Meet Our Winemaker Jeff Mangahas is a perfect fit with Hartford’s philosophy of "high risk–high reward" winemaking.	Winemaking to Show Vineyard Character At Hartford Family Winery, we embrace traditional winemaking techniques to produce luscious wines that express vineyard site or terroir. Hand Picking and Sorting Gentle handling and sorting of grapes preserve fruit quality. Cold Soaking Before fermentation is allowed to begin, whole berries and juice are placed in chilled tanks for nearly five days. This process extracts additional flavors (polyphenols) and more supple tannins that can not be obtained during the warmer fermentation process. Destemmed, Not Crushed Pinot Noir and Zinfandel are partially de-stemmed, but not crushed. Approximately seventy-five percent whole berries are delivered to stainless steel open-top fermentors where they are given a pre-fermentation cold soak and stirred daily for about 5 days to extract optimum color and mouth-feel. Open Top Fermentation For maximum color and flavor extraction, shallow, wide fermentors are used to facilitate the mixing (punching down) of the skins. During fermentation red grapes are punched down in small open-top fermentors and pressed-off after taste evaluation, usually at, or close to, dryness. Native and Cultured Yeasts After the Pinot Noir and Zinfandel cold soak, the cooling jackets are turned off and the grape juice is allowed to warm and begin fermentation utilizing either native or cultured yeasts. French Oak Only tight grain French oak barrels are used to age all of the wines. Wines are aged from 11 to 15 months. New French oak use ranges from 35% up to 100%. Minimal Handling After going to barrel, wines are usually racked only once before bottling. Chardonnay Chardonnay is hand sorted, whole cluster pressed and undergoes 100% barrel and malolactic fermentation. Batonage, or stirring of lees (spent yeast cells), is performed, as warranted, to build texture in the Chardonnay. Most often wines undergo native yeast fermentation. Unfined and Unfiltered Most wines are not fined or filtered in order to preserve the mouth-filling flavors and textures in our wine.