We are doing a bit of hand pruning when weather and other priorities permit. Adam’s goal is to get two rows of Marquette pruned each day. These vines have already been machine-pruned so these are the finishing touches. Our harvester has sprung a small oil leak. We
Read more →We are doing oil changes on a tractor and a Gator housed at Maple Woods Vineyard. We have also started researching additional vineyard mechanization. Our V-Mech pre-pruner does a good job but it requires three people to operate: one in the tractor and two on the V-Mech.
Read more →We bottled the 2022 Iowa Edelweiss on Wednesday and will be bottling our very popular Star Spangled White® over the next three weeks. We received more Concord and Cranberry juice this week and as soon as it warms up, we will start fermenting both batches of juice.
Read more →We always manage to break trellis posts during harvest and this week, we’ll try to get them all replaced. This is just hard work. We have to dig the base of the old post out and we slip a new post down in its place. Then we
Read more →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,
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Try an Iowa Wine Tai. Try an Iowa twist on a Mai Tai. The pineapple juice and orange juice in this Wine Tai enhance the pineapple and orange notes in Tassel Ridge Iowa Edelweiss.
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
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