Our small fermentation tanks fill up a large part of the basement all by themselves. The wine wouldn't come out very well if we tried to ferment every type in one tank! The empty tanks are said to actually be full of vintner's brains.

The wooden barrels are for aging our “big reds” and our Chardonnay. You just can't have Chardonnay without genuine, Kentucky-made, oaken barrels (or so we're told).

Our grape basket press, used for squeezing every drop of juice out of uncooperative grape skins, is, like the tanks, straight from Italy. It's the next step up from stomping the grapes with your feet.

The open area under the hole is also used to bottle the wine. The miniature-hat rack holds the bottles as they drip-dry from the sulfur sterilizing solution (you don't want your wine flavored with this stuff—trust us). That big metal thing that looks a little like a buffet table fills the bottles—six at a time. Those two red machines that look like, uh, strange red machines put the cork in the bottleneck. All this is done by enthusiastic volunteer labor. We have found that cattle prods generate more enthusiasm than whips.

At the back of the cellar is the lab. This is where the emerging wine is tested and re-tested for sugar, acidity, alcohol (believe it or not, there is alcohol in all our wines), sulfur, and all the other things that go into a great batch of wine. Every once in a while, we even perform a taste test, too.