Montemaggiore

While our high technology friends laugh when they see all the hand labor that goes into winemaking, our winery really does represent the state-of-the-art!

From the crush equipment to the building materials used for our vintage-2004 building, we have carefully considered the right blend of new and ancient technology.

New Fangled Ideas?!?

In recent research, the combination of wood and water and chlorine in wineries has been linked to off-odors and -flavors in wine. Although the wine is commonly called "corked", in most cases the TCA comes from the wine-ageing environment or building materials rather than from the cork in the bottle. Thus we have eliminated all wood (and all chlorine) in the winery building—however, our wine ages in French oak barrels, which we have not eliminated!

Old Fashioned Equipment

The design of winemaking equipment has withstood the test of time over millennia. Montemaggiore's equipment utilizes the old designs but uses new-fangled materials:

Our destemmer uses stainless steel "fingers" to separate the harsh tannic stems from the grapes.
The crusher rollers lightly break the skin of our Cabernet grapes (the Syrah grapes don't get crushed at all). Here we depart from the tradition of foot stomping because we question its level of sanitation.
The basket press separates the clear wine from the skins and seeds after fermentation — our basket, however, is made of stainless steel instead of wood or reeds.
225 liter French oak barrels are used for aging wines, although they aren't used for transport as they were in the 1800s.