Here, thank god, I have my brother-in-law Dennis getting all the equipment clean and set up and ready to crush the day's grapes. Then one bin at a time the grapes are coaxed into the de-stemmer crusher which miraculously picks the grapes off the stems. The must (grapes, skins, seeds, juice but no stems) then is gently crushed through rubber rollers and is amazingly (and sometimes less than amazingly) pumped with our high-tech peristaltic Italian pump into an awaiting fermenter tank. Bin after bin is processed until all the day's grapes are cozily squished into a collective mass ready to begin the transition from grapes into wine. A sample is drawn and sugar, pH and total acidity is tested. That tank's chiller valve is opened and the cozy warm mass of must chills out overnight.

Pre-fermantation chilling is a hallmark of winemaking here for decades. Giving a headstart to the extraction of color, flavors, aromas and all that's water soluble before fermentation begins, means the must won't sit in an ever-increasing alcohol bath as long. This reduces the extraction of the harser components (albeit necessary in the right amounts) like tannins and phenolics (bitter), etc. Pressing the juice away from the skins a little earlier results in robust fruit-powered wines with smooth but rich background.

From the press the new wine is pumped into a tank to settle the gross lees simply utilizing gravity. Then the clear wine is racked off the lees into oak barrels where it will age for more than a year. The rest is a story for a later date. So how do I find time to do all this, make pizzas Friday nights, cater an occasional wedding, etc? The fact of the matter is I don't find time to do everything and emails go unanswered, marketing efforts get delayed but this is life and the living is good.