- the top part of the vine actually comes from a different original plant than the bottom part. The bottom part(the trunk?), is a north american species, where as the top part is a European species, but the 2 species are close enough that they can become one
- they use a german bladder press to squeeze the juice out of the grapes with air pressure, that's right, they don't step on the grapes with bear feet anymore
- they ferment the grape juice in giant stainless steel tanks in a temperature and air pressure controlled room. A lot of dirty work happens here as they have to "punch" the fruite down from the top, and also remove the grape peels left inside and wash the tanks after it's used
- After fermenting the wine, they are barreled and aged for 8 months to 2 years. The insides of the barrels are charred to different degrees so as to the wine different oak flavors
- the barrels has a hole on top called the bonghole, a bong is what is stuck into the bonghole to seal the barrel. I am not making this up. The bong is not air tight, it allows some air to come out from inside the barrel.
Georgia Wine
We took a trip(1 hour drive) to Delonega yesterday to visit one of Georgia's premier vineyards - Wolf Mountain Vineyards. That's right! Georgia produces wine. Of course, the wine yard there is like one small fraction of the size of a vineyard in Napa valley(we saw one later in the day on the TV show: Dirty Jobs). I did the wine tasting. They had a couple of whites, which were the same except one was stored in French oak barrels and the other one was not. I can't make up my mind about the whites, I still think it has the smell of Chardonnay that I have always disliked, especially the first taste, but in subsequent tastes it went away somewhat. Their reds were solid but what I really enjoyed was their dessert wine: Seyval Demi-Sec. It was very sweet, but also incredibly smooth. I was surprised at how smooth it was. So we later bought a red and the dessert wine before we left. After the tasting we went the the winemaker's tour. They gave us a lot of information about how wine was made, and since this was the first time we've been to such a tour, most of the information was new to us. Some interesting facts:
I am answering your question in the item 1 of the article “Georgia Wine”.
The processing method is named grafting (嫁接), and described as following.
1. Cut off the plants on the steam bottom horizontally (a north American species, mentioned in your article), carve it a short cutting vertically. This bottom stem is named “Stock (砧木)”.
2. Cut off another bud stem of plants, beveling it. This beveled bud is named “a graft”, or “a scion (接穗)”.
3. Insert the graft into the short cutting of the stock, combine the cutting sections between the stock and the graft firmly, wrap them with beeswax.
And then, the stock and the graft could continue to grow together. The stock which has adapted to the US growth situation absorbs the nutrients from the soil and transports them to the graft which could grow well and keep the characters of original species.
Back to your article, the stocks which are used in the vineyard you visited may be zinfindal, or some un-famous local vine species, etc. They have adapted American soil and climate status well. And the grafts which are used in the vineyard may be some famous species, such cabernet sauvignon, merlot, etc. They have the good characters of the original species.
So, the grafting method is a botanic way to merge the advantages of stocks and grafts.