The Pressing Floor

The first stage of the wine’s transformation: the largest interior space in the Common Quarter, its stone floor the oldest continuously worked surface in the town’s production infrastructure. During the harvest press — the six weeks of late summer and early autumn when the grapes arrive from the estates in daily waves — the pressing floor operates from before dawn to after dark, staffed by the full cellar worker community, its smell the specific signal to the rest of the Common Quarter that the current vintage has begun. The estate families’ master vintners assess the pressing floor’s output at the end of each pressing day. Corso has been the person who gives them the preliminary assessment for twenty years.