The very first wine press was probably the human foot and the use of manual treading of grapes is a tradition that has lasted for thousands of years and is still used in some wine regions today.
The pressure applied by these manual means was limited and these early wines were probably pale in colour and
lagars
where grapes that were tread by feet with the juice running off into special basins.
The more modern idea of a piece of a winemaking equipment used to extract the juice from the skins probably emerged during the Greco-Roman periods from which written accounts by
tannins also extracted. That style of wine press would eventually evolve into the basket press used in the Middle Ages by wine estates of the nobility and Catholic Church leading to the modern tank batch and continuous presses used in wineries today.[1][4]
Early history
Ancient Egyptian pressing basin, in which grapes were probably trodden by human feet in the Marea region around present-day Lake Mariout
The exact origins of winemaking (and, thus, of pressing grapes) are not known, but most archaeologists believe that it originated somewhere in the
Imeretin Valley (in what is now Krasnodar Krai, Russia) dating to between 7000 and 5000 BC of early winemaking using hollowed-out logs that they would fill with grapes, tread with their feet and then scoop the juice and crushed grape remains into jars to ferment. In the 17th century, French traveller Sir Jean Chardin described a similar practice still in use thousands of years later in Georgia.[2]
The earliest evidence of deliberate winemaking is from excavation at sites like
carbon dating of these sites (and earlier sites at Çatalhöyük and Neolithic B sites in Jordan) are based on left over grape pips (seeds) and while they provide solid evidence of wine making, they do not necessarily provide evidence of how the wine was made and if the modern concept of pressing (i.e. extracting juice from the skins and separating it from the skins and seeds) was used.[2]
In the 2nd century BC, Cato the Elder wrote a vivid and detailed account of the workings of
De Agri Cultura.[8] The press Cato describes was known as a lever or beam press which was built on an elevated platform that contained and shallow basin that would slope and narrow to a run off point where the freed juice would exit. The press would consist of a large horizontal beam held up by two upright fixtures in the front and one upright fixture in the front. The grapes were placed under the beam with pressure was applied by a windlass that was affixed by rope to the front of the beam and a user winding down that end.[1] Rope would also be used wound around the "cake" of the pressed grape skins to help keep it in place.[3]
In the 1st century AD, Roman statesman Pliny the Elder described a "Greek style" press in his work
Roman empire, their use was actually relatively rare. This was because having a wine press was a very expensive and large piece of equipment that most Roman farmers, outside the estate holding patricians and the most wealthy plebeians, could not afford. Instead, it was much more common for Roman estates to have large tanks or troughs where grapes were tread upon by feet or paddles.[1]
A Roman architectural relief from the 1st century AD showing that grape treading was still widely used as a means of pressing wine grapes during Roman times
Varro also described in his work De re rustica a type of "pressed wine" known as lorca that was produced by the left over grape skins being soaked in water that was served to slaves and farm workers.[1][10]
By the 2nd century AD, the Romans began using a "screw press" that would be the predecessor to the basket press that would become popular in the Middle Ages. This press would include a large beam with a hole cut out of the middle through which a screw was fitted through. Attached the base of the beam was a cut piece of stone that fit the circumference of a vat that was lined with porous
Middle ages and the increasing popularity of the basket press
An old horizontal wine press that used wooden planks and a square base to exert pressure on the grape skins
In the Middle Ages, most winemaking technology advances were made by
Germany) who owned vast amounts of vineyard land and produced large quantities of wines in their abbeys and bishoprics. It was here that the basket press became popular. The press included a large cylindrical basket made of wood staves bound together by wood or metal rings with a heavy horizontal disc fitted at the top. After the grapes were loaded into the basket, the disc would depress towards the bottom with juice seeping out between the staves into a waiting basin or tray. In some presses, added pressure would come from a giant lever or manual hand crank.[1]
While the basket press was becoming more widely used by Church-owned estates in France and Germany, winemaking in the
feudal land tenants were willing to pay a portion of their crop to use a landlord's wine press if it was available. This was probably due in part to the added volume of wine (anywhere from 15 to 20%) that pressing could produce versus treading. But safety could have also been a driving force since many parish records from the period reported wine cellar workers suffocating to death (from the released carbon dioxide) while treading fermenting wine grapes in a vat.[3]
Press fractions
A 16th-century basket press
As the use of the basket press became more popular, wineries and wine writers started to make a distinction between the quality of wine that came from different levels of pressing. The highest quality was the vin de goutte or the "free run" juice that was released by the mere weight of the grapes squeezing each other as they were loaded into the press. This was usually the lightest in colour and body and was often kept separate from the vin de presse that came from pressing which was darker and had more tannins. In 1600, French wine writer
wines of Anjou in the Loire Valley to blend in the vin de goutte with the vin de presse. Much like the ancient Roman pressed wine lorca, Middle Age peasants often drank piquette from the left over grape skins after pressing.[3]
Nowhere was the analysis of the difference in press fractions more astute than in the
Canon Godinot to have laid out these specifications for how the press fractions of juice destined to be Champagne should be handled. First the pressing were to happen quickly, as soon after harvest as possible to keep the juice at its freshest and to avoid any coloring from the red wine grapes of Pinot noir and Pinot Meunier. The free run vin de goutte was considered too delicate and lacking on its own to make fine Champagne and it was sometimes discarded or used for other wines. The first and second pressings (called tailles or cut since the pomace cake was literally cut with ropes, chains or paddles to remove it between pressings) were the most ideal for sparkling wine production. The juice of the third pressing was considered acceptable but the fourth pressing (called the vin de taille) was rarely used and all other pressings after that (the vins de pressoirs were considered too harsh and colored to be of any value in Champagne production.[3]
Changing styles
A 1649 drawing of a German horizontal wine press
In the 17th and 18th century,
full bodied wines of Ho-Bryan produced by Lord Arnaud III de Pontac began to receive wide acclaim from English writers such as Jonathan Swift, John Locke and Samuel Pepys. By the end of the 18th century, nearly all prestigious Bordeaux wine estates were following de Pontac's method of giving the grapes more time to ferment in the vat and then using a basket press on the darker vin vermeilh and pressing it into new oak barrels.[3]
A basket press from the Provence region of southeast France
The advancement of
steam power machinery in the 19th century brought about a revolution in wine press technology as manual basket press gave way to steam-powered presses that greatly increased the efficiency of pressing and reduced the amount of labor needed to operate a press. Even the advancement of rail transport had a positive influence as the cost of transporting large wine presses from manufacturers to wine regions throughout the globe decreased and more wineries were able to afford to purchase a wine press.[4]
Modern presses
A modern pneumatic batch press
With relatively modest changes, the basket press has continued to be widely used for centuries since its introduction by both small
In the 20th century, wine presses advanced from the vertical style pressing of the basket press and ancient wine press to horizontal pressing with pressure either being applied at one or both ends or from the side through the use of an airbag or bladder. These new presses were categorized as "batch", which like the basket press had to have the pomace emptied and grapes reloaded, and as "continuous" where a belt or Archimedes' screw would subject the grapes/pomace to increasing pressure from one end of the press to the other with new grapes being added and the pomace being continuously removed.[1]
Large "tank" presses that are fully enclosed can be used for anaerobic winemaking.
Another advancement in the horizontal batch press was the complete enclosure of the press (sometimes called "tank press") that reduced the exposure of the grape must to air. Some advance presses can even be flushed with nitrogen to create a complete anaerobic environment that can be desired for wine making with white wine grapes. Additionally, many of today's modern presses are computerized which allows the operator to control exactly how much pressure is being applied to the grape skins and for how many cycles.[1]
^Marcus Cato De Agri Cultura (18-19) LacusCurtius, English Translation by W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash, University of Chicago. Accessed: May 8th, 2012
^Pliny The Natural History Book 18 CHAP. 74. (31.), translation by John Bostock and H.T. Riley, Perseus, Tufts University. Accessed: May 10th, 2012
^Marcus Terentius Varro "De re rustica" (I. 54) published in the Loeb Classical Library, 1934. LacusCurtius, University of Chicago. Accessed: May 11, 2012
