Clos de la Tech winery in Woodside, California
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PATENTED NEW
WINE PRESS TECHNOLOGY
 
 
 
   
     
 
When new technology improves the ancient method, we use it. Ancient wine presses were giant wood cages pressed together with levers sometimes the size of telephone poles. These presses squeezed the last 25% of the wine from the grape “pumice,” but they were not gentle. Typically, pressed wine is considered to be rougher and less desirable than so-called free-run wine. At Clos de la Tech, we invented and patented a wine press which is very much like the French Melior coffee pot. In this case, the cap of the wine is pressed gently through the wine (filtering the wine beautifully and naturally) and squeezed against the bottom of the tank with 20 tons of pressure.

Since the pumice is not disturbed (cracking the bitter seeds), our experiments show that the pressed wine is not inferior to the free-run wine. The wine tanks are special in that they have to be round within 1/16 of an inch in order to allow the plunger to work properly. It used to take Valeta and me half a day per tank to press wine using our old-fashioned Italian basket press. Last year, we pressed 20 small tanks of wine at an average rate of one tank every 42 minutes. Our press is not only gentle but efficient.