Friday, September 25, 2009

Our first wine is in the tank!

What a week! The press was fixed on Wednesday afternoon. Laura “convinced” UPS that William should be able to meet the UPS truck, get the part, and rush it to the winery as quickly as possible. The electricians were waiting for the part, and the press was back to work by the middle of the afternoon.

Everything is moving along quite rapidly now with our first juice fermenting in a tank, and the press going non-stop 15 hours a day. As soon as one cycle is finished, the press is emptied, cleaned, and readied for the next batch of grapes. We hope to finish the Traminette today and start pressing Chambourcin tomorrow. The Traminette will make a white wine, and we will make a blush from this Chambourcin. Our test batch of Chambourcin last winter was delicious and we are very excited about the possibilities of our Chambourcin wine.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

First day of pressing grapes

We had finally gotten everything working today when the press blew up – complete with smoke and terrible noises! The building was bustling this morning when we started the press for the first time, and when the juice started pouring into the catch pan, we literally had a crowd of about 15 construction workers standing around in awe of the process. It was a very exciting morning...until it crashed. It was during the second cycle of pressing the Traminette variety. Fortunately the electricians were working in the building and helped William – a very distraught William – figure out what was wrong. Our electricians figured out the problem (we hope) and the part is ordered and will be shipped overnight. It was quite a let-down from our initial excitement at getting everything started.