Tassel Ridge Winery–August 2006
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Our New Sparkling Juice
Tassel Ridge Winery Sparkling Grape Juice, is a delightful non-alcoholic alternative to wine. With a lot of grape flavor combined with spritz, our sparkling juice is just the ticket when your guests will be driving or when they just don’t want to consume alcohol. $8.00 per bottle plus tax.
August’s Wine Feature:
Tickled Pink, our general purpose “family” wine, will complement most meals and occasions. Equally useful as a sipping wine, this semi-sweet wine is very versatile and can be paired with different foods. It is 100% Zinfandel and is made from grapes grown in Lake County, California. $10.00 per bottle plus tax.
What’s New in Our Vineyards?
Vineyard maintenance: July is the time we focus canopy management. We make sure that fruit is covered by only one layer of leaves on the west side (don’t forget that our rows are all oriented north-south) so that they get some sun but also some shade so that the fruit itself does not get sunburned. We also spend some time tying first-year vines to the pencil rod and second year vines to the top wire. And, we are working to keep weeds out of the area under the trellis so that our vines don’t have competition for water. We got about two inches of rain on Tuesday night, July 25 and one inch on Wednesday night, August 2. These rainstorms really helped to green-up all of our vineyards. We have irrigation in two of our three vineyards but we have only have had to turn our irrigation on twice during the past couple of months. The heat we are getting this year should help to set sugar in our grapes as they mature. Some of our red grapes have experienced veraison when they turn red. We are about to shift our focus to deciding when to harvest. One of our vineyard staff will be employed full time very soon collecting samples of grapes in a random pattern in each block of grapes. We will crush these grapes and analyze the juice for pH, total acidity, and sugar. While not the whole story, the information from this analysis will help us determine when to harvest. 
New vineyard construction: We will soon start pounding the posts for the vineyard at Meadowcreek West and South where we will plant Marquette next May. We are excited about Marquette’s potential because it could help us make an outstanding red wine. Marquette is a brand new variety that was developed at the University of Minnesota. It has Vitis Riperia and Pinot Noir in its parentage so the possibilities are intriguing. We will plant 5500 plants. We expect our first harvest of this variety in 2009.
What’s Happening in the Cellar?
July and August are the months when we are bottling wine and getting tanks empty so that they are ready for harvest starting in mid-August. This year, we built cat walks along the tops of our tanks. That project required moving most of our tanks which must be empty when they are moved. And, we received eight new 2,000 gallon stainless steel tanks in mid-July. With the new tanks and cat walk system, the cellar looks completely different. We now have 41 tanks with a total capacity of 35,500 gallons.
We just bottled our Chardonnay and we are working on raspberry and blackberry fruit wines and a port-style dessert wine, all of which will be bottled in August.
We’ve decided to focus on production of sweet wines suitable for pairing with fine desserts. We plan to freeze some of our fruit each year and then use a process called cryo-extraction to make a small quantity of outstanding sweet dessert wine each year. We decided that a new basket press was the best way of processing this fruit. Our new basket press should arrive in mid-September.
Bottling Wine at Tassel Ridge Winery
One of the most interesting steps we take in producing great wine that is ready for your enjoyment is to package it in bottles. At Tassel Ridge Winery, we use a bottling line that theoretically allows us to fill, seal, and label 25 bottles per minute. This works out to 1500 bottles or 125 12-bottle cases per hour or 750 cases per six hour bottling day.
We start out by thoroughly cleaning the bottling line with steam that is injected so that all surfaces that will be contacted by wine are steam cleaned first. We wait until the nozzles that fill the bottles reach 185ºF and then we run the steam into the bottler for 20 minutes. This is enough to assure that all microbes are killed in the cleaning process. We clear the hot water out of the bottler and then start filling bottles.
Each bottle is turned upside-down and given a blast of clean air to remove any cardboard dust that may have settled in the bottle during shipment. Then we fill the bottle with Nitrogen and finally with wine. We apply the seal and screw cap. The filled bottle is moved on a conveyer line to the labeler where we hope to automatically apply labels once we’ve resolved teething problems with this equipment. The final step is to put the filled and labeled bottles back in the carton.
It takes 5 people to operate the bottling line at top speed for 5-6 hours. We can operate with a smaller crew if the run lasts only an hour or two or if we run the line slower.
At the present time, we are set up to run 750 milliliter bottles only however we plan to tool the machinery to eventually handle both 375 milliliter and 1.5 liter (magnums) bottles.
Wine Bottle Coolers
The Tassel Ridge Winery Gift Shop offers two different products that will either keep an already chilled bottle cool or will chill a bottle that is at room temperature in about five minutes. These coolers are appropriate for use with either white or rosé wine. Read on!
Epic Wine Cooler:
The Epic Wine Cooler will keep a bottle that is already chilled cool for at least 30 minutes. It has two clear plastic walls that buffer outside warm air to keep your bottle chilled. This product is appropriate for events in which you want a chilled bottle of white or rosé wine to remain cool for a few minutes while you consume it. The Epic Wine Cooler is attractively styled and it will compliment nice stemware and other utensils used in entertaining. Price is $18.00.
VacuVin Wine Cooler:
The VacuVin Wine Cooler is first frozen in the freezing compartment of a refrigerator and is then slipped over the bottle of a wine at room temperature. It will chill the bottle down in about five minutes. The VacuVin Wine Cooler is perfect for those occasions in which you decide on the spur of the moment to try white or rosé wines that are not yet chilled. Price is $12.75.
Wine and Food Pairing Suggestion
Pair our In the Dark, red table wine with bar-b-qued steaks, sweet corn, and a nice veggie for a terrific meal. In the Dark is a full bodied, dry, red wine that initially offers hints of white pepper, plums, and blackberries. The finish is long and complex with hints of ground cloves, cinnamon, and vanilla. Steak has never tasted so good! In the Dark is priced at $15.00 per bottle.
See Tassel Ridge Winery at:
Saturday, August 12, 2006: Iowa State Fair Wine and Cheese Garden, 11:00 a.m. – 10:00 p.m., State Fairgrounds in Des Moines
Saturday, August 26, 2006: Iowa Wine Festival, 12:00 noon – 10:00 p.m., Indianola Town Square, Indianola, IA.
Friday, September 8, 2006: The Movable Feast, 5:30 – 8:30 p.m., Des Moines East Village, Des Moines, IA