Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1898-07-29
CALIFORNIA WINE.
A DESCRIPTION OtTH3 PROCESS
OF FERMENTATION.

Placing This Product on the
Market The Winery Described
The Different Varieties of
Wine Owe Their Distinctive
Character to the Variety of
Grapes Used.
When, sometime since, visited
Fresno, the very heart of the Cali
fornia wine district, ! find that Cali.
fornla is about the only wine produc-
ing State in this great country.
A vineyard and its operation consti-
tutcs a large business and ncccssitatcs
an immense outlay of capital. The
amount OF ground that even the larg-
est in Fresno county occupies is but
mediocre when compared with the
farms of the Northwest. The one
| am going to describe, the st. George,
consisted of two hundred and forty
acres, but then, if one considers that
this land with the vines growing upon
it, is worth from five to eight hundred
dollars per acre as against thirty-five
or forty for land in such States rs
Kansas, Nebraska or Minnesota, they
will at once see how enormous in value
is the one and how insignificant the
other, despite the fact that each may
have the same area.
The saying that it takes a gold mine
to operate II silver mine would apply
with equal truth to vineyard-a wine
producing one-for there is great
number OF small ones, some that con-
sist OF but ten or twenty acres, but
these produce nothing but raisins or
else are simply dependents upon the
wineries, to which they must send
their grapes to be made into wine.
OF varities OF grapes there is an
almost limitless number. 1t took the
writer something like three weeks to
become passively acquainted with the
most common kinds. There are zin-
feudcls, malagas, muscatcls, tokays
and so on, but the only difference that
the untutored would see would be that
some are green and others black. The
black ones are by far the most numer-
Gus in wine yard, while in raisn es-
adjustments the reverse is the case.
The manager took me through a
door in the lower story of four story
tower at one end of the winery and as
we climbed the stairs surrounded by
semi-darkness and the walls sloppy,
wet and foul smelling, he said:
"This is the starting point; the top
most story of this tower contains the
crushers. The crusher is the latest
in the invention in the art of wine
making. The old press that has been
familiar to all races of men who have
known of wine itself since the days of
the old Greeks has gone out of COM
mission and the gyrating monster
called the crusher has taken its place.
1t consists of cylinder similar to that
of the threshing machine, which
separates the grapes from the stalks
the grapes, by the way, are first
dumped from the wagons that bring
them from the field upon platform a
few feet from the ground at the base
of the tower, and then shoveled into
elevators that carry them up to the
crushers. They fall into funnel,
through which they are delivered to
the cylinder which threshcs the grapes
from the stems and there delivers the
latter into sort of screw cylinder
which elects them from the machine
with such rapidity that one man is
constantly at work with n pitchfork
raking them into stack ut u safe dis
tance from the machinery. The grapes
fall between two rollers from which
they issue in shapeless mass resembling
porridge and are then raked through
troughs into the first or upper series
of fermentation tanks, of which there
are three series.
"They are allowed to remain here
few days to ferment, II careful sugar
test being taken each day and men
making regular rounds with an ore
like instrument to stir the mass into
greater activity and then, when the
sugar test shows that the required
amount of sugar has been Produced
a hose is connected with the faucet at
the bottom of the tanks, and the
liquid is run off into the several series
of tanks. Here it passes through an
other series of fermentation with tests
as before but no stirring, and when
again the specific gravity test indi-
Gates that the proper time has come,
brandy is run into the fermenting
liquid, which thereby closes its ac-
tivity. This operation is called for
tifying.
"Now the liquid is wine, and only
requires the advantage and prestige OF
age to be ready for market. 1t is i'm
mcdiately after being fortified, drawn
out of the middle series of tanks into
the last and lowest series where it re-
mains until some convenient time
when it may be conveyed to the
storage vaults.
"What becomes of the pummace
that is left in the upper tanks after