"I am drinking the stars!" Dom Perignon, on his first sip of bubbly Champagne

Yesterday evening, Carolyn and I drove out into the prairie lands of Colorado. Let me back up. For those of you who have no clue who Carolyn is, she is the wonderful older sister of one of my best friends from middle school. Her and her husband have been feeding and housing me the past 3 days, until I move into my apartment (today!) they have been really wonderful and helpful to me!

So she and I drove into the prairie. Think rolling hills of wheat and long yellow grass and this weed called Mullein that looks like a furry cactus-type plant. Here's a photo I found via google image. The rumor is that the tallest one you see shows how much snow you can expect for total accumulation during the winter. They are looking pretty tall right now so that is exciting!! Every time I drive through the prairie lands I think of this:

An Emigrant Train Attacked by Hostile Indians on the Prairie

So we end up at this beautiful farm in the middle of no where. Her friends live there with their 3 adorable daughters (ages 9, 6, and 3) and 7 llamas. Apparently llamas deter Coyotes (and save you money on your taxes).  Abby's (the 6 year old) favorite is Google, but I didn't meet him as he was far out in the field with the other boy llamas. I did meet Andy (a female llama), the girls took us to the barn to show us, and she came running in. Those things are HUGE! And Carolyn told me not to pet her or she may spit at me, so then i have this huge think poking its head towards me and snuffling, and the kids are all over it petting it and I am freaking out! The little girl was telling me "it's ok, don't be scared! I'm not scared!" And she gives me a treat to give the thing, and it comes over to get it and i drop it before she can get it! So Abby tells me that she can give me a longer one. So I give that one to the llama and survived without getting covered in llama spit. I did get some cute pictures!

So the whole reason we were at the farm was because this family had built a warehouse and started making their own wine! And I'm not talking one or two bottles here, last year they put out about 1500 bottles! So Carolyn and her husband Paul are now in on the collaboration and expect to make/get 70 - 80 bottles this year. We went there because the grapes were at the perfect fermentation for pressing! There was this huge slatted barrel thing that you put the grapes in, and the juice drips down into a big bucket. You put slabs of wood on top of it and turn the press to squish the juice out of the grapes. When you're done, they pump the juice into carboys (5 or 3 gallon jugs) to store until its time to "re-rack" it, essentially remove dried yeast. After you take all the wood out of the press, there is a cake of dried grapes! It looks really cool. So we pressed about 7 or 8 giant trash bins full of fermented grapes. Carolyn and I were pressing queens! There were about 8 of us there working, cleaning and sanitizing carboys, pumping grapes, sifting the grapes out of the bins into the presser, pouring the juice, cleaning the press, etc etc. We were there from 5 until about 11 pm. The sunset out there was gorgeous! And the moon was HUGE last night. It was beautiful. We took one break for dinner but otherwise pressed through the night. I learned lots of interesting things about the wine pressing process! The mix of the yeast, and the handling of the CO2 and preventing oxidation and all sorts of wonderful things you never really think about when you're drinking wine!

Also they got to pick the type of wine they were making based on the grapes (of course), but there were some really interesting mixes. Of course we got to drink some of the wine from previous years, my favorite was the Alicante! This year they made an alicante/Merlot mix. One of my favorite wine's to press was the Pinot, but we also did cab sav/merlot and a shiraz/cab sav among other combinations of more grapes i can't remember. It was lots of fun! Now it's the next morning and my hands are still stained purple from all the grapes! We've had 3 bottles of wine the past few days I've spent with them, the wine that they made last year. And it was really interesting because 2 were the same bottle of wine but had a different level of bubbly or "frissant" almost like champagne! It was slightly carbonated and delicious. Yay wine!

Today will be eventful, as I am moving into my new apartment!! I'm sooo excited to have my own place and to start getting things settled and organized. Tonight I think I will bake some brownies and have some wine to celebrate!