Life on the Crush Pad

Pressing; pressing; pressing. Shown here is our basket press, gently squeezing the remaining juice from the Tempranillo grapes. One complete cycle for this press takes 24 hours.

Alan says we have only about four lots to go before everything is pressed and "barrelled down" (transferred from tank to barrel). The remaining wine is happily contained in the stainless steel tanks inside the winery at around 70+/- degrees. On average, the skin contact was around 50 days for all the wines - that's a lot!

And in the middle of everything, we bottled our 2007 VIADER Proprietary Cabernet Blend, and the 2007 "V" Petit Verdot Blend last Monday. Since our own bottling line only does about 500 cases a "day" (read: a very loooong day), and our 2007 VIADER is about three times that, we hired a mobile bottling line to get it done in one day. Well, I guess the large formats and half-bottles were bottled over the weekend, so it was more than one day! Today our friend Valerie Lenhart waxed the tops of all the big bottles (3L, 6L and 9L). She has to wear a back support belt!

As the holiday nears, we will break for Thursday and Friday. Unfortunately the whole family will not be together, as I have a trip to the East Coast... Wine will definitely be served with Thanksgiving dinner on both coasts. :)

Sincerely,

Janet Viader

Sales & Marketing at VIADER

Napa Valley Vintners Gives $5.2 Million to Napa County Charities

The Napa Valley Vintners awarded $5.2 million raised from Auction Napa Valley (ANV) at a celebration at the Oxbow Public Market in downtown Napa last night. Proceeds come from ANV held in June, and provide grants to area healthcare, affordable housing and youth service non-profits. This year's gifts bring the overall giving from ANV to $90 million.

"Auction Napa Valley is always a fantastic way for our community to raise money for the many, many non-profits that provide needed services. Our family was proud to chair this prestigious event. We all feel, especially during this recession, that any dollar raised at the auction was a dollar more than we had the day before--and to have raised $5.6 million over the weekend, in this economy, was just terrific," said Janet Trefethen, 2009 ANV chair of Trefethen Family Vineyards.

"This evening's festivities were also to honor the more than 500 volunteers, without whose support we could never produce such a world-class fundraiser benefiting Napa County," said Linda Reiff, NVV's executive director. "The success of ANV is based not only on our very generous bidders from around the world, but also on the generosity and hard work our vintners, and these dedicated, amazing community volunteers."

Visit the Napa Valley Vintners website to learn more about this year's charitable giving or check out more photos of the event.