Action in the Cellar

Last Friday, we crushed Steuben, the last grape variety for this season. We measured the sugar, total acidity, and pH on the Steuben juice after crushing the grapes and pressing the juice off the skins and seeds. We added Sulfur dioxide and two hours later added enzymes

We started the fermentation on the second tank of Edelweiss last Friday and added the lag nutrients on Sunday. We have totes each containing small batches of red wine (about 175 gallons in each tote) and we are punching the cap down in them twice per day.

Processing the grapes includes weighing them in, lifting the macrobins filled with fruit and dumping the grapes into the hopper-elevator. The fruit is metered into the destemmer-crusher where each grape is gently broken open. Grapes that will be made into white or rosé wine will be pumped

We started with LaCrosse last weekend. Since the grapes were warm, we put them in a reefer trailer which we have rented for harvest again this year. The LaCrosse was chilled and then processed on Sunday. Because we have a lot of Edelweiss (17 acres), we harvested

In order to make room in our larger tanks for the incoming harvest, we will take a few days to move wine in the tanks to the smallest appropriate tank available. That will take a few days. We will organize the yeast and nutrients that we get

We bottled about 400 cases of Red, White, & Blue on Wednesday and got another batch of Red, White, & Blue cold stabilized. We have lots of birds that just love our crush pad. They do what birds do so we’ll be talking to our local exterminator

We bottled a batch of Oskyfizzante Pink on Tuesday. This wine must be very cold when it’s bottled in order to avoid losing the carbonation. We have to let the wine warm up for a couple of days before we apply the labels and sleeves because the

We bottled our very popular Sweet Roxie Red this week. Sweet Roxie Red is a sweet rosé with cherry and green apple on the nose and cherry and plum on the palate. It is great with spicy foods like Mexican, Asian stir fries, and Indian meals. Or,

We bottled Oskyfizzante Red on Tuesday. This is slow work because it must be done on our hand bottling station with five people rinsing and filling bottles, installing a crown cap, wiping the bottles down, and putting them into cartons to warm up. The wine is about