot comes out really really fast. The first fifteen minutes go by no problem. Luciano is still sitting on his milk crate, having said a few words only to Andrea who came in with a question. All of a sudden, the cap has descended far enough that it is at the mouth of the valve and all of a sudden a shitload of skins and seeds are coming out, the strainer is overflowing, I can’t keep the stuff out of the way fast enough, the scoop I’m using to move the solids from the strainer to a bucket is overflowing with liquid … and I have to close down the valve to get caught up. Shit. Still Luciano says nothing. I continue the straining process, turning the valve and pump on and off as needed until the liquid is all out. I am so nervous while under "the gaze" I nearly soil my trousers. While I managed to get everything separated, it wasn’t very elegant. I now have solids left in the original tank, and the neighboring tank with about 35hl of liquid. I reverse the hoses to pump the liquid back over the solids, climb the ladder and fix the top hose – it can spray like crazy then the pressure is put back on. I turn on the pump, climb back up the ladder and begin spraying the liquid over the solids back and forth. The idea here is maximum contact and maximum agitation, so I never just leave the hose spraying in the same spot. Back and forth, back and forth. Round around the edges. Back and forth, back and forth.
At this point, Luciano climbs up on the catwalk on the other side of the tank to watch. I make even strokes over the surface of the must with the hose in a crosshatch pattern. I get the edges all churned up. I make sure I cover every spot. The CO2 coming off the tank is incredible and I am feeling lightheaded, but I refuse to stop. Finally the hose gurgles and the liquid stops. I climb down, turn off the pump, open the door of the tank to let the rest of the liquid flow into a bucket, and dump the remaining liquid, as well as the solids from the original straining, back into the original tank. It has taken an hour, and the net result is that the exact same wine is back in its original tank with the solids, but a lot of air had been added to the mix and the solids will be better extracted into the liquid. I gather up the dirtied equipment for cleaning, drain the hose pipes, shut off the power.
I step outside the fermentation room door for a breath of fresh air. Luciano follows me out.
“Bravo.”
Comments