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Do wineries wash their grapes?

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keepitlow

NewBee
Registered Member
Nov 27, 2009
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NE US
Saw a video of a winery that pressed grapes direct from the vineyard. Dirt, leaves, whatever else sticks to the grapes were pressed. Is this standard for wine makers? What about all the pesticides, fungicides they put on the grapes? They never get washed off?

Thanks
 
I guess at the volumes they're dealing with, the foreign matter is such a small percentage that it doesn't affect the wine... I mean, your wheat flour (and most other commercially/industrially produced foodstuffs) have an ALLOWABLE percentage by weight of insect parts and rodent hair and feces... Think about that next time you bite into your hamburger bun :P

I'm way too particular about what I put in my musts, I make sure I dig out all the bugs in the crabapples/pears, I remove the stems (and spiders) from the currants and wild grapes... takes longer to process than a commercial batch but I'm not feeding someone something I wouldn't eat... and if it wiggles and I know it's there, I'm not eating it... If I don't know it's there, well, whatcha gonna do, I'm sure not about to start growing and grinding my own flour.
 
Chevette Girl said:
I guess at the volumes they're dealing with, the foreign matter is such a small percentage that it doesn't affect the wine... I mean, your wheat flour (and most other commercially/industrially produced foodstuffs) have an ALLOWABLE percentage by weight of insect parts and rodent hair and feces... Think about that next time you bite into your hamburger bun :P
Click to expand...

The Big Boys Don't play by the same rules:

http://www.thevintnervault.com/index.php?p=view_product&product_id=3681

Then Again it's big business:

http://www.thevintnervault.com/index.php?p=view_product&product_id=1831

This stuff is for me in my next life...:evil4:
 
My uncle used to make a lot of kit wines and there was one year (late 90's or early 2000's) where the ladybugs were just CRAZY... and we discovered that it made it to his wine juice the year after! It was a red (can't remember what variety), it tasted OK but had this bouquet of ladybug...or at least, that scent they release if you annoy them... and I don't know if there were just that many excreting their scent around the grapevines or whether enough of the silly things went for a ride into the crusher to flavour the wine! It wasn't terrible but the first sniff-sip sure were surprising!
 
Sediment in a fine bottle of Bordeaux is not MOG. The very high end vineyards can afford the labor to sort the grapes and include only the ones that are up to standard, while eliminating most of the other debris. Even in vineyards where MOG ends up in the ferment, that stuff precipitates out during racking and clearing.

In a fine, aged bottle of Bordeaux (or a California Cab) you get sediment forming from the precipitation of tannins. During aging the tannins slowly aggregate and drop out leaving the wine smoother and more refined. This is natural, and in fact, desirable, but it is also why these wines need to age a decade in most cases before they start to reach their peak.
 
Medsen Fey said:
Sediment in a fine bottle of Bordeaux is not MOG. The very high end vineyards can afford the labor to sort the grapes and include only the ones that are up to standard, while eliminating most of the other debris. Even in vineyards where MOG ends up in the ferment, that stuff precipitates out during racking and clearing.

In a fine, aged bottle of Bordeaux (or a California Cab) you get sediment forming from the precipitation of tannins. During aging the tannins slowly aggregate and drop out leaving the wine smoother and more refined. This is natural, and in fact, desirable, but it is also why these wines need to age a decade in most cases before they start to reach their peak.
Click to expand...

Would love to agree with you, however I had this 4-5 years into the vintage and yes it was young, but what body and legs, flavor and finish...You had thought you died and went to heaven? Oh, and it had a piece of stem left inside the bottle to boot....An exquisite Pauillac from IMHO one of the finest producers in the world that does both 1st. and 2nd. ferment in oak as I understand it....

If only I could be a fly on the wall in their Chateau for a day;D
 
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