What is the clarification, the filtering process of the wine that was made with egg whites
For some time now, the grape harvest and the wine production process has been altered at a dizzying pace by the irruption of technology in the sector, which has allowed to mechanize the processes and make each step much more productive.
From the grape harvesting itself to bottling, through the gutting or clarification have changed their way of being adapting to the new times to make the wine a much more careful product and achieve a much more profitable production.
According to Julia Villar, guide of the Emina Rueda winery, in Medina del Campo, “the harvest process is done by a machine that passes over the plant, it is maturing and is absorbing the grapes, which will not fall to the ground and is more antiseptic,” he says.
Once the grapes arrive at the winery, as Villar explains, it is refrigerated so that the fermentation does not begin early, and from there it goes to the press. ” In Emina they are pressed in presses of vacuum technology that is the latest to press, and inside there is a kind of swollen membrane that causes the grape to suck, the press and thus expels oxygen, something that is super important because thus we avoid a premature oxidation. It is pressed with enough force to break the skin of the grape but without breaking the seed, which can give it a touch margo”.
Once the must has macerated for about five hours, it passes to the stainless steel tanks, although it passes with pulp, skin and others, according to the guide of the winery, so that’s where, to make whites, all the remains are removed.
After the fermentation, which lasts about 15 days, the wine stays in the tanks for about two or three months to catch more structure, and after these processes comes the cleaning phase, that is, the clarification.
Based on clearings or clayey soils
“The name of the ‘clarification’ comes from the egg whites, which is what was used above all for red, but in this area, since the time of the Catholic Monarchs, it was very typical to use clayey lands of Nava del Rey to carry out this cleaning,” says Julia Villar.
According to the guide, this process has resulted in the use of bentonite: “They are clayey lands that like the egg white does a cleaning at the bottom; that is, it is thrown from the top of the deposit, and as it weighs more it goes down and dragging the dirtiest and dense part of the wine, and so it is cleaner and more fluid to then filter it better”, confesses Julia.
SOURCE: 20MINUTOS.ES