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We
seek to take advantage of our superior
sources of grapes, and traditional
methods made possible by our limited
production, to make wines of great
varietal character, intensity and complexity.
"harvesting
by hand"
"sorting out unripe/damaged clusters"
After
hand harvesting the pinot noir grapes,
further selection at the winery is
a crucial step to remove any unripe
or damaged clusters. Next, the clusters
are gently de-stemmed so that most
of the grapes remain as whole berries
which allows a slow fermentation process.
Primary fermentation takes place in
lots of 1.5 tons or less, so that small,
special blocks of the vineyards can
be vinified separately. We allow at
least two days of “cold” maceration
before inoculating with either wild
or cultured yeast. As the fermentation
takes off and the temperature rises
to 90 degrees, the grapes begin to
slowly break down and color and flavor
is extracted from the skins.
"pinot
noir grapes are destemmed and fall directly
into a fermenter"
"punching
down the cap on fermenting pinot noir".
The skins float
to the surface, and twice a
day are “punched down” by
hand to keep them under the
juice. After
12-15 days, the primary fermentation
is nearly complete, most of the
sugar has been turned to alcohol
and the
juice has become a deep garnet
color.
"shoveling
pomice into the press after primary
fermentation"
The “free run” wine is
drawn off and the remaining solids
are pressed yielding the “press
wine”. After settling for
a few days, the wine is transferred
to barrels
for aging. At this stage, the free
run and press wine from different
vineyards and clones are kept separate.
"press
wine from pinot noir fermentation"
Each
year we use about 30 % new oak cooperage
in the barrel-aging process. Several
sources provide barrels made from French,
American (mid-west and Oregon), and
Hungarian oak. Each type of oak brings
unique characteristics to the wines
aged in these barrels which gives us
considerable scope to create distinctive
wines. Our best single vineyard and
barrel-selected wines may be aged in
up to 60% new oak. We never employ
tanks for aging wines.
Primary
fermentation continues in the barrel
for a few more days until all the sugar
has been converted to alcohol. A secondary
fermentation also takes place in the
barrels due to the presence of native
malolactic bacteria and may require
several months to complete. This step
is important to allow the conversion
of malic acid to lactic
"racking wine
off the lees"
acid, producing
smoother wines. After secondary
fermentation is complete, the
wine is racked once
to clean barrels without fining,
in keeping with our philosophy
of minimal
manipulation of the wine. After determining which barrels will be blended to produce various cuvees, bottling occurs with minimal filtration to avoid potential loss of color and intensity.
Production
of white wines is an even simpler process.
The grapes are hand-picked and sorted
as for the pinot noir, but then immediately
pressed to remove the skins and seeds
from the juice. The juice is allowed
to settle and then transferred to 60
gallon stainless steel or neutral oak
barrels. Inoculation with yeast
starts the fermentation
which can take several weeks, due to
lower temperatures achieved in the
small volume barrels compared to much
larger fermentation volumes used for
pinot noir.
River's
Edge Winery
1395 River Drive
P.O. Box 539
Elk ton, OR 97436
541-584-2357 (tel)
541-584-2837 (fax)
wines@riversedgewinery.com |
