The Winery & Facilities

In designing the winery at Mary Michelle, one question was asked. What facilities do we need to produce a world-class wine? For the wine cellar, it needed to be in a totally temperature-controlled building which could vary in temperature, like a natural cave, from 55 to 65 degrees. The cellar had to have all the modern sanitary features including stainless steel drains and epoxied floors to permit easy and thorough cleaning. 

For white wine, the essential ingredient was to have stainless steel tanks that could be temperature-controlled to keep the fermenting juice at 56 degrees. The white wines need to be stored in stainless steel tanks with French oak staves until the wine has a soft smooth rich finish. The reds also needed temperature-controlled fermentation and pump-over equipment, plus a mixture of both French and American oak staves to add complexity until the wine has a soft smooth rich finish. 

The bottling equipment needed to be state of the art. Before filling, each bottle needed to be sparged with inert nitrogen gas. Corks had to be of the highest quality and purchased from Scott Laboratories in California (one of California’s premier suppliers). The screw caps are made in Germany and are designed and made to be of the highest quality. These screw caps help seal the bottle from oxygen to protect the wine after the bottle is opened. The bottles, the labels, and the foil caps needed to be fully reflective of the quality that had gone into the wine itself. 

Mission Accomplished! In the end, every item on our wish list was checked off, resulting in a winery facility that would look at home in the Napa Valley, Bordeaux, or Australia. No expense has been spared to produce the highest quality wine.