We received Catawba juice last Monday and the cellar team started the fermentation on Wednesday. We really like the nose on this juice.
The team worked on several batches of Red, White, & Blue® to move them along towards bottling. The next step is to begin cold stabilization.
On Tuesday, the cellar team bottled the 2014 Iowa Prairie Snow®. It has great aromas of apricot and pineapple. We will now let it settle in the bottle for several months.
The cellar team pulled barrels containing the 2013 Iowa Marquette and the Robert Duncan Cuvée 415 from the cellar. We tasted these wines and are very pleased with how they have developed. We will apply for label approval and bottle them in the next couple of months.
The 2014 Iowa Marquette was moved from the large format (200 gallons) French oak barrels to the small format (60 gallons) French oak barrels on Friday. This wine will remain in the small barrels for 9–10 months. The large format barrels are now four years old, whereas some of the small format barrels are new and others are 1–2 years old. This will provide more oak characteristics in the wine.
Finally, the team filtered a batch of Red, White, & Blue®. We will bottle that on Wednesday, April 29.
