Mechanical Winepress

"Monsieur Lefevre, this machine of yours is wonderful! Why in just one day I've managed to press a weeks worth of grapes! With this, you have changed the wine industry forever my friend."

— Adriaun LeBlanc, Vinter

Discovery

The Mechanical Winepress was invented by the Gnome inventor Monsieur Lefevre after he spent a summer at the LeBlanc vineyard outside of Villdue in the Kingdom of Falise. He was inspired after watching the numerous women working at the vineyard spend much of their days stomping on the grapes and sought to alleviate them of their hardship. What he failed to consider though was that his creation had just put them out of their job.

Access/Availabilty

The mechanical winepress is an expensive piece of machinery that only the wealthiest vineyards can afford. In turn, this allowed them to greatly increase their output making the wealth divide been vineyards ever more expansive, with many smaller vineyards being bought out.

Complexity

The Mechanical Winepress is a fairly complex piece of technology. A continuous screw system allows the press to process several batches of grapes at a time. This screw system is used to continuously force grapes into a chamber where a bladder then expands and presses the juice from the grapes which then flows out through small openings in the chamber.

Utility

This device allows the pressing of grapes on a plane surface instead of the grape stomping method previously used. While white wines required the use of a wine press in order to preserve the color of the wine by removing the juices quickly from the skin, red wine did not need to be pressed until the end of the juice removal process since the color did not matter. Many red wine winemakers continued to use their feet to smash the grapes then used a press to remove any juice that remained in the grape skins.

Inventor(s)

Monsieur Lefevre