Our family has owned grape vineyards for over a hundred years.
We have several hundred acres of grape vines that produce the fruit that is mainly used in juice, jam and jelly.
We grow concord grapes that are a dark purple in color, very sweet and have a strong flavor. Most of the wine that is made from concord grapes is truly awful. However, my father and I have spent a great deal of time developing new ways to process and sweeten concord wine to create something really tasty. We began the project as a hobby but our winemaking has turned into a business. We’ve grown from producing a few bottles of wine in the basement to building a winergy and bottling hundreds of gallons. We handle the processing, racking, sweetening, bottling and labeling processes all inside the one large building. It is very important to keep the environment at a stable year round temperature. Our local weather is unpredictable and extreme. The outdoor temperature swings from negative twenty-five to eight-five. We needed a way to maintain the inside of the winery at a constant 65 degrees. We decided to install a commercial level ductless heat pump. The system consists of an outdoor compressor linked to an indoor air handler mounted up high on the wall. It runs on electricity and transfers heat between the indoors and the outdoors. During the winter months, it takes ambient heat from the outside air and uses refrigerant to pump it into the winery. In the summer months, the system pulls heat energy out of the winery to create a cooling effect. Because there are no windows and we keep the doors shut the majority of the time, there are very few energy losses. The heat pump easily handles demand and costs very little to operate.