As planned, we pressed the Barbera on Saturday. The juice is now officially wine!

The photo to the right shows the press setup on our side yard and in the background you can barely get a glimpse of our terraced Barbera vineyard. The Barbera that we pressed was not from our vineyard, though, since it’s not mature enough yet. Instead we purchased this beautiful fruit from a local vineyard.

Everything went reasonably smooth except we ended up with about 8 gallons rather than the expected 5 gallons. The bucket receiving the wine in the photo is just one of the buckets that were filled as we transferred the wine to carboys.

Before filling the carboys, I combined a small amount of the wine with a Malolactic Fermentation (ML) starter and Leucofood (a mix of high amino acid yeast extract, vitamins, and nutrient digests that super-charge the ML bacteria). This mixture was spread between the carboys before being filled with the rest of the wine.

After pressing, you’re left with a large disc of pumice made up of skins, seeds, and whatever else couldn’t escape. The photo below shows a closeup of the pumice after the walls of the press were removed.

The wine is now bubbling away in the carboys as the ML bacteria is converting the malic acid into lactic acid (and giving off carbon dioxide). The result should be a softer and rounder texture in the wine.

Next up: Zinfandel harvest this weekend!