Action in the Cellar

We started the winemaking process with Edelweiss this week by racking the juice off sediment and starting the fermentation. The Edelweiss was beautiful and the juice had great aromas. We also tested more grape samples to determine which variety we will harvest next and how other grapes

When the grape samples come to the Winery, we test them for their sugar level, for the total acidity of the juice, and for the pH or the strength of the acidity. We do this in our lab using a titrator made by Mettler-Toledo. In addition, we

This week, we bottled 2021 Iowa Petite Pearl and the 2020 Iowa Marquette. The first step was to run Nitrogen through both wines in order to remove any dissolved Oxygen in the wine before bottling. Then, on Wednesday, we bottled both the 2021 Iowa Petite Pearl and

On Wednesday, we canned 7,000 twelve-ounce cans of Red, White, & Blue for the first time. Whenever we do something for the first time, we encounter all sorts of unknowns. This time was no exception because after we got the run completed, we learned that the UPC

Because our labeler still awaits the visit of a technician (currently scheduled for April 25), we can’t bottle anything right now so we are getting wines ready for bottling. This week, we filtered Brianna and are cold stabilizing another batch of Red, White, & Blue®. We continue

The labeler portion of our bottling line has been down for a couple of weeks and we have tried to schedule a visit by a technician to fix it. We don’t yet know when the technician will visit so we are focused on getting wines ready for

A photo eye on our labeler failed last week and until the replacement arrives and is installed, we can’t bottle more wine. For the moment, we are dead in the water. We used our time this week to rack the Iowa Brianna and begin cold stabilization. We

As part of our long run interest in making dry red wine with bigger mouth feel, we borrowed a Della Toffola Maceration Accelerator last summer and ran one ton of Marquette and Frontenac through the DTMA and then made an additional ton the normal way (this is

This week, the big task is to bottle our second and final batch of the very popular Star Spangled White for this season. We will also be checking on all barrels, which includes tasting the wine and filling the barrel up to replace wine that has evaporated.

We are working with the Midwest Grape & Wine Industry Institute at Iowa State University on evaluating a machine used in processing grapes.  It is called a Della Toffola Maceration Accelerator.  We pump the Must (juice, grape skins, and seeds) through this machine and it cuts the