Thursday September 15 (Wallace & Duplin Winery)

After a good night's sleep, I woke to another warm, sunny day. After I ate a quick breakfast, we left for Wallace to visit Terri's good friend Helen again. We made good time and I took a few more photos of the cats.

After a cup of coffee, we left to visit a friend of Helen's, Gail, who has a 1931 Model A Ford Sports for sale. We took photos to take back to Chris as one of his car buddies might be interested or know someone who is interested in buying it. She also has a sweet dog, Lily, who was a rescue from a puppy mill.

We then carried on to the Duplin Winery Bistro for lunch. I ordered the Little Three Pigs and it was delicious. I also had to order a glass of their Muscadine wine, I ordered Sweet Sox White as $1 of each glass goes to Pet Friends rescue, Terri had the red version.

After lunch we went on the free tour of the winery which was just down the road  from the Bistro.

The winery was started in 1972 by two brothers, one a schoolteacher/principal,  the other a builder with his father. The latter wanted to buy some land and grow something.

After much debate they decided on grapes when they heard about a New York winery that wanted Muscadine sweet grapes. Then the economy took a dive and they were offered much less. The boys then decided to make their own and with much trial and error before they came up with some good ones. The family dog was used as the wine taster! If he did not drink it they would throw that attempt away and start again, lol!!

The Muscadine grape has the highest concentration of antioxidants of any grape and the winery is the Number 1 Muscadine winery in world.

They use 50 contract growers around the country as well as their own 2500 acres. September is harvest time so we were able to see the grapes coming in from the vineyards and beginning the process. There is a Muscadine festival on the last weekend of month.

As we entered the intake area, the smell of the grape was strong but pleasant. They need to have a 25% sugar content to be processed. The grapes are washed then crushed, one of the crushers holds 68 tons of grapes at a time, and there are two smaller crushers.

The pulp the goes to the cold treatment tank where it is held at 40 degrees F. One cup of sugar is added to agitate the yeast. Carbon dioxide is added to protect the pulp and fermentation begins at 60 degrees, for a bolder wine the temperature will be dropped. The white wine is directed one way, red the other. It is tasted for quality at this point.

The wine then goes into cold storage at 27 degrees. The pulp sinks to the bottom of the tank, there are 170 such tanks, and the tanks are on an angle to ensure the pulp all sinks down. By this time it has crystalised and cream of tartare is a by product of this. The wine stays from between 6 weeks and 6 months in the tanks, then it is bottled., over 1 million gallons of wine is held in the tanks.

They do not bottle in September as the guys who do the bottling are working the crushers. Thee is a small bottling plant and the bottles start on a small conveyor and are washed with hot water, dried and then had carbon dioxide put in to keep the water out. Then the wine is inserted and finally the labels are put on.

That machine puts the front label on, rotates the bottle 180 degrees and puts the back label on. There is a delightful message posted on the back end of that machine asking people to ensure both labels are for the same wine. There are no dates on the labels but the cartons are dated for the retailer.

The bottling area started on 3,000 bottles an hour but David Jr. decided to try 9,000 bottles per hour. There was a huge mess as a result and they finally settled on 6,500 per hour. They pack 40 pallets each day, finishing at 3 pm so they can clean the area thoroughly ready for the next day.

The Third generation of the family is now running the show.

At the end of the tour, we saw that nothing is wasted as they make a few health products. We also saw the largest bottle of wine in the world is at the winery it holds the equivalent of 18 bottles of wine. It was produced for a special event and auctioned for $1,000. They made six in all so they will be auctioned in turn.

We headed back to the Bistro that has a Gift Shop and I bought a few items including a bottle of wine for Terri. As Helen had taken her car, a Mercedes, we returned to her house and after a nice chat we set off to return to Ayden.

We finally stuffed the pillow cases I had given to Terri and then I had a couple of chicken sandwiches for tea. Then it was time to write the blog.

I received an update on Sylvie from my friend who contacted my flat mate, she is urinating less, but still not using the litter box all the time.