CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- It's almost harvest time for City Winery in Chicago's West Loop and Caroline Schrader is preparing for a new season.
"September through November, we'll be getting in fruit for California, Oregon and Washington," Schrader said, City Winery's award-winning winemaker. "We'll immediately process the fruit, we'll remove the grapes form the stem and send the fruit into the fermentation tanks.
"When fermentation is done, we then separate the juice from the grape skins, we press the grape skins. Then a week later, we'll send the wine into barrels and we'll let the wine sit in the barrels, 6-12 months on average," she said.
Power washers are continuously cleaning out each barrel, ahead of the fall harvest. The process takes about a year, she said.
"We're just now taking the wine out of the barrels," she said. "Now we clean then and reuse them for the next batch."
As head winemaker, Schrader is the first woman to take the helm and one of the few women in the industry. She is leading the Chicago wine scene with innovation and expertise she has learned along her wine journey.
"I see myself fitting into this niche. I think it's becoming more common for women to do wine making and sort of having the hands on technical role," she said.
She hopes she will be joined by more women in the industry and that the gender gap tightens up as it continues to grow.
"Women bring a lot of different skills to the job. I like to nurture the wines," she laughed. "I think you're going to see a lot more women in the winemaking industry.
An architect by trade, Schrader took on wine making as a hobby; now it's her full time job. She began at City Winery in 2015 and was recently named head winemaker at the company.
"A winemaker took me under his wing — most (of) everything I know is from the predecessors teaching me and guiding me along the way," she said.
This spring, she rolled out a first-of-its-kind vegan Rosé harvested from Midwestern grapes. Made from Chambourcin, a French hybrid widely grown in Southern Illinois, the Rosé brings a new varietal Schrader wanted to introduce to City Winery's market.
"Rosé is very popular to drink these days," she said. "It introduces people to the Midwestern grape that is different from California grapes. This Rosé was my baby, my first major project I have taken on here."
Upstairs is a lab of sorts where science takes over. It's where she tests wine analysis in a small labratory.
"We run free SO2, ethanol, PH, volatile acidity and residual sugar tests. Those are the standard analysis we do for every wine we serve," she said.
City Winery produces 7,000 cases a year with 70 tons of grapes each harvest. Schrader said this is a time where wine is more popular than ever. There is more interest and more accessibility.
"One of the unique and fun things about making wine in the middle of the city is that on crush days when we receive our fruit, you'll actually see us offloading 10 tons of grapes on the corner of Racine and Randolph and you don't really see that anywhere," Schrader said. "Being able to bring that rural element of farming and viticulture to an urban setting is really unique.