From vine to bottle
Below is the process of how our wine is made!
01
It all starts with the grapes
From 1999 to 2018, Pillar Bluff Vineyards had over 8 acres of grave vines planted. Due to a late winter freeze in 2018 and Pierce’s Disease, we lost all of our vines … some that were over 20 years old.
02
The Harvest
Harvesting the grapes means getting your hands into the vines and clipping each cluster off the vine, one by one.
03
The journey begins
The grapes begin their journey from the vine to wine by hauling them to the processing site.
04
Into the Grape Wagon
The buckets of grapes are gently poured into the large "Grape Wagon" as the harvest day continues.
05
De-stemming
From the grape wagon into the de-stemmer the grapes go into an "elevator" that will deposit the grapes into the de-stemmer.
The grapes are then separated from their stems in preparation for pressing.
06
Fresh out of the de-stemmer
At this stage, the grapes are called "must" and ready to be pressed.
07
From juice to wine
The white grapes are immediately pressed and the juice from those grapes goes to into containers for fermentation. The red grapes are normally left as must for the purpose of darkening the fluid for the red wine.