Tassel Ridge Winery

Tassel Ridge Winery–August 21, 2009

If you are having trouble seeing this e-newsletter, copy this link into your web browser www.tasselridge.com/newsletter8-21-09.htm

Saturday, August 29—Cooking with Wine Demonstration Featuring Tapas

1:00–3:00 p.m.

Cost: $5 per person

Tapas are literally translated as “small dishes” and are THE appetizer in Madrid, Spain. They are becoming very popular in the U.S. Tapas are generally paired with wine and can be consumed as an appetizer or several can be consumed as dinner.

Join us as Chef Gordon Rader and students from Indian Hills Community College Culinary Arts Program (http://acfofiowa.org/hillskitchen/) prepare tapas and pair them with Tassel Ridge wines for your pleasure. You get the recipes and the opportunity to taste the tapas. Space is limited.  Make advance reservations by Wednesday, August 26.

Sunday, August 30—Waterfront Seafood Market Comes to Tassel Ridge Winery for an End of Summer Salmon BBQ

Wine Tasting: 6:00 p.m.
Dinner Seating: 6:30 p.m.

Price: $60 per person, plus tax

Join us as we welcome back Des Moines’ finest seafood purveyor, Waterfront Seafood Market & Restaurant. Dinner will feature the freshest salmon of the season, a salad, sides, and dessert, all paired with select Tassel Ridge wines. Space is limited. Advance reservations required by Wednesday, August 26.  

Friday–Sunday, August 21–23— New Iowa LaCrescent Released

Our new 2008 Iowa LaCrescent white wine is made entirely from LaCrescent grown in our Meadowcreek West Vineyard at the north edge of Oskaloosa. This semi-sweet white wine is intensely aromatic and fruity. My first impression was the essence of grapefruit followed with a complex set of tropical and stony fruit flavors. When our staff was asked to independently identify the various notes they detected on the mid-palate, they talked about papaya, mango, kiwi, nectarine, and peach.

Serve our 2008 Iowa LaCrescent well chilled as an aperitif before dinner.

Price: $13.00 plus tax in a 750 ml bottle.

Beginning on Friday and continuing through the weekend, we will be serving an appropriate appetizer to pair with this wine. Come in and give this flavorful and versatile wine a try.

 

Pizzeria & Pasta, Too! and In The Dark Are Well Received

Both of these dry red wines have been available for just a few weeks. But, customer reactions have been very positive.

Pizzeria & Pasta Too! has really appealed to people who want a very fruity dry red wine. This wine, as its name suggests, really works well with pizza and pasta with a red sauce, especially when either is spicy.

Price: $13.00 plus tax for Pizzeria & Pasta Too! in a 750 ml bottle.

 

Our new In The Dark is a blend of St. Croix (62%), Syrah (34%), and Foch (4%). This wine was blended and then aged in a mixture of French, Eastern European, and American oak barrels for 16 months. In The Dark is a big dry red wine with soft tannins, notes of black cherry and baking spices, all combined with nicely integrated oak on both the palate and finish. It should be served at room temperature with grilled meats and spicy pastas with red sauce. In my opinion, this is the best dry red wine we’ve made so far.

Gift giving hint: If you are looking for the perfect gift for someone who loves dry red wine, a bottle of In The Dark might be an outstanding choice. This is a serious dry red wine that we are really proud of.

Price: $20.00 plus tax for In The Dark wine in a 750 ml bottle.

Be Sure to Visit Us in the Wine Tent at the Iowa State Fair Through Sunday, August 23

Tassel Ridge Winery, along with several other Iowa wineries, will be pouring tastes of several of its wines in the Iowa Wine Growers Association Wine Tent. You will find us again this year just south of the Bill Riley Stage (east of the Varied Industries building). The tent is a nice place to sit and enjoy a glass of wine or a Wine-a-rita made with Tassel Ridge Wine. We will offer several, but not all of our wines at the Fair. Someone from Tassel Ridge Winery will be present during the entire Fair. We look forward to seeing you.

Harvest at Tassel Ridge Starts on Tuesday, August 25

We will begin our annual harvest on Tuesday, August 25 at about 6:30 in the morning. We will be using our mechanical grape harvester and will start on our Brianna in the northwest corner of Tassel Ridge Vineyard. We only have about a ½ acre of Brianna and expect to be done in less than one hour. Then, we will shift to Edelweiss at the northwestern edge of Tassel Ridge Vineyard. We will harvest all of our 17 acres of Edelweiss over the next 2–3 days.

We will be harvesting other varieties as they ripen. Generally, we are looking for low total acid levels and sugar levels ranging from 14-22% sugar, depending on variety.

Tassel Ridge Winery Wins Seven Medals at New State Fair Commercial Wine Competition

Tassel Ridge Winery won seven medals in the Iowa State Fair Commercial Wine Competition held for the first time in 2009. We won the following medals:

The medals were awarded on the basis of the judges’ scores. Double gold medals were awarded only to the three unanimous gold medal winners. The judging took place on Saturday and Sunday, August 1 and 2.

Iowa Helicopter Comes to Tassel Ridge for Aerial Photography

On Monday, August 17, the first helicopter landed at the helipad at Tassel Ridge Winery. Built for wine tourism in 2008, the helipad turf has been maturing nicely and is now ready for action. Our first flight arrived to take a video producer, David Woodward, and a still photographer, Jene Cain, skyward for a 90-minute session of aerial photography of all four of our vineyards in Mahaska County. I’ve included some photos of the flight as well as some photos taken in flight. We will publish more photos in the future.

Above: The first helicopter arrival at Tassel Ridge Winery

Left: Video producer, Dave Woodward, preparing for flight

Below: Aerial view of Tassel Ridge Winery. By the way, the vineyard in this photo does not have the mange. Our supplier of cuttings had a quality control problem and mixed a red grape variety with our Edelweiss. We didn’t discover the problem until last year when had fruit for the first time. We had to cut the incorrect vines out of the vineyard and replace them with new vines. So, the lighter color areas are first year vines that are not as leafy as the fourth year vines next to them.

Your Copy of the Summer 2009 Tassel Ridge Winery Events Program Can Be Accessed Here!

In the future, we will put our events programs on our web site and will let you know when  they have been posted with a note in our
e-letter. The Summer 2009 edition can be accessed here: http://www.tasselridge.com/images/Events-Prog-Sum09.pdf.
It is a 4.86 mb PDF.

 

What Is Happening In Our Cellar?

We got our new catwalks in place and now will have the temperature sensors installed and the chilled water connections made to our new 2000-gallon tanks. We bottled Red, White, & Blue late last week and are getting several other wines ready for bottling. We need to get our bottling done BEFORE we start harvest because crush takes most of our resources for about a month.

Interested in Pairing Specific Foods With Tassel Ridge Wines ?

Are you interested in suggestions of foods that pair well with specific Tassel Ridge wines? We’ve put some suggestions on our web site under Recipes and Food Pairing Suggestions. You can link directly to this page at www.tasselridge.com/recipes.htm.

 

Our Hours:

In August and September 2009, we are open seven days a week, including Labor Day, for tours, tasting, and wine and gift shop sales:

 

Our Location:

Tassel Ridge Winery is easy to find. It is just south of State Highway 163 on 220th Street in Leighton. From Ottumwa and Oskaloosa, drive northwest on 163 to 220th Street and turn left toward Leighton. From Des Moines and Pella, drive southeast on Highway 163 and turn right at 220th Street. Drive west on 220th about 0.7 miles from the Highway and right into the Tassel Ridge Winery parking lot. view maps

—Bob Wersen, President

Email Jody Brockway at info@tasselridge.com to sign up a friend for our e-newsletter.

Previous Issues:

www.tasselridge.com/news.htm