First Crush!

A bin of grapes.I am not reliving a freshman fantasy, this is the first wine crush. When I reported this to my ophthalmic technicians and surgical assistants, they immediately and to the person said “Lucy” recalling from their rerun days, the Lucy segment with Lucy and Ethel with hair up in buns, stomping grapes holding their skirts. Lucy is now an eight foot long stainless steel apparatus with a large bladder that progressively expands and squeezes the grapes, in this case pinot gris, and later auxouis, a white hybrid. The photos show conveyor belts, grape filled bins, and forklifts, readying the meeting of juice and yeast and Mother Nature’s hand. The Bible makes reference to wine exactly 720 times, and if you do the math, a gross of nickels has a value of $7.20, and I, for one, do not think that Grossnickle (oft misspelled -el) and 720 references are a coincidence; it is fate. Shawn and his new assistant, David Hill, called and asked if I and Lori were excited, and the answer, of course, was “unbelievably so.” The fact that we are producing validates our business plan, but there is more to come. My wife has taken over the tasting room project and we have decided upon a rustic barn raising and hopefully it will be complete by next year when the finished product actually goes into a bottle.

Being dumped. On the conveyor.

Wet your lips!
Steve