What is "pressing"

Pressing \Press"ing\, a. Urgent; exacting; importunate; as, a pressing necessity. -- Press"ing*ly, adv.

Press \Press\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Pressed; p. pr. & vb. n. Pressing.] [F. presser, fr. L. pressare to press, fr. premere, pressum, to press. Cf. Print, v.]

1. To urge, or act upon, with force, as weight; to act upon by pushing or thrusting, in distinction from pulling; to crowd or compel by a gradual and continued exertion; to bear upon; to squeeze; to compress; as, we press the ground with the feet when we walk; we press the couch on which we repose; we press substances with the hands, fingers, or arms; we are pressed in a crowd.

   Good measure, pressed down, and shaken together.
   --Luke vi. 38.

2. To squeeze, in order to extract the juice or contents of; to squeeze out, or express, from something.

   From sweet kernels pressed, She tempers dulcet creams.
   --Milton.

   And I took the grapes, and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand.
   --Gen. xl. 11.

3. To squeeze in or with suitable instruments or apparatus, in order to compact, make dense, or smooth; as, to press cotton bales, paper, etc.; to smooth by ironing; as, to press clothes.

4. To embrace closely; to hug.

   Leucothoe shook at these alarms, And pressed Palemon closer in her arms.
   --Pope.

5. To oppress; to bear hard upon.

   Press not a falling man too far.
   --Shak.

6. To straiten; to distress; as, to be pressed with want or hunger.

7. To exercise very powerful or irresistible influence upon or over; to constrain; to force; to compel.

   Paul was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ.
   --Acts xviii. 5.

8. To try to force (something upon some one); to urge or inculcate with earnestness or importunity; to enforce; as, to press divine truth on an audience.

   He pressed a letter upon me within this hour.
   --Dryden.

   Be sure to press upon him every motive.
   --Addison.

9. To drive with violence; to hurry; to urge on; to ply hard; as, to press a horse in a race.

   The posts . . . went cut, being hastened and pressed on, by the king's commandment.
   --Esther viii. 14.

   Note: Press differs from drive and strike in usually denoting a slow or continued application of force; whereas drive and strike denote a sudden impulse of force.

   Pressed brick. See under Brick.

"exerting pressure," mid-14c., present participle adjective from press (v.1). Sense of "urgent, compelling, forceful" is from 1705. Related: Pressingly.

1. 1 Needing urgent attention. 2 insistent, earnest, or persistent. n. 1 The application of pressure by a press or other means. 2 A metal or plastic part made with a press. 3 The process of improve the appearance of clothing by improving creases and removing wrinkles with a press or an iron. 4 A memento preserved by pressing, folding, or drying between the leaves of a flat container, book, or folio. Usually done with a flower, ribbon, letter, or other soft, small keepsake. 5 The extraction of juice from fruit using a press. 6 A phonograph record; a number of records pressed at the same time. 7 urgent insistence. v

2. (present participle of press English)

adj. compelling immediate action; "too pressing to permit of longer delay"; "the urgent words `Hurry! Hurry!'"; "bridges in urgent need of repair" [syn: urgent]

1. n. the act of pressing; the exertion of pressure; "he gave the button a press"; "he used pressure to stop the bleeding"; "at the pressing of a button" [syn: press, pressure]

2. a metal or plastic part that is made by a mechanical press

Pressing may refer to:

• Pressing plant, process for producing vinyl (sound recording) records
• Pressing hill, 2370m high, part of the Central Eastern Alps, range of mountains (also known as Hohe Pressing) in the region of Gurktal, Austria.
• Pressing (execution), a method of execution
• Pressing (wine), the extraction of juice from crushed grapes during wine making
• Expeller pressing or oil pressing, a mechanical method for extracting oil from raw materials
• Hot pressing, a powder metallurgy process
• Hot isostatic pressing, a manufacturing process
• Pressing, a generic drug name of Hemofarm Group for Loratadine, a second-generation H histamine antagonist drug used to treat allergies.
• The Serbian band Presing, who also used the alternative name Pressing.
• Pressing, a defensive tactic in association football.

Pressing in winemaking is the process where juice is extracted from grapes. This can be done with the aid of a wine press, by hand, or even by the weight of the own grape berries and clusters. Historically, intact grape clusters were trodden by feet but in most wineries today the grapes are sent through a crusher/destemmer, which removes the individual grape berries from the stems and breaks the skins, releasing some juice, prior to being pressed. There are exceptions, such as the case of sparkling wine production in regions such as Champagne where grapes are traditionally whole-cluster pressed with stems included to produce a lighter must that is low in phenolics.

In white wine production, pressing usually takes place immediately after crushing or/and before primary fermentation. In red wine production, the grapes are also crushed but pressing usually doesn't take place till after or near the end of fermentation with the time of skin contact between the juice and grapes leaching color, tannins and other phenolics from the skin. Approximately 60-70% of the available juice within the grape berry, the free-run juice, can be released by the crushing process and doesn't require the use of the press. The remaining 30-40% that comes from pressing can have higher pH levels, lower titratable acidity, potentially higher volatile acidity and higher phenolics than the free-run juice depending on the amount of pressure and tearing of the skins and will produce more astringent, bitter wine.

Winemakers often keep their free-run juice and pressed wine separate (and perhaps even further isolate the wine produced by different pressure levels/stages of pressing) during much of the winemaking process to either bottle separately or later blend portions of each to make a more complete, balanced wine. In practice the volume of many wines are made from 85-90% of free-run juice and 10-15% pressed juice.