The Schramsberg Caves Party Crash

I was cleaning out my camera and realized I never posted about when T and I crashed the Schramsberg party.  Late after work one day we heard that Schrams was having a party so we headed up valley hoping to get in.

We successfully snuck in and tagged along on a tour of their caves.  My camera did not do well in low light, but you get the idea.

Schrams does a staggering amount of hand riddling, which is what all the racks are for.  A person has to physically turn the bottles in the rack to eventually get the yeast sediment (from a secondary fermentation) to collect in the neck.  Once it is all in the neck, the top of the bottle is frozen and the frozen yeast plug is popped out.  Most places now do this process mechanically, but Schrams is classy like that.

However, the best part of the Schrams caves is how furry they are.  For red wine caves, sanitation is of the upmost importance, any mold is a huge concern because the wine is less protected in barrels.  In this cave, all the wine is in bottle so the grotesquely mold covered walls add character instead of panic.

They say the moldy walls are covered walls are lichen.  When you're in there it looks less like a fungus and more like years and years of grey powdery dust that hang down.

I think you get the picture.  It's gnarly, but oh so cool.

Those are sparkling bottles stacked from floor to celling going several rows deep.  These have already undergone the secondary fermentation in bottle, been riddled and are chilling here, aging, waiting a few years until they are ready to be pulled out, labeled and released to the public.

The bottles are packed tightly together and go back several feet.  Its a very cool tour.

So uh, when I said party, I meant holiday party.  This was a while ago.  

But quick tip for everyone who tries to sneak into a party: add your name to the raffle and win the best prize of the night!  That really helps you blend in.

About 15 minutes after our arrival, I won this magnum of sparkling wine, and then carried it like a baby through the cave tour.  Which also explains how few pictures I was able to take, T kept getting tired of holding my wine baby while I battled with the low light in the cave.  The saddest part is that this was in December and it is almost May and that bottle remains unopened in my fridge.

-L