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PATENTED
NEW
WINE
PRESS TECHNOLOGY
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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.
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