Our day started out at a little after 7am at the store. An hour and a half drive to St. James, MO. we arrived at the winery. Drove around back and pulled up to a set of sliding doors on the metal building. Inside we saw rows of stainless tanks and the floor covered with hoses.
Andrew met us at the door and greated us with an Aussie accent. We got our containers out of the truck and rinsed out the K meta we had in them. His assistant drug a 4" hose of of the warehouse and put the end that looked like a 4' long gas nozzle, into a 4'x8' tank and turned on the valve, out came the juice with a good amout of leas, they ran it untill it somewhat cleared, then into the truck to fill our containers.
After filling us up, the hose went back into the tank to flush the lines ( found out afterwards, the juice was filtered and returned to the tank).
Andrew left to fill out our paperwork, and his asst. proceded to show us around. We started out back where the driveway came in and a huge overhead crane, next to that was a hopper where the 18 wheelers would drop the grapes into a de-stemer that was some 20' long.
From there we went back inside to a series of 6" and 8" pipes interwound through more stainless steel tanks, some covered with frost. Then through a pair of doors and there were the 5 25,000 gallon tanks. Not sure of the exact measurments, but we guessed they were between 30' to 50' wide and about 100' tall. All sat on 4' concrete pads.
Andrew came and got us at this time and went into an office where we got our bills and a print out of the brix, TA and Ph. We told Andrew our plans of what type of wine we were going to make, and he made so many suggestions I had trouble keeping up with notes. After paying, headed out to the truck to secure our bounty.
We could have stayed much longer soaking in all the info that was presented to us, Jon had the day off, but I had to get back and open the store.
This is just a brief overview, to go into more detail would be a second by second replay. Simply amazing. Looks like Jon and I are heading back next year.