After the first day or so of this year’s harvest, we quickly discovered that there were more grapes than we anticipated. Indeed, it had already been mentioned in the local press that previous records were likely to be broken.

I did write very recently that in the case of kilos produced that biggest, quite simply, does not mean best. Obviously there are ways of controlling this in the vineyard – the system of pruning, green harvesting, selective picking etc. However, even by the time that fruit arrives at the cellar door there are still options available for improving quality, one of which is in the pressing.

Our two pneumatic presses are electronically controlled, which means that we are able to adjust any single action of the pressing cycle that we require. The two most basic aspects of this are time and pressure.

In an ideal world we would make wine using only the first ‘free run’ juice (pretty much the juice that escapes when the grapes are pressed under their own weight before any pressure is applied), but unfortunately that would not be economically viable.

So in the end, when the yields are a little high, one option is to reduce the time of the pressing cycle, and more significantly, the pressure used to crush the fruit. In reality we never use the maximum pressure anyway, as this will simply extract the phenolic compounds from the grape seeds and stalks that cause bitterness and astringency in wine. In this way we extract better quality juice which obviously helps to improve the finished product.

After the first day or so of this year’s harvest, we quickly discovered that there were more grapes than we anticipated. Indeed, it had already been mentioned in the local press that previous records were likely to be broken.

I did write very recently that in the case of kilos produced that biggest, quite simply, does not mean best. Obviously there are ways of controlling this in the vineyard – the system of pruning, green harvesting, selective picking etc. However, even by the time that fruit arrives at the cellar door there are still options available for improving quality, one of which is in the pressing.

Our two pneumatic presses are electronically controlled, which means that we are able to adjust any single action of the pressing cycle that we require. The two most basic aspects of this are time and pressure.

In an ideal world we would make wine using only the first ‘free run’ juice (pretty much the juice that escapes when the grapes are pressed under their own weight before any pressure is applied), but unfortunately that would not be economically viable.

So in the end, when the yields are a little high, one option is to reduce the time of the pressing cycle, and more significantly, the pressure used to crush the fruit. In reality we never use the maximum pressure anyway, as this will simply extract the phenolic compounds from the grape seeds and stalks that cause bitterness and astringency in wine. In this way we extract better quality juice which obviously helps to improve the finished product.