Wineries Unlimited

This week finds us in Richmond, Virginia. We are going to Wineries Unlimited but are focussed on attending the trade show portion of the conference. When we went to the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento in late January, we went to many vendors' booths and got an overall impression of the kinds of equipment that were available but were completely overwhelmed. We learned that many of the vendors would be on the East Coast in March so we hope to get more information from a few of them. In the interim from January to March, my husband and I have been mulling over what we need.
The calculations that we are doing go like this:
For each ton of grapes we think that we can get 160 gallons of juice or approximately 65 cases of wine.
We need to look into the most appropriate size of equipment for volumes that can range from 3-5 tons (initial quantities) to the maximum of 25 tons or approximately 1600 cases which is our long term goal.
We are looking into destemmers (not necessarily with the crusher option), bladder presses, sorting tables and stainless steel tanks. We've talked with a few winemakers and listened to their sage advice. To us, the distillation of their advice goes something like this:
Grow the best grapes you can then the wine will make itself. Figure out what is the most important equipment that you need first and invest in that. Remember that people were making good wine long before science and technology came to have such prominence in grape growing and winemaking. Chik Brenneman at the U.C. Davis Institute for Wine and Food said something I'll always remember. When I remarked on all the state-of-the-art, beautiful, shiny stainless steel equipment in the new institute, he said a little wistfully, "Sometimes there is a need for more "art" in state-of-the-art".