We have decided to increase our wine production this coming harvest, and as a result have moved our operations from the garage and shed opposite the farmhouse to the old cellar at the entrance of our werf. This will allow us not only to make more wine, but will make the winemaking process, (hitherto often happening in the baking sun), much easier.
Using the Cellar has been a long held dream of ours. It is the oldest building on the farm circa 1820, with original thick roughly plastered walls, oregon ceilings and concrete kuipe which are large tanks for fermenting wine.
We began renovating the cellar about 5 years ago when we re-roofed it and re-cemented the floor. Then early in 2010 we divided the building in half, and renovated the one half to serve as a chapel/sanctuary for weddings and retreats.
Now the moment for the new cellar has come. This has meant a scurry to bring 3 phase electricity to the building, and to clean and paint it. Various volunteers have been indispensable to the process. Eric and Ingrid from Sweden cleaned out the kuipe - Jonte from Germany plastered broken walls, and our current volunteer Simon Wolfe, has painted walls and floors with special anti-fungal paint. Now it looks like this – spic and span and ready for harvest.
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