Press of José el Maroto

The grapes were transformed into wine in the press. Each family had their own press; in the upper part of Ademuz there were more than 100 presses. The vineyard had its heyday in the 19th century but declined at the beginning of the 20th century due to the phylloxera disease fungus. This building was donated by Tío José el Maroto. Its restorationn, along with other pre-industrial buildings in the neighbouring village of Sesga, was awarded in 2011 with the First Prize”Europa Nostra”, the highest award given annually by the European Union to architectural interventions that respect the original construction technique of the building as much as possible.
In the upper part we can observe the process of winemaking, until we reach the lower part, where the wine was stored.
In this museum we can find a sample of the tools necessary for working the fields and for harvesting the crop as it was done in the past with the help of horses. We can see how everything was made with noble elements, such as esparto grass and wicker.
The peculiarity of this press is that it is square, normally they were round to avoid corners. Regarding the process: some boards were placed on top of it, supported by the step that can be seen at the top, all the grapes were poured from the floor above and men climbed on the piles of grapes to crush them. To avoid losing their balance, they were held in place with ropes attached to the roof by studs or, in this case, half a horseshoe. The juice obtained was left to macerate for 15 days so that it would lose impurities.
On the ground floor was where the wine was racked through a hole that came from the press, to pass the wine into the jars. The big jars have a capacity of 200 litres and there were as many as men in the family (who were the ones that drank the wine). They came weekly and the wine was taken out in more manageable demijohns or skins.
The breeze that was still crushed at the top could still be used, it was poured into this cage press and a little more wine was extracted, although not of such good quality. The person who did not have a press made use of a neighbour’s press, extracting the proportion according to the harvest, (so many baskets of grapes corresponded to so many decalitres of wine, this was the measure of capacity used in this area). In the past, the wine was transported in skins, the skins being the whole skin of an animal, which was filled with wine and closed at the neck. By transporting them vertically, spillage was prevented. One could say that the skin is the grandfather of the wineskin. Just as in wooden casks for wine, oak is highly valued for the taste, colour and smell that it gives to the wine, the most suitable skin was goatskin.