On Monday, we processed the 7.9 tons of Brianna that was harvested on Sunday. Brianna is usually our first grape to be ready for harvest. In making our decision on when to harvest, we look for sugar levels in the fruit, how the fruit tastes, and how much acid
Read more →Tassel Ridge lost a tree at our entrance and some damage to the trellis in our vineyard at the Winery. The building did not suffer any damage and we don’t know yet of damage at our three other vineyards. Although we have not been able to conduct
Read more →Last week, we received blackberry and cranberry juice. We started the fermentations on Friday and will be monitoring the fermentations this week. Both of these wines ferment more slowly than grape juice and cranberry is especially slow. We are preparing for our last Red, White, & Blue
Read more →Our cellar team will get a double batch of Red, White, & Blue ready for bottling on Wednesday. This involves adding sugar and filtering the wine. This will be the last wine we will filter using our borrowed filter. Then, we will get it packed up and
Read more →Last week, we organized help from throughout the Winery and bottled what may be a one-day record amount of Red, White, & Blue®. It was made possible by a team effort from everyone involved. We also used the large filter we borrowed and that made fast work
Read more →The Cellar bottled Cranberry Wine last week and will try to bottle a double batch of Red, White, & Blue® next week. We normally keep our bottling runs to about 650 cases which takes about five hours. With two hours of cleaning before bottling and two hours
Read more →We’ve borrowed a cross-flow filter that we will use until the replacement parts arrive for our own filter in early July. The borrowed filter is much bigger and faster than our own filter, so we having to make numerous adjustments in how we operate it. This week,
Read more →We’ve borrowed a cross flow filter that we hope to have operational within the next week or two. It is double the size of our filter, so we’re having to make some electrical changes to accommodate it. We have ordered a new pump for our own filter.
Read more →The Cellar Team will bottle Edelweiss on Thursday. Because this bottle is taller and thinner than our regular bottles, we must change the feed screws, star wheels, and related guides to accommodate the “Hoch” bottle. This takes about four man-hours to change, and then, after the run,
Read more →Last week, we pressed our Iowa Prairie Snow®. We’d harvested the grapes right at the beginning of harvest starting August 2, 2017 and then took them to a locker for freezing. We left them at the locker until we could take a day or two to press
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