Traditional Tuscan Wines in your Backyard

Columbus, OH, February 20, 2014– Nestled in the historic Brewery District near German Village is Via Vecchia Winery, a destination for wine lovers with a taste for tradition. 

Guests of the winery enjoy pure, unfiltered, all-natural wines created from a single ingredient: premium Californian grapes from Lodi.

No artificial additives, preservatives, fining agents or lab-cultured yeasts. Each wine is also aged in French Oak barrels for a minimum of one year before being bottled.

Via Vecchia has four signature wines, but this year the winery is offering exclusive yet limited supply of two more: an Organic Cabernet Sauvignon and a Chilean Malbec. For private events, the winery will also be releasing their first-ever all natural white wine, a crisp Chardonnay.

Wine Enthusiast published encouragement of the natural wine movement with the (WineIQ) article “What’s In Your Wine?” in their March 2014 issue. 

The two-page spread is much like “Oh, Natural!” a (Wine Insider) article published in the May 2013 issue of Bon Appetit.

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If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Ms. Lindsay Everson at 740-755-3533 or email at ViaVecchiaWinery@Gmail.com.

Columbus Wine Festival | 2013

   Via Vecchia Winery had not attended a wine festival in about two years. With weddings nearly every weekend, business for the venue space had been occupying much of the available time. Without complaint though, the business of love is the best of any to be involved in~  

 

Inspiring it usually is to be surrounded by so many happy faces, all joined together for one special occasion, the celebration of love-

 

 

The celebration for the love of wine, in this case..

The winery was thrilled to share all-natural wines at the Columbus Wine Festival hosted by Giant Eagle at Franklin Park Conservatory this year!

 

Via Vecchia has been crushing the list on re-vino-lizing their presence in the wine market, so having this opportunity to share and connect with wine lovers was a wonderful experience.

 

The winery provided goodie bags with buttons, educational hand-outs on natural wine and little biscotti treats to enjoy with tastings.

 

During setup, Paolo and Lindsay, noticed that a toy Tank Driver had somehow managed to come along for the journey. He was missing a few limbs, but still ready for the show - Maybe it was a metaphor.

 

 

The sunshine all weekend was perfect, creating an exceptionally beautiful environment in the garden arena that the festival took place in. There were over 100 different vendors there, including businesses, wine, beer and even a few food trucks near parking. Live music and a showcased wine speaker, Joseph Carr from California, added to perks of attending this two day affair.

 

 

 

The winery set up their small table for a big weekend, bringing along all four of Via Vecchia's distinct red wines. Chilling Trovato, the Sangiovese Pinot Noir blend, made a unique choice for those who enjoy reds and needed to cool down, or for those whom typically enjoyed white wines.

 

People stayed engaged when they visited the booth. Sharing the process of making all-natural wine inspired questions and spurred conversation. The winery provided details in a positive fashion, offering up taste theories, descriptions of the wines as well as family heritage that told the story of how Via Vecchia Winery came to be.  

 

 

 

 

The community was alive, there were smiles with sipping all around. One gentleman lent a hand to display the fun you could have with sediment you find on the cork from a bottle of unfiltered wine.

 

 

 

 

The week of the festival, Via Vecchia had a small promotion on their Facebook page and selected three winners to be their guests. All three pairs visited the booth, grabbed a goodie bag and sipped wines in support.

 

 

A huge THANK YOU to Brad Pauquette, Paul Utrata and Amanda Snavley for participating and coming to support!

All in all, it seemed that Trouve was the crowd favorite of the weekend. Trovato, being chilled and refreshing was close in that category next to Jorro-Ma which many people favored for chance it tasted like port after being aged for almost three years.

 

We are still following-up on all of the fantastic connections we made that weekend, hopefully this will be the first of more festivals in our future.

 

 

 

 

Keeping the grape vines growing and the red wine flowing. 

 

 

 



And So It Begins (again)

Yes, it is true. This blog started back in 2006 when we were applying for our first Federal and State winery licenses. Now we are applying for a transfer of those licenses to new premises. We have come a long way, in our small way.

Before we start posting pictures of demolition work and decorating of the new premises we wish to thank Pete N, without whose help, faith and hard work, we would never have the fabulous opportunity we have now in the premises we have now.

This new move started a year ago when Pete N saw an article in a local newspaper about us and matched us to this property. Although the initial attempt to close a deal faltered and was almost forgotten due to 2009's grape crushing, etc, Pete N still held the vision and worked with us so that we are now able to move this winery into the next phase of its growth and development.

We believed there always such a thing as an "Angel Investor" and we were right. Ok, no-one's investing in us, but we mean we believe in being presented with those who can help us when we need it, and we got that.

We believed that if you held a vision and put the energy out there about it, things would turn to accommodate you. And we were right.

We believed you didn't have to go into stupid amounts of debt to do this. And we were right.

We believed we could accommodate events, galleries, music/bands, markets, fairs, shows, talks, groups, parties etc in our new premises. And we were right. It even has a stage and a top-line professional sound system and loads of space.

It also has brick arch character and columns in abundance. Also a ton of ghosts that we managed to "move on" - mostly.

So, when you wish for things, wish big 'cos you get what you ask for. You also get it a the time you need it too, so patience people.

Now all we need is more local support and Columbus will get the wine it deserves.

Thank you Pete N.
Thank you Reid W for being open to this venture.

Bottling Adamo 2007

The barrel racks got here on Friday, so we were able to bottle on Saturday.

We bottled the Adamo 2007 (sangiovese and cabernet franc blend) and then we moved the Jorro-Ma 2008 (syrah) and half the Evidente 2008 (pinot noir) into their French Oak barrels.
What we're left with is four secondary fermentation drums containing the sangiovese and pinot noir that goes into the Trovato 2008.
You may like to enjoy some video of bottling, corking and capping that is on our facebook space. On this blog we offer the following pictures of the winery and some activity.
On Wednesday we shall be finishing off the bottling of Adamo 2007 and finally transferring Trovato 2008 from secondary fermentation into ageing.
Also, thanks to those who were at Whole Foods, Lane Avenue, on Saturday afternoon. Michael was released from winery hard labour to do the tasting there. We know it was a success as he had to send Katrina back up to the winery to get more wine to sell.

Here you can see us preparing a French Oak barrel. We re-use our barrels as they're way more expensive than American Oak and old European wineries re-use them too. We clean, gas them, when not in use, then re-hydrate them to swell them up again before cleaning before re-use. Barrels leak like sieves if they've dried out so re-hydrating is necessary unless you want to lose a lot of wine.

Below you see our growing wall of wine. In the foreground are the prepped French Oak barrels that will receive the secondary fermentation from out of the blue fermentation drums.

This is our bottle filling machine. Wine is pumped into the reservoir at top, then wine is dispensed into bottles via the 4 spouts you see at the front. The bottles rest on the shelf below the spouts whilst filling. From here, the bottles are passed to the corker (no pictures of corker here, but a video of this is on facebook).

After the cork is inserted into the bottle, the bottle then has a tin foil cap placed on top of it and the bottle is inserted, neck first, into the capping machine. See video on facebook.

The wall of wine grows again.

However, we still have some wine left in secondary fermenters that will be used to top-up the barrels over the course of the next 12 to 18 months (these are the demijons at back, sealed with olive oil). The blue fermenters will be emptied by next Saturday.

Jungle Jim's Market, Cincinnatti, Ohio

It's with great pleasure that Via Vecchia Winery announces that all four of its 2006 wines are now carried by Jungle Jim's Market, cincinnatti, Ohio.

Jungle Jim's is THE place in Cincinnatti for food from all nations and a huge wine selection, so we're excited to go there. We've since found that many people anecdotally know of someone who has to go there each time they're in town.

So a big thanks to David S and Todd W of Jungle Jim's Market for taking time to taste our wines, listen to our story and take us on board.

Here's a link to the wine page. That's David in the photo.

Some notable comments from David and Todd

"Old European style reds"

"All food-friendly wines"

"California wine, with a twist"

"Well balanced"

"We like what you did with the fruit"

Their address is:

Jungle Jim's International Market

- 5440 Dixie Highway -

Fairfield, Ohio - 45014

Phone 513-674-6000 - Fax 513-674-6001

Getting Busy again

So a lot is happening again.

Saturday 9am - 12noon - if you know us, pop on by see what's up - shout when you arrive, we'll help you across the snow.

We checked out or old barrels and rejuvinated them. This consists of cleaning them out and filling them with water to rehydrate them. We have put wine in before hydrating and just watched it leak out again, whilst frantically caulking the head with sliced cork - can't do that with a plastic cork. Luckilly it has always been the head that leaks and even luckier, the head you can see, not the one against the wall.

So all went well with 2 barrels. 1 barrel decided it would pursue an alternative career as a sieve impressionist and got into character by happily leeking like one for about 12 hours.

It leaked from the head and the staves. But happily for us, it eventually gave up and decided to join us in maturing the 2007 wine and closed up as tight as a, well, a barrel.

It all helps with cutting down the expense of ordering more used french oak barrels and helps the planet.
We ordered morebarrels for 2007 too. They may be here next week, and we may start transferring soon after. I think the secondary fermentation is more or less complete. We'll see.

These barrels will be rehydrated too.

Tomorrow we try out our new filling machine. For thos eof you familiar with the Tom Baker Dr. Who, the filler looks like the machine used by the Santarans (Sultarans?) to go around kidnapping survivors of a crashed ship on an earth many years in the future. I dare not copy a photo from the BBC since they jumped all over those who copied the TellyTubbyies. remember them?

Well what about the Clangers, BagPuss, Chrystal Tipps and Alistair, Ivor the engine and Ludwig (what was that all about?). And long before there was Captain Jack, there was Captain Pugwash and Noggin the Nogg. Feel free to add to the list of nostalgic programming.

By the way, the Pinot Noir for 2007 is out of this world and will get even better over the next 6 months or so. Reserve now as we already have people who have tasted from those barrels making offers!

Also, Jorro-Ma (the Syrah) is getting very low.

Sales Outlet Update

Thought it was about time to update the list of where you can get our wines, outside of the web.
Apart from Whole Foods, please call them for availability...remember, we'll deliver too!

a), Shane's Gourmet Catering & Market

447 E. Livingston Ave., Columbus, OH 43215-5534

Phone: (614) 358-5555 Fax: (614) 358-7777

b), Simple Indulgences

20 West William Street, Unit A Delaware, Ohio 43015

Phone: 740.363.5763

c), Clintonville Community Market

200 Crestview Road, Columbus, OH 43202

Phone: (614)-261-3663

d), Whole Foods Market

1,
3670 W.Dublin-Granville Road
Columbus, OH 43235
(614) 760-5556
2,
1555 W. Lane Avenue
Upper Arlington, OH 43221
(614) 481 3400

e) House Wine
644 High Street
Worthington, OH 43085
(614) 846-9463

f) The Winery
8231 N.High Street
Columbus, OH 43235
(614) 847-8115

f), Buy From Us Direct

The ship kits are here we have FedEx lined up, so place your order for our wines.

We take VISA, MasterCard, AMEX, Discover, Debit. If paying by check, you have to mail your check in first.

Phone - (614) 893-5455

email: viavecchiawinery@yahoo.com

Full Moon Racking

Well, we're truly in the midst of secondary fermentation. This weekend saw the final racking of the wine. Last weekend was the full moon, dead on, so we transferred the bulk of the wine at this auspicious time. A lot of our process is dictated by moon phases and other un-scientific methods, but it means we can make wine without the treatments, so who're we to question millenia of practice.
This weekend we finished the wine in the demijons. The demijons manage our silty wine, enabling it to clear with time separate from the free run wine. Here's a picture of us racking from the demijons by siphoning. The demijon on the floor in the iron cage is thought to be around 100 years old (see previous post).

Our process, in part, relies on the lees in the wine to provide natural anti-oxidation/protection against air. It's the rationale behind the "sur lees" method of winemaking. Here's a view fo the lees that have settled out against the sides of a demijon that has just been racked. Lunar-esque n'est pas?


Now those same lees have fantastic astringent qualities too and make great face packs, as demonstrated by Via Vecchia's own Apron Boy (aka Paolo at right of pic) and Rob' Clone (aka Marty at left of pic).
Also note that Zen Tree Soaps uses these lees of ours in its face pack product.


And speaking of Zen Tree Soaps, here they are at the North Market in Columbus. The upright and longitudinal wooden display stands are made out of an old wine barrel of ours (Marty ran them up) and on them you would see, if you were there, soaps using grapes skins from our Pinot Noir and Syrah, sugar scrubs using grape seeds from our grapes and the face pack using our wine's lees.
This is a nice venture for us

Last of the 2005

Today was, in retrospect, a watershed. It passed almost without significance and yet, it marked an end to making wine outside the "bubble" of the bonded winery status of Via Vecchia Winery. Why? Well, today saw the breaking of the last remaining barrel of our Bordeaux blend (Truove) from 2005 which was not produced under bond. From here on in, any bottling of personal use wine will come from the bonded 2006 barrels.

We leave you with images of that last barrel, a stack of wine cases duly receiving their bottles, and Michael standing proud beside his quarter share.

Well done all.

Labels (again) with more Crush Prep, MamaPalooza #2

Label Update.

We have settled on a front label for the SanGiovese, SanGiovese/Pinot Noir, Syrah and Cabernet Franc. The last corrections went off to Kim today to take care of.

We also got our rear label through. My own initial impressions were good. The four different takes of the rear label that Kim worked up for us will be discussed at tomorrow's winery meeting. Personally speaking, I hope we can have a definitive vote for one of them, in the same way we did for the photo for the rear label. If we do we can then proceed to get the labels reviewed and approved by the FEDs, and then Ohio Liquor Control Board.

Crush Prep.

Last week saw a re-think of the crush equipment set up. We had initially designed and built a chute system, but on further consideration this was actually the right solution to the wrong problem and so one redesign later, we're doing something different ... keep watching for a post and pictures on how this new development shakes out.

MamaPalooza #2

Remember we went to MamaPalooza a while back? Well, we're invited again. Those on the mailing list will get an invite too as we can invite others. There will be a pie competition too - those of you getting invites please look out for invite for website containing the details.

I guess we'll have to take more wine?

Alcohol Levels

Here's the latest on the wine's alcohol content. Now, remember, we don't chaptalise; we don't add sugar to the crushed grape and juice to give us the alcohol we want; we let the wine get on with it.

Of course, it's not THAT easy. There's a fine balance between the timing of the transfer from primary to secondary fermentation so that you a), don't kill fermentation and b), don't let the wine oversteep in its skins. A fine balance that doesn't prejudice the naturally occurring yeast's abilty to eat the sugar that's naturally present and convert it to alcohol.

So, given no sulfiting and no sugar, relying on experience and intuition, this is what our grape gave us:

a) Bordeaux Blend - 11.5% to 12%.

b) SanGiovese - 11%

c) SanGiovese/Pinot Noir - 11%

d) Shiraz - 12.5%

e) Cab franc - 13%

This is the high end, if not the pinnacle, of what you could hope for without artificially adjusting the fermenting wine.

This is wine alcohol levels (let's ignore the Cab Franc) that you can comfortably drink with a meal at lunchtime and return to work sober on. On a hot day, what better than a wine with a cool lunch that won't knock you for six.

The Cab franc. Remember we reported it had kicked up again? Well this is what it was doing; creating an (I would say) impossible 13% for a wine with no artificially added sugar. Go figure. We don't run a laboratory so we'll live with it.

Labels, Pricing & VZ Navigator

Tonight we went on a field trip to look at approved wine labels. We got frustrated with the regulations which state that if you can only substitute the "class/type" of wine with a varietal name if you put the appellation (where they came from) on the label. This is frustrating because since we are located in a place that doesn't geographically touch California, we cannot put California or Lodi or San Joachim on the label. We can put American Wine on though - big help that.
So we went looking for examples of American Wine and how other wineries producing wines from grape in other states/parts of the world do it. And we were pleased to see many just do not comply. Our label will be submitted for approval with varietal and no appellation, the appellation being reserved for the rear label where we think it can stay as it is a statement of truth and why wouldn't we be able to state the truth - that our grapes come from California?
As to pricing, nothing really happened. The wine selections were not that great either, with a mighty overpriced ( I mean 1,000s of %) French table wine I used to pick up in Calais, France, on my way back home from work/holiday weekends in France.
But VZ Navigator worked well. This is the GPS application you can get on your Verizon wireless phone - put in where you want to go and it gets you there. It has voice and graphic directions. This is the second time I have used it and it makes for very relaxing trips, via routes you wouldn't take, so you see something different.

Labels, Labels Everywhere

Hello ! Michael here... Our latest and one of our most significant projects is progressing. We are in process of designing our wine label. As most of you know, the label needs to attract the customer to try our wine. In my opinion once the customer tries our wine, they will be pleasantly surprised by the real wine taste. They might never "go back" to the artificial and chemically enhanced wines again. If our label does not tell our story, we will never gain the customer loyalty and following we expect. In conjunction with Kim James, our designer we have taken the designs in our heads and placed them on paper. Anton suggested we use the elements from our business card in our label. I have one word for Anton. Brilliant!!!! While the design is getting finalized, I decided to gather estimates from wine label printers. First of all, we realize we are a small winery. This year our bottle total should equal just over 4k. However, I was surprised by the smugness that I experienced during my inquiries. One California printer,Metro Labels, went as far as telling me to call back when we have a bigger quantity and their salesman had poor customer service and did everything he could to defer our business elsewhere without even a referral. We will have a bigger quantity soon but I can assure you we will not be giving you our business based upon this experience. Everyone begins a business small and we made the decision to grow organically to avoid the need for outside/3rd party investment. Meanwhile, we are continuing conversation with Tapp Technologies ( referral from Carol Harvey Renaissance Mark) and Brent Cardwell. I have worked with Brent on a previous project but we felt the need to do our due diligence to gather a few quotes. (Stay Tuned...

Everything in Moderation

[Candida resigned herself to sitting out the next hour as Cristina ranted on about how screw caps were ruining her cork sucking/cork chewing habit and were the work of The Dentist Devil. It was her own fault; she shouldn't have ordered Cristina the Fortified Grappa Cappucino. A bottle or two of Via Vecchia's fine wine would have been a far safer option].

Business-wise, we have our ThankYou cards printed up. Thanks, Michael, for getting another task off the list!
I think we need to sit down and list out who gets them as we've met quite a few people now who have been helpful and kind to us, not to mention those that are also sales leads.

Since we're still relatively small, it is Via Vecchia Winery's intention to do the customer experience to an extent not matched by any other winery. These thankyou cards will therefore feature in customer transactions too. Similarly with our labels, we hope to go beyond a simple printed label and individually number and/or autograph them.

This will also serve a practical purpose of tracking feedback on our wines from customers, who can then quote the label number back to us which will help in identifying the process or barrel of a particular wine bottle. And for those limited special wines, we'll do like the artists do and give the wine bottle its number out of the total number in the batch.

Feedback & Fun Time.
Yes, we'd love feedback and participation from you on the following;

a), a caption for the ladies above (best one to be published here); and
b), ways of improving or enhancing the wine experience of a customer (how would you like to interact with us after buying our wine?).

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Old School

"Going back to my roots, yeah...", as the song goes. Well, here's some Via Vecchia roots for you. This is where Via Vecchia derives its inspiration and process from; from the heart of the Lunigiana in Toscana, Italy. Village of Grondola in the Appenines to be precise. Also managed to pick up some great agricultural oriented magazines that feature a lot of wine making and I think the rest of Via Vecchia will get a kick out of them to see we do it the real way. In fact, I was grilled by no-nonsense-hunt all year round- slaughter my livestock in my garage- neighbor, Giannino, over the technique we use here and I think I passed muster. He threatened to visit us too.

These pictures show a traditional cantina in use. Via Vecchia would be at home here as all the equipment and method is familiar to us. In fact, this is where Dad has his wine kept for him and from where I brought back two bottles.

This picture is of the cantina. Below a house and it's made entirely of block stone, even the floor, great for that stable temperature with right amount of humidity. In this view you can make out the wine primary fermenter (back left) and grape baskets (back left below red hose), an oil siphoner on the shelf at left (old style glass with straw protection around the base), among the demijons we all know and love.

In this picture you see the primary fermenter. Grapes are thrown in, crushed by foot, then left to ferment. This one's really old and Dad remembers using it in the late 1930s. To help with scale this stands about 6 feet tall and about 4 feet in diameter. Notice siphon hoses.


In this one you see two grape picker baskets, stacked one upon and in the other. When full they were strapped to a donkey and brought back to this cantina (and others) for the crushing of their contents.
More from the annals of tradition to come...keep watching.

Hey, how about that Sanjaya? Wot?

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Final Four Tournament and Wine???

Michael here...Today we at Via Vecchia Winery congratulate our hometown Buckeyes from The Ohio State University. We are very proud that our Buckeyes advanced to the Championship Finals and will be facing the Florida Gators. Florida is becoming our newest rivalry both on the field and on the court. While I watched the game today, I thought about how odd it was that I was enjoying a glass of wine rather than a beer. Based upon the annual wine sales, I am sure I was not the only one. This year during football tailgate parties I found myself and my 40ish year old friends drinking wine and not beer. Wine is becoming not just an acceptable alternative to beer but the preferred choice to some. What I especially find ironic is that my father owned and operated a beer distributor in Pennsylvania for much of my teenage years. Beer literally put the "bread and butter" on our dinner table. Today, I do not find a pint of beer nearly as satisfying as a glass of our wine. Therefore, today I raise my glass (of wine) to my Buckeyes for a great season and wish them the best as they attempt to end the season as National Champions! Please feel free to comment. Based upon their incredible size audience, I would love to see our friends at The Winery Website Report or Wine Diva ask their audience: "While watching the big game (could be basketball, football, soccer or baseball) do you prefer a glass of wine or a bottle of beer?

Non-Wine Busy-ness

I believe we'll each update our own tasks, so I won't speak for the others except to say they're working on;

Liability Insurance

Label Design, label approval and regulations

Bottles, caps, corks

Software to run the business on.

My brief update is on Labellers.

Basically the Italians make a lot of the equipment, but the Australians have cornered the niche of labellers. I found quite a few models and even their respective manufacturers. It will come down to price in the end and what we think will work well.

There are two types - manual and semi-automatic, if you ignore the high end machinery. The labellers range from small production of up to 300 bottles and hour to a couple of thousand an hour then jump to something like 20,000 bottles an hour. Yes, well, quite.

Manual is a good start for us, but there is doubt on maintaining the accuracy of the placement of the rear label on the bottle as people tire or shift their position relevant to viewing the machine's guide that is used for alignment.

In fact, a French contraption, La Nantaise, seems to work well from its video, but they use a cute slight of hand to not show you how the rear label is not aligned with the front label. Their product is good but French bottles not sold here in the US do not have rear labels, so La Nantaise works for their front label only requirement but fails for us.

The Australian manufacturer of BenchMate is in contact with us. I don't see how he can ship it, customs cleared, cheaper than the US distributor, but we'll see.

And on Solicitor Licenses.

Another Form. But very simple. We need these to be able to sell our wine - or more precisely go out there and start marketing it, and offering it for sale.

The weird thing is that we have to write to ourselves outlining our sales duties, a copy of such communication to accompany the form.

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The "Business Side" of News

Michael here...I want to take time to update everyone on the "behind the scenes" of our winery with a business update.
While the wine was in production, we were all busy finalizing our logo. The logo appears to the right of our posts. Our logo creation was an exercise in the collaboration of ideas and creativity for us all. We learned so much about one another. It is amazing you can stand beside some people for years crushing grape and not really know how to work together to create something great.
We have come a long way and am so proud to know we persevered to be where we are today. In addition, I feel I am a better person for knowing each one of my partners through this project. So, we hope to take our "lessons learned", passion for the business and bottle it all up to make a product that you can be proud to serve.
After our logo was finalized, we began the process of creating a business card, thank you card and label creation. To assist us in our efforts with creativity, we have once again asked Kim James, graphic and photo designer, to employ her creative insight.
We as managing partners meet every week to discuss the state of our business and our next tasks. This week we will be meeting to discuss our complete sales cycle. "What will it take to move the wine from our barrel to your table?" We will update you along the way. In addition, we will be discussing the direct to consumer state shipping laws.
Many thanks to a great website source http://www.wineinstitute.org/ / Finally we hope to center more discussion around the customer intimacy to create an emotional connection.
By the way, we will continue to improve and succeed but only with customer insights and comments. PLEASE COMMENT!

Barrel Monkeys

Pictures at end of post.

On saturday we put the San Giovese and Pinot Noir into ageing in the flextank maturation vessels. We were particularly pleased with the Pinot Noir, which we could have bottled there and then. In fact, we should not be that surprised since the technique to which we adhere was structured so as to allow you to drink your wine early without extended ageing and the expense of keeping things barreled for a while. After all, this is a product to be drunk! In fact it is interesting that even today in Italy "il vino rosso di Toscana" can only be labelled "vino di tavolo" - table wine. No more no less. It's made to drink. You can do what you want to it and age it and have the planet deem it a super-Tuscan, but at the end of the day, it's table wine.

A further post this week will talk about ph and free sulfites.

But speaking of tradition (remember we explored "barrel spinning"? see link in list of links at left for that), well Via Vecchia Winery keeps alive the tradition of Barrel Monkeys.
The work of a Barrel Monkey is a forgotten trade, eclipsed by the popular movement that liberated the child chimney sweeps and child labour during the mid Industrial Revolution. If Dickens had lived in a viticulural region he would have written about Barrel Monkeys instead of Chimney Sweeps.
Barrel Monkeys would climb into huge fermentation vats and crushing troughs (we'd love one of those) and clean them out. Sometimes the fumes from a fermentation vessel would be too much and the child would pass out. This would be dangerous were it not for the fact that the child was made to wear a bell around their neck. For as long as the child moved, the bell tinkled. If the bell stopped tinkling the child would need rescuing. If the child played a trick and deliberately stopped so as to silence the tinkling, the vintner would bore them with that fable of Aesop's about The Boy Who Cried Wolf. "nuff said.
There is one school of thought that says the term monkey was used in reference to the bell the child wore which was like the bell a performing monkey would wear on his costume when employed at the hurdy gurdy with cup in hand.
Here, we see Via Vecchia making use of a volunteer Barrel Monkey for a day.
In the video and pic you see him with a maturation vessel lowered over him. He then turns around and around, wiping down the insides of the vessel as he turns. Obviously we helped, but we didn't fancy having him crawl in and roll it around from inside on the floor to clean it.


Here are the flextank maturation vessels. They each hold 200 gallons of wine.

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