The Most Beautiful Tanks in the World! These are our first ever brand new tanks. Aren't they spiffy? They are variable capacity tanks, which I have been asking for for years. WooHOO!

Last Friday we received over 15 tons of plums, and we crushed them all on Saturday. They are all fermenting beautifully; should be a great year for Christmas Plum.

The wines come in all different bottle shapes and sizes and styles at the County Fair. This was my favorite bottle. I think it's a barbeque bottle, or Karo syrup.

I am the head judge for the Amateur Wine Competition for the Ste. Genevieve County Fair. Vernon Iseman and his wife, and Art and Donna Flieg help me judge every year, along with John, but he was busy this year. We had 66 entries, and the majority were really good.

Here is a picture of our chicken wings for the Passport Weekend.

Dad got back yesterday from Paw Paw, Michigan with a load of cherries. We use a blend of cherries to make our not-too-sweet-award-winning-Cherry wine.

Beat the Heat

This weekend is another Passport Weekend. This time it's called "Beat the Heat" and it features spicy food with chilled wine. We are serving hot chicken wings with our Amoureaux, which is a Vidal/ Muscat blend, and slightly sweet. Should go really well together. John and I are really into hot wings, and although beer is usually served with hot wings, I think wine is a better companion.

The other four wineries are serving wonderful food too. Tickets are $20/person unless you made a reservation before July 1st, then they were $15/person. You get a glass and you get food and wine at each winery and if you go to all 5 wineries you get entered into a Ste. Genevieve getaway weekend package drawing.

John and I will be there on Saturday; 245 Merchant Street, Ste. Genevieve, Mo Come by, meet us, taste some wine and hot wings, and Beat the Heat!

Here is another shot of the arbor fixed up for the wedding. I thought it looked festive and romantic; perfect for a small gathering.

To give some perspective on how big the harvestor really is, featured is my wonderful husband, John, on top of the harvestor.

Remember the poles in the ground that I showed you a couple months ago? Here is the finished product; a place to protect the harvestor and maybe room for a few other things.

We are in the process of redesigning our labels and although each label will look different, here is the new style.

A very good point was made in that you don't know what our labels look like so you can buy them at your local store that will now be carrying our product. Here is what most of our labels look like.

State Wide!

As a result of having our wine in all those Wal-Marts I talked about earlier, Dad and I have found a distributer to take our wine not only to Wal-Mart, but state wide. Mostly I am excited, but as we get closer, a tiny part of me is starting to get nervous. This is kind of make or break. We have a salesman now, more of a friend of the family than an employee, and he takes good care of all those little shops along the way from here to there. We are comfortable with the trickle of money coming in once a week. The distributer has placed a healthy order, so that is promising, just as long as they keep reordering. Will their sales force keep us in mind at every store across this big state? I sure hope so.

If you live in Missouri, do us a favor and buy a bottle of our wine at your local store when you see it. ;)

I hope this is just the beginning of realizing our full potential.

Last Friday we had a wedding at the winery. It was a small ceremony and they rented an arbor you can kind of see. This is the brides' sons pretending to strangle the groom, their new step dad. Good times.

Twice a year the Foundation for Restoration in Ste. Genevieve hosts a "Spirit Reunion" in our old cemetary. The cemetary was found in the 1780s and over 4,000 people are buried there. The Foundation is in the process of restoring the cemetary, and so to raise money they have actors telling the stories of those buried there in first person. John and I went Friday night, and it was very interesting and not too creepy. I get creeped out pretty easily.

Twilight

Representing Model Senator Lynn

This is a picture of my dad(on the right,) and my brother, Joe's, coworker, Keith Massa at the Washington Wine Festival. Thought it would be nice to post a picture of my dad. Photo courtesy of Keith.

Last night the River Heritage meeting was held at the winery. I thought it went over real well. It was warm, but not unbearable. The meeting was catered, and the food was nice. All the members were friendly, and I did a little speech at the end. I like when the arbor is full of people. If you have a meeting to host or a shower to plan, this little space is just about perfect. 

Enjoying our arbor.