Delicata presses over a million kilos of Maltese grapes

The 2012 vintage has been a bumper year for Delicata as the pressing came to an end at their stateof-the-art winery in Marsa last month some six weeks after it began. The last two grapes to be pressed were Malta’s unique, indigenous red and white grape varieties, Gellewza and Girgentina.

These final deliveries of the Malta and Gozo grown grapes, took Delicata well through the one million kilo threshold.

Just to put that into perspective, if you lined up all of the vines needed to produce one million kilos of grapes it would stretch from Valletta to Athens (some 850 kilometres) or go around the shoreline of Malta (137 kilometres) just over six times. In total, the 1 million kilos is made up from 20 different grape varieties, that have been grown and handpicked in selected Delicata family run vineyards from approximately 350 farmers, spread out across both Malta and Gozo.

Overall, this year’s climatic conditions helped the grapes achieve a more regular but progressive ripening process than in 2011 and the substantial winter rains were also a bonus. Disease infestation was also lower this year, possibly a result of the customized winter pruning exercise carried out by Delicata’s team of French pruning experts back in February. These pruning techniques also helped increase the grapes natural sugars.

The white varieties pressed by Delicata include Sauvignon Blanc, Viognier, Moscato, Girgentina, Vermentino and Chardonnay, which performed particularly well this year due to the re-grafting exercise carried out and also responded exceptionally well to the customized pruning implemented. The red varieties pressed by Delicata include Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah (Shiraz), Grenache, Carignan, Cabernet Franc, Gellewza and Sangiovese. Out of these red varieties some of the Syrah, Grenache and Gellewza will be vinified as Rose wines.

The resulting wine brands that these D.O.K. Malta, D.O.K. Gozo and I.G.T. Maltese Islands grapes will go into are; Gran Cavalier, Grand vin de Hauteville, Victoria Heights, Medina, Gellewza, Maltese Falcon and Pjazza Regina.

Now that pressing has finished, the wines will be in various stages of fermentation, depending on when the grapes arrived at the winery. Delicata has an assortment of tanks; each one specialised to handle certain wines. Many will be fermented in the newly installed stainless steel tanks which are all temperature controlled, with insulated cooling jackets and fully equipped for pump over’s, de le stage, carbonic maceration, pre fermentation cold maceration, post fermentation maceration, cap management, seed management and punch downs. Some white wines are resting on the fine lees (sur lie), which is then mixed every other day to obtain more complexity whilst some of the reds are having additional maceration with cap submerged.

The previously installed state-of-the-art 300 hectolitre Ganimede wine fermenters, the only fermenters in the world to use a method that allows the scientific management of technical gases, will be used for many of the red wines in particular.