This a Fully-Functioning Winery inside a 550-Square Foot Apartment in Manhattan

(Photo: Laura Murray/Thrillist)

Matt Baldassano lives in a little apartment of the East Village of Manhattan. It has 550 square feet of living space, which I suppose isn’t tiny by New York City standards. But most of the space is taken up by his wine processing facility that produces 10 different wines using the 2 tons of grapes that are delivered there. It’s a lot of work, but Baldassano has help. He throws grape-crushing parties to do some of the work:

Twice a year, Matt throws a party where members and invited guests come over to crush. Most of them just grab a box of grapes and throw them into that electric crushing machine. But others take off their shoes and stomp on the grapes, because they’re in the club, and it’s their wine, so they can do what they want. The grapes ferment in vats in the yard for 8-10 days before they get pressed and racked (that’s a fancy way of saying the grape juice gets extracted and put into barrels). Once the wine is in the barrels, he sets the temperature in his apartment to a necessary 66 degrees. Then 10-18 months later, boom, you’ve got matured wine.

You can see more photos of his impressive in-house facility at Thrillist.

-via Nag on the Lake