{"id":118,"date":"2007-10-22T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2007-10-22T13:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/22\/pressing-merlot\/"},"modified":"2007-10-22T06:00:32","modified_gmt":"2007-10-22T13:00:32","slug":"pressing-merlot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/22\/pressing-merlot\/","title":{"rendered":"Pressing Merlot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>When to press red wine<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When making red wine from grapes, you crush the grapes then ferment them. You leave the skins and pulp in the fermenting wine, for a time, then you press it and leave the solids behind. The amount of time will vary according to the style of wine you&#8217;re making. Three or four days, will yield a light bodied wine. A few weeks will yield a tannic, full bodied wine. A good full bodied wine requires top notch fruit, and since I don&#8217;t have detailed information on how my grapes were grown I decided to make a medium bodied wine, and pressed after a week.<br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\" \/><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pic\/20071020 pressing merlot.jpg\" alt=\"Pressing Merlot in a bladder press on 10\/20\/07\" title=\"Pressing Merlot on 10\/20\/07\" vspace=\"10\" \/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\" \/><br \/>\nHere you can see the bladder press I used to press my Merlot.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Using a bladder press<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I loaded the fermenting wine, pulp skins and all, into a perforated cylinder. At first, &#8220;free run wine&#8221; flowed out of the perforations, leaving seeds, pulp and other debris behind. Later, I applied water pressure to inflate a rubber bladder that squeezed the grapes against the sides of the cylinder and &#8220;press wine&#8221; flowed out. Altogether, I got over eight gallons (30+ liters), which is more than I expected from my 100 lb (45+ kg) of grapes. I was going by the rule of thumb that 100 lb would yield 5 gallons (about 19 liters).<br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\" \/><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/pic\/20071020 pressed wine in carboys.jpg\" alt=\"Pressed Merlot in 5-gallon carboys, press wine in the carboy with the orange handle and free run in the carboy on the right. 10\/20\/07\" title=\"Pressed Merlot in 5-gallon carboys on 10\/20\/07\" vspace=\"10\" \/><br \/>\n<br clear=\"all\" \/><br \/>\nI kept the free run and press wine separate. The carboy on the left, with the orange handle, contains press wine, while the carboy on the right contains free run. It&#8217;s still fermenting, and I expect it to finish in another week. Once it starts to clear, I&#8217;ll rack into fresh containers for aging. At that point, I&#8217;ll have to decide if I want to keep the press and free run separate or combine them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When to press red wine When making red wine from grapes, you crush the grapes then ferment them. You leave the skins and pulp in the fermenting wine, for a time, then you press it and leave the solids behind. The amount of time will vary according to the style of wine you&#8217;re making. Three [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13,41],"tags":[48],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enology","category-equipment","category-winemaking","tag-nad"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/washingtonwinemaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}