“Fukagawa winery” is a very small shop
which shutter is always closed.
However, there is a wine factory behind this
shutter.
As I was making a reservation, a clerk came
out and opened the shutter, and said, "to keep the room temperature
stable, come in soon".
The room was small, but surprisingly, there
was a complete set of equipment to make wine.
First, crush
grapes. This machine can remove the stems from grapes and crush the fruit of the
grapes. You can see a handle. Yes, it is not electric.
When making red wine, they put yeast in this orange big bucket and
leave them for 2 weeks for the primary
fermentation.
Second, press these
fruits juice.
(This machine was behind these big buckets.)
Finally, send squeezed juice into the
stainless steel tanks to
ferment.
There are 5 big steel tanks, capacity of 1
tank equals to 1000 bottles of wine.
After 2 weeks fermentation in the tank,
some of wines are filtered by the filter-machine before bottling. (You can see
10 white filters there.)
But most of wines are not filtered in this
shop. You can know the reason at the end of the tour.
There are 5 garbage bags near the inside of
shutter. These are stems and pomace.
The clerk said, "2t
of grapes are delivered
at one time in the morning. 3 or 4 members deal with 2t of grapes all day long."
2t of
grapes make not only 5000
bottles of wine but also 5
garbage bags.
At the end
of the tour, you can enjoy wine tasting and find the reason why this shop doesn’t filter most of their wine.
by
M.K.
