so summer is upon us...

Warm weather is finally upon us and the winery is amping up for a busy summer. May 18 isour Spring Open House and I always enjoy giving tours of our little facility.

Indiana wine news is all good. There was a late frost that may have caused some damage to the grapes in some hoosier vineyards, but most vines survived well. Several new vineyards statewide are coming into fruit for the first time and we look forward to that new crop

New hoosier wineries are opening every year. As we approach our tenth anniversary we recal when we opened we were one of few wineries north of Indianapolis. Now we have four within less then an hours drive of us.

EE winery near Huntington is hoping to open Memorial Day weekend and we look forward to it! The new "wine" wine trail is debuting this sumner. And Vintage Indian is coming soon!

We have been working hard on some new wines and the old favorites are here as well.  We hope you'll stop in for a taste; a glass; or a bottle soon.

COMING NEXT: OUR FREE SUMMER FESTIVALS

December Midway

So its mid-December, its 40+ degrees, and we are back to concentrating on wine-making rather than parking!  It was quite a hit to lose 100% of our parking the first week of November and on through December 10, but it’s nice to know if you raise a lot of noise you can get some reaction.  Our state representatives and the Governor’s office all pressed INDOT to revisit their decision to remove ALL parking in front of the winery. Unfortunately, the Town Board recommended using the south side of the street for parking to INDOT, in consideration of a part-time funeral home east of us that has one to three services a month! We have hundreds of people every week, but they get parking on their side of the street.  But as mentioned, its time for us to move on and get back to making wine rather than fighting “city hall”.

 

We did a new bottling of our two Niagara grape wines, JALAPA and FAIRMOUNT, and feel these are much better wines then their prior batches. 2011 was the oddest batch of Niagara juice we have ever seen; it tasted fine, looked good scientifically, but turned out fair at best.  I worked on the barrels remaining and got them cleared up visually and tuned up, taste-wise.  See what you think next time in.

The Nouveau-style wine, EEL RIVER, is making lots of new friends. This off-dry red wine made with Indiana-grown 2012 Leon Millot grapes turned out much better than expected for is youth.  Our port-style, RIVERWALK, is also a great wine according to tasters.

We will be open every day except the 25^th through the end of December, January 1 we go back to our winter-spring schedule of weekends only, 1-6 pm.  It still surprises me how many people do not know we can be open on Sundays and sell carry-out wine.  Please tell a friend, Sundays can be very slow in the depths of winter!

The only disappointments I have had this 2011 vintage ares the Muscat and Sauvignon Blanc wines have not been ready to make an appearance. I guess that will make their arrival in 2013 something to look forward to!

Please note our final 2012 Wine Nite will be December 22^nd, 6-9 pm.  If you have not made a Wine Nite, they are full of fun, surprises and lots of people talking and drinking wine.  I suspect this one might be a bit quieter as it hits on a holiday weekend, so if you are free, come out and join us and we will have fun together!

New Nouveau

I am excited!  I am too busy!  I am mad!  I am confused!  These few words sum up this time of year and you have seen me write the winery business is not about money, it’s about the lifestyle of being your own boss and making something people really like.

Yes, the parking situation is an irritant, but we have seen some movement in the form of more information and response from our state representatives. Thanks to all you who have written asking our politicians to help us solve this problem.  One comment was to the effect that one email represents 1000 peoples’ opinion, so your emails do carry weight.

The wines from 2011 are still coming on and we will roll out our 2012 “nouveau”  on Black Friday, this is our second Indiana-grown new vintage wine. Last Thursday was the international Nouveau Beaujolais release, the famous first release of the new vintage. Our grape is a French hybrid called Leon Millot and we were happy to find a small crop from a little vineyard north of Fort Wayne, near Leo.  We brought the totes home, ran the grapes through our new crusher-destemmer, and started a fermentation that ran almost six weeks. Then we drained off the fresh free-run wine and pressed the skins. We racked the wine twice and found it was clarifying nicely and (surprise) even tasted pretty good!

Traditionally, nouveau-style wines are served slightly chilled, are dry with no sweetness, and  taste just “OK”. I think our new wine tastes better then “OK”, but on Black Friday and as long as one barrel lasts, you can make your own determination!

Black Friday at the Winery

For the past few years we have enjoyed sleeping in on the Friday when many folks are getting up at very early hours and going shopping after stuffing themselves with turkey and the fixins. But we must not sleep all day...

So we decided this year we will open at 11.00 am and offer $1 cash rebates on every bottle of wine you buy until 1:00 pm.

We will release our 2011 vintage port-style wine RIVERWALK on this super shopping day. There will be very limited quantities available of this special release.

We hope to also offer you an Indiana grown and Indiana made special "Noveau-style" wine on this day, as well. That assumes the wine is ready and turns out good! (Pretty sure it will!)

This same day we will be open late, until 9:00 pm and be holding our November "WINE NITE"!! These extra special evenings include some special surprises so much fun even I do not know what all of them will be!

I would be not doing my job if I did not remind all of you we have some great GIFT BASKETS priced from $25-$50 on hand. On this Black Friday my lovely wife will be on hand to make any custom gift baskets needed, or adjustments to existing baskets, and offer advice on putting your own gift baskets together. This is a one-day special service, so let's keep her busy all day!!

Parking Eliminated in front of Winery!

On Wednesday, November 7, INDOT came into Converse and installed No Parking signs up and down SR 18. This includes right in front of the Winery, eliminating all of our parking within a two block radius. This will force our customers to walk quite a distance to get to our business. We have received no response to our inquiries as to WHY this action was taken as of Friday. We have written the Govenor and our state representatives. In the ten years we have been here, there have been only two property-damage accidents and NO personal injury accidents as a result of on-street parking at the winery. We believe this action will cost us between 25% and 50% of our drop-in business over the next few months and more beyond. Please email our state representative/senator at the following addresses and express your concern as to this unreasonable restriction on our business. Please cut-n-paste these email addresses into your email. s18@in.gov h32@in.gov

Thanks for your continued support!

Weather & Wine

It’s been a weird summer weather wise, I know we all agree, and I am asked often how it will affect the grape crop. I listen to smarter people than myself regarding this frankly, because while I have a great deal of interest in the outcome of the crop, since I am not a vineyard owner. So I do not have the experience of year-in-year-out growing grapes and seeing them develop.

That said, I do have more experience than the average person, so I guess its reasonable to ask me the question.  As I said, I listen to smart people about this and I am hearing two stories.  The first is the heat and drought will give us intense flavors but not much quantity due to smaller berries.  Now there’s been a wet August, which might help this for some kinds of grapes and hurt those with a longer growing season. So some good news, some bad. Got that?

Second line I hear is after the warm spring, followed by a late frost in some areas, the crop was diminished and the drought did not help it at all. This late rain is washing away any advantage in flavor intensity we might have gained, it’s a bad year.
 

Me, I am waiting for the grapes.  Let’s let the grapes tell us what they been up to, what they have given us to work with. I suspect we’ll see some great grapes this year and some fair ones.  We don’t buy bad grapes, so no problem there!

So it’s the end of summer and as you “regulars” know, we start rolling out the new vintage wines about now.  The first few are out, hope you’ve tried them, but if not, here’s some notes on them:
 
WILDCAT CREEK WHITE: This label has been a favorite for the past few years, a dry, fruity, white wine made with Vidal grapes from Michigan.  This past year we had some problems finding good Vidal, so we bought some Muscato juice to fill in the gap. No, WCW is not a Muscato, that one is still coming. But we did find some Cayuga White, blended in the last of the Vidal from 2010 and that’s the new WCW. The early reviews are good, see what you think.
 
SWEET SALAMONIE: Now, a few years ago we ran a very sweet white wine based on Cayuga White and it was a winner and I am happy to tell you its back!  We bottled a test batch and it sold out, so we bottled a full batch and its going good too!  It will go well on the Cheesecake Festival, its that sweet.

ROANN: Last fall I made a small batch of blueberry wine and frankly, I was not too fond of it.  But there were some customers who loved it! So I again made a SMALL batch of our 2011 blueberry wine, blended in a little Gewürztraminer to balance the taste, now you see what you think.

PERU PEACH: The big surprise for the summer was how well people liked our latest peach wine.  Our naturally-made fruit wines do have unique flavors, but a lot of folks like this one.

We have two dry reds, a Malbec and a Zinfindel coming out soon. An off-dry Sauvignon Blanc is about ready and I have my hands in a different take on Riesling, but that one is still in the works.  I have been asked about our port-style wine, RIVERWALK, and yes, we have a new batch coming. Getting pretty close!

FREE CHEESCAKE FESTIVAL: What does wine have to do with cheesecake? You can sip wine while you eat it, of course, but for us it’s the biggest event of the year! We bring in 10-15 commercially-made cheesecakes; you taste them; then vote on your favorite!  Oh, and try some wine while you are here!  September 15, 1-6 pm.

Tasting Plus 2012 Event Schedule

So wine, like life, goes on. Not a deep thought but certainly one filled with truth. I see wines I really love selling out and walk downstairs to the winery and look at the barrels and ask myself, “Can I do it again?” Gladly, with ten years of commercial winemaking under the belt I know the answer is “Yes!” Every year brings different wines with different flavors and, as the old saying goes, “You can’t make all the people happy all the time.”

Yesterday I had a nice group of four people do a tasting and they raved about most all the wine and bought a case. My next group of five had three in it that hated every wine I poured for them, but the other two liked several and bought what they liked. That’s the way it is and its really one reason I love the whole winery concept. Try before you buy and buy what you really like. Now it’s true a number of wineries have started charging for tasting, typically $2 to $5 dollars, although I have heard as high as $10!! I know some charge to offset the cost of tasting, some to discourage non-buyers, and others because they just do not like to wash glasses, they sell you a glass for the tasting. We’ll stick to free tasting here tho’….

We’ve got our summer free-event schedule complete. June 16th is the Strawberry Festival; we’ll introduce a new strawberry wine and offer fresh strawberries and toppings. July 21 will be our ninth annual Chocolate Anniversary with gourmet chocolate and lots of fun. August 18 starts Cheese Days, parting wine with free samples. Our Cheesecake Festival is September 15 and it’s our Big Event, so come early to sample some great desserts.