The grapes are subject to less internal pressure and the juice has a very short distance to travel through the compact mass of grapes before it flows out. The resulting wine carries much less debris (bourbes) which can rapidly communicate a green, stalky taste when present. Normal practise indicate that the day after a wine has been pressed it should be pumped into another tank to separate it from these deposits which form a thick mud several inches deep on the bottom of the tank. We have found that instead of a couple of 100 litres of deposit that we used to have with the modern wine press, we have less than 10 litres- so we no longer carry out this operation.

Another avantage is that there is no"rebêche". This involves breaking up the mass of grapes after an initial pressing so that on the second pressing, more wine is extracted. This is commonly done by chains inside the wine press that mash up the grapes on the opening cycle. This has a strong tendancy to extract stalky tastes from the stems and pips. The old fashioned vertical wine press does not do any rebêche.. Certainly less wine is extracted as is witnessed by the final cake which is still quite moist after pressing. Less is definitely better as the wine extracted at the end of the process under heavy pressure is not the best.