Everyone breathed a sigh of relief as we picked the last grapes on Thursday morning. The grape variety was Frontenac and both the quality and quantity was outstanding. On Friday we processed the grapes and started to clean things up. This week, we’ve cleaned the harvest equipment
Read more →After every day of harvest, we have to process grapes. That involves a run through the destemmer-crusher for all grapes. Red grapes are then pumped into either tanks or open-top fermenters. Grapes used to make white and rosé wines go into the press and just the juice
Read more →The first step in processing each batch of fruit is destemming and crushing the fruit. When we are making a white or rosé, we then juice the grapes in the press and pump the pressed juice straight into one of our stainless steel tanks. If we are
Read more →After allowing for rain, we harvest almost every day right now. Most of our grape varieties are approaching ripeness, fortunately in a nice sequence. We received a load of Petite Pearl from a grower on Sunday, harvested Sabrevois at Maple Woods and Steuben at Meadowcreek on Monday,
Read more →One of the components of our Nouveau is Foch. We started carbonic maceration on the Foch last week and pressed it off skins and seeds on Monday. We took some Marquette and started carbonic maceration on Thursday of this week and will combine the two batches next
Read more →We had planned to harvest St. Pepin late last week but decided it was not ready. So, on Saturday, we harvested our LaCrosse and then on Sunday, started harvesting Marquette. Most of the Marquette was harvested on Sunday with the rest harvested on Monday. We hurried to
Read more →We started the fermentation of our Brianna this week and added the lag nutrients at mid-week. We watched the temperatures of the fermenting juice very carefully. We have also received Foch from one of our grape suppliers and we started a carbonic maceration of this fruit this
Read more →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 →Beginning at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, our harvest crew of four people started harvesting Brianna at our Maple Woods Vineyard. They finished at about 10:45 and moved north to Newport Lane Vineyard. After harvesting Brianna at Newport Lane Vineyard, they moved the equipment over to Tassel Ridge
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
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