It starts in the cellar the most exciting moment of the year: the grape pressing.
The grapes that will produce Valpolicella Classico arrive in the cellar
in plastic bins that are gently overturned on convey belt.
The grapes to produce Valpolicella Classico Superiore and Valpolicella Ripasso Classico Superiore arrive in plastic boxes and are gently overturned on the band. For a further selection the grapes are control by a worker while moving on the convey belt in order to discard those bunches not suitable to be pressed.
The grape bunches are sofly press by the winepress and, through a pump, go directly into the
stainless stell tank where fermentation starts after few hours.
In the tanks some selected yeasts are added to the pressed grapes in order to favor and control the fermentation.
The yeasts are prepared startiong from small quantities: (circa 500 grams every 5000 kilograms):
they are first rehydrated and them multiply by adding must (grape juice).
Fermentation lasts for 10-15 days: during this period couple of operations happen daily:
one is the so called pump over made at least twice a day, the other one is the racking, made once a day.
With the pump over the must comes out of the bottom part of the tank and go inside a plastic bin:
in this way we improve the oxigenation.
A pump sucks the must up from the bin and brings it, through a tube, to the top part of the tank.
In this way the must enters the tank and soak the pommace to extract the colour substances.
With the racking, the solid and liquid parts are instead separated:
the must not is contact with the pommace can the cool down a bit.
After this everything is brought back into the tank, always from the top part,
through powerful pumps and bigge tubes.
It is important, infact, for this process to be turbulent to get all the solid part to be
covered by the liquid component.
Once fermentation will restart the pommace will infact resurface inside the tank.
When all the sugars, thank to the yeasts, will be transformed into alcool, we consider  the fermentation complete.
The new wine is separated from the pommace that is then pressed:
with this operation we get the so called “vino torchiato” (pressed wine).