Past Week's Fun

We had scheduled to take the trovato 2008 (comprising sangiovese and pinot noir) out of secondary fermentation and into ageing and to bottle the remainder of the adamo 2007 (sangiovese and cabernet franc).

One was dependent upon t'other. To move the trovato into ageing we had to free up the vessel the adamo occupied. We had started doing this over a week ago and only had about 200 bottles to go, however...

When beginning to pump the wine out to the bottle filler, sediment (lees) were kicked up. Since we do not filter, chemically, mechanically or otherwise, this meant we had no choice but to abandon the bottling and store the wine until the lees had once again settled out.

So we transferred the adamo to demijons to settle out and sealed them with olive oil. This enabled the vessel the adamo was in to be cleaned out and the trovato put in.

The nett effect is that we accomplished putting the trovato into ageing, and have deferred the bottling of the remainder of the adamo.

We have to be flexible in this game of minimalist winemaking.

We had a couple of parties over for tasting's on Saturday. Now you know we're not open to the public but we do open up by appointment. The first party was from a yacht club on Eire and we rented in chairs and a big round table for them. There were 12 of them.

It went very well with lots of good questions. We also learned some things from them too, which is always nice. There were a couple of them who visit wineries extensively and they bring what they learn from those visits to us and share. So everyone's collective knowledge increases.

Their visit lasted about 2.5 hours and fortunately for us, the later party was delayed.

Our tastings always take a long time...we all have a lot to talk about and it's about our collective favourite subject too. I think it's a good sign of a good event if it basically keeps going on like a good party.

The second group was smaller in number but no less into the visit. We learned from them that our associated winery imagery was recognisable to them and they had seen the wine "around". We also found out that other people will proclaim they know us as one guest told of someone who works in a worthington drinking establishment who claimed to know us, but we were at a loss of who it could be. A small world I guess.

Anyway, great fun had by all. People are just great.

A photo of how we set up the winery for the visitors is at top of this post. This is the same space you see occupied by blue fermentation vessels in earlier posts.