Oh boy, we’re gonna have fun this weekend!  Come on out and join us - I guarentee great wine, neat people, and fabulous music each afternoon.  No reservations needed and picnic baskets are welcome (but our license does not allow for any other alcohol other than PBV wine to be consumed on the property).

Start out on Saturday and unwind to the tropical breezy music of Elliott Ranney from 1-4pm in our winegarden.

Then on Sunday, come out from 2-5 to check out Gumbohead:

These guys have the coolest Cajun & Blues in St. Louis, and we get to kick up our heels all afternoon with them!  There is a $5/person cover charge from 2-5pm on Sunday.

Of course we don’t want the fun to end, so Labor Day Monday we’ll be open from 10-5pm. Before you head home, come check out:

Mark Gordon from 1-4pm!  He LOVES requests, and HATES having to make decisions about what to play; so be sure to ask for your favorite blues, pop, folk or any other tune you can think of!

Finally, in honor of Labor Day Weekend, I’m holding another little contest.  Leave a comment on this post by Friday August 29, 2008 at 3pm (central time) telling me what your favorite Labor Day Weekend memory is.  I’ll use the random number generator to choose a winner and if you are chosen, you’ll win four free entries to see Gumbohead here on Sunday afternoon.  Woo Hoo!  I’ll post the results at the top of this entry by 5pm on Friday.

Sorry to not post sooner…..we had problems crushing on Sunday, and that spread a lot of the cleanup work into yesterday.  Needless to say, I’m just recovering and catching up today!

We ended up crushing just over 8 tons of Cayuga White grapes from Kingdom of Calloway Vineyard up in Fulton.  The first half of the day went relatively easily and we processed our first set of six bins without issues. Unfortunately, the second half of the day went a LOT slower.

I guess we wore out our tractor, because by the second bin in the afternoon, it decided not to lift anymore.  Fortunately, our neighbors, the Earharts, came to our rescue with their tractor!  We processed another bin, then our pump clogged up, so that took some time to figure out.  And of course the second half of the grapes would not all fit into the press, so we had to press out some juice before we could process the last bin of grapes. We started processing at 9am, and finished processing at 9pm, leaving the cleanup for yesterday.  I can tell you that I don’t think my bed has ever felt better!

Anyways, here’s a pictorial recap of Sunday (and my thanks to Terry for taking most of these photos):

There’s Clyde at the beginning of the day loading the first bin of grapes onto the bin dumper (with our tractor).  Bob is on the ground guiding him into place.

And once the bin was in place, we all took a look around to make sure everything was hooked up correctly.

Wheee…..there goes the first load of grapes into the crusher!  Hope the dumper holds up all that weight!

The view from above.  Clyde is operating the handle that tips the bin over.  The grapes don’t all come out completely so you see Bob at the lower right is using a rake to encourage the rest of the grapes into the destemmer.

Once destemmed and crushed, the grapes are then pumped into the yellow press.  Once the press is full (it holds about four tons of grapes when it’s full), we close the doors and turn it on.  As it rotates, two plates on the inside press all the juice out of the grapes. The juice is collected in the pan below, then pumped into tanks downstairs in our cellar.  Here, Clyde and Bob stop for a moment to talk and plan for the second half of the day.  Little did they realize what was to come.  Mmmwahahahahahaha!

While they babysat the press, I went to work cleaning out bins.  We like to get the juice and the extra pieces of skin, leaves, etc., rinsed out of the bins and cleaned up right away.  If we wait too long, well, let’s just say the grape juice is an effective glue!

After the bins were cleaned up, Clyde moved them all out of the way to get ready for the next batch of 6 coming.  Those arrived about 1pm.

Finally, there is the borrowed tractor that saved the day.  There I am on the right, wondering if I’m going to have to call our neighbors and tell them we are not giving them back their tractor.  heheh  It was a powerful machine (Clyde spent a few minutes yesterday finding out how much they cost…..I think he was almost sad to find out that our tractor is back to normal)!

Well, Sunday was one of the hardest first-day-of-crush we’ve experienced for several years.  The good news though is that the bin dumper sure does save a LOT of work, just as anticipated.  Now if everything else would just coorperate, we’d be on easy street!  Hah!

I cleaned the press yesterday, and Clyde spent the evening filtering the juice.  Then he inoculated it with yeast and today it’s fermenting away.  Smells pretty good so far!  Now for a nap……

Hope everyone out there had a great weekend, and that you can come for a visit soon!  Cheers!

A couple days ago I read an entry on the AAWE blog  (that’s the American Association of Wine Economists…..yes, there really is an association for wine economists!) which tied in to conversations I’ve been having with customers here in the salesroom lately.  Click here for the actual post, if you’re interested in more detail.  But to sum it up as quickly as I’m capable of….A researcher made up a fake restaurant complete with a fake menu & fake wine list.  The thing to note is that he created mediocre wine list and a ‘reserve list’ for the restaurant which was made up almost entirely of wines that Wine Spectator Magazine had rated very badly in the past (the reserve list is really supposed to be the truly outstanding wines that the restaurant has to offer).  He then submitted this fake restaurant for consideration in the Wine Spectator Magazine’s Award of Excellence.  The submission included all contact & location information (all fake of course) along with a $250 entry fee.

According to WS’s website, The Award of Excellence is “Our basic award, for lists that offer a well-chosen selection of quality producers, along with a thematic match to the menu in both price and style.”  Incredulously, the fake restaurant with the crappy wine list got an award of excellence in 2007.  It was printed in the magazine and on their website, but once the truth came out they took the listing off of their website.

Interesting.  I wonder what other wine-related ratings are for sale?

This is just another reason why I say to you all…TYOT!  Trust Your Own Taste! Just because a wine is rated highly by a magazine, publication, self-proclaimed expert or celebrity, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s gonna be good….or maybe I should say, it might not be a good value for the price, as prices often inflate quickly after good ratings from one of a handful of publications.

Not to say that all wines & restaurants that have been given the nod from WS (or other’s) aren’t worthy.  And I realize also that there are several wine reviewers out there with integrity; folks that would not allow commercial interests to influence their opinions.

But even with that being said….it’s so much better that you sample for yourself and see what you like.   You know your taste better than anyone else - no one is better than you at deciding what you like best.

TYOT!

Crush begins tomorrow, so I’ll be back with fun stuff in the next post.  Cheers!

Bob requested more tank photos.  And since he helped pour all that concrete that these tanks are sitting on, I felt it was the least I could do.  And I always do the least I can do. 

Here they are, all properly placed.  Time to clean up a bit!

There’s Clyde taking off the last of the straps from the tanks.  By the way, he is wearing special concrete camoflage boots.  That way he can sneak up on the concrete.  Once surprised, the concrete is then stepped on.

Finally, here is the view from the other side of our newly padded tanks:

Ooooooo aaaaaaaah ooooooh.  I hope Bob doesn’t want any aerial shots of these tanks.  That might be asking too much.  Even if he did pour all that concrete and replace two roofs here. 

These are in place not a moment too soon.  On Sunday we will be processing Cayuga White grapes and at least one of these will be needed to hold the juice.  If you want to see the processing equipment in action, come on by before we open.  Park across from the cottage, and walk up to the salesroom - you won’t be able to miss us!  We should be starting no later than 8am, and more than likely we’ll still be pressing juice out around noon when the salesroom opens up.  Hope to see you soon!  Cheers.

Clyde and our neighbor Rob have worked hard the last two days to place the tanks up on that finished concrete pad.  Two tanks are up and they are working on the third and last tank today.  Here’s Rob hooking up the tractor to the front of the third tank to move:

Thanks so much for all the help this week Rob, especially since it’s your vacation.  We couldn’t ask for better neighbors!