Chapter 10 - Pole Barn becomes a Winery

Chapter 10 – Pole Barn becomes a Winery

Captain America: Also in 2005, we began the task of converting the pole barn into a winery, storage rooms and, on the south side where the horse stalls were, a wine bar that we decided to call The Enoteca (which is Italian for wine bar). The Professor undertook the oversight, and a lot of the actual work, of construction, particularly of the extension we built onto The Enoteca. He spent day after day – and even some evenings – building small fires out of scrap wood to keep warm, designing and constructing the edifice. It was an amazing piece of work, no doubt with a healthy dose of belly-scratching. But the Professor would say that belly-scratching is important so as to work smarter not harder. An amazing guy, our Professor.

As we continued the build out of the winery, we ordered a few barrels to store what was to become our first vintage. We had grapes delivered from Lodi, California. We ordered the same varietals that we had planted that first year – Sangiovese (the grape in Chianti), Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. We crushed the grapes and fermented them in food grade plastic barrels that we built a makeshift tent around to help control the temperature.

Dave and Shannon continued having children - Stone showed up in the summer of 2005. We lost Jules’ dad, John, who had been the honorary foreman over the first two plantings, right before our third planting in the Spring of 2006. Before long, Jules’ mom bought a house near the farm.