Basket press

The basket press — a traditional vertical press in which grapes are loaded into a slatted wooden or stainless steel cylinder and pressed slowly from above — is one of the gentlest ways to extract juice from grapes. Unlike modern pneumatic presses, the basket press applies pressure gradually and evenly, extracting clean juice without excessive bitterness or astringency from the skins and seeds.

Le Grappin and Du Grappin use a basket press for all wines — the same press, in the same cellar in the Hautes Côtes de Beaune, for every wine Andrew and Emma Nielsen make. The Du Grappin Vézelay Blanc is slowly pressed over several hours before the juice is chilled and racked to barrel. The Du Grappin Bourgogne Aligoté is foot-crushed and basket-pressed — a particularly gentle approach for a grape variety that can produce harsh results if handled roughly.