Shipping The 'Bucher' Grape Press

The main event of the second shipment to Texas was loading the big 'Bucher' bladder press at Monticello winery. This press was one of the first two presses to operate at Monticello Vineyards in Napa Valley. I am thrilled to have it now as a focal point of the exhibit's crush pad area. This press is about 6.5 feet tall by 6.5 feet wide by 13 feet long. It has pressed more tons of grapes than I can begin to estimate. It was operational at Monticello from 1982 until 2005.

The photos show the press being loaded onto a special truck for shipment to San Jose, California where it will be loaded into the trailer that will take it to Texas. Once in Texas I will begin cleaning it and prepping it for painting. I want to restore it as close as possible to it's original colors and markings.

Finally Found the Perfect Tractor

In George Taber's excellent book 'Judgement of Paris' there is a photograph of Warren Winarski, founder of Stag's Leap Wine Cellars on a Ford tractor working in a vineyard. I decided early on that I wanted a Ford tractor for the exhibit. I looked everywhere...in California, in Texas....on tractor club websites. Nothing like I was looking for seemed to be available. I was really starting to worry that I might have to opt for something else. That wouldn't be so bad...but I wanted a Ford, circa 1968 - 1976.

Then one day....I was driving from Houston to The George Bush Library in College Station and as I was coming into Navasota I passed a corner lot that had a beautiful Ford tractor sitting near the barbed wire fence with a 'for sale' sign on it. I turned around went back and wrote down the telephone number on the sign. It ended up being about a week later before I could make contact with the owner and work out a price....but now I had my tractor, a 1969 Ford 2000....perfect for the exhibit.

Shown in the photo is George Bush Library - facility manager Robert Spacek as we unloaded it at my College Station storage area.

Getting Ready for the First Truck

I fly back to Oakland and head straight to my two storage spaces in Cloverdale (up in Sonoma county) to begin prepping all items slated to be on the first shipment to Texas. There was a lot of work to be done...but primarily it was wrapping barrels and vines in plastic stretch wrap. Sounds relatively easy... but I can tell you that it took hours to complete. As the day turns into night I'm still wrapping and stacking barrels, grapevines and 100+ year old basket press parts.

Tomorrow the 18-wheeler is scheduled to arrive first at Monticello winery in Napa to load a circa 1980 'valley bin' used to haul grapes to the crush pad. After the stop in Napa the truck heads to Cloverdale to load all the remaining exhibit items going on the first load.

Shown in the photos you can see a few of the wrapped vines, barrels and broken down barrel staves (that will be used to build the exhibit reader rails) Twenty-four hours later these items were headed to Texas.

Recreating Jefferson's Famous Fireplace

Few aspects involved in creating this wine exhibit have impacted me more than the research devoted to Thomas Jefferson and his appreciation of wine. In October of 2008 when visiting Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia I learned (and saw firsthand) more about Jefferson in two days than all the book research that I had done for months prior. The curators at Monticello were a wealth of information. In addition to touring throughout the various rooms of Monticello, I was taken into the wine cellar. This was very special to me, to actually be walking in Thomas Jefferson's cellar, standing exactly where slaves stood as they placed selected wine bottles in the carriage boxes of his famous fireplace wine dumbwaiter to be sent upstairs to a waiting Jefferson and his dinner guests. The cellar was located directly below the dining room. The dumbwaiter system that Jefferson devised allowed for wines to be served without the intrusion of waitstaff.

For 'The Culture of Wine' exhibit we are recreating a portion of Jefferson's dining room and wine cellar areas. The focal point of the dining room will be a recreation of his fireplace showing the ingenious dumbwaiters hidden in the sides of the mantle. Shown in the photo above is George Bush Presidential Library 'Exhibit Specialist' Jason Hancock and 'Museum Tech' Debbie Page, both worked on building the replica. As shown here the fireplace is about 80% finished. Still to be added are the Wedgewood Jasperware plaques, the marble trim and finishing moulding. The photo below shows a detail of the hidden dumbwaiters located in each side.