Photos at last!

A few photos for you. There's been a dirth of images lately, so here's some to make up for it.
And just because we don't grow the grape, doesn't mean there isn't more labour involved with our heritage process and there isn't left craft. Thankyou.

But first, our 2007 grapes are still making soap. Latest batch for sale arrived. Contact us for purchase. Thanks

Pump Out Free Run.

Well, Strictly speaking, free run should come out under its own steam...but that's modern day corruption for you. We still have primary fermenters (the blue drums) with taps on to let it out, from the days everything was done by foot (excluding this year's foot stomping of the merlot), but we pump it out now.

Press Out the Second Wine.

The wine that's pressed out of the skins and seeds after the free run has been taken is traditionally used as a second-grade wine to drink pending your first drinkable wine in the New Year. I don't think any winery does that any more as it's all money. We use this to top up the headspace in the ageing barrels during ageing - any left goes into its own barrels when the vintage is totally bottled and we keep tasting it until we decide what to do with it.

Second Wine Storage

The second wine is storage in demijons. Since the 2008 merlot had to pressed by foot, we thought it appropriate to store and manage it in one of the original old boys from Tuscany - who's pushing 120 years old by now. Look at him go!
By the way, the wine is sealed with virgin olive oil. It floats on the wine and doesn't let air in whilst letting fermentation gasses out. See if you can find a photo of the tool used to extract the olive oil in an earlier posting.

Secondary fermentation Underway.

Free run wine now in secondary fermentation in these blue drums. See some of 2007 wines ageing in french oak barrels in background.

2007 Grapes are in Soap Again.

Here they are. Order some - order them all!

Now for Some Fun.

There are many items of very specialised and costly equipment in the winery, that only trained personnel can use - only kidding, just common sense and a lack of fear is all you need. There are also good luck charms in operation too - winemaking t-shirts are worn, luni-head necklaces are worn, and so on. However this year it was like super-hero-dom in the winery with special appearances of that dynamic duo Mermaid Man and Apron Boy, with dandy yellow gloves of imperviousness and apron of skirtness.

First time yellow gloves have turned up , 'cos it's obvious what would be said, but the apron's been around since the beginning - see if you can count how many pictures through this blog it appears in (hours of fun).
Unfortunately we cannot divulge the identities of Mermaid Man and Apron Boy.

Just a Few Things...

As we creep ever nearer achieving that most excellent event of seeing our wine in its bottle, fully dressed, there are events going on that heighten this excitement and serve to douse it somewhat. In short, we're experiencing a decidedly mixed bag of emotions right now. Its effect is seen in how few the posts to this blog has become.
So this post will be plain and just go through some high and low lights of the past few weeks. It's ameasure of things when we really only have one low, but it is of such fundamental importance, it seems to dominate and negate all else.

Highlight 1 - Soaps and Recycling Grape & Seeds.

This is so cool. Lucia of Zen Tree Soaps found a use for our grape skins and seeds. She makes soaps and all manner of our related products. When she came by to see us transfer from primary fermentation to secondary fermentation she went away with about 3lbs of each grape varietal we had - taken right from the fermentation bins.
Within a week she had returned to show us her Pinot Noir soap. A soap with our pinot noire grapes in it. Paolo has been using this for two weeks now and reports the bar is at the stage where the grape skins are really poking up and so as you soap yourself they act as an exfoliant.

Highlight 2 - Recycling Grape Sediment (Lees).

Still with Lucia, we gave her about a cup of lees from which she is experimenting with a face pack. The lees are a great anti-oxidant and we know from our own experience, that if you smear it on your face, as it dries it really cleanses your skin.

Highlight 3 - Candle lab

Curt of The Candle Lab stores visited. They make custom candles and they run candle making parties. he likes our wines and is looking for a way to introduce them into the business. State laws, such as they are, do not simply allow him to sell our wine, or readily include them as a private event party beverage.

Highlight 4 - Maca's

Michelle (of Mamapalooza fame in prior posts, and partner in StarfFish Clothes), called us from Maca (a Tapas Bar in Powell, no website) . She had got the owner interested in our wines. So we went down with some wine for him to try. This was very nerve-wracking as it turns out that Norm, who was a basketball player for Barcelona (No.15), Spain, was taught how to taste wine by the winemaker of Chateaux Margaux.
Long and short of it was that he liked it, said we were doing the right thing, and that it was amazing that we turned out a nice wine as he thought we had a big handicap other winemakers don't (our shipping of our grapes).
So he wants the wine. And again, State laws being such as they are, this is not as simple as it sounds due to minimum markups etc. But we'll get there.

The Abyss - 1

Our label approval is a grind.

Federal laws being such that they are, means that because our State of Ohio does not touch California, where we get our grapes, means we cannot claim the California appellation. Fine. However, if you want to state the grape varietal on your label, you need the appellation, so we are prevented from stating the varietal on the label. And, without the varietal stated, you cannot put the year.
So, even though , we do get our grape from California, we do use sangiovese etc, and we did produce our wine from the 2006 harvest, we cannot say any of that at all, anywhere.
All we can say is Red Wine, state alcohol content and give the blend or varietal a fanciful name.
We were not allowed to state that we don't sulfite either, or use minimal sulfites, or sulfites below the organic standard.
At one point we were prevented from using "produced" even though we do produce the wine - that got sorted out in our favour - eventually.
We feel penalised. We cannot state what we have done on our label. we cannot state truth. In fact, during one enquiry of the Feds, we were accused of doing something illegitimate because otherwise we wouldn't be querying their rules and trying to find loopholes to get the true information on our label!
How does this serve the public, when we are prevented, through regulation, from stating truthfully on the product's label what is in the bottle so that the consumer can make an informed decision?
Whatever, we'll get there. If anyoen has some helpful industry advice, it would be very welcome.

Columbus C.E.O. Magazine Article
Yeah, we'll talk about this later. Lessons learned in journalism, we guess.