Day in the Life

We just purchased a new bottling machine that does not work and our latest batch of Blue Corn Vodka mash is happily fermenting in the distillery next to a space heater. We had to cover the fermenting tank in blankets so the yeast could stay warm. Fermenting in winter is not the best time…especially when its been so cold. But is it is the best time to distill if you want to go green. In winter, Mother Nature can cool the circulating water that we use to convert alcohol vapors back to liquid. In summer I have to use two cooling tank each with a 2-ton chiller attached. Here's something you may not know, when you ferment blue corn, it turns pink....wonder if there is a message in that?

Olha is busy labeling bottles for the tasting room. When we bottle our wines we do not label or put the foil seal over the cork. This is in part because we want to focus on bottling when bottling but also because we sell private label wines and those are done on an “on-order “ basis. This is not the most efficient process. For one thing you have to handle each wine case an additional time. As a small winery, we can afford some process inefficiency. There’s an old expression at the Los Alamos National Laboratory where I work, “any job worth doing, is worth doing twice”.