First Week @ 12th & Maple Done and I'm excited for more!!!

well i finished my first week, worked a full week and an extra 1/2 day yesterday (saturday), and it was great. so there is still loads of construction, too much it seems, guess they will still be working during harvest. we have been setting tanks into position, installing catwalks, sanitizing tank and a general scrub down of the whole place. so far everyone is great, staff is fun, interns are starting to bond and looks like we are going to have a blast. in fact next weekend theres word that we might head off into the woods somewhere for a little employee retreat aka drunk fest to get to know everyone better. some of the interns don't know the first thing about winemaking so i have been helping out the winemakers with training and teaching them different setups and procedures. friday they left me alone to teach 3 of them how to sanitize a tank. stuff like which where to connect the hoses, pumps and which chemicals needed.
as i expected it sounds like i'll be working on the super premium side, which is the larger side, i think i heard 20 ton lots or more. as apposed to the ultra premium side which is the small batch side.

so i took a few pics:
if you click them below you can zoom in


from here you can see almost all the tanks lots of 4000 and 6000 gallon tanks


our "small" tanks 1000 and 2000 gallon tanks


the open top fermentors, back row are 5 ton and the front can hold 10 tons each. basically each ton of grapes produces about 150 to 180 gallons

the ultra premium fermentation cellar, over 100 (i think) 2 ton open top fermentors. oh i can't wait to punch them down....


the giant tanks out back, 32000 gallons (thats over 160000 bottles of wine per tank, and we have 2) on the left, 19000 gallons on the right.


The presses, 3 huge willmes tank presses, odd 2 door design for more even loading, interesting 2 bladder system inside and they unload into a big (3 foot) auger in the floor under them.


and something i think that is wicked awesome, a crossflow filter... super high tech, its so complicated, its amazing. basically it filters out everything including bacteria and it doesn't require a filter medium like a pad or membrane.