Action in the Winery

What do you do when you have a space that you call a "winery" but it doesn't have all the accoutrement of a functioning winery? You make the best of the situation that you have. The conversion into using our industrial space as a winery began in March with our Industrial Space Upgrade to include a wash down station, installed by Mark and Dan! (We appreciate you!) Another critical component in a functioning winery are floor drains. Here is how we solved that problem.
March was a busy month because we were also beginning our pruning duties in the vineyard. However, we did have in the back of our minds, the fact that we had to return Jonathan Edward's stainless steel barrels that we have been storing our wine in, so yesterday, we began using the industrial space as a winery.
The first thing that we did was to bring an IBC tank from the vineyard back to the winery. This IBC tank will hold the "waste water" that we generate, which is our solution to floor drains. My husband contracted for this waste water to be removed by R.E. White, who provides us with our portable potty.
We then unstacked our 1070L stainless steel tank which will hold the wine that we will be transferring. The next thing was to bring down the stainless steel barrels that contained our 2022 Chenin Blanc and arrange them for the transfer.

We set up the pump in order to clean the stainless steel tank. The first solution was a water rinse. This water went into the IBC tank. The second rinse was with a basic solution then the last rinse was with an acidic solution. All of these solutions went into the IBC tank.

We were finally at the point of being able to move the wine from the stainless steel barrels into the tank. My husband bought a racking wand with a site glass so that we were able to move only the clearest wine into the tank. The process was slow but methodical. The great thing is that we were able to fill the tank to the top. You always want to fill any container that has wine in it to the top so that it comes in contact with as little air as possible to prevent any oxidation from taking place. For that we are thankful that Jon and his crew (Zack) put our wine into the stainless steel barrels and filled it to the top.
The transfer of the wine from the stainless steel barrels to the tank took the entire day. We washed the stainless steel barrels with water but will wait until Tuesday to do the final rinse. We have a functioning winery!