GOIN' TO A SHOW

Each and every year Dominique and I suit up, pack up, and spend a say at Wineries Unlimited, the biggest industry trade show for eastcoast wineries.

We'll be traveling to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where the show is being hosted. There's a trade show, with booths and stands. Here, we'll meet with equipment suppliers (stainless steel, trellising, solar power suppliers, tractor attachments), as well as our bottle, cork, and label suppliers.

There are also seminars on managing your website, focusing your tasting room experience, wine making techniques by wine, unique book keeping issues peculiar to the wine business. We'll see friends and acquaintences, we'll meet new people, and commisserate with fellow owners.

It's an indespensible part of the winery year for us.

THE WINERY AT WINERTIME

We may be closed, and the snow may fall, set, freeze, get washed away, and we reset the weather pattern all over again, but that doesn't slow us down. Oh, sure, we may be closed for three whole months (January, February, March) but April is just around the corner.

We're checking our wines, racking, filtering, moving, but things are always busy. We put up a brand new electrified fence around the parimeter of 3/4 of the farm, bought a new large shed, rewired the entire property, and are making plans for much, much more.

By the time we reopen, we'll have a new building (small) fully appointed for a new product line we'll be annoucing in the spring. We'll be wiring our field water pump and water station for first official use, and buying a shed to cover it up so it lasts that much longer. We'll be adding a new, portable deck out back, and a new slate patio in front of the tasting room. We'll be adding new products. So there's all kinds of bottling, label printing, and approvals we have to achieve. We're also getting ready to set up our large trellising for the two vineyard blocks, and we're preparing to a new booth for wine fairs this summer and fall.

In the mean time we have seminars and fairs to attend, and meet with our suppliers for other fun things. There's very rarely down time on the farm.