The vineyard crew is ready to harvest as soon as the fruit tastes good, sugar levels rise, and acid levels drop. We are thinking that it will be St. Pepin, followed by LaCrosse, so we will remove the netting on the St. Pepin the day before we harvest. We are continuing to test fruit so we can jump when the time is right.
We spent all of last week harvesting Edelweiss. We have 17 acres of Edelweiss, so this is our biggest white grape planting. We’ve never before harvested more than about 2 tons per acre of Edelweiss. We knew that we had a heavy crop and that the individual grapes were big and very juicy. But, we were pleasantly surprised when we ended up with 83.9 tons. This made a little over 40,000 liters of juice. Everyone was too tired to celebrate, but it was still a great feeling. We will use the Edelweiss to make Iowa White Blossom, Iowa Edelweiss, Star Spangled White®, Oskyfizzante® Iowa White, and it will be a component of the Iowa Candleglow® White.
