2006 Crush pictures

October 4, 2006

Today, they started the crush for the wine they call "Opulence".  I was there with my cousins watching the process and took some pictures to share with all of you.  Kathy

There were lots of bins, two bins high, filled with grapes.

They have good grapes, stems, and some bad grapes in the bins.

This is the sorting table.  At this end, they lift the big bins of grapes up in the air and gently feed them over the conveyor belt.

Here is the big bin of grapes in the air.

The volunteers stand on either side of the sorting table and separate the leaves and bad grapes.

As the process continues, someone has to stand by the grape bin and help the grapes out.

Here is the hard working volunteer, BOB.

The grapes travel down the conveyor belt.  

After leaving the sorting table, the grapes fall out the right side of this picture to the de-stemmer machine.  If you look closely (VERY CLOSELY), you can see the grapes and stems dropping.  The de-stemmer machine separates the grapes from the stems.

I tried taking a close up picture of the grapes dropping but I don't see any grapes falling in this picture.  

The grapes are collected in this area before they traveling on to the tubes.

You can see the grapes in this tube on their way to the stainless tank.

You can see the tube on the floor in this picture and the grapes are being fed into those big stainless tankss behind Steve and Warren.

The stems and bad grapes trickle out of this area and are collected in this bin.  Some grapes end up here but not many so it does a good job of separating.

So ... that was my experience watching the process for about 30 minutes.  All of these folks actually spent the entire day (a very long day) doing this.  They have done several days of "crush" so far and have several more to go.  You really have to love doing this to spend all those days working.  Bob does love it and it makes him smile which makes me smile.