Acharnes in Chania - 4th day

by Maria Pitsineli and Alexandra Triandi, class B

Thursday 17/10/2019

On Thursday 17/10/2019 we visited Karavitakis Winery

At the winery we learned about the wines, their color and how we made them. We ask our questions if we had and when we ate some snacks.

We need the best place for each diffrent virieties for example we got tubes which hane a very long altitude.This is ileal for red wines not for wines.If we want to produce white grapes we need to go up to the mountain.This makes our job a little more difficult than usuall but in the end of the day we are getting a far better resault for our wines.So, this winery is producing 200.000 bottles of wines wvery year.We are growing diffrent virieties. Nine of them are internasional. A lot of diffrent wines for our winery hane very hard harvest all the time on the end of the day something is bringing this winery to other level of compare to other.We are focusing a lot quality wines.Its still a family old winery where lot of people working for us the wine making procces starts for the grapes.The harvest here starts in the middle of August and it is over at the beggining of October.

In Greece almost every winery has it’s own bottle line. We hane the wine ready to be bttled. We are bring the wines into the fortains. We are doing the final filtering, unclean the wine 100% and then we start the bottlening. The bottle line can bottle 2.000 bottles per hour. So, is extremely fast and it is very modern. The first part it is for whashing the bottles. The second part, cleaning the wine cleasing the skruw cup. Grece is not a country which is very familiar. There some countries whose use mostly skruw cups. The last part is pleasing the plastic cancel of the top of the bottle and the label. The biggest part wine it is not there. We have another storch area where we keep mostly red wines that needs to age for a few more years and then we start selling them.

All the grapes cut with hands.In other countries which have very large produdtions there are special machines which they shaking.Τhis means than they cut much more grapes in much less time but the don’t have the quality of the ones you will catch with your hands and put them in the telar and bring them to the winery.This winery wants to make very large quality’s wines.So, we rely on the people who make the wines. All the grapes when you cut them they get into track coolers and they are staying there for a hole day.It’s good to start on a very hot day of summer and it’s good to start with cold grapes.Like this we can protect the product especially at the beggining when it can’t be safe.When the fermatation begins because is produced carbon dioxide and some gases during the fermatation the moustacke is protected but in the beggining we have nothing to protecte it and we don’t want to use chemicals and we want our grapes to be very cold when they get here.So, we set the minimum rates as a winery we are very low in this track we are not even close to the middle of the line. We recycling almost everything even the rest from vintage we use them as fertilizer for our venyeards and our olives.When the grapes go to the winery we ous a mechanic to take out the stems, we dishtiguish the sterms from the roots. Dipending what wine we want to make red or white we following a completelly diffrent process.Because the white ones are very sensitable we want to make the process quickly.We have a wine that will oxidize.We don’t want to have a wine that it will go to the vinegar very quickly.Then, we put the grapes at the press.We will take out the moustacke from there and we make it cold.We freeze it to remove the mud that the mussel has.We freeze the must for one night so that no residue remains.Immediantely after fermentation will begin. We basically have one yeast that it takes out alchol. The process of the white wines takes 10 with 12 days. At twelve days the process has finished. Then we fill and seal our tanks for two months . After those months we need to follow some processes and at the end of the year we make all the white wines.For the red wines the process is much more slower.For example we don’t touch the grapes because the root hasn’t got colour.So as soon as we stand out the sterms and the roots we put the gravy at the tanks. They will stay there for three weeks.So,that we can get all the colour of the grape out for the taste we want.When the fermentation overs. We put the wine into barels from six months until 2 years depending on what wine we want to make. After all these we are botting up and we keep the wine in the vials for 2-3 years.

When we left from Karavitakis Winery we went to see one of the oldest olive tree in the world which is 3.000 years old.