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
Read more →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.
Read more →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
Read more →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
Read more →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
Read more →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
Read more →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
Read more →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,
Read more →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
Read more →We bottled about 140 cases of Oskyfizzante Iowa White on Tuesday. This is a slow process because it is all done by hand. We can’t use our bottling line on fizzy wines. And, it is a two-step process because we have to fill the bottles, wait at
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