Sde Boker Winery

inemaking starts about seven months before the harvest in the vineyard. To make good wine you must start with good grapes.
The most important job in the vineyard is the pruning. Pruning insures that the crop load is at the desired level and that the grapes will be exposed to sunlight. The vines are pruned in January-February while the vines are still dormant. The vines that are designated for Sde Boker Winery get extra treatments to insure the best grapes. These treatments include removing extra vegetative growth, leaf pulling to expose the clusters to sunlight and removing extra clusters.
In the middle of July we start sampling the grapes, testing the Brix (sugar) and pH. In the beginning we sample once a week. As the grapes ripen sampling is done twice a week. In order to reduce the sampling error, testing are done on the same day(s) of the week and at the same time of day. Harvesting starts in the begining of August and ends mid September.

How we make our wine
Steps in winemaking:
The following steps are general but most if not all are used in every winery.

Wieghing the grapes
Destemming /Crushing. Destemming is the separation of the grape berries from the stem. Crushing is the breaking of the grape skin to allow the juice to be in contact with the yeast. Care must be taken not to crush too hard. If seeds are broken the wine can take on a bitter flavor.
Fermentation. The crushed grapes are moved to fermentation tanks. We use open topped fermenters. Fermentation continues between 10 and 14 days. During fermentation one of two operations are carried out in order to extract the flavors and color from the skins.
1. Punch down. The Cap (grapes that rise to the surface) are pushed down into the fermenting juice to mix the grape skins with the wine.
2. Pump over. Juice is pumped from the bottom of the tank and sprayed over the cap thereby wetting the grape skins and extracting the flavors and colors.
Pressing. Extracting the wine from the grapes using pressure. We do not press the grapes till all the wine is extracted. We lose a percentage of the wine however we get a better wine with softer tannins. The best wine is Free Run, that is wine that is extracted without pressing. The next highest wine is the wine that is extracted with minimal pressing. The lowest quality wine is the wine that is extracted by pressing the grapes till the skins are dry and there isn't a drop of moisture left in the skins.
Racking. After a period of time impurities (grape pieces, yeast cells etc) settle out of the wine and collect at the bottom of the barrel. During racking wine is pumped out of the barrel, except for the bottom centimeter or two. The sediment is removed, the barrel is washed and refilled. In this way the wine is "cleaned".
Aging. The wine is placed in oak barrels immediately after the first racking. During the next year to year and a half the wine is racked four more times. The barrels are also topped up every month to replace the wine lost through evaporation.
Bottling: We bottled the wine from 1999 without filtering it. We feel that while filtering will remove any sediment left over after racking, it will also strip some of the flavors from the wine.