page_title: History of the wine press
section_title: Changing styles
hierarchical_section_title: History of the wine press / Changing styles
caption_attribution_description: Original image description from the Deutsche Fotothek Architektur &amp; Wein &amp; Presse
context_page_description: The history of the wine press and of pressing is nearly as old as the history of wine itself with the remains of wine presses providing some of the longest-serving evidence of organised viticulture and winemaking in the ancient world. The earliest wine press was probably the human foot or hand, crushing and squeezing grapes into a bag or container where the contents would ferment.
  The pressure applied by these manual means was limited and these early wines were probably pale in colour and body, and eventually ancient winemakers sought out alternative means of pressing their wine. By at least the 18th dynasty, the ancient Egyptians were employing a "sack press" made of cloth that was squeezed with the aid of a giant tourniquet. The use of a wine press in winemaking is mentioned frequently in the Bible but these presses were more elaboration of treading lagars where grapes that were tread by feet with the juice running off into special basins.
context_section_description: In the 17th and 18th century, the style of winemaking in France was for heartier wines that could age and survive long transport voyages over seas. Winemaking text such as the 1803 annotated and updated edition of de Serres' Théâtre d'Agriculture began recommending that all fine producers employ the use of a wine press and that sometimes blending in a bit of the vin de presse to enhance color and body was essential to create a wine that could last. Even in Bordeaux, which was still using lagars long after Burgundy, Champagne and other French wine regions had adopted the basket press, saw the use of a wine press become more popular after darker, more full bodied wines of Ho-Bryan produced by Lord Arnaud III de Pontac began receive wide acclaim from English writers such as Jonathan Swift, John Locke and Samuel Pepys. By the end of the 18th century, nearly all prestigious Bordeaux wine estates were following de Pontac's method of giving the grapes more time to ferment in the vat and then using a basket press on the darker vin vermeilh and pressing it into new oak barrels.
  The advancement of steam power machinery in the 19th century brought about a revolution in wine press technology as manual basket press gave way to steam-powered presses that greatly increased the efficiency of pressing and reduced the amount labor needed to operate a press. Even the advancement of rail transport had a positive influence as the cost of transporting large wine presses from manufacturers to wine regions throughout the globe decreased and more wineries began being able to afford purchasing a wine press.
caption: A 1649 drawing of a German horizontal wine press.
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