Congratulations on commencing your Rent-A-Row winemaking experience!
Following on from the Picking and Crushing of your grapes, your crushed grapes are now in their fermenter in our winery. We added yeast to the must, and is now fermenting away, turning into wine! As the grapes ferment, carbon dioxide is produced pushing the grape solids (skins and seeds) up to top of the vat, forming a crust. Three times a day, our team walks through the winery and plunges the skins under the liquid to keep the skins wet, extracting colour and flavour from the skins.
Your next visit is for the stage of Pressing Off. We separate wine juice from skins and seeds, using a basket press, and transfer the fermented juice (otherwise known as wine!) into a glass demijohn, where it will sit for the next few months as it continues a secondary fermentation.
Compared with picking and crushing, this workshop is a little shorter (closer to an hour in total), but equally informative and an exciting opportunity to taste your wine now after fermentation and at different stages as it comes off the press, ranging from low in tannin to very tannic.
Pressing should be done a fortnight after your crushing to ensure a minimum of 10 days of skin contact. For example, if you complete the picking and crushing on the 10th of the March, you should aim to press over the weekend of the 23rd or 24th of March.
All pressing bookings will be made through the calendar below. If you would prefer to press off mid-week, please contact us to discuss a time to press your wine. And if you can't make it, let us know and we can handle this stage for you.
Contact: rentarow@shirazrepublic.com.au or (03) 5433 6338.
The pressing stage will conclude the harvest stage of your winemaking. It will sit in Demijohn to ferment and clarify until we revisit it over the winter to add oak. Book into the oak tasting stage via our Rent-A-Row Hub.