We served Navarro's first juice in our tasting room in 1981 and we were delighted that adults as well as children enjoyed Gewürztraminer's lychee-peach flavors. A few vintages later we introduced a red grape juice so that our friends of all ages could also enjoy Pinot's strawberry-plum-rhubarb flavors. It's not difficult to make non-alcoholic grape juice; the grapes are harvested and quickly pressed, and then the juice immediately chilled so that no fermentation occurs. The difficulty is in successfully bottling juice. Conveniently holding cold juice in a tank until after harvest—when yeast cells aren't everywhere—isn't an option as juice is a perfect fermentation medium. At Navarro we've learned that juice must be bottled within a week or two after harvesting. Grapes for juice are picked early in the season but by the time we are ready to bottle juice, we are harvesting other grapes and our tanks are bubbling with fermenting wine. To minimize yeast spores in the bottling area, these lots are fermented at the other end of the winery.

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