Scholium Wines

full body punchdown program

the tank room, seen from the side of the Babylon tank. You are gazing at the four puncheons of Hudson Syrah, the second wooden tank in the far background.
An illustration of the full body punchdown program. This is the only the syrah's second punchdown, and each fermentation is 100% whole cluster, so getting in requires some effort.
Two days later, at the completion of a successful punchdown, the winemaker rests and admires the special cooling pumpover set-up for the rapidly fermenting Babylon.

Harvest 2007 has been especially festive and high-spirited. We have instituted several programs that are not uncommon in the making of fine wines, but that we nonetheless take special pleasure in executing, and in sharing with our friends. Chief among these are the Midnight Pumpover Program, in which we make sure that we have a very good dinner and then leave at its peak to pump over a vigorous red wine fermentation; and the Full Body Punchdown Program, in which we eschew any devices that mediate our contact with the must, and instead use our full bodies, beginning with our bare feet, to make sure that as much as possible of what is good in the skins gets into the fermenting wine.