It’s Monday and it’s cold and it is trying to snow! So what makes you feel better than getting new stuff!! Thanks to all our wonderful old customers, and all the new ones too! Demand for Maize Valley wines have been really strong this spring so in order to keep up we had to upgrade and get a new wine chiller. Todd “Z” winemaker (we say, “Z” so we sound all fancy and french like, yea that’s us) has hammer in hand and is getting at his new toy! Todd does a way cool, good job making awesome wines and this can really help out more and make the wine chilling process go much smoother.
The chiller is used in the wine making process to “freeze” the wine or at least hold it at a low enough temperature for a period of time to get the solids that are in the wine to precipitate or “fall out” of the suspension. Mostly we are trying to get the tartaric crystals to fall out in our bulk tanks so they don’t end up in the bottom of the bottle. Native American grapes (Niagara, Concord, Catawba) tend to create a great deal of these crystals and are very prone to ending up with them in the bottom of the bottle especially if the wine goes through a number of cooling and warming cycles before it is enjoyed.
It depends upon the type of wine you are drinking as to the benifits or perceived problems these crystals in the wine create. Follow the link above to learn more.
Saturday I was happy to get out and finish up spraying the grapes that were ready for this summers weed crop. Weeds like death and taxes are sure to come. We still have some more grafted grapes to uncover yet to spray later. We try and not use any more crop protection products than we have to, but after I had to weed eat 7 acres of grapes for 3 days in the 90 degree heat of August last year I am NOT going to let our lovely little vines get choked by some nasty ole’ weeds!! I also cared for the Raspberries and Apple trees too.
That is all the wine news today, the more probably deals with Galen chasing a would be thief from our old dairy farm as he was trying to make off with some our our bakery racks we had in storage. Probably after the aluminum, as some copper pipe was also gathered near the door.
Also working on the trucks for our upcoming “Farmers’ Market” season too. Putting a new canopy system on my 52′ Ford F5 I think it is going to be way cool.
For me the FunTSAR Monday like many of you involves getting after new marketing ideas, ad approval and all that paper work stuff. My wife and I woke at 2:30am to hear our son Brett playing “Monster Jam” on the Wii! He is autistic but does very well, however he can’t tell between 2:30 & 6:30 he just thought it was time to get up and thought he would get a game in or two before school. Needless to say nobody got back to sleep very well after that for some reason, and he is home with a cold today from school.
Well gotta go and stop by grandma’s and pick up Brett and take him home so he can catch some ZZZZZZ’s, maybe I can too!
Hakuna Matata