Sol Rei Winemaking Primer - A Non Invasive Approach
It never ceases to amaze me – how a plant that looks like a dead stick in the ground midwinter can transform into a lush, espaliered bush laden with beautiful ripe grapes by September. Here we are, another cycle of the seasons, another cycle of life, driven by a planetary rhythm more powerful than anything made by man. And the truly remarkable outcome is harvesting the beautiful wine grapes destined for the latest vintage of Sol Rei Wine.
Our focus is using old-world techniques of minimal intervention, small batch natural fermentation, and using only the highest quality grapes.
For those of you who want to know a little more about how we get from grapes to glass, here are the high-level steps:
1.Harvesting
From our premier partners’ sustainably-farmed and organic vineyards in northern California, grapes are picked in the cool hours of the morning once they reach optimal ripeness. All of our grapes are transported within hours to start the winemaking process.
2. Sorting and Crushing
Once at the winery, grapes are hand sorted for quality. An optional step may occur where the grapes are destemmed from the clusters (depends on varietal and style). For white wine, the juice is immediately separated from skins (pressing); for red wine, we do whole berry fermentation so although the process is called crushing, it is really just gently destemming the berries so they do not burst and moving them to small fermenting tanks. From the point of receiving the grapes to crush, we target a maximum of four hours to ensure we are capturing all of the flavors at the peak of freshness.
3. Fermentation
To convert the sugars in the juice into alcohol, the magic of fermentation begins after the initial crush and slowly, grape juice transforms into beautiful wine. We use a combination of indigenous yeast naturally occurring on the grapes and Rhône yeast that match the varietals for a slow fermentation that fully brings out the unique characteristics of the varietal. For our reds, using a whole berry fermentation process means that the juice is converted from sugar into alcohol within each wine grape (I.e., berry) and the seed is only gently released when the skin of the grape naturally breaks down during the final stage of the fermentation process. This produces a fruit-forward, smooth-tannin wine with very little histamines.
4. Clarification
Once the desired level of fermentation and balance is achieved in the wine, it goes through an additional filtration step to remove solids and impurities, ensuring clarity and stability. For our white wines, this includes cold stabilization which removes the tartaric acid crystals so you don’t end up with little crystals on your cork or clinging to the stem of the bottle.
5. Aging and Bottling
Sol Rei Wine is aged in stainless steel tanks or neutral French oak barrels for approximately 6-23 months depending on the varietal to enable the flavor profiles to mature. This process smooths out tannins in reds and balances acids in whites. Because we want the pure taste of the wine grapes and terrior to shine, we do not age in new French or American oak which would impart “oakiness” to the wine. After aging, we carefully bottle the wine, seal it with a capsule, and then let it rest another two months prior to releasing the vintage for sale to ensure that the wine has settled after the whirlwind bottling process.
6. Enjoying and Honoring
And now....Sol Rei Wine, grapes to glass, is ready!
Given the miracle of nature’s gifts and how lucky we all are to be able to enjoy them, we are honored to share our wine with you. Thank you for being a customer and partaking in one of nature's greatest rituals.
