Each harvest, we invest a lot of time getting all of the equipment we need to process grapes set up before harvest. This involves getting the scales in place and being certified by the State. Then, we move the elevator and dump bin from the warehouse. We
Read more →Jonita Boyer, Winemaker at Tassel Ridge Winery, accepted the Governor’s Cup in a ceremony on Friday, August 13 at Grandfather’s Barn at the Iowa State Fair. Oskyfizzante® Iowa White won Best of Show in the “other” category and was the 2021 Governor’s Cup Trophy award winner. Oskyfizzante
Read more →We will get the preventative maintenance done on our scales and our presses early this week and then get our outside 4,000 gallon tanks washed. We will stock up our case goods room so that we can continue to make deliveries to retailers during harvest without having
Read more →Several tanks have small quantities of wine that we will move to totes for storage during harvest. We will need all of our tank space for harvest. We will reorganize the case goods room to temporarily house several Macro bins that we will be fermenting red wines
Read more →We will bottle a batch of our very popular American Pink Catawba this week and then rack and transfer a batch of Blackberry Wine off sediment. This last operation is challenging because the Blackberry Wine has lots of solids and we want to bottle as few solids
Read more →This week, we will bottle about 600 cases of the very popular Red, White, & Blue. We will also begin cold stabilization of our American Pink Catawba, rack Cranberry Wine off yeast lees, taste the latest batch of Blackberry Wine to determine what we need to do
Read more →On Tuesday, we ran Nitrogen through the Iowa Reserve Marquette and the Iowa Sabrevois to remove any dissolved Nitrogen from these wines. Then, we bottled these wines on Wednesday. Both of these wines are special. They will be allowed to settle in the bottle for several weeks
Read more →We will check the dissolved Oxygen of the Iowa In the Dark first thing Monday morning and will probably then run Nitrogen through the wine in order to eliminate any dissolved Oxygen. We are starting to feel the pain of unreliable truck deliveries that we’re reading about
Read more →We are working to get both the Iowa Louise Swenson and the Iowa St. Pepin ready for bottling next week. This week, we will check the level of dissolved oxygen in both wines and we will probably run Nitrogen gas through these wines. This will remove the
Read more →We have several batches of Red, White, & Blue® in the works right now. Some are still fermenting and need additions of yeast nutrients while we also monitor fermentation temperatures. On other batches, we are ready to make the blend, and then cold stabilize the wine. On
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