What’s Shakin’? Funny that people ask me that same way all the time around the winery, whether a customer or also employees, but it is a good question as there is always something new happening at wineries. No year is ever the same, and most likely every day is different than the next and each day has something new in store. This past harvest, however, did provide us with a new answer to “what’s shakin’?” and that was a new piece of equipment that actually shakes - a new destemmer!

About a year ago we decided that we needed to modernize some equipment and one piece in particular we knew was something that will improve our winemaking which leads to… better wines! This piece is a new destemmer that replaces our destemmer that I purchased back in 1998, which is a South African copy of a German destemmer, and I looked up that we paid $15,000 back then for that crusher. This crusher has been a workhorse for the winery over the past 25 years and has done a good job destemming the grapes and was very easy to work on when something broke on it (which happened more often in the recent past), easy to clean and maintain. All of what you look for in a piece of vital equipment. We did make some improvements on it over the years but in general it was a great purchase.

Last year we decided it was time to make a change for the better, and we started looking at what destemmers were out on the market and asking around other wineries what they were using. We found a variety of machine makers of a product that is basically the same no matter who is making it. We meter the grapes into the top of this machine via a belt feeder, and out the back comes the stems and out the bottom should be the berries without much else other than the berries. Inside the main idea is that the clusters of grapes are fed into a rotating tube (called a “cage”) that has holes in the tube. A set of paddles spins and knocks the berries off the stems and the stems stay in the tube while the berries fall through the holes and drop by gravity out of the machine. Simple! What makes each machine maker different is how they do this procedure and how fancy they want to get.

The machine we decided on had a variety of factors that impressed us, and the variety of settings we could play with to match the type of grapes going into the destemmer. The “cage” for our new unit is almost the same as the ones 25 years ago, as they are very simple and not much can be improved. Inside the cage spins the paddles, and they are largely unchanged over the years. Our new destemmer does, however, have the capability of increasing or decreasing the rotational speed of both the cage and also the paddles, and also, we can change the direction that the cage rotates. This is all important because we want the berries to be gently and efficiently removed from the stems. Less breakage is desirable when destemming! The other function that this new destemmer has is insert horns blaring that the whole cage can be vibrated! (“What’s Shakin’?”) The vibration aids in the removal of the berries from the stems, allowing for less use of the paddles in the cage. The berries are shaken off instead of mechanically ripped off the stems, thus more gentle and higher quality! The last part of stem removal is also important, and that is the problem of keeping all parts of the stem from falling below along with the berries. The new destemmer tries to solve this dilemma by placing a tray of rollers below the cage, and it has spaces just large enough for berries to fall through but the bits of stem are larger, and they travel on the rollers out the back side. The hardest process for any crusher is to eliminate what we call “jacks”, which are small fragments of stems that break off the stems and are about ½ to ¾ inch wide and the look like “jacks” – from the game! The new rollers do a good job eliminating the jacks, which every winemaker hates to see when you are removing….Stems.

So, as you see things really are “shakin’” here! Oh, and in case you were wondering, prices have really gone up in 25 years. This new machine was actually reasonably priced at $80,000 compared to other destemmers. Oh well keep on shakin’ along and here’s to making better wine in 2023 and beyond!