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The 2000 harvest took place under excellent weather conditions. The physical conditions are more difficult. The majority of the Burgundy harvest takes place by hand and because the vines are low to the ground, pickers must bend over all day long.  Individual grape bunches are cut and placed into buckets or baskets which are then either carried directly back to the winery in small containers or transferred to a larger recipient which is then emptied into trailers which are taken back to the winery.   When grapes arrive at the winery a majority of wineries will de-stem them. How much they will de-stem is based on the quality of the stems. The machine used is quite simple. There are rotating fingers inside that separate grapes from their stems. The grapes and juice are pumped into vats in the winery and stems are discarded out the other end.  Directly off the vine, the pinot noir grape has a clear juice and a dark purple skin. Red wines are made by letting the grapes macerate in vats for a period of 2 to 3 weeks. The maceration process is necessary to extract color, making the wine red, as well as letting the natural sugar transform into alcohol in the first fermentation process. There are many different types of vats in Burgundy and is very telling as to the fine line for Burgundian winemakers today: accept tradition and modern techniques.  The physical challenge continues with the "pigage" of the vats. The skins of the grapes float to the top and the juice sinks. If the grapes are left in this state there is no color extraction and oxygen cannot reach the mixture so fermentation cannot take place. The result is a lot of rotten grape juice. The solution is mixing up the skins and seeds every 12 hours or so, called "pigage". Some wineries have automated vats where this process is handled by computers and stainless steel arms, but the majority of winemakers must take care of things by hand:   When the alcohol and color levels are appropriate comes the transfer of wine and skins to the wine press. The process is rather quick with modern techniques:  Decuve1.bmp +  decuve2.bmp +decuve2.bmp  With more traditional vats the juice is removed with buckets and, of course, by hand:  Decuvep +   And the wine arrives at the wine press:  Decuve4.p +   After the press, the juice goes back to the vats for a decanting process before it is put into oak barrels for 15 to 24 months of aging. |
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