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Saturday, March 29, 2014

A Visit to Coastal Vineyards in South Dartmouth, MA

We recently took a drive to South Dartmouth, MA to visit David Nielson, owner of Coastal Vineyards. We met David in the H&W Booth at the Eastern Winery Exposition when we were visiting with Hans and inquiring about the Lipco tunnel sprayer. David mentioned that he had one and that we were welcome to come and see it. The day we chose began with flurries of snow so we bundled up and began our drive. It takes about 2 hours to reach South Darthmouth.
When we arrived, we found David pruning his vines and the sun had broken through the clouds. Trust me though, it was still cold. David was pruning his vines with a few helpers, his neighbors who come over to lend a hand and who were obviously enjoying the outdoor activity, chatting as they worked their way own a row!
David makes about 500 cases of wine a year and this is about how we will begin so it was interesting to see what kinds of winery equipment he needed and used. He had several 160 gallon stainless steel tanks. This is the amount of juice that comes out of 1 ton of grapes. We went to look at his Lipco sprayer is a one tunnel, three point hitch style sprayer. His tank held 100 gallons.
Next, we went to see his tractor barn to look at his Lipco sprayer. David's Lipco is a one tunnel, three point hitch style sprayer. His tank holds 100 gallons. David has 8 acres of land currently under vines. He is also adding more vines this spring and has already cleared the land in preparation for planting. We ended our visit with David by looking at his case storage area. We've tried to do this calculation before by estimating the three dimensions that a case will take and how many cases can be piled on top of each other, etc, but it is good to see the area that the case goods will take.
Thank you David for your time. We really appreciated the fact that you interrupted your pruning to give us a tour!

3 comments:

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  2. Eventually, did you end up buying that type of sprayer?

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  3. Hi Fermentswine---we didn't get the Lipco sprayer yet. When I blogged about the Lipco sprayer, we didn't know that 90% of the vines that we planted in 2013 would not make it. We haven't had to deal with a full canopy so we postponed getting the sprayer. It is still high on the list of equipment that we would like to purchase.

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