Tuesday, February 25, 2014, Pahrump Valley Winery Tour, Pahrump, NV

After our morning waffles in the clubhouse, we decided to tour the Pahrump Valley Winery. Since it is adjacent to Wine Ridge RV Resort (in Pahrump, NV) it was only about 20 steps from the clubhouse. Before the tour started there was some wine tasting. They allowed us to choose as many as seven wines to taste and then they started pouring. When Joani and I compared lists there was only one wine, Cinsaut Rose, in common, (I prefer dry and Joani prefers sweet). It was so good we bought two bottles.

Our host for the tour was loaded with interesting details about the wine business. For example, in Nevada, you cannot start a winery in a county with more than 100,000 residents (of course after a winery is in place if the county grows the winery can stay, but then no more can be started.) The Pahrump Valley Winery uses red grapes from three locations in Nevada totaling 10 acres (the entire state only grows 40 acres of grapes). White grapes do not tolerate heat well, so the winery buys grapes from California for the white wines they make. 

The winery has certainly earned a lot of medals for their efforts. Their medal room made me nervous - all I could think was "what would happen in an earthquake?"  When I looked closer I found the bottles were secured to the wall with velcro. The picture below probably shows less than half of their 375 awards. The amazing thing is that they received their first award in 2005!

Next, it was off to the wine "factory." The machine below is named "Lucy." It separates the grapes from the vines and stems before they are crushed. I studied the thing, but I could not see how it would work. Maybe if I could just see it in action.

All of the winery's operations take place in this small room. They even fill, cork and label the bottles here. They process 10,000 bottles a year - not a lot if you could level it out over the year. Since they can't do that, they get really busy for a short time each year.

Later in the afternoon, it started raining. We had to think a while to remember the last time we saw rain. It must have been when we were in northern California near the end of September! No complaints from us - it was a nice change. It did rain enough and the winds were strong enough we pulled the slides in so the awnings flapping would not worry Sam so much.