How do you operate a small winery?

First you get a license...

Your choice. What kind of wine do you want to make?

You use a racking wand and incrementally lower it until you start seeing sediment moving through the clear vinyl hose. Stop the siphon or pump at that instant. Rack what's left into a 5 gal carboy and let it settle again..., repeat.

I'd like to develop a float that the hose fits into that stays on top of the liquid and keeps the hose just under the surface. It has to fit through the 2" hole in stainless 55 gallon drums.

Wine for sale should be filtered regardless what the purists claim The purists aren't going to be buying that much of your wine anyway.

In northern climates, you can open the fermentation or wine storage area to the night air. A week of consecutive below zero nights will take care of cold stabilization. Otherwise, you get a walk in cooler/freezer. If you can't forklift the tank into the freezer, you put an empty tank in there and pump wine to it. After stabilization, pump it through a filter on its way to the bottling tank.

Some small wineries don't cold stabilize reds, but you never know the sophistication of your customers and some may prefer chilled reds. And then you may get complaints.

The best source are the small wineries in your area. Be sure to buy some of their wine when you visit and pick the winemaker's brain. Be open about your plans.

Enjoy.

Thanks for the reply. I have tried to pick the winemakers' brains here in the Texas Hill Country, but to no avail. Maybe I had back luck, or maybe here in Texas the wineries are not used to showing their customers around. All you get to see is a tasting room. I am very disappointed in that regard.

Franco wrote "I'd like to learn how to extrapolate that to the hundreds-or-thousands-of-gallons scale."

Hi Franco, I suggest you get a job in a winery. Best way to learn how to do something is to do it. I once heard how to make a million in the winery business. Start with two million.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

Franco,

I'm a bit surprised at your experience. I've found that most wineries I visit welcome questions in more detail, and I try to visit a brewery and/or a winery on every vacation I take. I've also had excellent experiences at wine festivals, where often times the winemaker is in attendance and is very happy to talk about their vocation with a semi-educated questioner rather than pouring samples for the masses. I've managed to arrange to purchase small quantities of pressed juice (white varietals) at venues such as this. If you are not having any luck with the server in a tasting room, ask to speak to one of the winemakers. They are the people who can best answer your questions. I have found that by being polite, appreciative, and interested, that it is not hard at all to get a wealth of information about the vineyard and their winemaking practices.

Cheers, Ken

Yeah, I have thought about trying to work for a winery. That would be ideal.

That has been my experience up here in the North too; if you tell the tasting room person what you are after 9 times out of 10 the winemaker is only too happy to oblige if thwey are onsite. It depends on the time of year I'm sure, if you get them in the middle of bottling or at the harvest there aren't enough hours in the day so that could be all that was wrong.

People up here don't seem to see you as potential competition, they see you as a fellow winemaker with an issue. If winemakers in the Northeast are that agreeable I would expect that Southern winemakers would be even more accommodating if that's possible.

I may just fall into the right people accidentally but I doubt that.

Presque Isle Wine Cellars in Northeast PA caters to the small scale professional winemaker. Call them and ask them to ask Doug if he knows of any small wineries in your area that might be able to put you on the right path.

They have a huge selection of books, they can probably point you in the right direction there too. I'm thinking you might like the U of Missouri book better. I'll look through what I have here and see if I have something more practical for you. I got most of my technical books from Presque Isle and get most of my supplies there.

As to racking from a tank you already have good advice, you drain 3/4 of the tank first then start inching the hose down.

Joe

Congratulations! Your Hill Country is having a bit of an explosion in vineyards/wineries. There is a web site for winery start-ups in Texas, and I think it's run by the state dept of agriculture. It's worth a look.

Next time you visit, ask to speak to the winemaker. If he/she is on premise, they will usually come right out. Be respectful of their time, though.

Maybe there is a bit of a difference in winemaking culture between Texas and other regions such as the the Pacific Northwest. While it is true that Texans tend to be corteous, it's also true that there isn't much of a winemaking tradition over here. For example, when I talk to people who live in Washington State, it seems that everyone is familiar with what a grapevine trellis looks like, and everyone seems to have an uncle who "worked for such-and-such vineyard for over 30 years". Here in Texas, it seems that most people have never seen a vineyard.

I'll give you another example. Last summer I drove to Fredericksburg (the "heart" of the winemaking region in Central Texas) and I knocked on every vineyard's door to ask if they would sell me a pail of grapes after the harvest. Every single one of them reacted like they have never been requested that before, and nobody offered to sell to me. They all raised their eyebrows when I mentioned that I was a home winemaker trying to make a 5-gallon batch.

Enough of the ranting. Ahh, tomorrow I will be in San Francisco enjoying the cool weather.

Franco - apologies if my response seems discourteous, it is not meant to be so. But I think that you might start by taking some winemaking classes - US Davis offers a complete progoram, even a certificate for distance learners. And I really like the suggestion of "work in a winery". Nothing teaches like experience. If Margalit's book seems technical to you, then you probably need to take those classes. While the book does indeed contain a lot of chemistry- it is all relevant and important. If you intend to have a commercial winery, you'll need to understand that chemistry - and a lot more.

There is a huge leap between small scale home winemaking and commercial winemaking. Like many here, I lived and worked in a winery many years ago. I now have a small homewinemaking operation here at home (northern California); 200 vine vineyard and a self-contained winery. In any given year, between my own grapes and sometimes purchased grapes, I crush somewhat over 1/2 ton. But compared to even a small commercail winery, that is tiny. There are a lot of logistical issues to contend with in managing a commercial winery, all of which have a bearing on the quality (and sale-ability) of the wine produced.

I really recommend you take the Davis courses, or similar, to get you started. I've taken some of their vineyard management classes - and they are outstanding.

Thanks Ric. The Margalit book is great and it is not too technical for me. I have two engineering degrees and the chemistry in the book is quite easy to follow. It just has the wrong title. I mean, it only has two pages that deal with a winery floorplan and workflow, which is the subject that I want to learn. Everything else is about the theoretical aspects of winemaking, which I am already somewhat acquainted with. It doesn't talk about the different fermentation vessels, presses, crushers, pumps, etc. I am curious about how to deal with practical problems such as how to transport thousands of gallons from one part of the winery to another. Or how to cork thousands of bottles.

I will look into the UC Davis courses.

Where is your vineyard? I will visit the Anderson valley this weekend.

While I have not yet done so myself, most people I know that are close the business have told me the best way to get your foot in the door is to volunteer to work a crush. That way you'll get to see the process from vines to fermenting tanks, and most importantly you'll make some contacts that you can run to when you have problems or questions...

Keep in mind that some winemakers will be more than happy to have an extra free set of hands working, while others may see you as just an inexperienced person who will require too much time to train or supervise...but I imagine you'll find one of the former fairly quickly...

damn good advice CJ.i am going to do that here in northeast ohio,just for the experience.never thought of that,damn good thought.