San Francisco Wine Country Tours

Your journey to the beautiful Napa and Sonoma Valleys begins here.

 

The Wine Country Lovers tour - It’s hard to pinpoint, but wine country is beautiful, the people are friendly and Charles was fantastic! It was a really nice to touch that he took us to the perfect spot to have our pictures taken with the Golden Gate Bridge behind us.

Thanks Charles!

-- Tracey L., Rialto, CA, Oct 2007
Wine Country Lovers Tour

Wine Country History and Information

Grape Crushing and De-stemming

Grapes being crushed for use in winemaking. On your Sonoma and Napa winery tours, you will likely see a large machine that looks like it has a huge corkscrew in it leading up to a conveyor. This is the De-stemmer/Crusher machine. Once picked by vineyard workers and collected into bins, grape clusters are transferred to the De-stemmer/Crusher. This machine will separate and discard the stems (which contain bitter and unwanted flavors) and then lightly crush the grapes into a pulpy mass of juice, skins and seeds called “must.” Prior to fermentation, the skins and seeds of the white wine grapes will be removed from the juice or “pressed” by means of a large air bag press, which inflates inside a large steel cylinder forcing out the juice.

 

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