Monday, April 13, 2009

Winemaking is work, sometimes

Ok, so I am getting grief from the regulars because we are out of two of our best selers, Bunker Hill and Fairmount. Last year we upped our production volume on these 10% to cover sales increases, but sales went up 15%!

So there I was on Sunday, checking the barrels on both the Concord and Niagara wines we make these out of. The 2007 vintage is long gone, I am waiting, impatiently, on the 2008. Making wines naturally as we do, we are a little handicapped. There are things you can add to the young wine to cause it to mature more rapidly, but we don't add chemicals to our wines. You can rack (transfer from barrel to barrel) the wines a bit more often, but this is more work and costs more money to do, since we use inert gases to reduce the impact of oxygen on the wine.

So it looks like, maybe, the new vintages will be available fairly soon, at least the sweet versions. It seems the sweet wines can be marketed younger then the dry ones, it takes more time for the good charactor of a dry wine to come forward, while the sweet ones seem to be more forgiving, flavorwise.

We hope to introduce a few special wines, in limited supply, fairly soon. It is very rewarding to see the excitment new wines bring to the eyes of my customers. I guess it is one reason I love making wine, finding that some people find great delight in drinking what I have made.

UPCOMING STUFF: We have a free workshop on home winemaking coming up April 26 at 4:30 pm; In May we will hold an open house for the winemaking area; June will be the bread-baking contest for both professionals and amatuers; July is free chocolate days; August is free cheese days; and September will be the cheescake festival; see our website for more information

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