pressing hard

I've never found it necessary to break up the pomace with my bladder press. I just leave it on overnight under pressure. That's usually good for at least 5 gallons extra out of a ton of grapes.

Your problem with color is probably because of the Pinot Grigio. This varietal has significant color in the skins - enough that the juice will often have a distinct copper/orange color. If you treat the juice _before_ fermentation to remove the color (PVPP), you'll likely end up with a white wine. Post fermentation treatment doesn't work.

Tom S

I only had about 60 pounds of grapes so every drop was precious.

I've found that breaking up the pomace and repressing releases quite a bit of juice (quite a bit being relative).

I didn't kmow that about Pinot Gris and pre-treatment. I'll remember that next time I get some Pinot Gris grapes. I guess that's why they call it Gris eh!

Dan

Tom, you said you let the skin in the bladder press overnight to get more juice. No problem with fruit flies, oxydation, spoilage ? How much free SO2 you use to protect the pomace ?

Thanks, Séb

Spoilage and oxidation aren't a problem as long as the fruit is free of rot and mold. I don't sulfite my juice prior to fermentation, but I do chill it to allow it to settle thoroughly and rack the clear juice into fermenters. The juice turns brown under these conditions, but all the brown stuff drops out during fermentation leaving the wine pale green after sulfiting and with less potential to brown later because it's already finished with that. It's been reported that wines that are aggressively sulfited at crush and heavily protected from oxygen in their youth have a higher tendency for "pinking" later. They are also harder to induce ML in.

I haven't found fruit flies to be much of a problem when leaving the press out overnight. They don't like the cold nights during the crush season.

Tom S