Update re: Winery and new "Mini-Brewery"

Wow! It has been about 6 months since my last post. Time really flies.....

Winemaking activities over the winter are always rather slow and hands-off while waiting for the new wines to "do-their-thing". I hope to post soon with the numbers and actions I've taken over the last 6 months with both the St Croix and Marquette wines. They are really tasting good!!

With all the snow and drifting I have not been able to start any of the winter pruning. Many of my vines are still under several feet of snow.

It's now been about one full year since I started my mini-brewery. I jumped in with both feet and skipped the usual "extract" brewing (from concentrates) and got right into "all-grain" brewing. I have a couple of mash lauter tuns, a couple of propane burners, several pots and a Keggle, a 14lb grain mill, 6 corney-kegs, CO2 tank, beer fridge, etc. I've brewed 16 batches of beer in the past year and am finding this new hobby (obsession?) to be a lot of fun. Now, friends and visitors can enjoy not only a wide variety of wines but can also enjoy up to 6 beers on tap with others available in bottles.

St Croix harvest

As I indicated in my post, we had strong winds and rain for the entire week of pollination for the St Croix grapes so we had a very poor set of berries. However, some of the clusters got filled fairly well. Here's a picture of a few clusters. The berries are a bit bigger than the Marquettes.

Harvest was on Monday (8/24) and was rather small (only 7 vines). I'm still not sure I want to keep this grape variety. I may replace these few vines with something else in the future.

Harvest numbers were fairly good. Brix came in at 18 (norm I'm told is 18-20), pH was 3.18, and TA came in at 11.9g/l (1.19%). I brought up the Brix to 23 and started to process.

Marquette Harvest

I was just about ready to harvest my Marquette grapes when all of a sudden we got about a half inch of rain unexpectedly. That messed up the numbers a bit so I decided to wait a bit longer.


On Saturday (Aug 22) the numbers looked good again and rain was being predicted starting on Tues for 3 days straight. So, I decided to harvest on Saturday.


The numbers were not perfect but close enough considering the upcoming rains. Brix was 23, pH was 3.3 and TA at 13 g/l (1.30%). Being cold weather grapes, the TA will come down a lot during Malolactic Fermentation and cold stabilization so I should be okay.


I left the Brix alone at 23 (12.7% abv), added 20 ppm of SO2, opti-red, Lallzyme EX, tannins (enological and chips), nutrients, etc. and got it going. I didn't have the yeast I wanted to use so I used RC-212.

Here's a picture of the grapes on the vine on Harvest day.


























Here's a Picture of a Marquette cluster on harvest day. Berries are about the size of large blueberries. Clusters were about 5 ounces.

Here's a picture of a bucket full of my Marquettes.

Veraison and vineyards

Well, I've been very busy all summer and haven't posted to this Blog in quite a while.

I got bit by the "beer-bug" and started brewing beer. I now have all my equipment and have been doing "All-Grain" brewing and have 6 kegs to hold/dispense them. I may start another Blog for my beer activities when I have some spare time (this winter?).

Over the next week or so I'll try to get caught up.

I'm still bottling last year's 66 gallons (330 bottles) of Italian wine and my small harvest wines. This should fill my wine cellar up again to its 800+/- level.

Here is a picture of the "established" northern vineyard (30 vines) and a picture of the "In-progess" southern vineyard which will have another 25 vines when done.

The Marquettes did really well this year.

The St Croix did not do as well due to high winds and rain all throughout the pollination week... they ended up with less than full clusters but the grapes still look good.

The Marqettes are now in year 3 so I let them have a partial crop. I shoot thinned and cluster thinned so they would have only about 20 clusters per vine (about 7 lbs). Next year, I should be able to let them have twice as many and maybe more in future years.

Here's pictures of the vines at the beginning of veraison (about August 1st). I put up the electric fence to keep the raccoons out now that the grapes are starting to develop sugar. Those rascals can smell the sugar !!!

I also put up the netting. I bought a 500 foot roll of "heavy Duty" netting this winter and it is much better than the lightweight netting I used last year. A bit more expensive but well worth it.

Nebraska Wineries & Grape Growers Association Mtg

Well, this year's conference was again a big success. Lots of displays at the trade show, lots of great presentations (including a 4 hour presentation by Scott Labs on yeast, etc.) and of course a great wine tasting by the wineries.

I usually attend some of the viticulture presentations and some of the enology presentation because I both grow grapes and make wines.

Here's some pictures......

Final (?) Major Equipment Purchase

In the past, I've been able to get my purchased grapes crushed and de-stemmed by the seller or we (wife always helps) have de-stemmed and crushed our grapes by hand. The small quantities that we had to process this way did not take that much time.

Well, this year we hope to have a much larger harvest from our own vines. So…. We finally bought a crusher/de-stemmer (and my son who is in the picture bought a press). Hopefully this is the last major purchase of equipment for a while.

Well.... actually I could use bigger spray equipment for the vineyard........

New addition to Winery

A very cute white/tan Cocker Spaniel puppy joined us this Christmas.

I originally wanted to call him "Wino" but my wife objected to that so I named him "Riesling". Although I'm not much of a white wine drinker, this has always been my favorite white wine.

Shortly afterwards, I was racking some carboys and emptying the sediment into a 5 gallon bucket. I always add a small amount of water to the carboy before emptying so the bucket was about half full and while I was racking another carboy I suddenly heard ... "slurp....slurp...slurp...slurp....".

Yes, that was Riesling enjoying some Italian "Wine"!! Since then he has been on patrol to clean up any and all spilled wine off the garage floor.

I should have insisted on calling him "Wino". As a compromise we gave him a "middle" name of "Wino"!