Mumm Napa is the only winery offering a free tour at only 10 am, their first tour of the day. Our tour guide, Carlee, was very friendly and Informative. We got to see the whole process from harvesting the grapes to bottling the wine.
The grapes are hand picked in late August and are filled 2/3 of the way in insulated microbins so they do not get crushed by their own weight or affected by temperature.
The grapes are mashed by a machine with a bladder that fills up and mashes the grapes until pink or purple juice is squeezed out.
The juice is stored in large fermentation tanks and mixed with yeast that eats all the sugars and leaves alcohol. The fermentation takes a few months and usually ends in December or January. The CO2 off gas is vented directly from the tanks to the outside.
The wine is then stored into glass bottles and using a robot arm and stacked inside wooden boxes and left to sit for a few more months. This process is known as tirage.
After the tirage, more yeast is added to the bottle thus starting the second fermentation in the bottle. Because the yeast will settle on the side of the bottle, it must be turned 1/4 every day for 4 to 6 weeks. This will work the yeast up to the neck on a process known as riddling. In the old days this was done by hand and a good riddler could do 30,000 to 50,000 bottles in a day. Now, they have an automated machine.
When the yeast was in the neck it was flipped upside down and the neck was frozen. This only takes a few minutes now.
When the bottle is open back up the gases built up with come out at 100 psi and the frozen yeast will fall out. This process is known as disgorging.
As soon as disgorging is done, a sugar mixture is added to the bottle as well as more of the original batch of sparkling wine. This process is known as dosage.
Finally the bottled is prepared with the cork and labelled and then goes to a warehouse to cool down before being ready to consume.
We were surprised to find that the winery also hosts a large collection of Ansel Adams original and signed photos on permanent loan from Adams's family.
One other note is musician Carlos Santana has visited the winery 3 times now, actually picking his own dosage, thus created a limited edition Santana sparking wine.
We managed to taste this plus 6 other flutes of sparkling wine using a 2 for 1 coupon. They offer generous pours too. I would highly recommend this iPhone app that gives you discounts of tastings, tours, and purchases:
Winery Finder & Tasting Pass Finder: Napa Valley – Sonoma - Wine Country - San Francisco by econcierges
http://itun.es/us/SgIaz.i.
I believe there is a similar app for Android too in the Google Play store. You need to have a social media app like Facebook or Twitter to use it.
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