Spring gate's wine slushies - the legeND
Ok, everyone seems to love a wine slushy when it gets hot-- or warm, or for some, when it is cold and there is snow on the ground! So, Spring Gate serves wine slushies year round. We always have them available at our "Champagne Bar", and in the Brewery, and on those special days we open the "Wine Slushy Shack". Our more classy staff call it a "cottage", but we all know what it really is.
If the B52's were still composing. They'd have a song for it. We have lots of flavors, some we have borrowed from our friends at Three Brothers in NY, and others we have created ourselves. A few are even based exclusively on our wines, such as RénovéSM. Our wine slushies are approximately 2.5% ABV (Alcohol By Volume) and, on only one day do we have non-alcoholic one for St. Patrick's Family Sunday - which of course is green. |
the cupHas anyone in central Pennsylvania not seen the cup? We love that cup for a couple of reasons. One is that it gives sufficient insulation to keep wine slushies cold from warm weather and warm hands. The other is that it is part of our "Eco Refill" goals. We want people to bring it like a growler to Spring Gate and refill it so that we don't have anything to throw away. We've organized various discounts and strategies to encourage you to bring this cup back to Spring Gate when you come visit.
What don't we love about the cup? Buying 5,000 at a time for starters, and then storing them. |
Our new slushy location - the carriage house
The old wine slushy shack is now closed and we've moved our main slushy operation to a new cooler (literally) location to deal with scaling up to the demand. Where we once connected half barrel kegs (15 gallons) we now attach 80 gallon tanks and shortly 300 gallon tanks.
Who would have known that wine slushies would be in such demand? This new facility is in the large courtyard "behind the barn" across from the brewery. |
The original slushy shack
Everyone loves the wine slushy shack, but it was hardly optimal; it reminds us of the car we had in college - functional but not optimal!
As many of you know, the shack barely survives the peak blasts of Summer heat, and we've talked to the township, so far fruitlessly, on building a "Wine Slush Palace" -- no joy there yet. So as of July we've retired the shack, to storage, maybe it will come back as something else, somewhere else in 2018, who knows. |