CorkToBarrel

Jeff and I were married at Sharp Rock Vineyard in Sperryville Virginia. While we were dating one of our favorite past times was to visit the local vineyards in Virginia for wine tastings. We acquired a used wine barrel on one of the outings which sat on our front porch for months while we were deciding what to do with it. While we were planning our wedding with the vineyard venue in mind, we hadn’t wanted to use the typical metal tub filled with ice that you see so often at large events. Jeff, with his creative mind and amazing talent building things, came up with the idea to make a wine barrel cooler to use at our wedding for beer/water/soda.

So Jeff started designing, first he built a stand to hold the wine barrel and then came up with the design for the barrel. Several people at our wedding were very impressed and wanted Jeff to make a barrel cooler for them to purchase. Alas we entered our first wine festival with several barrel coolers as our only product at the time. Needless to say we didn’t sell any coolers at our first wine festival but we had a great time meeting many wonderful people with a lot of positive feedback.

Jeff and I enjoyed our first show and all the feedback but we felt we needed something a little smaller and less expensive than the wine barrel cooler. Although everyone loved the cooler, most people could not afford nor had the space for one. We then decided to design something else we could build using the staves from the wine barrels. That was the beginning of our hanging wine rack and wine butlers. From there we realized that the possibilities are endless with what we could build. We have new ideas everyday but just don’t have the time to create new products as often as we would like to. We are just trying to keep up with the demand of our current products while we both still hold full time jobs.

Once we started going to more wine festivals as a vendor we noticed the slumped/melted wine bottles. We loved the idea of repurposing all materials used for making and storing wine and wanted to include slumped wine bottles in our line of products. We then bought a used kiln on Craig’s list and began slumping wine bottles. There was a learning curve during that period! We ruined numerous molds and wine bottles as we experimented trying to get it just right. Eventually we got it down perfect, occasionally there is a bottle that doesn’t turn out perfect but overall they come out great.

Currently Jeff and I both hold full time jobs but we hope to one day make this our full time business and maybe even open up a shop. We live in the Shenandoah Valley with the shadow of Massanutten Mountain over us and a gorgeous view of the Shenandoah River and Blue Ridge Mountains to inspire us. We live with our 7 goats, 6 dogs and 4 cats. Occasionally one or two of our herd will try to help us out but at the very least they keep us company while we create and build. We are both perfectionists and aim to please customers. So if anyone ever receives a product from us that they are not completely satisfied with please let us know.
~Kristin~