This winery is located just to the east of Sugarloaf Mountain park, on Comus Road, and a few miles west of the Comus Inn on route 109. It is not very far from the park, so after a mountain hike, it makes a nice stop to sit down and rest with a glass of wine. Jim Mckenna, one of the owners is often around on weekends giving tours of the facility. The tasting room offers (for a fee) a tasting selection and glasses of wine. They sell bottled water and cheeses. The bottles sell in the $20 range. Depending on the time of the year they may have Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon. It is a small facility, with a large red barn, a tasting room in a small tent, and all the fermentation tanks in plane view through a glass wall in their production building. The vineyards are just beyond. I don't remember the vine count, but the harvest was reported to me as about 8-10 tons. They have a web site at: http://www.smvwinery.com/wines.html
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The last week of March marked the time for the Pinot Grigio to move from the large stainless steel vat, where it had been cooling at near freezing temperatures for a month, into the glass bottles for retail. Jim Mckenna, one of the four owners, had told us about this process when we visited for a glass of wine after a hike up on the mountain. The bottling process is run from a specially equipped truck which is shared by several small wineries. In the pictures below you can see the truck up against the winery building in the first picture. A fork lift has brought a stack of empty bottles in cartons to one end of the truck. The panels on one side of the truck lift up completely out of the way, forming a roof for the work area. The Italian made bottling equipment is shown in the next picture with the empty bottles on the conveyor. In the third image a cleaning rinse after which the bottles are upended and (in the same image) filling the bottle with wine. In the fourth and last image the bottles are being labeled, corked and the seal applied.
Reaching the other end of the truck, its the end of the line and the bottles are loaded by hand back into their cardboard cases (upside down to keep the corks moist) on another forklift for their trip to the warehouse. As we watched the mesmerizing scene the air was brilliant with the smell of the Grigio. Too bad it was a Tuesday, the first day of the bottling. It was a nice spring day, 80 degrees and sunny. But SMW is closed on Monday and Tuesday. Current hours are Wednesday through Sunday 1 - 6 PM. The current bottling operation runs through thursday (3/22). The new wines (including the reserve Franc) make their debut in May when SMW celebrates its 2nd anniversary.
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