We are working with the Midwest Grape & Wine Industry Institute at Iowa State University on evaluating a machine used in processing grapes. It is called a Della Toffola Maceration Accelerator. We pump the Must (juice, grape skins, and seeds) through this machine and it cuts the grape skins. Della Toffola says that a cut grape skin will release more flavor and color. We ran one ton of each grape variety through the Maceration Accelerator and handled one ton of each wine the same way we usually do. Now, the grapes are wine and we are going to compare them so see if there are differences. We will bottle two of these wines this week and the other two three weeks from now after they are cold stabilized.
We will also begin cold stabilization of Iowa Candleglow® Red as part of the preparation for bottling this wine, filter the next batch of Star Spangled White®, start fermentation of a batch of Red, White, & Blue®, and label Sweethearts Rosé this week.
