Mount Airy, MD – Thursday April 21, 2011

As you know from my last writing, as of March 13, 2011, we have gone 100% wind power, which is part of our sustainability goal for our winery. What you might not know is that on April 16, 2011 at about 8pm, we were hit by a F-1 tornado which gave us a lot of natural lighting by removing roofing from the processing room, tank room and the building we store the grape harvester, tractors, and festival equipment and supplies. Believe me, we really didn’t contract for this much wind power. As of this writing, 5 days later, we are all back under roof, with some new added skylights for natural lighting, and just finishing cleaning up the processing room tanks so we can resume normal operations. Folks who have been long time customers of ours know that over the last 35 years we have been ardent supporters of repurposing and recycling materials and byproducts at the winery to help keep the planet “green”. To that point I am proud to announce that we have been selected as a finalist for the Maryland mid-size business “Green Business of the Year Award” by the Baltimore Business Journal. I don’t know if we will win but to me it doesn’t matter, I feel honored just to have been selected and to see that our efforts have been noticed by others. We are very good at “keeping our light under a bushel” as it were. We don’t tend to blow our own horn because when we obtain one objective we start working on the next one down the list. This forward thinking mentality has been the driving force of our business and I truly appreciate the recognition but that isn’t why we do what we do. We do it because it’s the right thing to do for our business, for the farm, for the planet. Thank you for your continued support of our family business all these years and please help in continuing this process as we all progress forward from here.

Anthony Aellen – Your Winemaker