From Our Vineyard

We didn’t make much progress working in our vineyards last week. Severe weather was the problem. We have been working indoors on equipment to make sure it is ready for prime time. In the process, we discovered that some equipment had not been serviced for 3–4 years.

We are adding about 450 Foch vines to our vineyard this year so that we can become self-reliant on our own vines for Foch production. Foch is used in making Iowa Nouveau and Iowa Harvest Red. We have identified where in our Meadowcreek Vineyard they will be

We finished up our trellis work at Meadowcreek by walking the vineyard and reinstalling trellis wire staples where necessary. The vineyard crew also got ready for freezing weather by draining outside spigots and uninsulated lines at Maple Woods, Meadowcreek, and at Tassel Ridge Winery outbuildings. We ran

The vineyard crew finished replacing broken posts at Meadowcreek Vineyard and moved to Maple Woods Vineyard to replace broken posts and to fix broken H-Braces. The H-Braces are the structures that support the trellis wires at each end of a row. Jess Manley, our new Vineyard Manager,

The vineyard crew is making progress replacing posts in the Meadowcreek Vineyard. They are now working in the south part of the Marquette vineyard. The line posts in the north and middle vineyards are done. They replaced 43 posts this week and have 23 more posts to

We continue replacing broken posts in our Meadowcreek Vineyard. We initially had 72 posts to replace and we are about 50% done with the project at Meadowcreek. We are also getting ready to tackle weeds in the rows with the vines however, we discovered that we had

Vineyard posts break because they rot off right at the ground level. They are pressure treated and they usually last for at least ten years, but our vineyards are now mature (we started planting in 2002) and the posts still have a finite life. Then, if we

We finished harvest last week. It was the lightest harvest we have had for several years. One reason is that we left a lot of fruit hanging because we didn’t need it for our own production. We sold much of what we harvested. In addition, our vines

We harvested Petite Pearl on Monday. We still have Itasca, Verona, Foch, and Steuben to harvest and should have all except the Steuben harvested by the end of this week. Protecting our ripening grapes from hungry birds is a major challenge. We used to use propane cannons

We have already harvested LaCrosse, Brianna, Edelweiss, La Crescent, Marquette, and Frontenac. We were very disappointed with the quantity and quality of the LaCrosse so we decided to dump those grapes. The Brianna, Edelweiss, and La Crescent were outstanding and we sold what we harvested. The Marquette