Bauhaus "r" Us

I received a kind email from David Carnes, vineyard manager at Windham winery in Hillsboro, Virginia. David was dropping off wine for our mutually-used distributor on Friday and it was his first visit to Cardinal Point. In his email, referring to our architecture, he says "Cardinal Point has a hipness to it" and "Who can't make a winery look pretty with money? There's no challenge in that and the Napa look has been done to death." I appreciate the comment because including my wine and vine work, I also did a lot of the construction. Indeed the whole family was involved. My brother is an architect in Charlottesville and he came up with the useful design and clever layout of our buildings. Sure, they're just pre-engineered metal structures, but I think they're understatedly cool. My sister Sarah, who runs all our business operations, has final say on interior design. My parents bought, installed, and maintain our flower boxes. They also just had our gutters fixed which were damaged by ice flows of the winery roof several winters ago. I built the tasting room bar, did a lot of the painting. This year I designed and built a canopy system over the terrace. I like it and think it fits our "industrial/pastoral" look.

There is a saying in the industry:"If you want to make a little money in the wine business, start with a lot." Well, we are not paupers, but we, my family, started our winery with a lean business model by necessity. From the start we wanted to make a comfortable place to visit, but we knew that putting resources toward making the best wine we could was most important. Sure, I'm envious of deep-pocketed wineries, but I do like our little winery. (Cue violins). My family has been 100% behind this endeavor, my friends encouraging, our staff has been terrific, and the customers have kept it fun. I'm confident that eventually we'll realize all the dreams I have for this place (Google Kroller-Muller Museum for insight). It's going to take time, but it's the journey not the destination.

On practical matters, Friday I took some berry samples from a viognier vineyard I'm getting grapes from. They look perfect and the fruit is slowly ripening which I prefer. Looks like we'll pick that in two weeks or so. I'm getting ready for our own Chardonnay to come in next week, starting Tuesday. It was supposed to rain last night and today but so far so good, no rain!
Next weekend we are going to a big wine festival up in northern Virginia. It is causing lots of logistical problems. I'm going to have to figure out how to harvest and press AND how to get wine to Leesburg on Friday. Whoever decided to put wine festivals in the middle of harvest is a moron.