News & Views?

I just had a nice email from a customer who has some time off over the next week or so and asked about spending some time in the winery. I pointed out we are fairly busy during the Dec 26 to Jan 3 time frame, but there is always a few seats open in our sitting area. We offer wine by the glass plus our hot spiced cider (10% alcohol) and cheeses with salami and crackers. We allow snacks to be brought in as well, often there is a pretty good spread from table to table, I have been known to graze through myself from time-to-time, saves my wife making me lunch.

Business continues to be good, as expected. There seems to be a strong motivation to give gifts from local sources this year in particular. One customer said she always buys her friend a nice Merlot wine, but this year she is buying one of our red wines because there is a “story” she can tell about the wine. I appreciate customer who get-it that way, our naturally made wines are different and be made locally does make the unique.

I can recall vividly the moment, before we were open, we were discussing wine names and the thought of naming a few wines for local places of interest blossomed into naming all the wines for Hoosier towns and landmarks. I truly believe that is the a key part of our success, making a local winery truly local through the wines’ names.

I should mention the emails regarding blueberry have been mostly positive and we expect to have such a wine fairly soon, probably post-holiday-time. I have been able to just keep up with our present wine list, keeping enough bottled of what we have in stock.

I am sorry to say we have run out of MEAD MARION, our sweet honey wine, and it will be awhile before we have any more. We use local honey and make it naturally (of course) so it takes a long time to mature. I see we are almost out of an old favorite, PERU PEACH, which is over seven years old and the last of the start-up stock of wines we had when we opened. It took the wine three years to mature and I hesitate to start any wine that takes such a long time to become drinkable again. I have thought about a peach juice and white grape blend though, so we’ll see how that turns out next year.

I want to mention how much I appreciate the emails and public comments here on the blog over the past six months. I was told its takes about two years to firmly establish a blog’s readership, but I look at the blog simply as an extension of our website. A place for more information and insight into our business and winemaking philosophy. I do not imagine our blog will ever be what is called a “Big Read” in the world of blogging, bit we hope it does give you some more useful information and background on us.

See you in the winery!