We finished the 2020 harvest last week with the last of the Sabrevois and our small harvest of Steuben. We immediately thoroughly cleaned our Macrobins, the grape processing equipment we use seasonally on the crush pad, and trailers used during harvest and put them all away.
This week we’ll be replacing some broken posts at Maple Woods Vineyard, mowing, applying fungicide, and we’ll start cleaning Mulberry trees out of Edelweiss Blocs A and B at Tassel Ridge.
And, equipment maintenance never seems to end. We’ll be taking care of some equipment in need of repairs.
We are regularly asked how good our harvest was. This year, we think that the fruit quality was as good or better than we’ve ever before experienced. Our quantity, on the other hand, was disappointing. We actually harvested about 75 tons and we’d normally expect 120 tons. We regularly purchase some grapes that we are short on and this year we purchased small quantities of three different varieties. We have also sold excess grapes for the past 3–4 years and this year, we sold grapes that were excess to our needs to wineries in Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. We received several expressions of interest in purchasing grapes right at the last minute and that leads us to think that other wineries were discovering that their harvest forecasts were too optimistic. Maybe the dry weather reduced berry size enough that there was a general shortage of grapes in the Upper Midwest this year.
