la gramiere:

Last week was the bi-annual trade show called SITEVI (not sure what that stands for to be honest!). It's a huge event, farmers and winemakers come from all over southern Europe to check out the latest in farming equipment and winemaking equipment. I went for the first time this year with my friend Serge Scherrer who also has a small winery in our village. I swear it's like Disneyland for farmers! Anything you can dream of is there, and many things you never would have even imagined.

As always these things are a bit of a catch 22, because you see so many things that you want or "need" and that you truly can't afford. Serge and I looked at a brand new GAI bottling line that bottles 1000 bottles per hour, which isn't a lot, perfect for our size, I can't remember the exact price but it was somewhere around €30,000. We'd have to sell a whole lot of wine to justify that kind of investment! But it's lots of fun to look around to see what is out there.

We saw a very cool demonstration of a mechanical weed eater, similar to the , but it does both sides at once. It's certainly not as powerful as the Weedbadger, but it seemed to get the job done. There were lots and lots of tractors, you could feel the testosterone as you entered the pavilion! Burly guys drooling over the latest and greatest. We even saw a brand new John Deere, but it didn't really appeal to me, I'm old fashioned, I only dream of the vintage models!

Then we moved on to the packaging pavilion. Screw caps, labels, boxes, corks, glass. Everything you can imagine. It was fun to look at the designs that wineries are using, colors, logos, creative solutions for everything wine related.

Amazingly we walked around to what we thought were all of the different pavilions, but forgot to visit the winemaking area!! We missed all of the pumps, presses, tanks, filters, barrel makers and who knows what else. It's probably for the best though, who knows what expensive ideas that might have put in our heads...

There's always next time!