How does the grape destemmer crusher work?

With the harvest gone, it is time now to talk about one of the most important machines that we use to make wine. The destemmer crusher plays a very important role in the whole process of making wine. This is how it works:

• First, the grapes get into a cylinder, which is rotating at high speed.
• Then, the paddles beat the grape, making it jump out of the stem and dropping into the crusher.
• The crusher will gently break the berry, but not the seed, which goes then to the fermentation container. Many gently crushed berries together compose what we know as must, which will later become wine.
• For the stem, the cycle is different as it will then continue to the other side of the cylinder, where it will be removed to a container outside of the winery. After some months it is ready to be used in soils with high pH as a fertilizer.

But better than words is this video that I made during the harvest. It’s all in Portuguese, but unfortunately I made an English version, which, for some reason, disappeared…I hope that it helps you to train your Portuguese! Fixed!

Any question or comment?

Oscar