The vineyard is starting to come back to life after the harsh winter. The vines are pruned and buds are starting to open up. We planted an additional 500 vines last week (Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon). Hopefully the cold weather didn't claim too many vines.
The Vyneskeller is now open seven days a week from 1 - 5 pm. Monday through Friday it is self serve - you can buy everything you need upstairs in the tasting room (wine, cheese, crackers) and take it with you downstairs, on the patio or out to the picnic tables. Saturday and Sunday it is business as usual with our full staff.
May Specials
*
Wine of the Month - Naked Chardonnay, 10% off
*
3 Pack of the Month - 3 Vynecrest White for $25.
*available at winery only, 3 pack cannot be combined with other offers
Upcoming Events
May 10 - Mother's Day
We will have live guitar music in our Vyneskeller Wine Bar from 1 - 4pm, and will feature our Blueberry Pomegranate cocktail, made with Vynecrest Pinot Noir and Blueberry wines. We will also offer samples of Sugar 'n Spice Black Raspberry Dip with bite-size graham cookies. A great day out for Mom.
May 17 & 18 - Wine in Bloom along the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail
In addition to the beautiful potted petunias from
Amore Greenhouses for the first 25 customers each day,
Vynecrest will be doing Winemaker Tours of the vineyard and wine cellar free of charge for the public at noon both Saturday and Sunday.
We have a new
PA Preferred Partner -
September Farm Cheese from Honey Brook, PA - and we'll be offering samples of many of their delicious cheese in our tasting room along with complimentary wine tastings.
May 25 - Jazz Sunday and Vineyard Tours
In conjunction with Jazz Sunday, featuring live jazz music the last Sunday of every month in our
Vyneskeller wine bar, our Winemaker Vineyard & Wine Cellar Tours will be held May 25, June 29, July 27, August 31, and September 28 at noon for $5 per person. Come tour the backlot of Vynecrest where the wine is grown and made, and then taste the finished product.
Glass Half Empty
by Sam Landis
Well we had quite a day yesterday as we christened our new screw cap bottling line. After a thorough five hour tutorial on Tuesday, Malachi and I were confident and primed to dominate 1,000 gallons of Blueberry Wine.
Ten minutes in I was holding five bottles of uncapped wine while the machine was spitting out capsules like a machine gun all over the floor. Suffice to say, we eventually figured it out and like most things around here, three months from now it will feel like it's always been there.
But it got me thinking how far this business has come. Growing up we used to bottle where the current Vyneskellar is. I used to have to recruit friends of mine to help alongside my parents and their friends. I believe we had two bottle washers, three manual hand corkers, two people using hair dryers to melt the caps, three hand labelers with glue, and two people putting away final cases. All told, it took 12 people all day to bottle 100 gallons of wine that looked like it was produced by a third grader.
So there we were yesterday, just Malachi and I, bottling 100 gallons every 25 minutes and it got me thinking: you can upgrade all you want but you can never replace the good old days.
