We bottled 2016 Iowa White Blossom on February 1. The 2016 vintage is very fruit forward and it filled the cellar with tropical and citrus fruit aromas. The 2016 Iowa White Blossom is a reminder that Mother Nature has a lot to contribute to how flavorful our wines really are. Our Edelweiss vines are maturing and the weather helped us produce outstanding grapes.
On February 8, the cellar team bottled Candleglow® Red. It has prominent plum and cherry notes. Although it is sweet, we expect our customers to enjoy it with steak and other meats.
We’ve now filtered our new 2015 Iowa Silky St. Croix. It will be bottled soon and left to settle down in the bottles for several months before release. It is a semi-sweet wine.
We have batches of Concord and Catawba whose fermentations are complete and they will be combined and used to make Red, White, & Blue® sometime soon. And, batches of Steuben and Cranberry are nearing the end of fermentation.
Mark Reynolds joined the cellar team as its manager on January 30 and as he puts it, Jonita, our Cellar Specialist and Lew, our Cellar Technician, are getting him broken in. Mark has a background in fermentation technology, food ingredient production, and corn milling and is excited about the opportunity to jump into the world of wine production.
Jonita paired our new 2016 Iowa Brianna with Chicken Alfredo and really liked the combination.
