From Our Vineyard

Because of the recent rains, the vineyard soil here in Mahaska County is well irrigated and it is much easier to remove broken posts and Mulberry trees. Posts get broken off at the ground during harvest because they get hit by the harvester, especially when we are

We are well into the process of cleaning up the Macrobins and putting them away for the winter. We are also looking the harvester over carefully to find out what needs to be fixed so we are ready for next year’s harvest when it starts. We continue

We harvested Petite Pearl late last week, and this week, we harvested Steuben, Foch, and Crimson Pearl.  Foch will be used in making Iowa Nouveau and Iowa Harvest Red.  Steuben is used in a standalone wine. And, only enough Crimson Pearl was harvested to make a small,

We collected samples of grapes on Monday to determine the juice chemistries and to decide which to harvest first. We also moved the harvester, the tractor and its trailer, our two refrigerated box trucks, and several Macrobins to Meadowcreek where we expected to continue with harvest. We

The 2022 harvest at Tassel Ridge Winery began on August 23 at about 3 a.m. We started picking Brianna and then quickly moved to Edelweiss where we picked until all of our bins were full at 11 a.m. The 4-person picking team uses a Korvan harvester that

Because grapes have been slow to ripen, we will be at least one week later for the start of harvest this year compared to recent years and we are using the time to get ready. We will be picking samples for testing again on Monday. This is

We are frequently asked why we don’t grow and produce wines from Cabernet, Chardonnay, Merlot and other Vinifera grape varieties. The short answer is that our winters are too cold and our growing season is too short for Vinifera. So, we grow Cold Climate Grapes. Our grape

Veraison is a major annual milestone in the grape ripening process. The most obvious manifestation of veraison is that the grapes themselves begin to change color. Purple grapes change from a milky-green to purple whereas white grapes change from a milky-green to an amber-green with a measure

Marquette has started veraison where the grapes start changing from a milky-green color to purple, as in the case of Marquette. The grapes also get softer and the juice inside the grapes becomes less acidic and sweeter, especially as harvest approaches. We are about ten days later