Lazy or Busy?

OK, so its been a while since I posted, but if you’ve been at the winery, you know why. December is truly a CRAZY MONTH for us and we do our best to keep our head above water, glub, glub, glub…

First, we did introduce the new Riesling as Sweet Salamonie this past week. This 2008 batch has a nice flavor, is 100% naturally sweet, but not too sweet! It is a tad young, less then six months since fermentation, but we feel the flavor makes up for its youth very nicely.

We are still beating (metaphor) on the Gewürztraminer we started at the same time, we hope to get it out next week if it comes along as planned. This will be the aforementioned WATERTOWER semi-sweet wine; I love the spicy taste it has over the Riesling wines, a nice alternative.

The apple wine continues to ferment slowly, as expected. I am watching it closely so we do not lose the active yeast working on due to low temp’s. Yeast likes it over 65-degrees but I like the winery at about 62, so it’s a balancing act. Plus I have always felt low temperatures produce fruity tasting wines. Next week we will start a batch of Niagara juice on its way to wine-dom.

The holiday gift sales are going well, the wife has caught up as of today on her gift baskets, but every weekend we see a bunch fly out the door, so its like shoveling sand in the desert, it does not end until January!

The new red wines have found a good niche in our tasting list, by popular demand we bottled more of the OLD BEN Shiraz and will probably do the same for the WABASH VALLEY RED Pinot Noir. I think the Cab Franc will continue to improve with aging, maybe by next summer.

Be patient with me on posts here this month, I will try to keep up a weekly schedule, but as goes the business, so goes the blog. I guess it could be worse, not being so busy I could blog, huh?

Got a wine or winery related question? Send it to oakhillwinery@yahoo.com and we’ll address it here possible.