Tasting Room, Day 1

Thank you to all of the folks who paid us a visit on this, the first day of business at the winery! Hope to see you again really soon!

2010 Spring Release preview

Members, family, and friends got together April 14 and 15 to help with bottling our first wines! Much of the 2009 vintage is now in bottle. It just has to rest for a few short weeks to get used to its new cozy glass quarters before we can starting pouring!
We're releasing six wines this Spring, and will release (at least) two more this fall.

Here's the Spring release lineup...

Vidal Blanc - dry white varietal

Chardonnay - mostly unoaked

McIntosh Run - semi-sweet apple wine

Breton Bay Breeze - semi-sweet white blend

Breton Bay Shoals - semi-sweet red blend

Autumn Frost - lusciously sweet dessert-style wine from Vidal Blanc grapes

Bottling Day RE-scheduled

Ok folks, forget the previous post mentioning bottling day. After coordinating with the label maker, the TTB for label approval, and the mobile bottler:

The NEW bottling date is APRIL 14!

We will bottle everything in one day, instead of two days as previously planned. The bottler will be on-site about 7 am. It will take a couple of hours to prep the line and get ready for production, so volunteers can start to show up before 9 am. It takes five people to run the line and we'll be running for about 11 hours with at least two shifts and extra people taking over during a shift so no one will have to stay on the line 5.5 hours straight.

Grand Opening scheduled for Friday, May 21!

Ribbon cutting ceremony with local, regional, state dignitaries and more! Stay tuned for details.

Keep in mind, the winery will be open for business starting Friday, May 7th. That's First Friday in Leonardtown. The tasting room will be open that day noon to 9 pm.

Business hours will be:
Wednesday through Sunday: Noon to 6 pm.
First Fridays: Noon to 9 pm.

Bottling Day scheduled

We're bottling our very first vintage and confirmed the date: Friday and Saturday March 26 and 27. We've hired a mobile bottler who works for several local and regional wineries. He supplied the equipment, and we supply the wine, bottles, labels, and hands to run the line. It takes five people to run the bottling line. I'm not sure, but I think it breaks out as one bottler and four "quality control" checkers.
Come by and see the bottling in action, and get a sneak preview of our 2009 wines.

wine labels and wine festivals

A subcommittee of volunteers is meeting at the winery tomorrow, Saturday 16 Jan, to discuss wine labels. There has been a lot of discussion and thought and ideas going around. Now it's time to finalize our concepts and decide on a style and presentation that fits with the winery's principles, communicates our vision, and expresses who we are.

At the last board meeting Laschelle brought by the plans for the tasting room build-out. All present agreed it was a fine plan.
It was also decided that POLW would attend four of the six state-wide wine festivals this year! Check out the list at: http://www.marylandwine.com/mwa/events/festivals.shtml We won't make the first festival of the season because we're bottling our whites too close to the date. Freshly bottled wine goes through an awkward stage for about a month or so after being bottled where it does not taste so great. The general concensus was 'better safe than sorry', especially since it would have been our very first festival.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS!
The winery's first festival appearance will be the Chesapeake Bay Wine Festival, June 5 and 6. Want to get in for free? Our volunteers get free entrance to the festival for working half a shift! Help us at our tent for three hours and the rest of the day is yours to explore the festival and all that maryland wineries have to offer.

crush to date

The premiere harvest for the winery is better than half done. It's been a challenging year for growers, and the volume of fruit reflects the realities of the growing season.
To deal with the shortfall in fruit, the board decided to buy about three tons of Merlot grapes from Virginia, and several hundred gallons of juice from New York.
The good news is we have enough local grapes to label it Maryland Wine, which regulations require a minimum of 75%.

Winery update

Hey all,

Upcoming winery events (working events, not the fun kind):

Villard Blanc - Joe will be picking and delivering his Villard Blanc today. Expecting delivery by late afternoon. Original harvest estimate was for around 1 ton. We should press it tonight unless we want to chill the fruit overnight (can be good thing to do) and press tomorrow (but I'm not available today until 6 pm and 4 pm on Thursday). Plan is: press - settle 24 hrs - rack - inoculate.

Chambourcin - Doug brought 9 lugs over yesterday - sitting in the chiller (our barrel room now has full cooling capability). He plans to have the rest harvested today and delivered this evening. Might have about 1500 lbs. This will get crushed and put into a bin for fermentation. I would rather not chill these grapes too much since it would take a long time to get the crushed grapes back up to temperature to get the fermentation kicked-off. Would be ok to let them sit for a day on the 60-65 deg production floor.

Today I won't be able to get to the winey until about 6 pm (trying to reschedule other things to get there earlier if I can). Thursday I would be able to get there around my usual time of 4 pm.

Chardonnay - It is looking like the Chardonnay will be picked Saturday - if it comes in too late in the afternoon or evening, we should let it chill overnight and then press it Sunday morning (ideally it is best to let the whites chill down to 50-55 before pressing anyway). Two tons would require two press loads. With a 2-3 hrs pressing time per press load and at least an hour cleanup time, I don't really want to be there until midnight or later. We plan to barrel ferment the Chardonnay.

The two barrels of Chancellor will need racking sometime over the next few days - time permitting.

Btw, we now have 592 gallons of Vidal ferementing away.

Pat