Arriving this morning in New Albany!

Our 8 540 gallon tanks are seen here leaving Atlantic Welding in New Jersey for their journey to New Albany. They'll arrive on Wednesday morning and begin their final move into the winery's basement production area.

Market House Label

One of several labels waiting approval from the federal government. This label features the Middle Market House that was located on East Market Street between State and Pearl Streets.

Our Thanksgiving Tanks

Here are two of the eight 540 gallon tanks heading our way from Atlantic Welding in New Jersey. They should be arriving in New Albany just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. How appropriate. Should give us a new reason to celebrate in the future.

Thank you Duke Energy

Duke Energy was finally able to get a crew to the building to set us a new pole in the alley. A bit delayed by those mid-summer thunderstorms that brought trees and powerlines down in Southern Indiana. We'll give them a pass on the delay. The new pole will bring our new single phase and three phase services into the building. The building has been upgraded to the 208V Delta system. The old system needed 6 service boxes at the back of the building. Ugly! The new system knocks that down to just two.

More good news! The ugly wire on the front of the building is gone. It took 8 months and numerous calls to Duke to get it removed but persistence paid off. The old line wasn't very attractive and it had started to pull the brick away from the building. The line was apparently only used for the Harvest Homecoming Festival. It certainly didn't belong on a historic building.

Just in case you haven't noticed.

Painting on the pressed metal cornice continues. We think we have finally figured out our paint scheme. You should start seeing it come together down the side of the building. Hopefully, it will translate nicely to the front. We'll post a picture as soon as we get a chance.

Also if you haven't noticed, some of the windows are gone. Ol' House Experts of Madison (IN), have removed six of the windows for restoration. They'll restore the windows using the existing historic glass and repair and replace wood as needed with like materials. Why someone would restore a historic window and not reuse the existing historic glass doesn't make a lot of sense. We had bids to restore the windows using new glass. We were told that they wouldn't be able to remove the old glass without breaking it. We did some quick research online and found out how the real professionals do it.

Ol' House Experts uses the preferred method for restoring the windows. They will be putting the windows into a steam box to soften up the old paint and window glazing. This will allow them to remove the brittle glass without breaking it. We were told that by using this method they could lower the breakage from 50-75% down to only about 5%. We were assured that any broken glass would be replaced by glass that had that old wavy look to it. Thanks to Historic Landmarks of Indiana for turning us on to Jack Patchin and Rhonda Deeg of Ol' House Experts. We can't wait to get some of them back.

Our future is quite colorful!

Our plans are to use a six color paint scheme on the building. The picture represents a rough idea of what we're planning. Special thanks to Brenda at Porter Paints on Grantline Road and Kris at Dezine Communications.

A peek at the production area.

Epoxy Flooring, lighting, and equipment coming soon!

The wine production area... Epoxy Flooring, Lighting and Equipment coming soon!

How do you eat an elephant?

Someone once asked me that question and I'll admit I had no clue. Never really thought about eating an elephant. Not here in Nawbny. But in reality, I've been eating elephants my whole life. So how do you eat an elephant? Obviously, one bite at a time. You have to think that way when you undertake a project like this. If you aim low you'll certainly hit it. I've always known that. I never thought it was worth the effort to do things that I knew I could do. So I always tried to do things that everyone else said I couldn't do. Living in New Albany it's not hard to find those kinds of people. We tend to elect them around here.

So I know everyone wants to know what's going on with the winery. I can assure you it's full steam ahead. You may not notice the progress but it is there everyday. One bite at a time. There's a lot going on with this project and I expect things to start falling into place soon. We've been quiet up to this point because we've been busy eating the elephant. Literally, my plate has been full. Be patient. We are "them People" and we are progressing. Luckily, the downtown seems to be progressing along with us. Must be more of "them people" out there than we originally thought.

Can't wait to walk a half block for a nice Community Dark and BBQ Bologna. Anyone want to join me?