A Visit to Shelburne Vineyard & What Goes Into A Bottle of Wine?

Ken walks us into the Vineyard

Yesterday we had the fortunate opportunity to venture to Shelburne Vineyard to visit Founder Ken Albert, who gave us a detailed tour showing us what exactly goes into creating a bottle of wine. Shelburne Vineyard bottles a variety of wines, everything from La Crescent and Marquette to Riesling. Here we’ll talk about how red, white, rose and ice wine are all made, and once you’ve read, please take a minute to watch Ken’s video below where he talks about why he created Shelburne Vineyard, their sustainable mission and more.

So what goes into a bottle?

Ken shows us the grapes,
which will eventually be red grapes

The first step is the harvest, which begins in September for most grapes; their late harvest goes into October, and for the Ice Wine they wait until freezing. The September batch is picked when the proper balance between sugar and acid is achieved, and then grapes are picked by hand and gathered. Once they’re gathered, they are brought over to the winery to be crushed and to commence their journey into wine.

Next the grapes are brought to the crusher/destemmer. The machine is used to separate the stems from the grapes; the stems bring an unfavorable taste to the wine. Just the juice and grapes go into the press, where with white grapes, the skin is removed, and reds keep their skin until later in the process (see below). The juice is then transferred to steel tanks where it rests for a day before yeast is added. The reason yeast is added to the wine is to convert the grape’s natural sugar into alcohol, which takes around two weeks. The wine is then transferred to a clean tank where it will age throughout the fall, winter and into spring to be bottled during the spring season.

Destemmer, crusher and steel tanks

Oak barrels for red wine

As for red wine, the grapes skip the crushing process that removes the skins and are transferred with skins, grapes and juice into the steel tank. The yeast is still added, and the red grapes will also ferment for two weeks. In the case of red, after fermentation is completed the skins are removed and the wine is transferred to oak barrels to age. Oak barrels not only give the wine a subtle, oak flavor, but also act as an evaporator to the liquid, which mellows the natural tannins (tannins are the dry, harsher tastes found in the skin of red wine grapes); this evaporative process takes roughly six months to a year and a half.

Wondering about rose? We were as well. It is, alas, not a combination of red and whites (as Ken joked with us), but is the result of using red grapes and bringing them through the white grape’s process.

See the finished product at the end! 

When the wine is finished aging, the wine will either be varietal (meaning made from a single grape) or it will be blended with several different wine grapes. This process is achieved by careful tasting sessions to create a pleasurable flavor of wine. After this process is completed, the wine is ready for bottling.

In the machine shown above, bottling is done through a conveyer belt that fills, corks, seals and labels each bottle. Shelburne Vineyard bottles up to 1,000 bottles an hour.

In layman’s terms, and without the details of hard work, that is the process of what goes into a bottle at Shelburne Vineyard’s Winery. But before we depart, let’s talk about ice wine.

Photo courtesy of the
Shelburne Vineyard website

Ice wine is made from grapes that hang on the vine until it reaches a chilly 15 degrees, where they’re then picked by hand. Sugar freezes at a colder temperature than water, which is why they must wait until early morning when the temperatures are low so that only the water in the grape is frozen and the sweetest part is a sort of slush. The grapes are then gently pressed to extract the sweet juices and the rest of the grape is discarded. These juices are then put into one of the steel tanks where it begins the same fermenting and aging process as white wine.

We hope you have enjoyed learning about wine’s pre-shelf life as much as we have. Click below to view Ken’s quick two-minute video and don’t forget to enter our contest on Facebook for a chance to win free tickets to the Burlington Wine and Food Festival on June 23 at the Burlington Waterfront Park.