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WINEMAKING Rebuilding history In March 2008, the Bakers purchased the Bynum property, which had been con- verted to a winery in 1973 by essentially dropping a roof over the remnants of three separate buildings that had housed a hop kiln in the 1920s. After a long and successful career in the wine industry, Bynum sold the Davis Bynum property in 2007 to the Klein family, owners of Rodney Strong Vineyards. Bynum is recognized as a pioneer in the Russian River Valley, being the first to make a single-vineyard Pinot Noir. But there had been few improvements to the original Bynum winery over the decades. Baker said his family purchased the property for about $7.3 million and made an equivalent investment in the rebuild: "I don't think there's an inch of ground here we didn't work on," Baker said. The old tasting room, housed in a simple room with exposed brick walls, was heated by an open fireplace. Visitors had to use an outhouse. "It was kinda garagey-style, for sure," Baker said. The tasting room housed in the original Davis Bynum winery is used during the week, and a tasting area in the cave is employed for weekends. Soil samples from TGE's different vineyards will be featured in a tasting room display. While Baker had a vision of creating a premium winery, he said he also wanted to maintain a connection to the historic nature of the property. "There was a lot of character to the place we didn't want to lose," he said. "We wanted to tie in the relationship to new and old." To that end, Baker left much of the exposed stone of the old buildings, but he had all the surfaces sandblasted and then sealed with an antimicrobial epoxy treatment. The new tasting room inside the winery features modern temperature control as well as a sugar pine ceiling and a new concrete countertop. The estate vineyards grow on a multitude of different soils, and Baker has plans to incorporate samples of these soils into display tables in the tasting room. The cellar at Thomas George didn't just need renovating, it needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. When Baker bought the property he found a cellar with the original stone walls covered in black mold. "It smelled like vinegar," he said. The floors didn't even have drains, and one of the first steps of the rebuild was to "float" in new floors at an angle so wastewater would flow to a central drain that also had to be cut. Baker installed a total of 27 tanks from Westec, 19 of which are closed- top and range in size from 300 to 3,000 gallons—six 5-ton open-tops and two 3-ton open-tops. In addition to the new floor, walls and tanks, Baker said he installed a hot and cold glycol system, an argon gas line, compressed air and catwalks to access all of the fermentation tanks. He also upgraded the winery's electrical system. From vineyard to tank Thomas George sources fruit from three main estate vineyards that com- INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS Wes_WV-Jan-Feb2012.indd 1 Westec ad 1/2 page horizontal 4 color ad — Wine Business Monthly Jan 2012 issue. Wines & Vines FeBRUARY 2012 49 12/2/11 12:12 AM