We took gewürztraminer grapes to Cap*Rock Winery in Lubbock, Texas this morning for crush pressing and chilling of the juice before it is to be sent to Becker Vineyards.
Hmmm, delicious.
Now I know, that you know, that I really know very little about growing grapes. I’m just usually around for the ride, but get ready for this … I know even less about wine making. But it sure is interesting. Here are some pictures for you even if I can’t explain it all to you.
The harvest started at 6:00 am this morning. It was finished and loaded on to two trailers pulled by pickups by 7:30 am. I got to drive with My Honey.
We were driving up to Caprock at about 8:30 am.
We had picked up some big boxes yesterday to haul the grapes in. Today they were loaded down with luscious gewürztraminer grapes.
Then “we” had to get all that equipment running. Lots of cat walks and buttons and tanks and …
Glad we had people around who know what they are doing.
So now back to how those grapes turned into juice and got into those tanks.
They start by using controls to dump the big boxes into the unloading bin.
Nice load of grapes.
Here the auger moves the grapes up.
And up and up and up.
Fun to watch! That guy actually gets paid for watching and pulling out any foreign matter that he sees. Everyone kept commenting that our grapes were so clean there wasn’t much MOG (material other than grapes) at all.
That was until …
They pulled that wrench out of the grapes. (Not the green stick. Just the wrench.) Woops.
Back to the story.
… here.
Actually there was quite a bit of walking up and down and leaning over precarious ledges. So …
I was glad I wore my boots.
It was really neat watching all the beautiful grapes keep coming.
Of course some people did other things than just watch the grapes the whole time. Some people talked on their phones.
And some people watched other things …
I looked around at the winery. Very nice. The new winery owners were already remodeling the interior.
Nice entrance.
Back from the distractions. Here are the hoses that end up taking the juice to the stainless tanks.
What can I say – beautiful grapes.
That was 7.4 tons of Gewürztraminer off of one acre of wonderful High Plains soil. Beautiful. Can’t wait to taste this when it is finished. The Becker ’09 Gewürztraminer is really, really nice.
Blessings,
Betty
