Acorn Hill Winery

The Winery

“My job is to nurture the fruit and provide it with ideal conditio­ns, so that I can make great wine.”

Frantz Ventre, Winemaker

Merlot

Any good winemaker knows that the vineyard is where the winemaking truly begins. When we talk about our winemaking philosophy at Acorn Hill, we have to start with our winemaker, Frantz Ventre, because it is his approach that sets the style of wine for which our winery is known. The winemaker is, in a sense, coaching the grapes through fermentation and aging. Frantz became well versed in this method as a young man growing up in the world–renowned Bordeaux wine region near St. Emilion, France, and working in his friend’s family vineyard. From there, Frantz enthusiastically embarked on his life’s work and after receiving his Masters Degree in Oenology from the University of Bordeaux, he set off for a life–changing internship at a Virginia winery in 1996.

Frantz Ventre, Winemaker

Frantz’s approach is based in the well–proven old–world style, which relies on focusing great attention in the vineyard, and then nurturing the fruit in the cellar, “Don’t try to interfere too much, and you will produce good wine.” Frantz’s education also provided him with an appreciation and understanding of technological advances that enable a winemaker to better provide an environment for the fruit to yield their very best.

View from top level

AH Winery has built a 26,000–square–foot state–of–the–art gravity flow production facility. The 3–level building allows the fruit to move through the process with the benefit of gravity flow versus the harsher pumping alternative. From grape reception through transfer of the juice into the fermenting and aging tanks or barrels, this process provides a gentler handling of the fruit, resulting in superior wines. Our state–of–the–art equipment includes a vibrating hopper, which is the receptacle for the fruit arriving onto the crush pad at the highest point of the winery. The hopper maintains the integrity of the clusters, but is the first step in ridding the grape clusters of leaves and twigs. Next the clusters move gently onto the vibrating sorting table, where our staff pick out any missed leaves, twigs and fruit that does not meet our quality standards; then onto a conveyor belt, which delivers the grapes to the press (in the case of white wines); and from the press into the stainless steel tanks on the level below, by way of hoses. The juice flows into the fermentation tanks below—what’s called gravity flow—an innovation based on age–old techniques in the world of winemaking.

Smaller tanks gently transporting reds into fermentation tanks

In the case of the red grapes, the fruit moves via the conveyor belt to the destemmer and is delivered into smaller tanks, which are then hoisted and placed over the larger tanks—this ensures, more than any other method, that any bruising of the grapes is minimal, which is not the case when a much larger quantity is fed into the large fermentation tanks at one time.

We use a semi–automated Punch Down system, which is an alternative to traditional pump–overs and a gentle way for extraction to happen, for the fermentation process to take place.

Filtering the wine is the last step before bottling, to eliminate any small particles that may still be in the tank or barrel. The cross–flow system that we have at AH requires only one filtration rather than several. This single step filtration maintains the integrity and complexity of the wine.

The AH Barrel “Cave” is where our reds age in French oak barrels. Even though it’s not actually a cave in the side of a mountain, two of the walls are underground and it has its own temperature and humidity controls, separate from the rest of the facility. Since the whole point of storing wine in actual caves is to control the humidity and temperature to optimize aging, ours definitely meets the criteria for being called a “Cave.”

The end result of any of these advanced techniques is to avoid harsh treatment of the fruit from the vineyard through all points of the winemaking process. It is a large part of AH Winery’s commitment to bringing our customers the very best wine possible.

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