This year’s harvest gave the winemaking team at Rack & Riddle Custom Wine Services in Healdsburg a chance to test some new machinery that allowed them to press and crush the grapes in the vineyard, something only done in a few European wine regions.

The goal of the project is to get the freshest possible juice into the tanks in the least amount of time, cutting down on problems ranging from highway traffic to long wait times at the winery before the fruit can finally be processed.

The roughly 25 tons of chardonnay grapes harvested from the Thomson Vineyards on Sept. 3 will serve as the base to be fermented into sparkling wine and also help determine whether this could be a viable new technique in American winemaking.

Read the article here:https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/business/grapes-crushed-right-in-the-vineyard-sonoma-county-winery-tries-something/

BILL SWINDELL
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

An overhead shot of the Rack & Riddle winemaking team conducting a grape crush for sparkling wine at the Thomson Vineyard in Napa County on Sept. 3, 2021. (Rack & Riddle)