Harvest is Complete

Well Harvest 2012 is basically behind us now. A lot of long days, some made even longer as both Amy and I work outside of the winery. Many nights of coming home from work and then spending until midnight working with the grapes, hopefully catching a quick dinner somewhere in there.  All in all we processed 13,400  lbs of grapes which will produce   a little over 1,000 gallons of wine.

The grapes all came in on either a Saturday or Sunday, starting with our own Brianna on August 4th and ending with 3 plus tons of Chambourcin coming in from one of our growers (Cambrian Ridge near Auburn) on September 8th. With this being the first fall we are open it presented quite a challenge to make sure we could cover the harvest, processing when the grapes came in, and staffing the tasting room.  The first few weeks of August were some of our busiest in the tasting room. Amy valiantly staffed the tasting room while Richard handled the arrival of the grapes in the cellar. We never could have done this without the help of many volunteers who assisted us along the way. Doing it all for the fun of the harvest, a good lunch, and a harvest crew t-shirt! Thank you to All!

Opening Weeks

We have been open 7 weeks now and it has been quite an experience. We have run the gamut of emotions. from if we are going to get busier to  not having a moment to rest for several hours. We have met a lot of wonderful people and it is always gratifying to hear that people enjoy our wine and the winery. Now that we are open it is hard to find enough time in the day to get everything done. We have had a lot of feedback on what people enjoy at a winery so we are now trying to determine what type of activities we are going to have: wine dinners, musical entertainment, or ??.  We may start doing tours of the vineyard and wine making facility on Saturdays and see if people want that "inside look" at things. We're always looking for suggestions either here or on our facebook page.With our limited staff of two and a half we can't stretch ourselves too thin!  Plus harvest is just around the corner.

Let the clean up Begin!

Construction is finally wrapping up. Just a few odds and ends left and re-inspections from the building inspector and the Fire Marshall and we can get our occupancy permit. .  Now we have to clean the place of construction dust, get some landscaping done,  and get it ready to open the doors and sell some wine! Also yesterday we had 5.8" of rain which caused considerable erosion so we can add that to our list of things to do.

Here are some of the latest pictures.

Stairway to deck completed:

Tasting Bar Complete:

Wood Floor uncovered and most of the construction items moved out:

Getting Close!

We can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. On Tuesday the electrical inspector did the final inspection for that and we got his seal of approval. Next up is the Building Inspector and Fire Marshall. Only a few odds and ends left (mainly baseboard) and then it is on to cleaning the place up and getting ready to open!  Here are a couple of the latest photos. You can see the tasting bar is now covered - there is still some molding to go on it. The stairs are finally finished to the cellar and the molding is all up.

Latest Pictures

With the blog appearing on our brand new website - cellar426.com I thought it time to provide a photo update.

Odds and Ends

Retaining walls below the deck are finished right before our first snowfall of the year:

Rock is added in the ditch north of the service road to provide erosion control. Unfortunately not quite complete before snow!

Tasting room west wall gets molding around windows

Office/food prep area tile completed

First Snow!

Front Entry

The stone work is finally done as the front columns are now complete! The entry way has taken shape and we finished off the remaining siding & got that painted..  One door has been stained (as we are nearing winter, days warm enough to stain & paint are a premium!). The other door will get replaced as the company installing them damaged it. The positive is that we can stain that one inside before they hang it.  You can also note the new sidewalks left and right of the vestibule.

We are now trying to finish up some odds and ends outside in the remaining nice days we have. Forecast for Thanksgiving is 60 degrees so we will plan our Turkey day events accordingly!