Wine is a big part of the economy of California's Monterey County, but though it boasts 13 percent more vineyard acreage than Napa County, it has only a fraction of the wineries. As a result, 80 percent of the crop is processed elsewhere.

The county also has only a few custom-crush facilities, but a new facility at Scheid Vineyards and the little-known three-year-old Monterey Wine Company are making it easier to process Monterey County grapes at home. They're not alone, however. The old Golden State Vintners facility in Soledad, now part of The Wine Group, also does custom-crushing, and large Courtside Cellars lies in San Miguel just outside Monterey County in northern San Luis Obispo County, convenient to both those counties and Santa Barbara.

Scheid Vineyards

Scheid Vineyards, Inc. is the newest custom facility in Monterey. The publicly held company recently dedicated the 42,000-sq.-ft. custom crush facility with a capacity of 10,500 tons for winemaking plus 5,000 tons of juicing of grapes and can crush 500 tons per day. In volume, its 155 tanks can handle 2,065,000 gallons.

Scheid Vineyards also manages 5,700 acres of vineyards, primarily in Monterey County. The winery in Greenfield was fully operational for the 2005 harvest.

President and CEO Scott D. Scheid said the company's business falls into three general categories: grape sales, sales of finished wine, and custom-crushing. It also has a significant business juicing grapes for other wineries such as Fetzer and Kendall-Jackson, which, among other advantages, saves 28 percent in shipping weight.

Scheid works with more than 40 wine labels, including Niebaum-Coppola Estate Winery, Don Sebastiani & Sons, David Bruce Winery, Diageo, The Hess Collection Winery and Constellation Brands. It also services smaller wine labels and produces about 5,000 cases annually of Scheid's own small label, which is used primarily to showcase the fruit.

Scheid said that more and more customers want to buy finished wine, not grapes, and some, such as Niebaum-Coppola and Sebastiani, can't even handle grapes. "One-third of our production is now making wine instead of delivering grapes," he said.

So the timing was right to build a facility. "Last year we made wine at seven custom-crush facilities for our customers," Scheid said, adding that they ranged from Castoro in Templeton to Wente in Livermore, California. "Our winemakers put thousands of miles on their trucks just supervising the winemaking."

He added, "The addition of a grape-crushing facility is a natural evolution of Scheid Vineyards' commitment to providing the highest quality service to our customers. For 34 years, Scheid Vineyards has been growing quality wine grapes to customer specifications, and we've earned the distinction of being one of the largest independent growers of premium winegrapes."

Scheid has completed the first of two planned phases at the winery, with the second to expand the existing building and grow to more than 25,000 tons. It also hopes to add storage and aging capacity.

The winery includes special features designed for both large and small wine lots. For smaller lots, it uses unique two-story tanks, with the top tank having an open top that can be used with automatic punch down equipment for Pinot Noir and Syrah. Free-run wine can be drained directly into the tank below. The open fermentor can also be sealed to use it for aging.

For large lots, Scheid's big fermenting tanks have sloping floors wding rapidly. "It was an area custom-crush wasn't addressing," he said. "The market was mostly divided into huge processing facilities and small companies, such as Laird and Napa Wine Company. Where does the medium-size company go?"

The winery was designed to be a custom-crush facility, not a winery that would do custom-crushing until it was full of its own company's business.

Laumann said that wine production for boutiques needs to be optimized. As an example, "How big can a tank with a 1 to 1 ratio get before the center gets too hot. And red fermentation needs to be done in small tanks."

Monterey Wine Company specializes in lots of one or two truckload size. The facility doesn't include a bottling line but brings in a mobile line when needed. Laumann said it bottled 50,000 cases last year and is considering adding a bottling line.

Laumann says his customers are mostly small wineries—including parts of big companies—mostly addressing the high end of the market, but the company does work with one major negociant. Many of the customers are in Monterey and Santa Lucia. "We're full," he noted. "We can pick our customers." And the company looks for long-term clients, not growers who need to make wine because they can't sell their grapes.

Laumann prides himself on his company's innovation, using a wide array of new technology. This includes micro-oxygenation, and heater and cooling jackets with individual tank controls, especially important for Pinot Noir. "We can tell the tank to heat up and stop at 75 degrees to start the yeast, then cool at 85 degrees."

The company tries to work with clients interested in experimentation. "We're always trying new things," he said. "We're winemakers. We like to experiment."

The winery also uses Pulsair cap-management systems—a new way to mix the wine and caps—in the majority of its red fermentation tanks, noted Laumann. "In the 1980s, we got into sprinkler irrigation, but the cap doesn't move. It's better to break it up."

He said, when you break up the cap, the seeds fall out, get covered with the lees and become isolated. Catachins fall down, but anthocyanins stay up. "Wines made in these tanks have had similar phenolic and anthocyanin profiles to wines made with common sump and irrigator programs. We feel Pulsair creates a non-reductive environment that encourages sulfide-free, dry wines." He added that automating the systems saves labor costs, decreases the chance of cross contamination and ensures that irrigation happens on schedule.

Another unusual ability is alcohol reduction. Monterey Wine Company has its own reverse osmosis equipment, which it can use before malolactic fermentation or before shipping the wine out. To use it, of course, means that it has a distiller's license.

It also has an ultrafilter to clean up heavy press wine of excessive phenolics. This is useful to makers of sparkling wine who want to get 150 gallons of must per ton. "We can clean up heavy press wine without carbon fining. The system is also used to remove color from Pinot Gris and bitterness from Riesling, two popular Monterey grapes.

Interestingly, the winery doesn't use barrels, except a few for home winemaking. It uses staves in tanks to impart oak and un-toasted chips in fermentation. "For our price point ($9 to $40 retail), aging wines on staves with micro-ox is a valid option," Laumann said. It ironically stocks and sells barrels, however. "We're becoming a bit of a winemaking store," he said.

One interesting customer is Violetta Bouressa, a Stanford graduate who created Mar y Sol to make wines aimed at Mexican and Mexican-American consumers. Bouressa is also Monterey's