Next task up for Sol Rouge is fixing the vineyard netting. We visited the Sol Rouge Vineyard last year in order to help at the beginning of harvest (http://mferraro73.tumblr.com/post/127822254393/our-day-working-in-the-vineyard-at-solrouge-neil) and that was our introduction to vineyard netting. The purpose of the netting is to cover the vines while they have fruit in order to prevent the birds from eating the grapes. Instead of taking the netting down during the harvest, we bundled it and tied it to the posts up and out of the way of the harvesters.
Our first act for the Sol Rouge Vineyard and Winery was wine bottling! While Maria was working in the wine industry in San Francisco, she helped with this job a few times, but this would be Neil’s first time bottling. It always proves to be a VERY LONG DAY, but we love those new wine experiences.
We arrived to the Sol Rouge Vineyard last night. We are excited about all the wine opportunities that this experience will provide! We are already scheduled to help bottle the wine on Monday morning so stay tuned for an entry regarding that. There will also be tasks to be done in the vineyard which Maria is super excited about.
After learning last week that Gouda cheese is named after the town of Gouda where it was originally traded, we decided to continue down the same path and find out what other cheeses are named after the places where they originated.
Neil and I love to eat cheese but we’d like to learn more about it. Gouda is one of our favorites and it seems we’ve had it made out of cow, sheep and goat’s milk so what makes it a “gouda cheese” if it isn’t the type of milk?
We’re spending some time with Neil’s sister, Marilou, so we planned to have her join us for WineAndCheeseFriday. On Friday, she came home and said “today is WineAndCheeseFriday, right?” We were excited to have the supplies ready and waiting in the fridge upon her request.