Bottling - what a workout

Who needs a gym? Lifting, lunges, squats and cardio - you can get it all on the bottling line. The last few weeks we have been furiously bottling the 2009 white wines at Wiemer to free up tank space for the fast-approaching 2010 harvest. I'm at the beginning of the line, putting the bottles on and controlling the flow of the wine. Sounds easy enough, right? The challenge is keeping up with the line while monitoring fill heights and making sure everything runs smoothly - the spouts, the corker, the conveyor belt, and of course, the bottles. There's a lot of back and forth and eyes darting. My favorite part is when I breeze by the part of the line where the bottles have just been filled and are about to be corked, because at that point you can get a whiff of the wine and it smells so good! But I always hope I don't have to take a bottle off around this stage because after putting on so many empty bottles a full one feels like it weighs 10 pounds.

On a full day of bottling we can fill over 10,000 bottles. You can't get this kind of workout anywhere else. I'm ready for a nap now.

Getting Tanked

One of my favorite things to do at Wiemer is to get inside the tanks to clean them. We've been doing that a lot lately, since we're preparing to bottle the wine. The technique for getting into a tank varies from person to person (mostly because of our varying heights), but I tend to dive in head first and come out feet first. Here are some pics of me getting ready to clean a tank.

Made in Vermont

Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyard is going to be featured in the Hubbardton Forge spring catalog! Hubbardton Forge is a light fixture company in Vermont. Their stuff is really classy and unique. They chose our winery as a set for featuring their new line of fixtures, so last week they installed new lights in our winery. This week they'll take photographs for the layout, which will appear in their March 2011 catalog.

It was really cool to see the guys installing the lights in our huge, scissor-trussed barn:

And the result is tons more light and a world-class design:

Wines from Alsace

Over the past few weeks I've tried some interesting wines from Alsace. They have a similar wine-growing climate to us and are known for Riesling and Gewurztraminer, so it is interesting to compare the wines.

This is a super high-end Riesling that retails for around $240:

It had a petrol nose that opened up to floral and stone fruit. Crisp acidity mingled with a smoothness on the palate as it sat in the glass.  Alsatian Riesling is generally more dry than in Germany, and this too was a very dry style.  This 2002 is their current release, so it has already been aged and now could be aged another 30 years.


We also tried a couple of Gewurztraminers next to Wiemer's 2002...

The 2007 Emile Beyer was surprisingly similar in taste to our '02 - with a mellowed creaminess balanced by the still-refreshing acidity. The 2000 Domaine Zind Humbrecht was viscous and sweet, the sweetest Gewurz I've ever tasted. That winery is the gold standard in Gewurz, so it was cool to try it, but I preferred the crispness of the Emile Beyer and ours.