Pressing wine

Pressing wine is squeezing Must so juice leaves the solids. Whites often press before Wine fermentation so skins never sit in the juice. Reds often press after (or late in) fermentation, once color and Tannin have already moved. Smith and colleagues: tannins extract more as alcohol rises, so a red still on skins in a fermenter is still extracting until you press ¹.

Free-run juice flows without much pressure. Press juice takes more force and is usually more phenolic — more astringent, sometimes more bitter from seeds. Blending them is a structure choice. Hard pressing of underripe seeds is how harshness gets in. See Extraction.

This is not Pressing cheese. Cheese pressing knits curd and expels whey. A grape press expels juice and leaves pomace.

Jelly presses a different product #

A jelly bag pressed for grape jelly is the same botanical family and a different technology: pectin gel from juice, not ethanol from yeast ². Squeeze a jelly bag and you cloud the juice; squeeze a wine press hard and you extract seed tannin. Different failures.

An AVA does not tell you when to press ³.

What to notice #

Look at juice color and at how dry the cake of skins is. Taste press fractions separately if you are in a cellar: the last cut is often the most astringent. Smell clean grape and ferment, not vinegar as the main note.

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