Like most of you on the East Coast, we got buried in snow starting Friday. Probably got over two feet, but the drifts in front of the winery were a good 30". It took me 15 minutes to plow a single lane with my tractor 25 feet long to our front door. The four-wheel drive tractor could barely drive forward through the stuff, let alone push the snow.
I have to say that I am glad we got all of our tanks moved outside before all this hit. We even filled them with the next batch of Suite for cold-stabilization. I tried to go out and check the temperature in the tanks yesterday, but the stairwell to the crushpad was full of snow....
I don't think we've seen this big a dumping since 2004 when we had to cancel our Sweet Release weekend and I plowed for two days. There's just a lot of snow out there.
That said, I think 4WD vehicles should be able to make it into our drive today if they really want to. Good luck. I'll be on the tractor if you need me......
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Moving
I'm torn these days. I spent most of yesterday moving tanks around. We have a few tanks in our winery--horizontal ones that take up a lot of space--that we use for cold stabilization. (These are old milk tanks from the dairy industry that we converted years ago for wine production. What's good enough for milk is plenty good enough for wine--we have alcohol on our side!)
Every year we cold-stabilize our wines. This involves bringing the temperature of the wine down to around 26F--depending on the alcohol content--and holding it there. We then seed the wine with some potassium bitartrate in order to start a crystallization process that helps pull the excess tartaric acid out of solution. Now, this sounds all fancy and chemistry-like, but every winery in the world does this or some form of this. The aim of this is to have the crystals deposit in the tank so they don't deposit in the bottle in your fridge at home.
Interesting fact: the crystals we pull out of the wine? It also goes by the name of "cream of tartar". That's right, the stuff used in baking comes from the wine industry. Neat, huh?
It takes a lot of energy to bring these wines to these low temperatures and hold them, especially when we're trying to keep the rest of the winery a little warmer (67F) in order to get our MLs to run in the barrels. So, the idea was to take the tanks outside--where it's colder--and save some energy and space costs. (Yes, space costs money. It's why you are charged to put things in storage units.)
Opening up the space has made me realize that we could be using this barrel room as a Barrel Room. In other words, use it for events and other marketing nonsense. Perhaps sell a few more bottles of wine. Now, I'd love to sell more wine, especially if it's the reds and whites I enjoy making so much. But the site of a newly-freed-up wall just begs for more tanks and barrels to fill it, not tables and chairs.
In any case, we're not quite done with the moving yet. Just got about 3-4 inches of snow last night. It's going to be fun sledding around with the forklift today.....
Every year we cold-stabilize our wines. This involves bringing the temperature of the wine down to around 26F--depending on the alcohol content--and holding it there. We then seed the wine with some potassium bitartrate in order to start a crystallization process that helps pull the excess tartaric acid out of solution. Now, this sounds all fancy and chemistry-like, but every winery in the world does this or some form of this. The aim of this is to have the crystals deposit in the tank so they don't deposit in the bottle in your fridge at home.
Interesting fact: the crystals we pull out of the wine? It also goes by the name of "cream of tartar". That's right, the stuff used in baking comes from the wine industry. Neat, huh?
It takes a lot of energy to bring these wines to these low temperatures and hold them, especially when we're trying to keep the rest of the winery a little warmer (67F) in order to get our MLs to run in the barrels. So, the idea was to take the tanks outside--where it's colder--and save some energy and space costs. (Yes, space costs money. It's why you are charged to put things in storage units.)
Opening up the space has made me realize that we could be using this barrel room as a Barrel Room. In other words, use it for events and other marketing nonsense. Perhaps sell a few more bottles of wine. Now, I'd love to sell more wine, especially if it's the reds and whites I enjoy making so much. But the site of a newly-freed-up wall just begs for more tanks and barrels to fill it, not tables and chairs.
In any case, we're not quite done with the moving yet. Just got about 3-4 inches of snow last night. It's going to be fun sledding around with the forklift today.....
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Bottles
We're doing a lot of bottling these days, so I'm thinking about bottles a lot. It's all part of the packaging of our product. Back when Kris was involved in our day-to-day decisions, she said she wanted to make our bottles look as good as the wine tasted. She accomplished that.
We use a few different types of bottles.....and I've been trying to make it easier on our warehousing and storage of them by not using too many. But, I also feel strongly traditional in this sense. I can't imagine Chardonnay in anything else but a Burgundy bottle, and Merlot and Cabernet have to go in a Bordeaux. Riesling is in a hoch (although we do it in blue....why? Because it sells better that way. Believe me. Most package decisions are made purely on making the wine more saleable. If you find a cool bottle at the state liquor store, you can pretty much be assured that the wine is just as uncool that's in it. That's marketing.)
We get asked from time to time if we can re-use the bottles, and unfortunately we can't. The bottles we purchase from our suppliers come to us sterilized. (Sure, every once in a while a small piece of cardboard dust makes it into the bottle, but it's STERILE dust....) There's no way on earth that I could take a used bottle and sterilize it so that it could be re-used. It's just asking for trouble. A few stray bacteria in the bottle and, poof, bad wine. Or worse, refermenting wine that pops the cork on somebody's brand new white rug. Not worth the risk.
Now, I have been reading that there's a company on the west coast that is going to start recycling bottles. There have been companies like this around from time to time, but they have never been successful long-term. I'm hoping this one will be--and that they find a way to open a branch on the east coast. This is an idea whose time has come. Most bottles are used once, and not all of them make it into recycling bins. (In fact, at Allegro, we have to drive about 5 miles to our recycling station. No curbside pickup in Brogue....)
In Europe, they have been re-using (re-sterilizing) bottles for years, and I read that the average bottle makes about 7 trips around before it's melted and remolded into something else. Most of the carbon footprint for wine bottles comes in the making. I sure would sleep better at night knowing we were being a bit more energy efficient with our bottles. Once the re-sterilized bottles are available near Pennsylvania, you can bet I'll be using them.....
We use a few different types of bottles.....and I've been trying to make it easier on our warehousing and storage of them by not using too many. But, I also feel strongly traditional in this sense. I can't imagine Chardonnay in anything else but a Burgundy bottle, and Merlot and Cabernet have to go in a Bordeaux. Riesling is in a hoch (although we do it in blue....why? Because it sells better that way. Believe me. Most package decisions are made purely on making the wine more saleable. If you find a cool bottle at the state liquor store, you can pretty much be assured that the wine is just as uncool that's in it. That's marketing.)
We get asked from time to time if we can re-use the bottles, and unfortunately we can't. The bottles we purchase from our suppliers come to us sterilized. (Sure, every once in a while a small piece of cardboard dust makes it into the bottle, but it's STERILE dust....) There's no way on earth that I could take a used bottle and sterilize it so that it could be re-used. It's just asking for trouble. A few stray bacteria in the bottle and, poof, bad wine. Or worse, refermenting wine that pops the cork on somebody's brand new white rug. Not worth the risk.
Now, I have been reading that there's a company on the west coast that is going to start recycling bottles. There have been companies like this around from time to time, but they have never been successful long-term. I'm hoping this one will be--and that they find a way to open a branch on the east coast. This is an idea whose time has come. Most bottles are used once, and not all of them make it into recycling bins. (In fact, at Allegro, we have to drive about 5 miles to our recycling station. No curbside pickup in Brogue....)
In Europe, they have been re-using (re-sterilizing) bottles for years, and I read that the average bottle makes about 7 trips around before it's melted and remolded into something else. Most of the carbon footprint for wine bottles comes in the making. I sure would sleep better at night knowing we were being a bit more energy efficient with our bottles. Once the re-sterilized bottles are available near Pennsylvania, you can bet I'll be using them.....
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