We will get our 2019 Iowa St. Pepin and 2019 Iowa Louise Swenson filtered this week so we are ready to bottle both wines next week. We are monitoring the fermentation of another batch of Cranberry Wine. Fermenting cranberry is a slow process. We are also getting ready for the 2020 harvest by making sure we have the yeast, tannin additions, and enzymes needed for the grapes we’ll harvest. We are developing our winemaking plan for each wine we’ll make. Finally, we are topping barrels, cleaning floors under tanks, and doing a bench trial on a possible sweet blend of Marquette and Frontenac.
An important step in getting ready for harvest is to take the initial harvest estimate of the 13 grape varieties growing at Tassel Ridge and compare that to sales of the wines made from each variety. This is a bit complicated because some wines are blends made from two or more grape varieties. We estimate total projected sales for each wine and adjust for current inventory and then project how much of each wine to make. If we need more of certain grape varieties we try to purchase them and if we have more than we need, we try to sell them. There is lots of number crunching involved.
