A winery is a complex structure. You need places to clean, places to crush, places to cellar, places to ferment, places to store equipment, places to retail your goods, and places to hold events. That is alot of places. Fortunately, the old barn has a good amount of space that can be repurposed for all of these winery operations. Larger events will be held in the adjacent field next to the winery using the crush pad as a stage.

Today we started taking out part of the floor of the hay loft so we can create a proper insulated ceiling for wine cellaring and equipment storage. This is where the wine cellar will go.

This wine cellar will replace the wine cellar in the basement of the old farmhouse.

This cellar has a perfect temperature right now, but later in the summer it starts to become more humid and I have to run a dehumidifier which heats the cellar up a bit. In winter, temperatures can get around freezing which causes some issues with crystals forming in the wine.

I wish I could say this winery is unfolding according to a plan but it is more like dealing with issues as they arise. I have wine that needs to be filtered and then put into storage. This year I don't want to bottle the wine right away but leave it, filtered, in carboys until I am ready to bottle. It would be too difficult to store glass carboys in my existing cellar. The part of the barn where the cellar will go has no windows, I can easily move carboys of wine that have been filtered into this room for longer term storage, I can get electrical to it easy as it is close to the panel, it has enough room to accommodate future growth and it has been an underutilized space since me and my wife purchased the farm. This area had become a repository for all the stuff left over from building projects which occasionally I need but for the most part was just taking up room.