The past 48 hours (actually all week) have been truly fabulous and unbelievably exhausting!

I’m averaging about 5 hours of sleep a night which is not terrible, but not too great either.   I’ve poured wine for retailers I’m trying to sell wine to.  I’ve poured wine at retailers for consumers I am hoping will buy bottles of the wine (they should – it is good stuff).  And I poured wine while playing guest bartender tonight at a fabulous intimate wine bar on the Upper East Side.

But before that, yesterday at about 4PM, I went out to Jersey to work on the Wine Tasting Guy cuvee’.  Actually, it is a wine I am making with two close friends.  The one I’ve previously mentioned.  I received a call on Monday from the guy whose garage we are using as our pseudo winery, informing me that the wine has finished fermenting and we MUST press it.  Wine ferments in open containers and it gives off CO2 while it is fermenting which protects it from the oxygen.  But when it stops fermenting it is no longer protected and must be moved to an oxygen free container.

Sure enough I raced from work on Wednesday to Jersey so that we could press the wine.  And lo and behold while the fermentation had neared its end and slowed dramatically, it WAS still fermenting.  The wine was protected and there was no emergency.  But I must admit that our Cali Cab was virtually done so we went ahead and pressed that (pic to come…I hope).

So far I think this years wines are going to be VERY DIFFERENT from last years.  Much less fruit forward and more acidic.  They will be wines with a longer life, but potentially a little less approachable in their youth.  Or so I suspect…but I suppose only time will tell…

And as for tonight, while pouring at the retailer for the consumers was OK, the real fun was playing guest bartender.  I met some cool people and poured a lot of Israeli wine that people really enjoyed.  I was quite proud!

Now if only I had my own wine & sold it at my own wine bar…  Wouldn’t THAT be cool?!!?!!!!!  😉

Happy wine insanity!

WTG