Local vineyards and microbreweries* are all the rage now, springing forth and delighting people of the locavore spirit. As an up-and-coming "It" Girl, I didn't want to be left in the dust.
Not that "It" Girl.
That's the one.
Of course, I still don't like beer, so I politely smile-and-nodded during a brewery tour last summer. (Tour was fun. Beer was yick -- no offense to those enterprising craftsmen. I'm just not in your marketing demographic.)
But last weekend, I had a much more enjoyable local alcohol experience. I hand-bottled wine! I'd been following a winery's website for several months when I read that they needed volunteers for bottling wine. I sent an email, wore old clothes, and helped bottle the sweetest white Riesling I've ever tasted.
And taste it I did. Volunteers could sample the stuff all day long, led by the winery mistress, herself. A small coffee bar when we arrived had Dunkin' Donuts, Bailey's Irish Cream, and everything you could possibly want in a bloody mary, from Vodka to Old Bay. I only had wine and a shot of Bailey's, but I admit to giggling heavily by the very end of the day.
It was awesome. I worked the bottling machine like a master soda jerk. You pop the bottles on six dispensers, which fill the bottle and shut off automatically. Then spin around and hand the bottles to corkmen, who used a hand press to pop in the corks. They passed the wine to ladies who capped the cork with a foil wrapper and shrink-wrapped it with a hair dryer/heat gun.
Add labels and throw it in a box. Four hours and one defective filter later, you've got 900 bottles of wine and 10 hungry volunteers.
We were paid with a lunch of veggie pizza and a souvenir bottle of fresh Riesling, which now rests in my (newly-created) basement wine cellar (on a bench behind our canned goods tupperware box).
They only do this a few times annually, but I totally want to return.
* A small brewery that makes beer in small batches. Does not refer to beer with an altered chemical composition at the microscopic level, as I previously believed.
