Action in the Cellar

We have about 540 cases of Cranberry Wine to bottle this week. In addition, we have lots of cellar operations to perform. We will rack Edelweiss off a fining agent and begin cold stabilization of Edelweiss. We will also rack St. Pepin off a fining agent. We’ve

This week, we will bottle American Steuben and get Cranberry Wine ready for bottling next week. We will also be monitoring some fermentations. We purchased some barrels made from American oak that have high levels of whisky lactones. We will be ageing a special batch of Iowa

We bottle the 2020 Iowa Nouveau, our first wine of the season, this week. This is a very fruity, dry red wine that lots of Iowans consume with Thanksgiving dinner. It will be released on Thursday, November 19. Last week, we received Concord juice and started its

Fermentations of Iowa Steuben, Sabrevois Rosé, and Sabrevois Special (temporary name for a new wine) are complete and we will rack these wines off the dead yeast cells and grape solids this week. We will do the same with two different batches of Marquette. We will chill

Now that all fermentations are finished, we are moving on to finishing wines and getting some ready for bottling. We’ve kept our Marquette in two batches in order to assess the differences in wine made from vines that were hedged and those that were not hedged. We

Our last wine to finish fermentation is Sabrevois and it is almost done. That is a big milestone for the season. We’ll be racking Foch, a batch of Petite Pearl, LaCrosse and La Crescent off yeast lees. Then, we taste and decide what the next steps are.

On Saturday, we finished fermenting our La Crescent. We continued punch downs on some red wines in small open fermenters. On, Sunday, we added the lag nutrients to the Steuben and Sabrevois and started fermentation on Frontenac. We also racked the Edelweiss, St. Pepin, and Petite Pearl

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