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Friday I picked up a U-Haul trailer to take cases of wine to Leesburg for the wine festival we were participating in. U-Haul locations used to be everywhere, but no more. The nearby garage stopped offering them a year ago. Though there are two listed U-Haul outlets in Crozet, neither are functioning. In Waynesboro there is a still a u-haul place, but they didn't have the trailer I needed, of course. So, I picked up a trailer in Charlottesville. Tip: Spend the extra $5/day and get the double axle trailer rather than the smaller single axle trailers. It handles more weight and is far more stable on the road. After driving back and picking up 65 cases, I headed up to Leesburg. The festival grounds were a bit damp and my four wheel drive is out on the F250 (Wasn't I raving about it last week?). Plus the tents were tightly spaced. All this lead to me having to schlep all the cases, four at a time, about 40 yards to our space. No one thinks of this when they are dreaming of opening a winery. After getting things squared away, I hit the road for home. This was about 3:45pm in Northern Virginia on a Friday! Dumb plan. Traffic was no problem, at least to my fellow motorists at least. They all look docile and content. To me it was intolerable. It took one and a half hours to go thirty miles. Well, I didn't press any fruit when I came home though I did busy myself with wine.

Actually, that night, my wife Susan hosted a cast party for the play in which she and my son Sam just starred. "Two tales from the Twilight Zone" by Earl Hamner of Walton's fame. Well, they were stars in my opinion. It was a good party. Not the first cast party I have crashed, though.

Saturday I finished pressing the Chardonnay. It tastes pretty good considering the tough year it's been for the variety. I'm going to do the primary ferment in a steel tank so I can better control the fermentation rate and temperature. In the past I had fermented in barrels exclusively. I'm hoping to pull out more fruit notes by keeping the ferment slow and steady and off wood. Then I will put the wine into barrel for aging. This technique should lead to the use of better quality lees, but more on that later.

Sunday morning I headed back up to Leesburg with six more cases of wine. I worked the festival which was busy but not too bad. Apparently Saturday had been at least twice as bad and Sarah had fewer helpers. There are no easy jobs in wine. Turned out we could have sold even more. I always like to say "sorry, we're sold out," though. Drove home Sunday night, trailer in tow. Stopped at Five Guys for dinner. I love Five Guys. Tip: Get the "little," single burger. It's plenty big, and the double burger is so beefy you can't taste the toppings. Another tip: Order the regular size fries, not the large. You get more than you need. And put the malt vinegar on 'em.

Today, Monday, I returned the trailer to Charlottesvile. It was cheaper than I though. Just $75. Then I racked the pressed Chardonnay over to a clean tank. Racking is when wine or juice is allowed to settle out solids to the bottom of its tank and then the clear liquid above is moved to another vessel, leaving the solids behind. It's a means of clarifying. In this case it is done to improve the quality of the ferment and keep off odors from becoming a problem. You can get juice too clear, though. Some of those solids are necessary for yeast nutrition and without enough you run the risk of a fermentation problem. We'll see if I guessed right. I pitched the yeast in and now the wine should be on the way.