A few weeks back I got the opportunity to help out the folks at m2 Wines again. Back in April I joined a small crew at m2 bottling their late harvest Zinfandel and had a great time.

The task on this day was to crush nearly 6 tons of fruit for the 2007 vintage. Three tons of Old Vine Zinfandel came from the local Soucie vineyard in Lodi, planted in 1916, and another 3 tons of Cabernet Sauvignon from Pratt Vineyards in Fair Play (up the hill in El Dorado County).

The following photo is a closeup of the Old Vine Zinfandel. These berries were loaded with flavor and were very ripe (as the raisining shows). In fact, these flavor bombs would later become something of a challenge in the winery.

The process involved raising a macrobin full of fruit with a forklift over the top of the crusher/stemmer. The crushed grapes dropped straight down into another macrobin while the stems were pushed out the side and into a third macrobin. We repeated this process, emptying one macrobin after another until all of the fruit was crushed.

One important task was to keep the fruit dropping into the crusher at a consistent rate. As the following shot from below the hoisted bin of fruit shows, Ted was doing a fine job.

After all of the fruit was crushed and moved into the “cozy” confines of m2’s winery, we cleaned up the equipment and rolled down the winery door and took a break inside. The coolness of the winery and beautiful aromas of fermenting Syrah were just what we needed.

I grabbed my camera a took a few more pictures before heading home.

The Syrah I mentioned above was already fermenting and needed to be punched down.

 I love this shot of a barrel, stained from the wine of previous vintages.

Check out m2’s blog to follow along with the rest of this fruit’s journey into the bottle.