How One of California's Biggest Wineries Produces Over 12 Million Bottles per Year — Dan Does

the francis ford coppola winery has become an icon in the american wine game with wines in nearly every price point you can find coppola in supermarkets and boutique wine shops and even in michelin-starred restaurants across the country what i'm wondering is how can they appeal to all these different markets and make a product that wine snobs know for more than just having a famous founder so today i'm headed to geiserville california in the alexander valley to see how the team behind coppola uses new world and old world techniques to keep the product consistent first up i'm hanging out with chief winemaker corey beck who's been in charge of the operation since the early 1990s i'll be meeting him at the coppola reserve vineyard where a team is about to come in and pick grapes for one of their higher end wines all by hand hi i'm dan and this is dan duz so what we have here is our cabernet sauvignon these vines were planted in the mid-80s right so long before you were born we call this the canopy these leaves i like to call them solar panels sun is hitting here all the carbohydrates all the energy is being generated to ripen the sugar we like to leave a little bit of the leaves as shade right so one of the things we have to battle here was with heat so we get a lot of the afternoon sun that comes over this way so we'll keep more leaves on this side and if you look over here on this there's not a lot of leaves because we've actually pulled those leaves so we can get light penetration because light helps provide color what is the window that you can actually pick these grapes right now we're blessed with some cool mornings which we have here anytime you have that the grapes kind of just calm down a bit so when it gets to that hundred plus range they're a very short window because they're just ripening so quickly so you probably have about a 10-day window right now though yeah when it's like this when it's hot it's a two-day window each vine gets its own constant water source but the grapes are grown on just enough water to survive for grapevines you actually want soil that's going to stress the hell out of the vines right too fertile all the growth and everything just keeps growing the grapes you want them to fight for it a little bit is that what it is you want them to struggle a bit so they're not so happy because you don't want these things big and plump so they're more flavor dense that's correct it's funny because they say wine is a depressant right and so much of your job is keeping things miserable exactly before calling in the pick corey has to do a final check to make sure the sugar content of the grapes is within the range he wants if it's too low they'll have to wait and if it's too high the grapes will be used for a lower grade wine or not used at all a sample you probably usually want 100 to 200 berries grab about three or four just like that then you're going to do the best job to crush all of those grapes okay okay good way oh boy have you seen my juice heavy hand there dad it's about 26 8 roughly we're picking this at the optimal what is your range right in there where typically with cabernet we're from 25 to 28. can you show me how we would actually hand pick these grapes we're gonna do that the goal is to come through and you're going to set your picking lug down here this long green it's called the rakus you're going to cut that drop it in your box and you guys have a first aid kit ready you said we do as soon as you make your first cut it's you're on the clock ready yep there you go that was inefficient i'm sucking right now time not bad not bad at all so it's not easy work this aspect yeah no it's it's hard from here corey's going to give the green light and then call in the pick the team first goes through and clears away the leaves and then goes through again and blitzes the grapes as fast as they can higher quality wines need hand picking to keep out as many leaves as possible and to not disturb the more sensitive branches and trees don't pull anything so you can see here what mike's doing right he's going through grabbing out some of the leaves snagging leaves cleaning up product here for my boys how long will it take to fill this up this will probably pull in another half hour with just seven guys just see seven guys here yeah incredible how fast everyone works once the vines have been picked corey and the team will repair dead plants and make adjustments to the crops based on how the wine comes out the grapes that were just harvested now head to the crush pit where they will undergo the first stage of processing here's our cabernet that we just picked we have our um our hoist over here when you pick it up right and moving it forward if you tilt too far this thing could come crashing down oh yeah all right so i'm gonna hit this button and it's gonna slowly raise these troughs yeah these beds these bends yep you're going to slowly raise them and put them in position too so go ahead so you up yep wow that's too much power for me cool are they coming out this is the tipping point here you got to be very careful so once you go in and pick out some of those just go for it yeah yeah yeah try and get every last little bit in i guess you can be a little rough with it right oh yeah dive in there and i think it's about 20 clusters for a bottle of wine really roughly how am i looking right this is where you want to clean the bins out aren't you adding water to the water so little it's so little bit usually this is just a rinse yeah so the goal is to then you send these back to the vineyard right nice and clean with no sugar and then you know depending on if there's tourists around you give them give them a shot sorry about that once we have the grapes here in our in our hopper we have our auger that's slowly taking them to where they will get de-stemmed and then finally we have our rollers down there which will crush them the crushing machine simulates traditional foot stomping it's meant to be harsh enough to break all the skins but not too rough to crush the seeds and release their bitterness so now everything's getting into our sump here in this pump right now and you can see through here taking them in through here into the wine ring a big part of this operation is dealing with all the stems and leaves nearly half of these machines are meant to get them back onto a truck to be used as compost for future plots the crushed grapes and juice are piped off into massive tanks where they will undergo the first stage of fermentation to create alcohol i'm meeting senior winemaker andrea card over at the larger commercial tanks to see what's going on i sort of helped how much will one of these tanks hold how many this is kind of one of our big boys oh yeah so this is going to hold like 55 tons of fruit so we can only fill it up a certain amount of space because if we fill it all the way to the top with fermentation it spans and it gets hotter it's just like a boiling pot of pasta and so then it'll stay in this tank for probably ten days to two weeks depending on the fermentation i like that you find this entertaining wines like pinot noir use an open air fermentation tank which is helpful for looking at the way they are constantly keeping the grapes moist and aerating the wine the process we're about to see happens about twice a day andrea what are you what are you gonna do right now i'm gonna turn it on so it starts sprinkling okay so this is uh [Laughter] is it going yeah it's going okay i really thought it was gonna go down and then spin everything and it turns out it's like willy wonka the foaming is really um part of the fermentation process the yeast producing um co2 basically yeast eat the sugar convert it to alcohol burp out co2 it will form a cap with the skins as you can kind of see on the top here and the idea is that we want to make sure that we're getting wine or must juice going through the entire thing it's a few feet there's actually some yeast still hiding in the skin so constantly running the liquid through it helps not only with color but to create the last bit of alcohol so as senior wine maker andrea has to taste the wine from every tank multiple times a day to spot imperfections or whatever else might have gone wrong so this tank has cabernet in it this has fermented all the way down to three bricks so it's still not dry it's still not ready yet right but we'll see what you think of it so we do swirl the wine and it's not to be pretentious it's not to look fancy it's actually to volatilize the aromatics and so then you shove your face in it the idea is that you're smelling if there's anything off if there's anything amazing all of those kinds of things you're looking for all of it interesting so if there are amazing things then we make note of it and it's like oh this is tasting really great this potentially could go to a different program or go to a higher tier or lower tier cool okay so having many tiers of wine actually gives you a lot of flexibility yeah so and then the best part about this is that you get to spit right there yeah just don't spit on my boots as you can see other people have can you imagine tasting all of these tanks every day and forgetting to spit you wouldn't forget no you wouldn't forget once andrea thinks the wine has fermented enough she will give the go-ahead to drain the wine from the tank from here the leftover skins and whatever pulp is at the bottom are sent to a bladder press which is basically a container that fills with a giant balloon to squeeze out excess wine still contained in the skins from here the leftover skins are also sent over to the compost at this point the wine is the ideal color sugar level and alcohol content so it's ready for barreling similar to bourbon copper's wines are put in toasted oak barrels so this is whites and reds in here yeah whites and reds holy this is huge so this is the cooper's name and their information and then it has our information and then it tells us exactly what type of oak this wood actually is the barrels aren't just there to impart wood flavor into the wine they also give the wine time to undergo what is called secondary fermentation secondary fermentation is changing malic acid like an apple acid into lactic acid and lactic acid is like the milk acid right it gives you that creamy flavor so for red you're getting like a bigger better mouth feel like it's more round it's more palatable really alcohol percentage percentages alcohol percentage is now stopped because there's nothing left for the yeast there's no more sugar right now we get to try some wine that's been sitting in the oak barrel for about one year that's fine thank you oh you have enough so you can feel the oak influence right oh yeah sure and it starts from day one so in another year we will then put that into the bottle and it will mellow and all be super balanced in the mouth after the wine is done aging the barrels are dumped and then rinsed so they can be used again the final stage is bottling and today we're getting the chance to see the claret being bottled which is by far coppola's most popular wine this is what a consumer would find in the grocery store so this is like our most well-known wine this is one of the big sellers yeah the most amount of wine that we make is for this label they have absolutely no reason to let me do this but that's hollywood baby and now slide pull up yep you want to hit it got it scary every time so the bottles come in here and they're actually getting gassed right now and the idea is to drive out any oxygen that might be in the bottle itself so every single one has a perfect spill level so that way when it does get corked it has the right pressure in there and everything is cut forks heading up and the corking system capsule gets fun on it's not spinning the bottle isn't it it's just it's spinning around and down and then that guy's camping it down with like a little rubber bumper the carrot has this beautiful gold net on the outside and we had to have special machinery designed just for us to be able to apply it one of my favorite parts of seeing these factories is checking out the machines that companies have built specifically to automate a unique style element that you can't find anywhere else on any other product so they actually have a two-step process where they spread the oh my god it's so cool they spread the nuts out and then they use like a mold to form and then shove them in insert insert the bottles and then tighten and twist wait you've been here 30 years eight years 38 years you've been packaging if you've been running this room yes ever anywhere else are always in this room always in this room how can you still hear i wear earplugs when i'm here jesus you just gotta let enough bottles go by so he's gonna touch all of these those are all here you gotta count and pass now let's just go by there's two six we're talking right here oh so that's when you get time to set the box up yes yes yes okay cool you're hired now stop that's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me it's now finally time to try some finished wine first off we're going to try the ultra popular claret and then we're going to see if we can spot the difference between that and something more exclusive like the line we saw picked this morning so you've tried this wine already many times well i hope you've done well thank you i will say it's really hard to like actually have watched the work that you guys do and like watch you running around and trying all these different things to not just be like that's the best one i've ever had so this is our reserved tier this wine is meant to be a more serious wine [Music] whoa i feel like i taste the whole day i think if you really invest yourself now i taste the different parts in that sip like i see the different rooms a little bit i love it cheers [Music]

Channel: Eater

Views: 583,273

Rating: 4.8956099 out of 5

Keywords: wine, wine making, winemaking, making wine, how to make wine, red wine, how to make red wine, cabernet sauvignon, cabernet sauvignon wine, Francis Ford Coppola Wine, francis ford coppola wine, francis ford coppola winery, coppola wine, winery, wine fermentation process, wine crushing, winemaking equipment, grapes, winemaking 101, fermentation, make wine, winemaking process, winemaker, vineyard, california wine, eater, eater.com, dan does, eater dan does, Daniel Geneen

Id: iu2C7AeIqac

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 03 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/catlover73]

i live and am from here. the wine industry is a disgusting thing. mono-cropped exportation for a clientele base with a wealth gap that far exceeds any locals anymore. tragically ironic that shmucks can excuse drinking in the morning because it's "wine tasting".