Ventures into Northern California Vineyards & Winemaking | BAO After Work
In late autumn, I traveled to northern California and visited Clavey Vinyards & Winery, a family owned boutique vegan winery, where I got the opportunity to capture the natural winemaking procedure, from grape harvesting, to pressing, fermenting, then bottling.
The weather said it would rain the morning of the harvest, to keep the wine nose consistent, the vineyard owner still scheduled workers to start around 6:30am the next day. He told me if they let the rain soak the vine, the flavor of the grape would be different.
Luckily, it was just couple drizzle in the morning, then it gave us an 2-hour window with first ray of sun pierce through the fog, shining on plump grapes.
After the harvesting, truck drove the fresh grapes to the winery and the pressing started immediately. I was so surprised how fast and efficient people worked at the winery. It's like they were racing with time to keep the grape juice fresh. The machine just lightly pressed on the grape to gather the juice, then the rest of the grape got tossed away. I picked and feast on the pressed grape on the ground for a little well. It's so fresh and sweet.
Clavey Winery produces vegan friendly wines. They don't use any fining agent. The wine is aged in oak barrel and self-stabilized and self-fined.
You may be surprise that not all wines are vegan. The reason has to do with how the wine is clarified and a process called ‘fining’. All young wines are hazy and contain tiny molecules such as proteins, tartrates, tannins and phenolics. These are all natural. However, wine-drinkers like our wines to be clear and bright. If you leave the wine age itself, eventually, it will self-fine. However, commercial producers have used fining agents to make the process faster. The most commonly used fining agents were casein (a milk protein), albumin (egg whites), gelatin (animal protein) and isinglass (fish bladder protein).
Check more of the visual tours here where we venture into different cities, cool places and countryside.
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