Episode 2: Welcome to Cellar B | Japanese Wines

Cellar B Château Mercian processes a total of around 700 metric tons of grapes each year, around 550 tons of which is processed at this facility. The harvest begins in early September and finishes by late October. The larger French tanks in this room are for red or white wines and are around 15,000 litres in volume. The French tanks show a distinct inclined weld for ensuring all remaining sediment can be removed after fermentation. The smaller Japanese tanks in this room are strictly for white and rosé wines and are around 6,000 to 10,000 litres in volume. Cooling jackets surround both types of tank. The fermentation temperature for white wines at this winery is from 18 to 22 degrees Celsius, while the fermentation temperature for red wines is around 30 degrees Celsius. You can see a large cooling system in this room that supplies 4 to 5 degree Celsius water to these cooling jackets. Although many of these large stainless steel tanks look identical in size, their actual volumes vary considerably, so the Japanese tax authorities have had the winery develop painstaking methods for measuring volume. Thus, a newly acquired tank, whether produced overseas or domestically, is filled with a known quantity of water and then the water level inside the tank is checked with a measuring rod reserved specifically for that tank in order to accurately determine its total volume. By doing so, the winery can quickly and accurately determine the amount of tax it must pay to the Japanese tax authorities.