Made My Way To The Wine Making Mecca!

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ibglowin

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Made our way over to the Wine Maker's Toy Store today to see about the grape arrival time for tomorrow and take a look around the place. We just missed George so hopefully will see him tomorrow but did get a chance to meet Joseph and introduce myself. Have to say the Toy Store is by far and away the BEST stocked Home Brew Store I have ever been in (and I have been into many!).

Here are some pics I took. Sorry some are tad bit blurry, taken with the cell phone.

Enjoy!

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Mike, thanks for sharing. He sure does have a lot of kits. Other than kits you really don't need much space with supplies for the home winemaker. It's amazing how little you really can get away with until you get out of control with carboys, vct tanks and barrels.
 
He has a pretty good size back room where they assemble the orders for shipping. Two guys were back there getting orders ready to go out for the day.
 
I could spend a lot of time and $$$$ in a place like that. In the picture with the primary bucket full of spoons, to the left of that is what looks like a stopper / bung with a ? shaped tube going thru it, what is that for?
 
I could spend a lot of time and $$$$ in a place like that. In the picture with the primary bucket full of spoons, to the left of that is what looks like a stopper / bung with a ? shaped tube going thru it, what is that for?

That appears to be a degassing whip that you'd attach to a drill
 
Well, at the Mecca ... but no grapes. Another delay, it looks like they won't be here till 8pm.
 
That's just a ploy by George to get y'all to hang around all day and buy more stuff. Lucky
 
George said the driver was in Deming NM this AM of all places for the love of baby cheeses! Thats in my hood and still 750 from Dallas!
 
Well it was an adventure for sure. I drove 5 hours from Boerne to Dallas. I arrived at 1pm expecting the truck at 3pm. There was delay, after delay, after delay. The truck arrived at 1:00am and we unloaded the grapes, crushed and de-stemed Robert's then mine. At 2:10am I had 30 gallons of must loaded and on the way back to Boerne. I pulled in the driveway at 6:50am dead tired. This afternoon I pulled most of the stems out and tested the must. Here are the test results.

Merlot

3.66 ph
Brix 24.2
SG 1.106
TA 0.310
TA 0.337
Added 60 grams Tartaric acid - This is 50% of what i calculated needed

Cab

3.85 ph
Brix 24.5
SG 1.106
TA 0.322
TA 0.315
Added 60 grams Tartaric acid - This is 50% of what i calculated needed
 
Awesome pics Rick! Did the driver ever say anything to explain any of the delays? George said this is more than likely the last year for him to mess with fresh grapes and who could blame him after this fiasco.
 
No. but it was obvious that this wasn't his first stop as promised. The truck was less then half full. George was talking about switching shippers, but not quitting. After a few days of rest all will be good.

I look at it this way ... we got the grapes, and the numbers were not too bad. It could have been worse, they could have been warm, moldy and starting to raisin. :)

Glad you made it home safe.
 
I took a quick PH sample this morning with my pocket PH meter. Both Cab's were at 3.5 and the Merlot was at 3.4. If these numbers are solid tonight, I am glad I only 1/2 the caculated acid.
 

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