The Crimson Pearl is a small batch from the Tassel Ridge Vineyard. It has some very nice flavors and we are interested to see what we can do with it. It might make an outstanding dessert wine. We will use the Foch (which we purchased from another
Read more →The vineyard crew picked grape samples for YAN (yeast assimilable Nitrogen) testing at Iowa State University. The data we get from this testing will tell us how much yeast nutrient we will need for each variety during fermentation. Our presses have now both received their preseason service
Read more →We had our presses serviced on Monday morning. Our contractor has also almost finished the installation of the new settling tanks for the Winery process water. We will grease all crush pad equipment and clean both presses. The winemaker will continue scouting to make sure that all
Read more →We need to get all of our equipment ready for harvest. The first big step is to replace the waste water settling tanks, and we will do that this week. These tanks receive and settle out solids from water used in washing tanks, equipment, and floors. Our
Read more →Although we are not bottling this week, both Red, White, & Blue and Star Spangled White are being filtered to get them ready. We filter all of our wines using a cross-flow filter. Our cross-flow filter has four large cylinders that are approximately six inches in diameter
Read more →On Wednesday, we bottled a small run of 2021 Iowa Frontenac. This is a dry red and it is the first Frontenac Red we have ever made. This wine will have a month or so to settle down and then we will release it. We worked on
Read more →On Wednesday, we bottled a batch of Star Spangled White. This past week, we also finished up the fermentation of a batch of Concord that will be used to make Red, White, & Blue®. We will next start cold stabilization of the Concord. In addition to Concord,
Read more →On Wednesday, we bottled the 2023 Iowa Edelweiss and next week, we will bottle our Oskyfizzante® Iowa White. We will start carbonating the Oskyfizzante Iowa White on Friday. We routinely check the SO2 on wines in our tanks to make sure that there is enough to prevent
Read more →The genetics in our Cold Climate grape varieties combine to present some major challenges in wine making. The first is that juice from our varieties tend to have very high acid levels. One common way to manage high acid levels is to let the grapes hang until
Read more →We bottled the 2023 Iowa Harvest Red this week and got a batch of our very popular Red, White, & Blue® ready for bottling next week. We started to cold stabilize a large batch of Edelweiss. This wine will be used to make three different wines: Star
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