Canadian River Winery Visitation

 

                                                                   My first winery visitation

This Sunday I visited the Canadian river winery in Lexington Oklahoma. The winery was established in 1999  and produced about seven grape varieties. Merlot, Cabernet, Sauvignon & Saviour blanc, Moscato, Reisling, Sangiovese.

The priming is the most important process, it is done on February & March. The flowers are self-polonized, and they usually use 5-gallon bucket for harvesting during hand pick  before being transported by wagon.
Here is the process described through the picture
The grape after being picked by hand put on 5 - gallon bucket, it is carried by wagon and left at freezer to overnight cool it off because they come hot from the vineyard.

                                                                                                                                       

Red and White grape receive a different special treatment. As it is known, White grape does not need aging or to have juice skin contant, therefore white grape skit this step and goes straight to the next one. This machine is the crash disteemer where  only the red wine stay momentary before being sent to the tank displayed on the background.

This is the pressure machine that receives the white one after leaving the freezer, and receives the red after staying in the tank for about 6 weeks.

This is the tank that receives the red grape for six weeks. Plus this process represents the fermentation and yeast manifestation that happen in about the time mentioned. 

Those are the barrel that receives the red grape for aging and maturation for 2 to 3 years. They dont use all the red wine to make driy wine because the demand in America is a sweet wine. Therefore, some reds are aged to make sweet wine. 

After staying two years on those barrels, it undergoes two more machines before being bottled : The coarse, and finer filter before the addition of sugar, 

This winery has wone couple gold and silver medal as the picture below the display.  A fun fact about this winery is that they have been opened for about 20 years, and use American oak because French is quite expensive.   Their future is uncertain because of the competitor that export wines from all over the world. That was a wonderful experience visiting the winery, I found a couple student attend the same wine class and we discussed a bit about how fun has been this journey. I tasted a couple wine there, and so far the most recommendable there was the chocolate drop, I LOVED IT.