Among the tools and devices that my dad bought or built for our “doll’s winery” when we started to play winemaking, there’s one that I still use: a small wooden 44 lbs press, which is just perfect for the manual squeezing of Ammàno and of my pied-de-cuve of wild yeast.

Ammàno spontaneously ferments with skin contact for about one week: only a small quantity of zibibbo grapes are hand picked and then transformed into a delicious craft orange wine, made without using machineries but only hands and manual tools. My small wooden press is just perfect to separate the skins from the juice at the end of the fermentation. The starter also ferments spontaneously thanks to wild yeast naturally present in the vineyard and at the winery for three or four days with all skins and stems, and it is pressed just before the juice is ready to be poured into the tank for the real fermentation.

When dismantled, the press looks like a meccano box more than a real winemaking equipment… but it only takes a few minutes and a little patience for assembling.
Once put together, the press is loaded with a little quantity of fermenting must and operated manually. Easier to watch than to explain, trust me...