The ninth day of the ninth month and a load of people from Nine Rivers Distillery. While 8 might be considered a lucky number for most, it was the number nine that blessed us last weekend where we brought together about 50 of our Ambassador Investors for an amazing day on-site, bricklaying to create The Plenum Wall, right here in Da Chi, Longyan, Fujian.
For those of you that have been following our story, you might recall two things. Firstly, we had an open day back in May, where a group of our Ambassador Investors all came over to review the progress so far. We then scheduled a follow up to this in July, where we planned to start cementing bricks into The Plenum Wall. But this got completely wiped off the calendar due to typhoon Doksuri.
The typhoon didn’t affect our site (we’re a bit further inland and we’re pretty much protected from those severe storms due to the geography, including mountains, that protect us) but it did result in a shut down on trains and flights that would have to pass through some of the affected areas. It turned out to be one of the worst typhoons to ever hit the coast of China, with winds reaching 185 km/h and rainfall that broke all records, dropping 644mm of rain in 24 hours.
So, we rescheduled for 9th September (August is typically a holiday month and after so little travel for the last few years, we knew most people would be going to visit family in faraway places) and started crossing fingers that we’d get a good day with good weather. Rain hasn’t been our friend for the last few months, so a day of sun and clear skies wasn’t likely.
Despite having something that resembled a schedule for the day, there were, of course, those who thought 11 am sharp meant “yeah, whatever, it’s a weekend, I’m sleeping in, I’ll get there when I roll out of my bed”. It would of course be unfair to name Lee B for holding everyone up until way past noon, but now we know he’ll be a bit more punctual next time.
We started with Building 1, the first of our cask maturation warehouses. Coming in at 50.40 meters long, 28.40 meters wide (1431 square meters internal footprint), and with an internal ceiling height of 13 meters it was much bigger than most people expected.
The shock hit everyone when they found out that we needed to build another 16 of these buildings to cater for the casks we would be filling when we were at full production capacity.
Building 3 was next. 54.9 meters long, 35.4 meters wide, 1943 square meters of foot print over 4 floors. The ground floor has an internal ceiling height of 8 meters and there is a 576 square meter mezzanine floor allowing visitors to look down into the beating heard of the milling, mashing and fermenting area.
378 square meters in the basement house the pipework and the pumps to take care of our fire suppression system. Behind the wall on the left of the image above, is a 678 square meter area that holds 2 vast water tanks. Each one holds 900,000 liters of water. The pipes are actually the biggest currently installed in Longyan for fire suppression.
Onwards and upwards, there was a tour of the malting floors and the storage on upper floors.
Then finally the roof of Building 3, where there are rumors of there being exclusive social events in the future. Of course, we completely deny this.
Last but by no means least, Building 4, the still house. 50.4 meters long, 28.4 meters wide (1431 square meters) with an internal ceiling height again, or 13 meters.
Everyone got to stand in the central open plan area of the building, which is almost 1000 square meters, where our 10 stills will be located.
Barbecue lunch time and then, with everyone fed and watered, it was time to get on with the bricklaying.
The Bricklaying
Some Pictures of The Plenum Wall
This isn’t the entire wall as there were still bricklaying to be done at the end of the day and the very last bricks will be added next week. So don’t start freaking out if you can’t see your name.
We’ll publish complete photographs when all of the bricklaying is done.
Now it’s goodbye from us
Would You Like To Read More?
If you enjoyed reading about how we currently don’t see any alternatives to Dramfunded, and you would like to catch up with some of our past articles, then please CLICK HERE and go to our News Section, where most of our other content is published.
Would You like To Know More About Helping Nine Rivers Distillery?
One of the easiest ways to help our project succeed is to take an interest in anything we have for sale. You can find out what we have if you CLICK HERE and go to our shop. We’ll make a few percentage points (after sales tax) and this goes directly to our project.
Or, you could learn more about being involved and help us grow to our target of 1000 stakeholders. You can read more about our story and how to get involved if you CLICK HERE.
Follow Us
Last, but as important as all the other points above, you can help us by reading, liking and sharing our content across some of the more popular platforms.
LinkedIn users you can CLICK HERE to follow us. 7000 people are following our story on LinkedIn right now.
Facebook users, you can CLICK HERE. 2652 followers so far.
YouTube users, you can CLICK HERE. We’re at 1100 subscribers and growing.
Twitter users, you can CLICK HERE.
Instagram users, you can CLICK HERE.
Or follow us on WeChat using the QR code below.
