Dream Big, Temecula Valley Winemakers!
This week we’re at the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium in Sacramento for a yearly industry event that helps keeps us all “in the know”. Apart from pouring a sampling of fabulous Temecula Valley wines to some of the 14,000+ attending wine lovers, we caught up with a few of our own to find out what they were dreaming about while walking through the chock full convention center.
Arturo Villareal, winemaker at Danza del Sol was looking for some new barrels. But what he’s really dreaming about is a new, much larger wine cellar. Sorry, Art! I don’t think they actually sell those.
We caught up with Damian and Marcello Doffo who were in the midst of purchasing a water treatment system for Doffo Winery. While it’s a much needed purchase, there’s certainly much more fun things to buy…
Nick and Cindy Palumbo were looking for some portable stainless steel tanks. And dreaming of a cold beer! As Nick always says, “it takes a lot of beer to make wine.”
BJ Fazeli, who’s winery is being built as we speak, needs everything for his new winery. He brought along his wallet and is definitely dreaming BIG.
The Wiens brothers are in the market for a new de-stemmer but are dreaming about a new optical sorter that will separate and remove the less than perfect grapes from the sorting table. It’s a winemaker thang!
JD Harkey and Chase Drake, of Drake Enterprises are dreaming REALLY big and hoping Ben pops for a machine harvester this year.
Jon McPherson and Javier Flores, the dynamic duo of winemakers at South Coast, were searching out some “state of the art” lab equipment for the new Carter Estate Winery which is scheduled to open in just a few weeks.
All in all, I’d say the Temecula Valley winemakers, while truly dreaming big dreams, were pretty down to earth. Except for Art and that new cellar…
