At Cypress Bend, the blossoms will
soon become great gob stoppers of muscadine grapes. Jim McClanathan sets his calendar
to the rhythms of the land – pruning, replanting, vine tying and worrying. He leaves the farming to the Smiths but still, the essence of good wine is a good grape, and he doesn’t rest easy until the harvest is in. The harvest sets off a new chain of events: crushing, pumping and, eventually, bottling. Just 30 minutes after picking, the grapes
are crushed. Last year, the Smiths picked roughly 200 tons of grapes from 35 acres of land. They are weighed then poured into a crusher made in Italy. Reading equipment manuals originally written in Italian and translated, sometimes badly, into English was a learning experience but that’s when McClanathan put a background in running lumber mills to good use, streamlining the repetitive process of crushing and straining into a smooth flow. Once the grapes are crushed, the
juice is stored in gleaming silver tanks visible from the Cypress Bend tasting room, a charming space overlooking the vineyards, and McClanathan becomes scientist once again as the juice’s sugar content is measured by the “brick.” The magic number is 21 percent, the time when fermentation can begin. Yeast, the secret ingredient, is added. There are hundreds of strains of
yeast, each with its own power to affect the flavor or complexity of a particular wine, so winemakers tend to guard their recipes closely. The wine then ferments in the tanks,
white at a chilly 60 to 65 degrees, red fermenting on the “must” of the grape, its skin, seeds and pulp. After partial fermentation, the red is pumped back into the press and then back to the tank once again to finish fermentation until time for bottling. All the while, McClanathan is constantly testing and tasting, sniffing and eyeballing his finished product. McClanathan gently swirls a glass as
he talks. “Everybody has a good time when they’re drinking a good glass of wine,” he says. “I’m the person who makes them happy.”CV
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