Action in the Cellar

We started fermentation of the Frontenac on Saturday. We actually harvested these grapes on Labor Day and did a week-long cold soak while it rained continually last week. We have two batches of Petite Pearl working now. The first is small and came from our 60 Petite

We are monitoring fermentations of La Crescent, Louise Swenson, and Petite Pearl and will add mid-life nutrients for the yeast in each tank. We are punching down the cap twice daily on our red wines. We are watching the fermentations on Edelweiss and St. Pepin (by measuring

Last Saturday, we processed the Marquette. That involves weighing-in the grapes and then dumping them in the elevator hopper. The elevator carries the fruit up above the destemmer-crusher where any stems are removed and the grapes are crushed. The grapes are then pumped into a tank in

The Cellar Team is testing and tasting grapes on a daily basis and we will harvest right when they are ready. Brianna is likely to be the first grape harvested. Meanwhile, the bin dumper needs to be attached to the crush pad forklift, the scale will be

We will very carefully scrub the inside of our new press by hand with scrub brushes. The scale will be moved to the crush pad and we will get a preventative maintenance visit for our Titrator. Our two new 4,000 gallon tanks will be carefully cleaned. We

We’ll be doing some cleaning and equipment maintenance before we bring our hopper, fruit elevator, destemmer-crusher, and must pump from the warehouse to the crush pad. Then, we’ll get that equipment cleaned and ready. We have a bit of wine in the tanks that we’ll be moving

We will bottle our last wines for this season: 2019 Iowa St. Pepin and 2019 Iowa Louise Swenson. Both of these wines are new for Tassel Ridge and we’ll be excited to release them in the Fall.  Batches of American Steuben and Cranberry Wine have finished fermenting.

We will get our 2019 Iowa St. Pepin and 2019 Iowa Louise Swenson filtered this week so we are ready to bottle both wines next week. We are monitoring the fermentation of another batch of Cranberry Wine. Fermenting cranberry is a slow process. We are also getting

On Wednesday, we will bottle another batch of our very popular Blackberry Wine. If you like a really smooth sweet wine, you should try Tassel Ridge Blackberry Wine. We are fermenting batches of Cranberry Wine and American Steuben so we’ll be monitoring those fermentations. We will be

This week, we will finish up the last bottling session with our very popular Red, White, & Blue. We are completing cold stabilization of a batch of American Pink Catawba. A shipment of Steuben and Cranberry juice is expected this week. We are getting ready for harvest