Making wine goodness

Although we have been abiding by the #StayHomeMN order issued by the governor, we have been BUSY and getting lots done at the winery.  I have sat down a couple of times in the last month to put this together, but life seems to always get in the way.  With all three boys home ALL of the time now, and the additional schooling that needs to get done daily, my available time during the day has pretty much disappeared. BUT, I have extra help a couple of days a week, and that has been such a blessing.  So, here is your update!

Through this whole building process, Joe and I have shared different tastes when it comes to all of the finishes we had to pick out.  This beauty was a "Melanie" win for the tasting room.  I ordered this back in December and I was so excited to finally put it together and display it!  Every single piece had to be installed separately and it was quite the project, but I'm so happy with how it turned out! 

Mission Mechanical and Lundebrek Electric have been on site off and on over the last couple of weeks tying up some of their loose ends.  We are hoping they will be wrapped up very soon!

And our juice showed up and we started making wine!  We are SO EXCITED about that!  Last fall we crushed our fruit outside in the rain, on the sidewalk.  We put it into totes and sent it to St. Cloud Cold Storage to hold it for us until we were ready.  It took about 16 days for these large ice cubes to thaw before we were ready to pump the juice into the tanks and put the yeast to work.  The first 3 pictures are of another "Melanie" win(e)!  I have wanted Joe to make me a rhubarb wine for about 10 years and he finally agreed to it!  This one will be about 90% rhubarb and 10% raspberry, and is AMAZING!  I think this one will be a favorite in the tasting room and I can't wait to be able to share it with all of you.

Our kitchen is getting put together and our pizza ovens are showing up this week.  Our plan is to have a small menu available so you can come enjoy wine with some small bites as well! We will be busy over the next couple of weeks testing all kinds of recipes, putting our menu together so its ready to go when we open. 

And Shane's crew at Gateway has been trucking along getting things buttoned up both inside and outside.  We now have the inside trimmed out, and the siding on the outside is getting installed this week.  We are getting really close to opening, and are on target for getting to early summer, as long as the stay at home orders are lifted by then.

We are in the middle of our pruning season getting the vines ready to get to work making fruit for our 2020 vintage.  It all starts now!  The vines seem to have come through the winter very good and we are hopeful 2020 is going to be a great year for us!

And here's some family shenanigans during this stay home order.  We are making the best of it!  

Things here are shaping up so nicely!  We hope you all are staying safe and healthy and we can't wait for life to get back to normal and celebrate with you on the patio!