It's a Tough Job, but Someone's Gotta Do it!

When Aaron told me the other day that it was time to do a tasting to start making decisions on our wine blends, I was more than excited. I've been a bit deprived of my wine for the past year--being pregnant and having a newborn, so he didn't have to twist my arm too hard to convince me to participate in the little test group he put together.

"When?! Where?! Can we do it now?!"

This was just an initial tasting to sample some different blends of wines and we'll do a second tasting (with select individuals) when making our final decisions to make sure our wines appeal to different demographics. This is a BIG DEAL as these blends are going to be for bottling wine that we are going to sell in our tasting room THIS SUMMER!

Ah! Can you believe it? This March marks five years since we moved out here and started planting our first vines. At the time it felt like it was going to be an eternity before seeing this venture come to fruition and now it's here already! At the same time, thinking about all that has happened in five short years is quite overwhelming. We got engaged, planted a vineyard, got married, adopted two dogs, and had two children. And that doesn't even include the multitude of projects we've worked on the past several years. Life for us was really different 5 years ago today.

But back to wine blending...

Aaron took samples of all the wine from the tanks and barrels and measured out different blends for us to taste. We took notes and got a general sense of which wines and ratios will blend well together.

Initial sampling had positive results and we are so excited about how these are going to turn out! We'll have about 8 different offerings of wine-reds, whites, sweet, and dry.

And since we started this just before our two year old's bedtime, he didn't want to be excluded from the fun that appeared to be happening at our kitchen table. So, we let him have a little fun too.

Here he is taking notes after delicately testing his palate for his preferences of bedtime "milky."

"Smooth, creamy, kind of sweet..."

After all, he did start with wine blending at a very young age. Remember? I tried to replicate that experience with our now 3 month old baby girl, but she was having nothing to do with sitting in the Bumbo watching this all go down.

Then we went out to the winery to get a few samples straight from the barrel. As always, Aaron has some project going on and now is no exception. This is the walk-in cooler he is building that he can use for cold stabilizing the wine.