The harvest is right around the corner, and Leah and I have been busy getting ready.  We procured 6 kegs for a total capacity of 93 gallons of wine.  We plan on putting the wine in these kegs for the bulk of the year for conditioning. Hopefully, we’ll be able to throw them under my parents house to benefit from the constant cool temperature, but moving a full 15.5 gallon is small crawl spaces is easier said than done.  The kegs were absolutely filthy and covered in beer gunk.  We gave them a very thorough scrubbing this past weekend so they are good to go.

We also purchased a sulfite detector, which was %$#%ing expensive.  Apparently, it’s the best you can get, so I hope to do this for many many years.  We put together a budget for the ingredients (what the club members pay for), which I hope to share soon.

We placed the order for the half ton of grapes.  We put down 50% so we’re committed.  We are going to get them in three 300 pound bins at the end of September.  So we might need some help getting them to our place when they arrive from somebody strong in the Oakland area, (cough cough BEN!!).

…. And speaking of committed, some of you haven’t paid.  If you haven’t paid, please send a check over my way.