Ponderings at the Oak Hill Winery

New Year, New Wine?

2012-01-20T22:12:00.002-05:00

I spend more time in the tasting room in the winter and early spring. Yes, its because business is slower this time of year and I am cheap about having help in with little to do. Oh, and I like to reconnect with customers and get feedback on the wine.

I tend to piddle with wine left over from the prior vintage while things are slower. This sometimes gets me kudos and sometimes gets me trashed. I am in the process of bottling a new dry white wine using the Indiana Seyval Blanc. I love a crisp, clean, simple Seyval and our MISSISSINEWA WHITE has been in our line since 2003. But I have been monkeying with it and we'll see if I get trashed or kudo'ed!?

The sweet wine lovers can look forward to February when I hope to offer the new versions of SWEET SALAMONIE and WATERTOWER, both white wines that come close to pegging the sweet-o-meter. As I wrap these up, I start tweaking a new semi-sweet red and trying to get the new vintage Foch wines ready to bottle.

Tomorrow is our January Wine Nite and as I sit here typing the snow is piling up, but the weatherpersons are promising it will break in the morning and clear up for the day. I just hope we can get the people in here for Wine Nite, I think its fun and i get to sell a little wine!

We kick off our free seminars on the 29th with a wine basics class for those who want to know more about the wine world. We'll talk about wine names, types, appellations, regions, and descriptors. We only have room for 20 to 25 people for these little workshops, so sign up soon if you want to attend!

“Help, my dining room is full of gift baskets!”

2012-01-15T16:22:00.002-05:00

So I got yelled at recently by a customer who said, "I have been waiting two months for your blog on the dining room full of gift baskets thing, what happened?"

Ok, fair enough, but its not all that funny when its happening. Every year my wife takes on the task of making ALOT of gift baskets for the winery. Its a lot of work, of course, because she is picky about what she puts into the baskets and how they are put together.

Begining in around July, she starts looking for baskets and stuff to put in them, although I have seen her sneak bags full of items in throughout the year with the explanation, "There was a closeout!". These items are socked away in our guest bedroom (thus no overnite house guests September thru December) and brought out in early October for assembly.

From that point on, the dining room in the center of our home is piled high and full of grass bedding, baskets of all shapes and sizes, ribbon, plastic wrap, and do-hickies to jazz up the baskets.

Oh, plus candy and snacks too. See, I have been known to snack on my way through the dining room and this results often in me getting yelled at for eating the basket goodies. True enough, but first of all, I see it as compensation for the inconvenience and secondarily, she should factor in my "grazing" as I have done this for years!

At times, its a real obstacle course walking through the house as the piles spill into the walkway or path through the dining room. This huge "mess" casues another interesting development: my wife does prefers to not have any visitors see her home looking "this way". I say, we will explain what this pile of stuff is and they will understand. Uh, no! We greet family and other personal visitors in the winery instead of our home and we take them out to eat instead of offering my wife's great home cooking.

This is one of the many sacrifices one makes for owning a small winery. I guess its a fairly small one in the greater scheme of things, losing a dining room while gaining a winery. Maybe we could add on to the winery? Hummmmm???

Good Deed

2012-01-10T18:11:00.002-05:00

So my wife and I took off for the weekend at the first of the year, a few days to rest and recharge after the demanding holiday season.

While we we gone, the area experienced some very high winds that broke our swinging sign, snapping off one side and causing the sign to swing about on the one hook.

This could have very easily allowed our (expensive!) sign to bash itself to pieces against the sign post.

But someone came and unhooked the other side and left it laying by our stairs. We have patched the sign back together and it is once again back in place.

THANK YOU! To this anonymous Samaritan(s) who went to considerable trouble to do this Good Deed. It almost restores one's faith in humanity!

Is it REALLY a "wonderland"?

2011-12-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

The cold weather has rolled in and although its technically still “Autumn” it sure feels like WINTER to me! Of course, here at the Winery we are in the full force gale of the gift buying season. The big sellers are certainly the sweet fruit wines we introduced last month. I’ll spend this weekend making sure we have plenty in stock of the cherry, raspberry, blackberry, and blueberry.

Next Saturday, December 17, we will hold our next WINE NITE! From 6-9 pm we will remain open and have a good stock of wine for you to buy as gifts or drink yourself! There might be music and a little dancing, if we have a bit to drink first!

Gift baskets are always a big item this time of year. My lovely wife spends hours putting nice collections together for a wide variety of price ranges. We had been talking this summer with how hard it has been to keep basket prices starting under $20, yet when she brought the first 20 baskets out, she still managed to have a good group at $19.95!! With a single bottle of wine priced from $10.99 to $12.99, you can buy that bottle wrapped in a gift basket for just a few dollars more!

Wines coming down the track include the Riesling/Gewurztraminer blend we call WATERTOWER, a very sweet white wine we hope to have anytime now; a dry white wine with a nice French-Oak taste will be out in February using the popular Seyval Blanc wine we call MISSISSINEWA WHITE as a basis; and yes, I am still playing with a peach wine, something we have not offered in several years, patience!

So while we are in the midst of our busiest season, we look forward to the cold winter in some sense, to its end and the coming of spring. Keep in mind the winter also brings (as of Jan 1) a change in our hours. We are only open Saturday and Sunday 1-6 pm for five months during winter and spring. However, we do offer free 90-minute seminars throughout the winter and spring, so watch here for dates

Hope to see you in the winery soon!

Friday nights not so black...

2011-11-22T05:54:00.000-05:00

So a customer asked me why most wineries are not open later and I said, “It has been my experience few people come to buy wine after 6 pm.” During the first few years we were open, we tried being open every Friday until 9 pm and the result was I got a lot of work done, but not too many people stopped in to taste wine.

That said, we had fun on our “Friday Wine Night” last weekend with a good turnout and good feedback on the event. So I guess we’ll try a Wine Night in December and maybe a few more through the cold, dark, winter!

We are getting on track for our Black Friday event as well. We have been bottling fruit wines and have our special release wine, RIVERWALK, ready for tasting on Friday. We will be working the winery ourselves all weekend, so stop on in and say “Hi” and take a few bottles of wine home!

I have had a few emails about wine that pairs well with turkey, for obvious reasons. I suggest MISSISSINEWA WHITE for our dry wine lovers and WINDFALL for the semi-sweet wine drinkers. We recently tweaked the WINDFALL and I am extremely pleased with the result, so stop in and try the new version of this fruit wine.

Next time, we’ll talk about my wife’s life this time of year, entitled “Help, my dining room is full of gift baskets!”

Whats New & Exciting?

2011-11-13T18:09:00.000-05:00

So we are now hip-deep into the busy season at the winery and yet, are having fun! What’s happening and what is new? Read on…

We have started the roll out of the new sweet wines including our cranberry and blackberry already on the shelf. Coming soon is the raspberry and the cherry, blueberry may be a while yet! A new version of our sweet Gewurztraminer is in the works too, watch here and the website for updates. If you have not tried the new IRON BRIDGE, a semi-sweet Riesling, you need too! The buttery finish is making it very popular.

Dry wines? Yes, the latest Chambourcin looks great and tastes better and the superb Shiraz still sells very well, new batches of both in the tasting room! Piddling with a dry Riesling made with Johannesburg Riesling grapes that has a nice light flavor, I am. It is a nice counterpoint to the new Pinot Grigio we introduced last month and YES I do have some Seyval Blanc getting oaked, but I think it will still be after the new year before we will get excited about bottling it.

Special Events? There are TWO in the near future: Our first FRIDAY WINE NITE will be Friday, November 18th from 7pm to 9 pm (?) and is open to all. Wait, what is a “Friday Wine Night”? We will be open later (we normally close at 6) and will serve wine, but will have limited tasting available and there will be music, maybe dancing, and weather permitting, a fire pit in the wine garden. Oh yes, the Winemaker himself will be your host, so stop in and have a glass (or a bottle) and most importantly, HAVE FUN!

Second special event: BLACK FRIDAY! Friday, November 25 we will open at 11 am and will offer special deals until 1 pm. Then we will be open regular hours 1-6 pm for your shopping convenience. Wait, there is going to be a SPECIAL RELEASE that day; a wine unlike any the Oak Hill Winery has ever offered! So special it is a very small release quantity-wise. Stop in and rest from your weary sale shopping here and we will rub your feet (not!) and polish your credit cards (no way), while listening to your shopping adventure stories! See you there!

September Update

2011-09-29T08:08:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago we held our 9th annual Cheesecake Festival and I’d like to say “thanks” to the 500+ people who turned out. Now if you’ve been to the winery, you might ask how we fit 500+ people into our small tasting room? Thankfully, they did not all come at once! But a steady stream of cheesecake-eaters and wine-tasters made their way here and waited, patiently, for their turn to taste.

This made for the biggest day for both customers and sales in our history and, at the end of the day, feet up, and the stock room depleted, that felt pretty good. Thanks!

Moving forward, we are releasing the 2010 KOKOMO CIDER, our sweet apple wine, on October 1 and I know many look forward to tasting each year’s offering. The last few years we have addressed the problem of “acidity” in apple juice by increasing the tartness through non-chemical means. Apple wine tends to taste “flat” without some acid, thin and watery. So you will detect a slight tart taste to this new batch.

Of course, many customers make our apple wine hot, adding spices like cinnamon to it to enhance the flavor. This is truly become a fall tradition and it finds its way into parties, tail-gating, and a few thermos bottles.

The next event for the year is our Fall Open House on Saturday, October 15, 1-6pm. We open up the wine-making area and conduct 20-minute tours, discussing how we make our wines naturally and the wine business in general. There will be fun, snacks, and informative talk and its all free, like our wine-tasting, with tours on the half hour.

The new 2010 vintage is in full swing with several new wines coming out very soon! Our Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, and the 2010 Riesling wines are coming out pretty soon, so watch this space for more information. TEASER: We will be having a BLACK FRIDAY special event for 2011, keep watching!

To taste or not to taste

2011-08-22T20:23:00.000-04:00

I have been surprised at the number of wineries both in and out of state who have chosen to begin charging for wine tasting and/or severely limit the number of tastes you may try when visiting. If you’ve read this blog for any period of time, you would be well aware I am not in favor of paid or limited tastings. I do respect the right of other winemakers to run their business as they see fit.

So why do I revisit this issue? Back in the latter part of June we had a nice little group of ten individuals stop in on a Saturday for a tasting. All went well and they wrapped up their visit sharing a few bottles of wine. As I spoke to them, I asked what brought them to our winery? One of the ladies spoke up quite loudly, “We saw on your website you did not charge for tasting. A lot of wineries want $5 or more per person!” I had to smile as the ten people left with over two cases of wine.

This past Sunday we had a car club stop by as part of a scheduled tour of the area. I received an email today thanking us for the hospitality and commenting on the fact that we were willing to let them try all our wines, which led them to buying wines they would not have typically purchased based purely on sweetness level.

We had planned to hold another winery bus tour this summer, but ran into a problem with the area we wanted to go. Four of the nine wineries we wanted to tour informed us they wanted $5 to $8 a person for group tasting; Five of the wineries informed us we could try six or eight wines only. When these matters were discussed within the bus tour committee, it was determined to cancel the trip and do more research for next spring’s trip so as to avoid this problem.

I would like to hear from you your opinions, feelings, and the effect, if any, that the paid or limited tasting policies have had on your wine buying. It is NOT my intent to start a movement or build a case to convince other wineries to change their policies. We just want to know what you think. Send your thoughts to oakhillwinery@yahoo.com with the subject line “paid tasting” and I will later print some excerpts from your comments.

And always remember, we offer free winetasting, because at the Oak Hill Winery, the proof is in the tasting!

Cheese and Cheesecake

2011-08-17T19:32:00.001-04:00

So the summer is hot and the wine is chilled and how can it get better? Our CHEESE DAYS are in full swing! This offers you, the taster, to try not only our wines but some great cheese along with them. “YOU’re just trying to sell me cheese!” you cry. “No” says I, we sell a little cheese its true, but the purpose of CHEESE DAYS is to show you how certain wines go with certain cheeses and how some DO NOT go together. Buy your cheese wherever you like, but we just want you to appreciate wine PLUS cheese.

I am pleased to announce we have set the date for the annual FREE CHEESECAKE FESTIVAL: Saturday, September 17, 1-6pm. This is not an attempt to get you to pair cheesecake with wine, though you can. We love cheesecake, you love cheesecake, we love feeding you cheesecake. So we gather ten commercially made cheesecakes and let you VOTE on which one is the best.

No, no, no, we do not sell cheesecake -but we know before you try the cheesecake, you might try some of our wine too! What a gimmick! Come over and have free samples of some great cheesecakes and some free winetasting too!

In other new, the fruit wines have been coming along slowly and we expect them to be in production sometime in September. Our new cranberry, BORDERMEN, is out and very tasty, but the blackberry and raspberry are slowly “ripening”, so to speak.

We hope to have an announcement soon for those of you who like to dance a little bit. We’ve been working on a “Friday Wine Nite Dance” program for the fall. What does it mean? How much wine does it take to get you to dance? When will it happen? Coming soon…

new vintage

2011-08-03T20:40:00.002-04:00

So over the few months we have been watching the 2010 wines mature and we have been patient. Now we begin to see the reults. First we've had the dry red VAN BUREN made with Indiana grown Chambourcin grapes on the shelf for several months. We just sent SWEETSER, one of our best selling wines, to the tasting room. This semi-sweet whire is made with Catawba grapes and has yielded another nice wine.

The new BORDERMEN is now out. This cranberry-white wine blend is a nice semi-sweet that has been popular as a fall favorite. This includes the 2010 Niagara as a base. The Niagara is ready to be bottles as JALAPA, a dry white, and as FAIRMOUNT, a very sweet wine. Both should turn up within a few weeks

I like to see the early new vintage wines, they tend to be alittle cloudy and have a bit of sediment, pretty normal for naturally-made wines like ours. We continue to work towards making better wine, but aging is the best method for clarifying. I am patient, but it takes many months to fully clarify some wines due to their make-up. I have a Sav' Blanc that cleared up in four months. But things like that are what makes winemaking interesting...

FREE CHEESE DAYS are coming, August 13 and end when we sample five pounds of Indiana-made cheese ALL UP! hope to see you then!

Ok, I am back!

2011-07-26T20:54:00.001-04:00

So in the recent past a lot has gone on. “What is that?” you might ask. First, we had a great Bread-baking contest and a record-breaking Chocolate festival! But that’s in the past, what’s really new?

We have been waiting many months for the return of a very popular wine, SWEETSER, made with Ohio-grown Catawba grapes. This semi-sweet wine has a unique flavor and every year we look forward to the new crop to see what characteristics it will show us. Some years the levels of tartness are very high and in some years it’s a bit mellower. The 2010 vintage leans towards mellow, but it still has that distinct sweet-tart tast wine everytimee our customer love.

The new Sweetser has another characteristic common to our naturally made wines, it has a tendency to have a bit of sediment in the bottle. We have found that when the wine ages to more then one year in the barrel, it tends to have much less sediment. As we have improved at winemaking, we have learned non-chemical means to clear our wines and reduce the sediment that occurs after bottling. But nothing replaces a bit more aging to help improve the LOOK of our wine.

Now that addresses an important point about our wine. We do not typically bottle a wine until its flavor stabilizes, so a customer tastes the wine and it stays pretty much the same for at least six months in their own wine “cellar”. But do we hold a great tasting wine until its appearance stabilizes as well? Our response is a firm “no” and the story of Sweetser is a good example.

I have had a few regular customers kid me that many of our wines are as clear and clean as any commercial wine and they ask, “Have you sold-out?” suggesting we were making wines just like everyone else. I always reply negatively, just getting better at wine making!

So, though we’d like a perfectly clear and sediment-free we hope you’ll stop in and add your comments to theirs as well! wine everytime, but you can’t always wait for the natural made wines to get that way. Those who have tasted the new Sweetser have said very nice things about it.

June is a Fun Month

2011-06-05T16:38:00.000-04:00

Oh a slow Sunday it is. We survived the hailstorm last night and the wind did not blow anything away. We’ve been busy here, got the new semi-sweet red out, EEL RIVER, made with Cab Franc grapes and I am pleased with it. Watching the 2010 wines mature, had a little barrel tasting last night so I can gauge other people’s reactions to the new wines as they come to life, flavor wise. A few are close, several are a long way from being all they can be, but that’s typical at this stage in the game. August-September is prime time for new wines generally. We’ll see what’s going on soon enough.

If you check the website (www.oakhillwines.com) you’ll see the schedule for free events is up through August. We are still working on the September Cheesecake Festival date, keep an eye out. Next Saturday, June 11 is the Bread Baking Contest, always fun with bread AND wine. The 8th business anniversary party and Gourmet Chocolate Festival is July 16th, that’s a biggie. Offer people free chocolate AND wine and they come out of the wood work. Then we kick off Indiana Cheese Days on August 13th. Basically we buy ten pounds of Indiana Cheese and give free samples as long as it lasts, usually a few days.

We are working on a late summer winery bus tour and we hope to have news VERY soon. We keep running into wineries that want to charge us for bringing them 44 wine buyers, like $5 to $10 per person! I recognize that paid tastings are becoming common in many wine regions, but this is driving me nuts. We typically buy ten cases of wine per stop, more or less. I would LOVE for someone to bring me a ten case sale in a 90 minute window any day. Oh well, we move forward…

Come on by next Saturday and vote for your favorite bread! We need bread-eating judges!

2011-05-07T09:16:00.003-04:00

Its a little after 9 am on Saturday and I have been working since 6:30 am getting set up for the open house today. Its a big job since we rarely open the winemaking area to the public, its small and we just do not have the space to walk people through for tours on a regular basis. But a couple of times a year we do open up to show people our unique natural method of making wine.

We put up our brite red canopy to call attention to the place and set up some chairs downstairs. Last year we had alot of people show up for this event and we have added extra staff to help out.

My only regret is we are out of our semi-sweet reds right now, the popular SWAYZEE and a new wine, EEL RIVER, should be bottled soon. The new version of FAIRMOUNT has proved popular, using a white grape blend I developed to mimic (not too closely) the fruity Niagara grape wine we have used in the past for this wine. We exect the 2010 vintage of FAIRMOUNT to be with us in mid-summer, but the substitution is not too bad...

Watch here for the upcoming BREAD BAKING CONTEST in June; its a great time for both bread baker and bread eaters here at the Oak Hill Winery and, like all special events, its free!

Windy Sunny Day

2011-04-17T14:41:00.000-04:00

Hey Wine Fans! All is good as I sit here in the winery. Well, not good, “good” would be a full house of wine drinkers, but HEY! Its Sunday and us Hoosier folk do not think you can buy wine on Sunday. Ok, some of us know…

I am piled high with blue barrels. We get some of our juice in blue barrels and I have been stacking them up higher and higher and, well, it’s time to get rid of some. So if you’re looking for a heavy –duty trash can; a colorful rainbarrel, or something to store big stuff in, try one of our slightly used wine-juice barrels for $15; or two for $25: or five for $60.

I see the sunshine as I look out the winery windows, but the wind is blowing and its kinda rough outside. Inside I have been working on the next free seminar on winemaking next Sunday. Yes, I know its easter for some folks, but last year we were closed on that Sunday and I got complaints, so we will be here and we’re having a free winemaking seminar. Oh, I said that already…

On May 7 we will have our annual Spring Open House, something we started a few years ago and people seem to like a lot. We open up the winemaking area for tours every half hour and last year I was swamped! We usually have a snacks and run a few specials on wine stuff. We also do a little advertising and that seems to bring in the people. Come buy and say hi!

New wines? We have intro’ed a fair number in the past few months, but I am playing with a semi sweet red to add to the list. Keep an eye here, I let you know.

This summer we’ve got the great lineup of special events, see the last blog for details and mark your calendars now! We’ll get dates for the July-Aug-Sept festivities pretty soon. And another winery bus tour???

2011 Calendar of Events Part One

2011-03-15T19:26:00.001-04:00

I have been promising a schedule of upcoming events, so here we go!

Sunday, March 27th at 4:30 pm: PLANNING A WINERY WEEKEND; a 90 minute seminar for those who would like to visit a group of wineries in one of the following regions: Southern Indiana; Southeast Michigan; Southwest Michigan; Northwest Michigan; Missouri River Valley; and the Finger Lakes Region of New York. This will offer advice on where to go, how to plan your trip, and what pitfalls to watch for once you are there.

Sunday, April 24th at 4:30 pm: WINEMAKING - AT HOME & IN THE WINERY; a 90-minute seminar for those who want specifics on small and large scale winemaking with a focus on questions the audience has on any related topic. Both beginners in home and commercial winemaking are welcome.

Saturday, May 7th, 1- 6 pm: OPEN HOUSE AT THE WINERY; Free tours in the winemaking “cellar” with Q&A by the winemaker every 30 minutes; free winetasting with music and snacks.

Saturday, June 11th, 1-6 pm: ANNUAL BREAD-BAKING CONTEST; Enter your best home-made bread for a shot at glory & prizes and come help us pick the best commercially-made bread by tasting and voting on your favorite. Bread and wine make a great combination!

Watch here for more on: July’s free CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL; August’s INDIANA CHEESE TASTING; and the Big Event of the Year, September’s CHEESECAKE FESTIVAL!

All the events we have at the Oak Hill Winery are FREE and we hope you’ll come join us for fun and a little wine too!

Cleanliness is next to...

2011-03-06T12:03:00.005-05:00

One of the ongoing jobs at the winery is tank and barrel cleaning. I handle the majority of the icky, scrubbing, scouring, de-gunking jobs in this category. But on occasion I do ask for help.

We had another load of juice coming in and I was getting all the empty containers ready to transfer the new stuff in for fermenting. But one of the big tanks had a stain I could not get out through regular means. I soaked, pressured-washed, and scrubbed with a long handled brush and mop, but could not get it gone.

Now, these tanks are about 6-feet high, 31-inches around, with a 15-inch lid, so I was doing all I could. But then I thought about my wife’s much lesser size (and girth!) and asked if she would help out. Of course she would!

So I took off the lid and she crawled right in! With her close up view, she was able to get more pressure on the crud and with about 30 minutes, it was back to its sparkling clean state.

So while I often get the credit for what the wine tastes like, my lovely wife is always willing to chip in and do her part when a job is too big (or I am, in this case, too big) for me to handle.

If you have not been by, we have LOTS of new wines in stock and the popular BUNKER HILL is selling well, as expected. A new wine WHITEWATER we tested the last few week has won a place in our regular line-up. So come by and see us!

March 27, free 90-minute seminar, PLANNING A WINE GETAWAY, is now able to be booked. Limited to 20 people, send in your reservation today! Next month’s topic: MAKING WINE AT HOME AND IN THE WINERY. Watch here for details.

Too Much Wine! Is it Possible?

2011-02-23T10:12:00.000-05:00

The winemaking continues! As the new 2010 Concord, Niagara, and Catawba wrap up fermenting, we have the new fancy grapes coming in. We will have 2010 Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir, Riesling, and Shiraz being shipped in from cold storage and beginning to ferment within the next week. These will be ready for (we hope) next fall when we head into the busy season.

Space is a big problem this time of year in the winery. We have more wine in barrels and bottles than ever before. The 2009 is still in house, now selling, and the new 2010 wines are resting, awaiting their turn “at bat”, so to speak.

We get asked about tours a good bit and we generally explain the cellar is not really set up for tours. We do have a spring open house every May, when we do open the cellar for a peak as to our naturally-made wine methods. Watch both here and the website for more information.

March will be the month of planning for spring and summer trips, so we will offer a FREE 90-minute seminar on planning a winery get-away. Where to go? What to look for? What else is there to do? We will offer tips on wine tour trips to Indiana, Michigan, New York, Missouri, and more. Whether you want to go for a day or a week, we’ll talk about destinations for wine lovers. This fun-filled (we’ll be drinking, of course) gather is Sunday, March 27th at 4:30 pm; email us your reservation with SEMINAR and the date to reserve your spot.

Is there a wine-themed seminar you’d like to attend? Send us an email at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com and we’ll consider it!

GOOD WINE NEWS!

2011-02-15T19:42:00.000-05:00

Greetings all! I have returned in the new year with energy and enthusiasm and I will try to post more often. I (we) crashed after the holidays, as planned and did little work in the winery, other than a few days of working the tasting room and watching the wine-making area, we call the cellar. No its not below ground, that’s just what you call it!

So we got the 2010 juice for our popular American grapes, Concord, Niagara, and Catawba in and got it fermenting nicely. Occasionally I would look over the 2009 stuff I started late to see if it was progressing and around Feb 1, I noted, by gum, it was! As I racked from tank to tank I saw clarity and flavor had matured nicely, so last weekend we dropped our best selling BUNKER HILL and the popular semi-sweet white WINDFALL back into the tasting list. Soon we expect to reintroduce WILDCAT CREEK WHITE, SWAYZEE, and HANGING ROCK to the list as well. If you know these wines, I think you will be happy, but if you do not, stop in for a sample and we think you will like them.

Our free seminars have kicked off and the next on is Feb 27th at 4:30 pm, 90-minutes of wine appreciation information for those who want to know more about wine. What is an appellation, an AOC, a rhone compared to a burgundy compared to a Barbera?? We will discuss all those wine-geek bits of stuff and more. But if you want to come, you MUST reserve a spot as we will limit it to 20 folks.

Next month we will discuss planning that wine tour weekend, where to go, what to see, how far to travel??? Hope to see you there for wine fun again soon!

new year

2010-12-30T10:45:00.001-05:00

It is the end of another year and as I have had the opportunity to do for every year since we opened, I want to thank each person who has visited the winery for their business. We have had another sales-breaking year and that encourages us, especially right now when we are running on little sleep and had little recreation outside the winery for the past two months. You make us feel like it’s worth it.

We are running a business, true enough, but a customer once said wine is “artwork in a bottle”. I love making wine and my wife and I love meeting people and talking wine with them. We love the people who come in and say, “WE know nothing about wine!” and we love the serious wine drinkers who come in and say, “WE like your wines; they are special, unique, different!” Those are what make owning a small winery worthwhile.

As you may have heard before, we started this winery with the hope of allowing an early retirement, an opportunity to make a modest living working for ourselves. Few people get rich owning a winery, but you can make a living if you are good enough and make the right decisions. The idea of opening a winery is not about wealth, its about passion and desiring to live your dream. And you who visit the winery are enabling us to live that dream.

Thank you.

whine, wine, whine,

2010-12-23T10:33:00.001-05:00

I have been a bit frustrated in the winery lately with how the wine is maturing. I expected to have several new wines out by now, but we have just a couple. Now that does not mean there is nothing new. The fruit wines have been re-blended and, I think, greatly improved. The new dry red, VAN BUREN, continues to be a good seller. Gift baskets have stressed my wife, to keep up I mean. But that’s normal for this time of year, we pretty much are swamped day and night and that’s just the way is is. In January we can relax….

I was asked why we were having problem getting some of our more popular wines to the point of bottling and the truth is, well, I screwed up! I did not take in to consideration that the big upswing in sales last winter/spring would impact availability fall/winter. So we did not order more of our Concord, Catawaba, and Niagara juice early enough o allow them to be ready for prime sales time, that would be NOW!

So, we will shortly have several of our old favorites back in the bottle, just not now, when we really need them. I am enthused about a new wine, WHITEWATER, we expect to release after the new year that is a great blend of three good grapes, watch for us to tell you who-when-what here soon!

Well, I am back in the winery, bottling some more of these apple wines you guys keep buying. Thanks, by the way…

Nick and Knacs

2010-12-05T16:24:00.001-05:00

Oh boy do my arms hurt! We got 20 new barrels in and I have been trying to make room for them and five big tanks in the winery. Yes, here at the peak of the winemaking season we are bringing more juice so we’ll have it when we need it next year. The winery is going to be chock full of barrels and tanks and there will be little room to work around in there. Oh well…

So we are very happy with the feedback from our 2010 “nouveau” wine, VAN BUREN, made with the Indiana-grown Chambourcin grapes. We serve it slightly chilled, but I like it room temperature myself. Its pretty fruit-forward, as we say in wine-speak and I like it better than any other nouveau style wine I’ve ever made.

We are trying to get the BUNKER HILL sweet Concord wine in the bottle, but its just not quite ready. We are going to bottle the new vintage SWAYZEE, HANGING ROCK, and WILDCAT CREEK WHITE very soon. I’ll let you know.

Our “Black Friday” promotion went much better than we thought it would, a lot of people took advantage of our early hours, special deals, and free eats. It was fun and we sold a lot of wine, yea!

Just a few weeks left in 2010 and this has been great year for the winery. Thanks to all those who visited, tasted and took home a few bottles. We are working on some new stuff at the winery we hope you will find interesting and exciting. Keep an eye here and we’ll keep you up to date. We will also make the announcement here when the 2009 BUNKER HILL is (finally) in house and for sale.

Black Friday

2010-11-22T22:40:00.001-05:00

So, some of you will not even go to bed on Thursday, because a few of the crazy retail stores open at midnight or 3 am, right? Well, we are not so crazy at the Oak Hill Winery. But we will suggest you stop by and see us after walking your tootsies off and wearing down the stripe on your credit cards. Ok, we might even have a deal or so for you, but what you will really need is a time-out to recoup and rest-up. So here we go...

--yes, even we will open early this friday!
We will open at 11:00 am to give you two extra hours in the winery and...

--from 11 am to 1 pm only:
Save a dollar more per bottle off our regular discounted price!

--Join the Wine Club:
Join at the regular price for one year and two extra free bottles just for joining!

--need to mellow out?
Mugs of hot, spiced Kokomo Cider are just three bucks Friday only!

--One more enticement:
Free cookies and snacks, while they last...

Ok, one more:
--we'll be releasing our NEW NOUVEAU RED wine called VAN BUREN - Its a 2010 Indiana Chambourcin!

- So don't miss the fun from 11 am to 6 pm on Friday at the Oak Hill Winery!!

Fire and Wine

2010-11-17T09:29:00.002-05:00

I am sure many of you have heard the news that Grape Inspirations Winery in Carmel burned down last week. I cannot imagine where you start after having your whole business reduced to ashes. I suppose you start out by designing a new building and getting it built. That would shoot a year at least. Then you would probably find another winery where you could start making wine again, under their license, so you’d have product when the new building was ready. Maybe the ATC (state) and TTB (federal) agencies would allow you to use a temporary building to make your wine, but the hassle of setting up such a facility would most likely lead you back to finding another winery where you could work.

Problem is; how many Indiana wineries have space to handle such a process? Every winery I have visited is pretty tight on climate-controlled square footage, although I know a few have helped some new wineries get started before they had a building. So it’s possible, I guess. I hope we never have to face that problem!

What’s new at the winery? We bottled our “Nouveau” style red wine this week, which we will release next Friday (11/26) as our salute to the French Tradition of releasing their new wines on the third Thursday of November. For those wine enthusiasts among us, that is this Thursday (18th) and I am sure many local wine stores will have a batch to sell. Here is what Wikipedia says about it:

“Beaujolais nouveau is a red wine made from Gamay grapes produced in the Beaujolais region of France. It is the most popular 'vin de primeur', fermented for just a few weeks then officially released for sale on the third Thursday of November. This "Beaujolais Day", or "Beaujolais Nouveau Day" sees heavy marketing from the producers, with races to get the first bottles of the vintage to different markets. Beaujolais Nouveau is a purple-pink wine that is particularly lightweight, even by the standards of Beaujolais. The method of production means that there is very little tannin, and the wine can be dominated by fruity, ester flavors of bananas, figs and pear drops. These are enhanced by the frequent recommendation to serve the wine lightly chilled, at approximately 55°F.”

Last year we had several of these new-style wines, but this year we have only a small batch of some Indiana-grown Chambourcin that we handled to be drinkable at this very young age. I am very pleased with the result, as the grapes were picked on September 18; the fermentation began on the 19th and completed (for-the-most-part) by the 28th; then we left the new wine on the skins for two weeks; then pumped off the free-run; and pressed the skins on October 9th. So the wine has only been tanked for five weeks or so and out of the vineyard for two months.

So what does it taste like? Hard to answer, because I have been riding this wine almost daily, watching and tasting. I feel its got a strong Chambourcin flavor, with overtones of ripe fruit, blackberries and currants. I drank about 500ml of the unfiltered stuff left in the hose and filter housing last night and was very pleased. I want to try it well chilled and see how that impacts the flavor. I am quite happy with the color of the wine, although there is a noticeable “muddiness” as you might expect with a young, naturally made wine. Well anyway, stop by on BLACK FRIDAY and enjoy a taste of this new wine. Have a seat and rest your feet after slogging through the malls, enjoy a glass of wine and some Indiana-made cheese.

By the way, last spring I said I would do three things: (1) paint the house; (2) install the new background music system; (3) finish the downstairs trim and paneling. Ok, well the music works now, OK, but its not the end of the year yet, I might still (haw-haw) get some carpentry work done.

Accepting Complaints in this Line...

2010-11-04T12:11:00.002-04:00

Ok, Ok, Ok! I know it’s been a while since I posted on here, but gosh-darn-golly-sakes its THAT TIME OF YEAR! Yes, we do just shy of 50% of our business in the last three months of the year, fairly typical for the winery business in general. So we’ve been working hard in the winery and we HAD to take a little get-away for our Fall Missouri Winery Tour. No, you did not miss a notice, every fall we go west with some friends to drink wine and canoe the clear waters of the Ozark Hills. But that’s all over now and we are back in the saddle and riding hard! So what’s going on in the winery?

The press of the 2010 fermented Chambourcin red-grapes went very well, it was the first use of the new, bigger press and I am delighted with the result. A bladder press has a rubber membrane that you fill with water while it squeezes the wine-juice out of the skins. You do not want to press too hard though, the wine will begin to taste bitter as the skins and seeds break down and put undesirable flavors into the juice. With the help of my able assistant, Jamin, we monitored the juice closely until it was just starting to give us that bitter taste and cut it off.

We have set aside a small barrel of this wine to re-ferment and bottle in just a few weeks as our 2010 "NOUVEAU" red wine in the French tradition. You might recall last year was our first effort at a nouveau style red wine and it went well. We will introduce that wine (name to be determined) on November 26th, so plan to stop in on BLACK FRIDAY to relax from the shopping and set a spell and taste some wine.

The winery’s “gift shop” is now pretty well stocked and if you have not seen some on the neat new stuff, you should stop in! The wife is cranking out the gift baskets day by day, every year we sell more than the year before and they start at just $19.99. Keep in mind she will design a basket for you (with notice) to meet your needs and price point.

Well, I’ll try to squeeze in more time to post here, there is much going on to talk about, several new wines coming out in the next 30 days; the winter Free Seminar schedule will be forthcoming; and in December we will have a special program to sign up new Wine Club members, so if you’ve been thinking about that, watch the website and here for a special offer coming in December!

Taking the Fall and All

2010-09-30T08:37:00.002-04:00

As the first crisp notes of Fall whirl around us, we start to think about years ago, things past, and nostalgia often sets in. This is not bad, especially for those of us over 45 years of age, as we have so much to remember and ponder over.

For me, the last ten years of starting a winery has many fond memories and lessons learned. But the point of matter is I have never seen a better year for grapes here in Indiana. What I am wondering is, 2009 was a tremendous year for apples and we are introducing this weekend the new vintage of both KOKOMO CIDER and INDIANA APPLE, unquestionably the best batch of apple wines I have ever made. So how will 2010 be?

So, in a few weeks I will head out to see the Hainlens at the orchard just outside of Converse to order the 2010 apple juice we will turn into next year’s apple wine. The late summer has been very dry. Will that cause a more intense flavor in the apple? Or did the heat keep the fruit from maturing and the lack of rain allow the acids to be out of balance with the sweetness? Only time will tell…

A few weeks ago we did a loop around Jackson, Michigan and hit four of the wineries on the Pioneer Wine Trail as a kind of scouting trip for a possible bus tour up there. The first stop was SLEEPING BEAR winery, right on I-94, in what was formerly a tasting room outlet for St Julian’s Winery based in Paw Paw. They are new and just have an initial offering of wines, but had some winners that were very good. Now, they take what some will call a “cutsy” approach to wine, using cartoon characters on their labels, but the wine stands up well. The 2009 Vignoles and the Cab Franc were both very tasty.

Next stop was SAND HILL CRANE vineyards and they had a huge tasting list and insisted we try every one! They had a superb 2006 dry Traminette; a Sassy Rose’ made with dry Cab Franc; and the Vignoles Pyment, just kissed by a dash of Michigan honey, all were excellent choices.

In the small town of Tecumseh, we found PENTAMERE winery, saying they are an “urban” winery. Located in a historic building with an open wine-making area with elevated walkway for tours, I’d say they are right, in a small-town kinda-way. I want to highlight their Morningstar, made with Seyval Blanc and Pinot Gris, plus their Michigan Cherry, a semi-dry wine I thought said “cherry” without messing the thought up!

Our last stop for the day was the very popular CHERRY CREEK CELLARS, the busiest winery we visited. Being a red wine drinker, I loved their Pinot Noir, but the people with me approved strongly of their wines named Jazz, a red wine and raspberry (!!!) blend; and a off-dry red, La Mia Famiglia. It took some time to get in and out of their small, brick school-house, tasting room, but the wine was worth it.

We missed the other four due to time constraints, but will plan on going up to see what else the area wineries’ offer. I have been asked before about a Michigan winery tour, but we generally go out in March (too early to go north) and August, a much nicer time to visit Michigan. So we’ll talk and see what we can put together for the Summer 2010 Bus Tour. We have tentatively set SE Indiana as out 2011 Spring Winery Bus Tour destination, returning to Madison and the surrounding countryside. If you’d like to get email notices iof our bus tours, send us an email with the subject line BUS TOURS and we will get you a notice when available.
www.oakhillwines.com oakhillwinery@yahoo.com

Winners and winners???

2010-09-21T11:43:00.000-04:00

Ok, we had 19 amateur entries in the contest this past weekend and now the Cheesecake winners are known: TOP PRIZE goes to CHERYL YOUNG for her Pina Colada, yum!

First runner up was MARK SILER’s Pecan & Carmel creation;
Second runner-up - MARLA LINES for her New York Style with Red Raspberry Sauce.

I tell you folks, I did not taste a bad one in the bunch and how you can say one is better then another. THANK YOU to all the entrants, we had a very busy day at the winery for the Cheesecake Festival and I believe a good time was had by all!

The COMMERCIAL division was won by SAM’s CLUB, but I forgot to see whose cheesecake they entered on their behalf, so I’ll get you the who and what of the winner very soon!

With our biggest event of the year over, what’s do we have to look forward to in the months to come? As mentioned previously, on October 2 we will release two new versions of our apple wine. First is the ever popular KOKOMO CIDER and we will have it hot & spiced for you to try, as well as chilled. What we are all excited about is the new INDIANA APPLE, an off-dry apple wine that several people have said is the best apple wine they have ever tasted. I felt that’s a bit strong to say about a barrel sample, but we were sipping some of this at the Festival, nicely chilled, and I will say its better then I expected.

We have a little of the 2008 Indiana Apple left, just a few cases. We are blowing it out at $5 a bottle while its lasts!!! A good dry apple wine that is excellent for cooking, sipping, or makes an fabulous spritzer (add 1/3 ginger ale).

In an upcoming blog, I will review our visit to the Pioneer Wine Trail near Jackson, Michigan, where we found some very good wines, well worth the drive up there for.

I got behind!

2010-09-17T11:07:00.000-04:00

Sorry! I have gotten behind on my blog updates, primarily due to the CHEESECAKE festival (Saturday, September 18, 1-6 pm), plus we are having website problems that have eaten up a lot of time trying to fix. I want to get started on the TWO wine tours we have been on in the past few weeks. Let's do one at a time:

First, the 2010 Summer Bus Tour went very well! Everyone showed up on time to get on the bus (7 am is early on a Saturday) and we did not lose anyone along the way. But how did it go?

Our first stop was Oliver Winery and the folks there opened up a bit early to accommodate us and we had a great time! Half went on tour of their impressive production facilities; the other half did a tasting. The results were quite surprising, in my view. Too often the “Big O” gets forgotten in the search for great wine, we think of Oliver as the “sweet wine” winery. But in truth they knocked us out with the variety and consistency of their wines, not to mention very nice tastes. A lot of wine was bought and not much was sweet, don’t miss Oliver’s next time you are in the neighborhood.

A few minutes away we visited Butler Winery’s winery & vineyard and found another great selection of wines. I think Jim has a real style to his wines and his vineyard was gorgeous.

The next stop was lunch, but the next winery was Carousel, right on the highway as we headed south towards New Albany. I found some reds there I really liked and a Pinot Gris my wife found very tasty.

Our last stop was in New Albany’s River City Winery, where we found more (repetitive?) great wines and a very nice dinner as well. If you visit the winery, come for food too!

Our stay at the Hampton Inn went well and all were ready for a Sunday morning tasting at Turtle Run Winery. Jim, the owner, looked a bit ill to me and he admitted he had went to bed at 2 am and got up about 5 am to be ready for us. Why? Because harvest was running well ahead of schedule due to our hot weather! Jim is one of the most entertaining and informative winemakers I know and the group of 44 wine “tourers” all agreed. For the first time, we were running behind schedule because everyone wanted some Turtle Run Wine. We wound our way through the scenic countryside to BEST Vineyards where we enjoyed the view from the deck while tasting excellent wine from this newer winery. The Chardonnell was wonderful…

We headed north and hit Chateau DePique where everyone was impressed with the wedding chapel as well as their wines. We hit Buck Creek, a winery the group had specifically asked if we could visit again and the gang there kept us moving towards dinner at a local buffet.

We made it home a bit after 9 pm and everyone scattered for home. The wife and I both agreed the trip went very well and we look forward to next spring’s winery bus tour. I think we need to return to Madison, its been two years and there are some new wineries down that way that need checking out…

Stuffy head...

2010-08-26T09:20:00.001-04:00

Ok, I will admit it, I have a cold and I have had a cold for about a week. It’s a sinus thing, I am not contagious (probably) and the only problem with the cold, other then the sniffing-wiping-coughing is, I cannot taste wine correctly.

Yep, when you have a cold you do not taste wine correctly or rather, as it really tastes because your olfactory sense is shut down or at least, inhibited. So here I am bottling wine and blending away without being able to get a fair idea what the wine tastes like.

So I call the wife out and say, “Taste this!” Now my wife prefers dry white wines, but has a good feel for what our customers will like, but she almost always says, “Not sweet enough!” So I adjust the sweetness and hand her another sample until we get it right and that’s what we did last night.

I was bottling another batch of a new wine for us, a blueberry we call STOCKDALE, and had a small batch of cherry wine I had not finished, which I did bottle called ROANN. Now these are still what I call in the “test phase” as I tweak the recipe for the new ’09 vintage, but we would appreciate your comments on both wines.

I have gotten two new wine labels approved, VAN BUREN and EEL RIVER follows our policy of using local names for our local wines. I do not know what each will be, but we got a few surprises coming we hope you will enjoy!

A PIECE OF CHEESCAKE, PLZ

2010-08-24T16:34:00.000-04:00

The next big event in our winery’s calendar is the Cheesecake Festival and as you might recall, it has been one of our biggest events year after year. BUT in 2010 we have had several events that have reached the popularity of this fun day of eating and sipping. The Spring Open House was a hit and I am sure many readers were present for the recent Chocolate Festival that found us swamped with customers.

As mentioned, the Cheesecake Festival will be held Saturday, September 18 from 1-6 pm at the winery. Amateur and professional cheesecake-makers (cheesecakes are not “baked” I have learned) are invited to submit their best creation for judging prior to that date during our regular business hours. The deadline for professional entries is 2 pm day-of and amateurs by 4 pm. The professional entries will be judged by the public, who will vote for their favorite. The amateurs will be judged by a panel from the Oak Hill Wine Club with the panel kept secret to avoid proffered bribes, frankly they are susceptible.

We are very busy in the wine “cellar” as the harvest progresses, getting things straightened up, barrels cleaned, tanks readied. I have been working on the new press, getting it ready for its first pressing. We have several new labels being printed, a few new wines in the works, and a couple of surprises yet to be announced (building suspense).

I was asked recently why I do not review other wines on my blog here and I replied “Its not a wine review blog!” Plus I want people to buy wine they like and I do mention wine I found and like; like ‘Tre Blanc’ from Casa Largo and ‘Twinkle’ from the NY meadery. So I do, kind’a, review some wines…

Late Summer Update

2010-08-17T08:32:00.001-04:00

This is the busy time of year! Why? Because we face the oncoming CRUSH! Ok, that’s wine-speak for the harvest and this year is particularly interesting because the excessive heat has ripened the grapes better and faster than usual.

We like to get a load of Chardonnel grapes every year from southern Indiana and we often pick these up around Labor Day. My guy called me and said, “They’re ready, come get them this weekend!” Getting grapes WEEKS early then usual and with better sugar and acid than ever before is exciting for a winemaker.

We picked up a new wine press from another winery that was upgrading, so we can now process ¾ of a ton instead of 100lbs at a pressing. That will save time and allow us to buy more local fruit than ever before, although the press needs a little work, but we got a great deal on it!

Our business continues to grow, which surprises me a bit. I thought after seven years sales would level off, but we continue to see an uptick in the number of people through our doors, although since the economy crashed our sale-per-ticket is down. So we are attracting more new people to the winery but they buy less per visit than they did two years ago. Hummm…

One problem we are having is we are running out of the 2008 vintage before the 2009 is ready to bottle, oops! Our popular BUNKER HILL is almost gone and will not be back until probably November, along with its dry version, SEVEN PILLARS. This is due to us taking late delivery on some grape juice to allow us to process our new line of dry reds we got last September.

Our new vintage of Niagara wines is very different this year, the FAIRMOUNT has some interesting flavors I have never gotten before, overtones of honey and pear. Its good, but its nothing like its 2008 vintage. JALAPA is the dry version and I have not released the 2009 as we finish up the 2008 vintage. I would call this Michigan-grown grape much softer and less acidic then the last batch.

We are very excited about our 2009 dry Riesling, which has matured very nicely over the past few months. Our 2008 vintage IRON BRIDGE has been popular and one of my favorites, but I think the 2009 will stand up very well to it. We hope to have it in the shop in the next two weeks!

The Summer Wine Club (its full, sorry) bus tour is just around the corner and we are enthused to be visiting several new wineries most of us have never been to. River City Winery in New Albany is hosting us for a tasting and dinner on Saturday and Best Vineyards is one of the Sunday stops. Its always fun to visit new wineries and these are mostly those along the Ohio River, so we don’t get down there too often.

If you have a question about wine, winemaking, or the Oak Hill Winery in genral, write at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com and we'll try to answer it here!

Dimples

2010-07-29T13:18:00.001-04:00

So this lady asked me why our wine corks have “dimples” and it took me a minute to understand what she was saying. When you get ready to open a bottle of our wine and remove the capsule top, you can see a small dimple in the top of our synthetic corks.

The dimple is where the corker pushes the cork down into the bottle. Keep in m ind we do everything by hand here, so if you have a bottle of our wine, its about a 95% chance I put the cork in it.

The corker squeezes the cork and then I pull a piston down the rams the cork into the bottle before it can fully expand again, sealing the bottle. I have been very, very pleased with the synthetic corks, they seem to seal better; they allow customers to store wine upright if they so choose, they seem easy to withdraw (no customer complaints); and they cost no more than regular low-end corks. The best part is we do not get the chipping when we put the cork in or when you take it out that we did with real corks.

I said I put in about 95% of the corks, I do occasionally have kind friends who offer to help out and a few crazy customers who want to assist. Due to cleanliness rules, we cannot let just anybody in the winery to help, you have to get cleaned up, a bit sanitized if you will, to help. Since I am doing the corking in the evenings, I do not get a lot of volunteers and since we do small batches I can handle a few hours corking fairly well. Maybe as I get older I will try a Tom Sawyer routine and tell everyone how much fun corking and bottling is, and everyone should drive a few thousand corks into a bottle for exercise!

For our 44 Winery Bus Tour participants, I’ll inject a little news: we have confirmed the Hampton Inn as our overnight stay and it has a pool, hot tub, and exercise room. We are still working on the Saturday dinner menu, but it looks like we will be wine tasting and eating at the new River City Winery in New Albany, your menu choices will come by email soon. Best Vineyards has signed on for a Sunday tasting slot, specializing in their semi-sweet estate wines. To get us home at a decent hour Sunday, we will have a buffet at a Ryans Steakhouse in the Indianapolis area, it’s the fastest way to feed 50 people!

Keep in mind our HOOSIER CHEESE DAYS celebration of Indiana-made cheese begins August 14 and lasts as long as ten pounds of cheese lasts…

Parties and Blueberries

2010-07-18T14:54:00.000-04:00

Wow! I know I have said it here before, but it is truly rewarding to hold a special event and have a bunch of people show up and enjoy it. The Chocolate & Wine Festival this past Saturday was a HUGE success, even to a fault, I was stuck in Peru in an unavoidable meeting for two hours and when I got to the winery about 3:30, the cars were parked all over and the tasting room was packed! Needless to say, my wife and single staffer were torn between “happy to see me” and killing me for “where have you been?”

So for the next two hours I met group after group, pouring wine, and offering sample of gourmet chocolate. I am afraid the crowds we had made it hard to give each visitor the time we prefer to spend with them, but we did or best to do what we could. I hope they will come back when we can give them more time.

Ok, the bus is full! If anyone out there would like to go, we will establish a waiting list. Occasionally we have someone who signs up run into a personal situation and they ask us to see if someone can take their place. So email us if you want on the list…

One of the surprises we dropped on the festival goers was a test batch of our blueberry wine. Honestly, I was not happy with it, but several serious wine drinkers told me they thought it was good. So I bottled a small batch and sent it out and people seem to like it! Well, they bought it, so it must be good. Even winemakers are not always on when balancing flavor, both to the good and the bad.

Last Chances? Yes and No...

2010-07-09T21:02:00.001-04:00

We have openings for four couples left on the August 28-29 bus tour, so this is the last chance for you to join our merry band of wine tasters as we wander Indiana wineries. Once we fill this bus, that’s it! So call, stop, by, or email if you’d like to come along!

Coming up soon is the Chocolate & Wine Festival on Saturday, July 17 from 1-6 pm. We’ll have live music from 2-5 pm and special snacks, gourmet chocolates, and lots of fun. We hope you’ll join us for our seventh anniversary celebration while we mix and match J. Edwards Chocolates with our wines!

Do you have a special occasion you’d like to celebrate too? Consider a private party at the Winery! Two hours of fun and information begins at just $149 and we offer many options for you to choose from. Email us for more information!

New York, New York!

2010-07-02T09:22:00.000-04:00

So what are the wineries in NY’s Finger Lakes like? Wow, as you might guess, they are as varied and wineries anywhere else. As mentioned in the last post, their buildings were a variety of shapes and sizes, but by far the most common were simple metal-sided buildings that the owners had often enhanced with a fancy entrance, a garden walk, a large fountain, or a bit of décor to add a bit of distinct character.

The interiors were pretty nice, for the most part. There were a few that were simple concrete floors with typical retail furniture and a tasting bar, but many had very attractive interiors with a theme even beyond just being a winery.

The wine was good, as with any full day of wine tasting we found a lot of good, some very good, and a few really great wines. We found some high priced wines and a few real bargains. We (four people) spent most of the week drinking a case of Casa Largo’s Tre Blanc, a semi-dry white made with 57% Muscat, 33% Traminette, 10% Gewürztraminer, and paid $59 a case (not a typo) for it. Yes, that’s less then $5 a bottle and when I asked why, the staffer said it was an ’08 vintage and they wanted to clear it out because the ’09 was about to bottle. Wow, what a good wine at a great price.

We ran into something I did not expect, a meadery, along Seneca Lake. It was a division of another large winery that specialized in fruity honey wines, yet they also had some great off dry meads worth a taste. Their slightly sweet pear mead was good, but their sparkling mead, “Twinkle” was fabulous!

As I have said, the problem with this area is the short distance between the wineries allows no “recovery time” and without much trouble you start feeling the accumulated tastings quickly. So you have to research and pick and choose which wineries to visit in advance. Our tasting room staffer, Chris, had spent some time doing such and gave us six great wineries to stop at. Problem #2 is most of the wineries have extensive wines lists offering 20 or more wines. How to choose which to taste?

The wineries have developed a method for handling this problem, they charge for tastings (!) and they limit your tastings, typically to six. Now, you know from reading my earlier blogs I do not ‘believe’ in paid tastings. I think in these folks case, I agree with their thinking. This region is nationally famous, like Sonoma or Napa in California, and thousands come here to tour and taste weekly. There are people, the staffers told me, who do pay, taste, and leave; it’s what they do. I must admit I would not hesitate to leave without buying if nothing struck my fancy and paying allows me to leave without any guilt about their time or samples provided.

But here’s what won me over in the Finger Lakes, every winery we visited applied your tasting fees ($1-$5 per person) to your purchases. Several were “sloppy” about collecting these fees with us and most gave us more then the five or six taste limit. I still feel paid tastings are a bad idea for Indiana, but I think these people have the right idea for their situation.

BUS TOUR DEADLINE: a reminder that the all deposits for the August 28/29 southern Indiana bus tour must be in by July 10!

VACATION, BUSING, AND A PARTY

2010-06-30T17:00:00.001-04:00

Ok, so I have been “offline” for OVER two weeks, but I have a good reason: we were on vacation! A good bit of the vacation (for tax purposes) was touring wineries, tasting wine, and purchasing what you might call, ahh, well, ummm, some “samples” for review back at home for future production consideration, of course.

We toured the Finger Lakes Wine Region in New York and the problem was not finding the wineries, it was choosing which ones of the 100+ you wanted to visit in your time there. There are over 9100 acres of vineyard in just this area producing over 41,000 tons of grapes each year. The scenery is beautiful, with the long lakes full of sailboats, streets lined with Victorian homes and cottages, and lots of crafts, antique, and locally-produced food stores.

In just one five hour period along Seneca Lake we passed at least 15 wineries and stopped at six. We saw wineries that looked like a French Chateau and some were in Morton Buildings. Some had wines made with premium grapes and tasted world class, others were names “Red-Neck Red” and “Granny’s Outhouse White” and tasted, well, a bit better then the name suggested. If you are a wine “nut”, this is a place you could spend a week, and then go into rehab and detox.

BUS TOUR: We are only half booked for the Aug 28/29 Southern Indiana Winery Bus Tour! We will extend the reservation deadline until July 10, but that is the cutoff!

CHOCOLATE ANNIVERSARY: July 17th is our seventh anniversary and we will be celebrating with FREE gourmet chocolates, and music, and some other goodies, so be here 1-6pm Saturday the 17th and join in the fun!

More Bread and Bus, plus a Calendar Update!

2010-06-03T10:03:00.001-04:00

--Ok, so I have been asked to detail the Bread Baking contest rules & information, being held Saturday, June 12, 1-6 pm. Seems there are already people clamoring for the who, what, when, where, and how. Ok, here goes…

The Bread Baking Contest is broken into professional and amateur classes; we welcome commercial entries from bakers, grocery stores, restaurants, and just about anyone who sells or serves bread professionally; The home bread makers fall into the amateur class and we often will split out any unusual breads into their own class, so a simple (but delicious) sourdough bread is not competing with rich chocolate chip loaf.

All entrants must submit one full loaf of bread; each entrant may submit no more then two breads, four total per household; Professional entries must be at the winery no later then 2 pm the day of the contest; Amateur entries must be at the winery no later then 4 pm the day of the contest; Entries may be dropped off the Friday prior between 1-6 pm at the winery; NO BREAD-MAKING MACHINES MAY BE USED for entries;

The professional entries will be judged by the public, by those visiting the winery that day. The amateur entries will be judged by a panel of bread-lovers after the winery closes for the day. Based on the results of both judgings, awards will be made by yours truly for the best of the best, which includes photos on the wall of the winery for the next year.

---BUS TOUR: Yes, we are taking another swing at holding a bus tour of wineries in southern Indiana. At this time we are accepting reservations for the first 22 couples who wish to go, with an estimated cost of under $300 per couple, $100 deposits will be accepted beginning June 5 to reserve your spots, sorry, no singles can be accommodated.

---CALENDAR UPDATE: On the website we have set the schedule for the special events from June through September, so if you want to set aside the time to hit the bread, chocolate, cheese, or cheesecake events, see the website now at www.oakhillwines.com

summer, Vintage Indiana and a bus tour

2010-05-27T09:26:00.000-04:00

Summer does seem to be here, although technically its still spring. 80+ degree days says summer to me and the rain + sun = grass growing like mad. Well we have made a few changes at the winery, although not as many as I had hoped. There are a few chores that are dragging into the summer that were supposed to be winter jobs, but nothing too serious.

We did start putting in a new “welcome” garden at the winery, regular rain has kept us from finishing it up, but I think we will get done pretty soon. It’s a modest little patch but it is in great spot to greet customers and catch a lot of sun. Our staffer Christine has been planning this for several months and I’m looking forward to seeing the result. Of course, any new garden needs a season to really show its stuff, so we’ll be patient, but its one less little piece of lawn I have to mow!

Vintage Indiana 2010 is just a little over a week away at Military Park in Indianapolis. This is a great chance to try a lot of INDIANA wine in one place. If you have not been there before, check out www.vintageindiana.com for all the details, It’s a food and wine “orgy” so you might need a room afterwards  -- There are 26 Indiana wineries scheduled to attend and no, we are not one of them. I see there are 11 food vendors and a whole bunch of art vendors. What more can you ask then local wine, local food, and local art all in one place. It runs from 11am-7pm on June 5, so it’s about time to plan your visit. Allow at least three hours for your visit, there will be lines for tasting and you’ll want to talk to other wine junkies you’ll meet there. We were hoping to go as tasters, but something came up ---sigh-!, so you’ll see us in the winery that day instead of indulging in Indy. I hate to miss the entertainment as much as the wine, check it out!

Ok, let’s talk WINE-TASTING BUS TOUR; I have recently been talked to, arm twisted, and beat up a bit that we have not jumped back into the bus tour business since the recession of ‘08/’09. One reason is we wanted to get past the worst of the worst and it may be that we have. But I need to know, are there 22 couples out there who would like to visit eight wineries in Southern Indiana as part of a bus tour, food/motel included, for this coming August 28/29? Send us an email at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com with BUS TOUR in the subject line if you’re interested, not ready to commit, but interested. Cost run $200-$300 per couple all inclusive. Talk to me!

Time, Grape News, and Bread?

2010-05-19T08:41:00.000-04:00

Can you believe its almost summer? When someone starts talking about how times flies, they are almost always over 40. When we are young time seems to drag, but as we age and minutes/days/hours become a smaller part of our life experience, time seems to speed up. As far as the winery goes, time is about going back to our seven-day-a-week schedule, beginning June 1. From then until December 31, we will only be closed national holidays, no longer do we have be closed on Election Day due to a recent change in the law.

A bit of good/bad news from a nearby winery, the New Day Meadery has closed their Elwood tasting room, with plans to open a downtown Indianapolis tasting room in the very near future. Apparently they will keep the Elwood location as a production facility, but not offer tasting their. I think this is a good move for Brett & Tia, their honey-based wines (mead) are very good and deserve a wider customer base that will appreciate the craftsmanship they bring to their products.

While the early warming trend this year has made a lot of people very happy to shed their winter clothes, the early bud-break on the grape vines around the state have led to some frost damage that will affect the available crop in the fall. The good news is the damage in most vineyards is not massive, but many lost some fruit. One vineyard in the northern part of the state reported a majority of their vines damaged, while southern vines were less hurt. This is not a surprise, but I thought the vineyard owner’s comment that, “…this was the worst damage in 17 years…” was worth noting. Hopefully the damage will not impact fruit prices too badly!

We are pleased to announce the annual Bread Baking Contest will be held Saturday, June 12 from 1-6 PM at the winery. This is a fun event that allows both professional and amateur bread-makers to showcase their skills. The professionally made breads will be taste tasted by everyone who visits the winery that day and the winner will be chosen by popular vote. The amateur bakers’ loaves will be judged by a panel of “expert” bread tasters who will chose the winner. Its fun, its free, and watch this spot for more information about more fun & free events at the Oak Hill Winery!

HELP WANTED:

2010-05-11T14:35:00.001-04:00

So as the winery’s business has increased, we have starting having some very busy weekends. Now most of the time, that’s not a problem because both myself and my wife are around to back up the person working in the winery. But as we look at the upcoming summer months, we see some problems coming. We have vacations for both us and the staff; we have some special off-site events we are attending; we have three solid staffers who do not want to work too many weekends!

So we need to hire another person to help cover weekends, someone who would work at least two weekend-days and no more then four weekend-days a month. That is going to be a hard person to find, well, at least hard to find a GOOD person who can/will do that.

First, its not about the money. No one gets rich owning, so by extension, no gets rich working at a winery ten to twenty hours a month. Second, its as much about the person’s ability to interact with the customer as prior experience. How many times I have heard a customer say about another winery, “The wine was pretty good, but the guy pouring the samples was so colorless we did not enjoy the experience.” So we need someone who us colorful? Oh boy…

Its important to find the right person, because we pay for the bartenders license, we have to train the person- takes about three to four days of job shadowing to get the procedures figured out- so there is an investment there.

Plus this person IS THE WINERY when people visit; what he/she says or does is the basis for the opinion of our business and this person can literally make-or-break us. Scary huh?

So now it begins, the hunt for a “Weekender” to work at the winery, helping the staff and covering vacations, illness, and other openings. Do you know anyone who might want to work at a small winery for just a pittance and a tyrannical master (me)? Tell them to stop in and fill out an application…

Oh, and do not forget this weekend is the “Greatest Spectacle in Tasting” at Kokomo! See the Kokomo Tribune website for more details: http://kokomotribune.com/local/x1700423493/Greatest-Spectacle-in-Tasting-returns-this-weekend

Thanks for the support!

2010-05-05T19:15:00.000-04:00

As a business, you put a lot of time and money into special events and when one is a big success, its gratifying. Such was our Open House we held last Saturday, it was a big success from a business stand point and we hope from our customers’ perspective too.

While our biggest event is the September Cheesecake Festival, this little party came close to catching up. We had a lot of people visit, tour, and taste. I did not get out of the winemaking room for almost four hours and every tour (10) was well- attended with two overflowing into the stage area.

And we sold a lot of wine. This means I am back at work, bottling every evening and ordering supplies that are running short. I got a little surprise when I found we were out of “Sweetser” labels. So I am working up an order of labels so we can get some more wine out there. Any
more wine-name suggestions?

As we move into Summer, I realize we are just a few weeks from going back to our seven-day schedule until December 31. I was reading about voter reaction that liquor can now be sold during lections and primary days. I really think that’s a law that’s well put away, I doubt too many people who are drunk can be counted on to show up to vote and if they do, do we want them voting? I am not sure it would matter one way or another, that’s why I stay out of politics and put my faith in God instead.

In June we’ll be holding our seventh annual Bread Baking Contest for amateurs and professional bakers alike. Watch here for more dates and information to come!

Stop the rain dance!

2010-04-30T08:44:00.000-04:00

So we have the Open House planned for tomorrow and everything is under control, except the weather? TV channel 8 says it will rain from 6 am til noon, then start up again after 7 pm. Well that’s dandy! That should give us the time we need for the open house and everyone can stay dry. We are planning just in case the weather is a bit damp, I am known by certain old friends as “the tarp man”, so I do have a plan.

There is a non-winery event I want to mention. Almost every year we attend the “Greatest Spectacle in Tasting” at Bona Vista programs in Kokomo. Its three huge tents full of wine, beer, food, and hundreds of silent auction items. Bona Vista is an organization that works with the MR/DD population and the physically challenged. This event is their main fund-raiser and we go most years and it is a very good time. The movers & shakers will be there and so will we. So We will be closing the winery at 6 sharp that day and heading over to Kokomo for a fun few hours. Here are the details:

Do not miss the GREATEST SPECTACLE IN TASTING on Saturday, May 15 from 6-9 PM at 1220 East Laguna in Kokomo. Taste fine wines, microbrews, and sample food from the area's best restaurants. This is a fund-raiser for Bona Vista Programs and tickets are $30 advance from Soupley's Wine & Spirits in Kokomo or $35 at the door. Live music, great auction items, we've gone for years and have a GREAT time. See you there!

Too Cold!

2010-04-21T11:12:00.002-04:00

Ok, so I had a few minutes last night, so I worked on the website some more. Are you tired hearing about the website? Imagine how I must feel! LOL - I have something else I thought I would rant about, maybe you'll find it more interesting.

I am sick to death of being served COLD dry wines at restaurants! I go to a nice place, spend $20+ bucks on an appetizer, $20+ bucks on an entree, then another $20+ on what I hope is a decent wine. Then they bring it our and it is ICY cold. What is the matter with these people? Now i will admit there is some disagreement about what is the IDEAL temp' for each wine.

I looked at one wine site that listed over 100 wines at a variety of temps', especially the point that "cheap" wines should be colder then premium wines, to mute their undesirable flavor I guess.

BUT even this wine site showed it should not be 'beer' cold! The last red wine I ordered came as cold as soda pop, the last chardonnay was about the same. They stick the bottle in an ice bucket! Now, bring me a dry red at room temp and then stick it in an ice bucket, OK. A good red is best at below 70 degrees, closer to 60 in my view.

So, I have become a pain (I am certain) to some of our local eateries, since I want to send back any wine that is below 45 degrees. So do I start looking like a bigger wine geek by carrying a thermometer to check it? Well maybe, but I wish these folks who charge us outrageous prices ($28 for a >$10 wine? Now thats a mark-up!) for the wine they have to stock could at least get onboard and serve it at CLOSE to a reasonable temp.

What do you think? Click ‘comment’ below (no registration necessary) or email me at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com. See you at the Open House!

Open House!

2010-04-20T09:06:00.001-04:00

Every spring we traditionally have an Open House, in which we literally open the doors of the winery and welcome people in to see what goes on in our little operation. We are going to hold the 2010 Spring Open House on Saturday, May 1 from 1-6 pm.

We will offer you the opportunity to peek into the winemaking area, with a 15 minute formal tour held every half hour from 1 pm to 5:30 pm. I will be on hand to answer questions, show off our simple equipment, and talk wine with whomever cares to stop by and poke their head in.

We will have live music from 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm. Our old friend, Chad Shrock, the “Modern Minstrel” (www.chadshrock.com) will be playing his mandolin and guitar. If you have not yet seen Chad, his musical mix runs from Celtic to Elvis and most things in between.

We’ll have a few other surprises too, a few snacks, and free winetasting as always. We hope you can join us at the Open House as we swing into Spring and head for Summer!

Spring Cleaning? nah...

2010-04-09T09:10:00.001-04:00

Ahh Spring! I love the warm weather, the sunny days, but its time to cut grass! I have never liked cutting grass but am too cheap to hire someone to do it. I usually buy a new mower every two or three years, but five years ago I bought one that is till going, will it start again this year or will I get a new mower to kick off 2010?

I did spend a good bit of time in the yard already. There are weeds and debris to clean up and our grapevines got pruned back. I am please with the progress the transplanted vine has made growing up on the lattice over our outdoor seating area. If the vine survived the winter, it should fully cover the arbor this year after making good progress last year.

We will complete the painting of the winery and the house this year, one way or the other. I allowed too many other things to divert me last year and we will get it done. Taking down the Big Red Awning is a big job, but it has to happen. I will attack that no later then Memorial Day weekend. (Famous Last Words)

It’s true the older you get the faster time flies, relative to yourself anyway. We have less then two months before we go back to our seven-day-a-week schedule at the winery. I know some of you will be happy about that because you have said you prefer us being there, well it starts up again Tuesday, June 1.

NEW WINE NAMES: Yes, we are working on ten new labels and we would like your input on what local names you would like to see us use on these new labels. We are looking for places of local interest that sound like the name of a wine (no more votes for “Gas City” please!). Email us or make a “comment” (see below) here to submit your idea for our new wine label names.

Have you mowed yet?

2010-04-02T09:13:00.000-04:00

The sun is shining and the grass is growing and temperatures are at July levels, welcome to April folks! The winery is staying quite busy (thank you!) and we survived the Kokomo Home Show last weekend.

The Home Show was a fun, we surprised a lot of people by being there, and met a lot of people who said, “We’ve been meaning to get out there…”. Its was a new experience for my wife, I have worked home shows before for other jobs, but she did not realize how long the day could be when you are standing and pouring wine for eight hours straight. We did buy a number of new things to allow us to work the show, a pop-up tent, a bar-height table, a new cash register, and a whole bunch of disposable wine glasses. So we are set for the next off-site event!

I have been asked about our April Special Event and I am happy to announce it will be Sunday, April 18th at 4:30 pm, entitled: “Winemaking at Home and in the Winery”. I will discuss and explain both basic home winemaking methods and commercial methods; we will include a walk through our winemaking area; and respond to any winemaking questions you have. As always, this 90-minute seminar is FREE and all you have to do is email us and reserve your spot(s). Watch us here in May, we’ll be having our Spring Open House with free tours and other fun stuff happening.

I do not know why I tend to use violent terms when discussing winemaking. A customer asked me about the blueberry I have been working on and I replied, “I have been beating it at least once a week and it has not yet come around!” This might well be a reflection of my frustration in why this wine has not come to a point we can bottle it or maybe I need to consider what TV shows I am watching?

If you have not been in recently, the new wines are well worth a try. I have been very happy with the new dry Chardonnel, SYCAMORE STUMP, because it has developed some very nice flavors. Its more then just a light crisp, white wine. Its actually got a bit more going on then that. It is a little young, but I’m drinking it!

websites and home shows

2010-03-25T09:19:00.000-04:00

Our website has been redone; again, I was just not happy with the look or the layout. I think the new website is not as flashy, but more functional. We will try to get the special event calendar set up asap. I am already getting questions about the bread-baking contest in June and the Cheesecake Festival in September. Soon, folks, soon!

We did decide to go ahead and try attending the Kokomo Home Show this weekend, so you will not see us in the winery much. One big obstacle to “doing” a home show is the cost of your booth itself; special items needed to run the booth like cash registers, credit card machines, sample cups, etc, etc, etc.

We did decide to charge $1 for tasting at the show as a way to recapture some of the overhead. Well, that and to deal with all those people who show and want to know what is “free” at your booth. How many pencils and pens can someone use in their lifetime, anyway?

The new wines have been well received, my staff kids me I have not come out with a “clunker” recently, I told them sooner or later it happens! We try to avoid that through test tastings of small batches. A good example I have mentioned before is the blueberry we have but have not bottled yet. I just cannot quite hit a good flavor with that wine yet, so we let it sit in the barrels for a while longer and then I will take another run at it.

I wanted to thank a number of you faithful readers for your regular emails in response to question we have posed here. It seems many of you hesitate to post a public “comment” (see below) but are quite willing to zing us an email. We appreciate that willingness and your input. As the weather warms up, so does the business at the winery and we hope to see you in there soon!

New Wines are in!

2010-03-11T15:37:00.000-05:00

So I was working last week in the winery and I finally got around to bottling several new wines. One I had looked forward to was our first Gewürztraminer which we call WATERTOWER in reference to the old water tower that was torn down last year, it was truly a landmark for local drivers and pilots. The wine has a nice flavor and turned out a bit sweeter than I expected it too. Give it a taste and let us know what you think.

We had a nice batch of Chardonnel grapes we got from Southern Indiana and we bottled the first barrel and called it SYCAMORE STUMP, if you’re from Kokomo you’ll get the name. Its a very nice dry white and my wife likes it a lot. So do I!

We are happy to announce we have bottled some more of our Cabernet Franc, RIVERWALK, which I thought was a little too light in body. Our customers disagreed and have been complaining. I was going to blend it with some Foch, but the people have spoken. Stop by this weekend and try it.

The issue of light bodied reds is interesting, because most winemakers tend to prefer full- to medium-bodied wines. Many light reds are thought to be too thin in the mouth, with not a great deal of flavor volume. I have always felt that was untrue and our customers who are not red wine drinkers are telling us they LIKE the lighter reds, so we will continue to offer simples, easy-to-drink red wines as one more distinguishing point in our favor, sales-wise.

I know several people are waiting to hear about our April special event and if you can be patient, we will have that information out very soon. I want to thank those who have commented on the new website, still under construction, we think it has a bit more up-to-date look then the old one. We hope to have some video added in soon and maybe even a podcast? Keep watching!

Home Shows & Websites

2010-03-08T11:32:00.001-05:00

We were recently invited to be a part of the Z92.5 Home Show at the Kokomo Event Center on US 31 on March 27-28. Now I have blown off these types of events over the years because I did not see a fit for a winery in them. But I have attended several similar shows recently and I am amazed at the number of non-home-type vendors that are there selling all kinds of stuff.

Then I went to the Indianapolis Home show, the one held at the fairgrounds. I saw Barefoot Cellars there sampling and selling their wine in a pretty fancy booth. And they were pretty darn busy too! I asked several people what they thought of a winery at the home show and got positive responses from all. One lady said it was a nice break from all the walking around, a vendor mentioned he loved the idea of potential customer s having a drink while shopping!?

So what do you think? Do you need a quick sip while wandering the Home Show? Would you buy a glass or a bottle of wine you liked, -at a home show? You can email us at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com or click the ‘comment’ link below.

A bit of good news, we finally were able to get the www.oakhillwinery.com name bought, registered, whatever. We have been waiting for ten years for whoever owned it to contact us or stop re-registering the name, and they finally did! For now, the www.oakhillwines.com will remain our website, but we will eventually set up a parallel site under the new name and begin the phase-out of the old name over a few years.

Have you visited our newly revamped website? Its still under construction, but I am getting he hang of the new program now, a few bugs to track down and kill. Any suggestions as to new content? Let us know….

Bad Planning or We Need a Bigger Winery?

2010-02-17T13:30:00.001-05:00

We have survived the snow, so far! In the winery business continues to be brisk, I suspect many people are getting cabin fever and need to get out. I hope we have had our snow for the year, its been colder and snowier then a normal year and could use a break myself.

We had our free WINE 101 workshop last Sunday and had a very nice turnout for this program. We like helping people become more wine-literate and it gives us good feedback on what new customers want, like, and think. Watch this space for next month’s free seminar in the coming weeks!

I did have a little problem in the winery regarding the seminar. A BUNCH (way more then four) of our regular folks had made arrangements to meet at the winery and enjoy some wine and snacks. I noticed the BUNCH about 45 minutes before the seminar and went out to let them know we had another group coming in and, well. You know; --Yea, that went over like a lead balloon!

It’s never happened quite like that before and we are not sure how to handle it so it does not happen in the future. We typically ask people who plan on bringing big groups in to let us know, but we have had informal gatherings of people like this at the winery for several years, almost since we first added seating.

When all is said and done, I guess we might just say “Crap Happens” and move on. But we do encourage anyone who PLANS to bring more then six people in for a tasting or to hang around several hours, please check with us so we can accommodate you. We do not want to disappoint, honk-off, irritate, or inconvenience anyone.

Free Wine Seminar Happens Soon!

2010-02-09T09:29:00.000-05:00

Ok, another snowstorm is hammering our area here, but we care not! All that matters is wine, wine, and more wine! We were surprised at the business we had in the winery have my prior rant as to how weather and football kills business, OK I was wrong!

New on the horizon is WINE 101, one in our continuing series of free workshops we hold at the winery. This is a fun and informative one hour session on the in-and-outs of wine. We will talk about stuff like what wine names mean, what is a varietal, and what is an AVA? The workshop will be held this coming Sunday, Feb 14, at 4:30 pm. LOOK GUYS! This is a way you can “Do Something” on a lazy winter afternoon and get credit for having good ideas,

We had a very nice time in Gas City at the Thompson-Ray house wine-tasting. The people there were very kind and said many nice things. We even got a nice article in the local newspaper which featured a shot of the Wine Maker his-self!

Another almost new thing at the winery is several new wines I keep hinting at, but do not ever seem to get bottled. No, I have still not bottled any, but we are getting closer. For example, every fall we introduce an “oaked” version of our popular dry white, MISSISSINEWA WHITE. One problem is we do not also offer the un-oaked version at the same time. Well, we’re almost out of the oaked version and I would expect in a few weeks, the last barrel of our crisp Seyval Blanc will get bottled and labeled.

Once that last barrel is gone, we will move to a Chardonnel version of this label. I suspect many will be delighted, a few disappointed, but you know the old saying, you can’t please everybody all the time!

Have you got a wine related question you’d like answered? Write us at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com and we’ll try to post our responses as soon as possible.

snow and free stuff?

2010-02-05T11:58:00.001-05:00

Oh no! A major snowstorm is bearing down on the winery on a Friday on a weekend that is already marked by The Big Game. I mention this because snowstorms are a business killer, people seem to hunker down during and after a snowstorm and our business slows way down.

This weekend the Big Game will also slow business, wine does not seem to be a “football drink” for most people. Maybe we need the Gallo Bowl to compete with the Bud Bowl? It has been good to see the growth of wine appreciation in general over the past ten years. One publication claims wine sales have gone up every year for the past ten on a national basis.

So, one thought would be if you need something to do this weekend, stop by and see us, we’ll be happy to see you and we’ll have a good bit of time to give you more then the usual amount of attention.

On a side note, I had been asked several months ago to speak at a fund-raiser in Gas City being held tonight and now the snow is a-coming. I hope we do not get too much to botch up the fund raiser, I support a few not-for-profit events, but this is about historical preservation, one of my hot buttons and we are glad to help out.

Another hot button of mine is how many times we get asked to donate stuff every week! The first year we did pitch in a good bit for local stuff as advertising, to let people know we are here. But we get letters from anybody and everybody now and even other states asking us to donate! Now most of these are non-profits and many are charitable institutions, but we have got to be a bit selective as to who we give to and when.

Thanks, I needed to say that, just got a call from a Union in Indy wanting three gift baskets for a meeting they were having, Arragh!

rested and ready for The Big Game

2010-02-01T10:34:00.001-05:00

This week is a busy one in the winery, because I have not been busy doing much for the last month! As previously mentioned, January is our slow-down, de-stress time after the rush of the gift-giving season. I must admit I have accomplished a bit in both the actual de-stressing and fixing-a-few-problems arena.

We finally found a good cooler for the tasting room. We have wanted to stock locally-made cheese and a larger number of chilled wine bottles for our customers, now we can! This will allows us to have our small wine coolers just for tasting bottles.

I have had a number of requests for a Super Bowl party at the winery, especially for wine club members. I think this happened after I set up my old 25” color TV in the tasting room so we could watch the AFC Playoffs. We knew from prior experience our business would be down due to the game, so we decided we’d hang out in the winery and watch ourselves, keeping an eye on the TV and whatever customers who showed up. That amounted to less then ten people in the door from 3 pm to 6 pm and none of them cared about football. But what about the Big Game?

Now, a business cannot just turn on a TV and show the Super Bowl, the game is licensed to for-profits and even not-for-profits for a substantial fee. I heard of several churches that got in trouble for hosting Super Bowl parties without paying their fee, got to pay Caesar his tax!

I am amused by the fact the term “Super Bowl” cannot be used in an ad without paying for it. So you are hearing “the Big Game” and “Championship game” in place of the Real name of the event.

The game starts at 6 pm, we close at 6 pm, we are not having a party, so we are not worried about it. I expect most people have already made plans for where they will be to watch the Game. I hope they remember to pick up some wine to enjoy during the game, we will be open 1-6 pm day of “The Big Game”!

so it goes

2010-01-21T09:25:00.001-05:00

I have told many people who visit the winery one of the winemaker’s challenges is following the progression of taste a wine goes through as it matures. I taste the wine every other week to see what progress has come about, check it for surface molds (yuck!), and check sugar and acid levels.

As an example, I have a wine we put into barrels this fall that I have decided is too sweet, we stopped the fermentation too soon. So I have the choice of re-fermenting all the wine again and trying to stop it at a better sugar level, or do one barrel and ferment it all the way to dryness and then blend it into the too-sweet remaining stock. Which method I choose has yet to be decided, but either should accomplish what we need here, a properly balanced wine.

Last weekend we moved a lot of wine around, “racking” or transferring wine from one container to another has a significant effect on the flavor and character. It is a little more work for us to rack then a typical winery since we have to minimize oxygen contact with the wine since we do not use sulfites as a preservative. The racking process also causes the wine to precipitate out many solids that might otherwise drop out in the bottle.

So the winemaking process goes on, and on, and on. It is what makes winemaking interesting and a constant challenge. But if you do not love it, you might as well get another job…

New & Improved?

2010-01-06T09:30:00.001-05:00

So what is the new stuff in the new year? Well, we are going to upgrade the winery website, I have the first draft done, tried to upload it, but no go yet. So I have some homework to do on how to tear down the old site and replace it with the new.

New seating for the winery? We are considering replacing some seating we have know with some more of the theatre-style seats we already have some of in place. This will allow us to return the old folding seats to storage for use when needed, we often have private parties exceed 20 people.

Background music? One of the many little things about the winery that make me smile is our current “music system”. It’s a $39 Walmart boom box I picked up just before we opened the winery, seeing I was not going to have time install a proper music system before we opened. To think we are still using it six and a half years later is fairly funny, but what’s even funnier is the comments I’ve gotten about how good it sounds. In my day job I sell commercial audio, both fore- and back-ground systems. It’s the old story of the plumber whose wife has a leaky sink that never gets fixed. We have the equipment in-house now to get the right stuff hooked up and sounding good, including outdoors!

Will there be new wines coming out soon? Possibly, we have a blueberry and a Gewurztraminer that are getting close to drink-ability and we might just have those available in the next few months.

The biggest change at the winery is we have new hours since the first of the year. They really are not “new”, we’ve been following this policy since our third year. We are now open SATURDAY and SUNDAY ONLY until June. Still 1-6 PM, so you will find us there at the usual times. One small change is we are keeping the staff on throughout the year and we (Rick & Betty Jo) will be in the winery from time-to-time. We had a very busy 2009 winter season and we thought the extra help would be useful, plus allow us to do more things besides work in the winery every weekend.
Ahh the (almost) Good Life…

In With the New...

2009-12-30T09:35:00.001-05:00

As we begin our eighth year in business, we look forward to new things and old things alike, with enthusiasm. Any business must constantly evolve to survive, it must remake itself every so often to progress and mature its market. Yet we also want to keep that which has made us a success, the tone and tenor of our business, along with the familiar products our customers have come to like and buy again and again.

New things include our wines made with vinifera, or European heritage grapes. For years we have concentrated on native grapes because of their lower cost. The poor economy and a “grape glut” have depressed prices to the point we have been able to buy some of these premium quality grapes at reasonable prices. We hope to be able to continue to offer these, but who knows what the future holds for grape prices?

Other new things include our widening of our wine selection, at present over 20 different wines both sweet and dry. We tried a honey wine in 2009 and expanded our fruit wines as well. One point is that we have seen dry wine sales increase markedly in 2009 and this is a good thing. Dry wines are healthier and pair better with food then the sweet wines. I also think this represents our core customers’ tastes maturing and moving into a greater amount of dry wine purchases.

We are considering the possibility of expand our facility in 2010, its at the “how much will it cost” stage at this point, but our increasing sales volume is making it hard for us to squeeze the wine we need to stock into the space we have now. We thought about a move to another building in Converse quite seriously, but it seems the dollars and cents for adding on to the carriage house just makes more sense, if you see the pun there.

New wine labels debuted in 2009, the first that did not feature 19th century artwork. The one you might have seen is OLD BEN, which honors the stuffed steer that has been displayed in Kokomo for many years. The other label features a picture of the 1930-era water tower that had been a Converse landmark and trademark. We like labels with a local connection and when we introduce WATERTOWER in 2010 as a semi-sweet Gewurztraminer wine , we think both locals and visitor will like it.

What else will 2010 bring? Keep your eye here and we will do our best to keep you up to date. Keep in mind that starting January 1, we will be open only SATURDAY and SUNDAY until June 1, 1-6pm as always. See you in the tasting room!

News & Views?

2009-12-22T09:21:00.001-05:00

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!

Let it snow, a little? -Nah!

2009-12-21T09:40:00.001-05:00

The Guy does not like wine. The question is, then, “What is he doing in a winery?” You can’t really ask that though, so we all just smiled and said, “Would you like to taste some?” Oddly he said “Yes!” Then he leaves with a case of wine for himself and as gifts. The question still hangs in front of me, why did he stop in a winery if he does not like wine?

Actually we get a lot of “Guys” who walk in the door, usually being towed by a wife or girlfriend,,who explain they do not like wine then end up liking at least one they try of our 20+ choices. I wonder why they start out saying they do not like wine?

I suspect what they mean is, “I have never tasted a wine I liked very much” which makes good sense. I also have the person who afterwards admits they were intimidated by the whole “wine experience” thing.

I know what they mean. I went to a fancy dinner a number of years ago and there were four forks, three knives, and two spoons next to my plate. I first thought there had been a mistake, but then I saw everyone had that many. Clearly I was out of my depth, so I watched a gentleman across the table from me and followed his lead on what to eat with which utensil. I never did use the fourth fork though, I understood the salad and dessert fork concept OK, but did they want me to use one fork for my meat and another for veggies? I am still a little lost, but how many fancy dinners do I eat at, huh?

Here we are, two-thirds the way through December and I have not keeled over yet, but we are working hard. The blueberry is still not ready and our new semi-sweet WATERTOWER has not made an appearance yet. Keep in mind after January 1 we go back to being open WEEKENDS ONLY until June 1. We are open Dec 24 and Dec 31 until 6 pm if you need anything!

Just Peachy! Or is it Blueberry?

2009-12-16T08:11:00.001-05:00

So I have this nice little batch of blueberry wine I have been messing with, but I wonder, does anyone really like blueberry wine?

Very few people ask for it. They ask for blackberry, raspberry, cherry, even elderberry. So why make a wine few have asked for? Because its good!

For the past seven years we have featured PERU PEACH on our wine list and, like blueberry, it is not a wine asked for by a majority of visitors. Yet it has sold quite consistently over those years, especially in the summer when the thick, peachy flavor is quite refreshing on a hot day.

After this batch is gone, I do not expect to make any more. Why? Frankly I found the wine takes years to become viable and drinkable using our method of natural production. So if you really like PERU PEACH, stop in and get some right away!

But this is about the blueberry, what do you think? Will blueberry sell? Will people like a blueberry wine? I guess we could bottle a little and find out. What do you think? Click on “comment” below and leave your thoughts or send us an email at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com.

Trying to catch up!

2009-12-14T15:29:00.001-05:00

The madness continues! I have a cramp in my right hand (cue violins) from all the corking over the past weeks. We got 340 gallons of Niagara juice last week, refitted our fermentation tanks, cleaned up generally and found (!) a barrel of Vidal we thought we were out of. Yes, it is possible to “lose” a barrel or in this case, mis-label it as something else. But that means we have another batch of WINDFALL, the marvelous, barely sweet Vidal wine so many of you enjoy.

I had tries to put off the delivery of the juice I mentioned, but the supplier was going to ding us with a storage fee if we did not get it in before January 1. So Saturday was shot messing with it and Sunday I just kept corking. A new batch of SWEETSER is in the tasting room, this blush wine is a bit more what I had in mind then the last batch, less sweet and more tangy I think.

The gift baskets and boxes continue to march out the door, I get more emails and calls asking us to ship wine, but we are not able to do that under present laws without a special permit. We decided the demand is too low and costs too high to be worth while, sorry! The lady from New Jersey will just have to vacation here next year, I guess.

In between sales rushes and bottling, we are talking about what’s going to happen in 2010. The new wine is in the tank, with a few exceptions, so we are looking at a possible addition to the building and some improvements to our seating area, a tweaking of the wine club too? If you have any suggestions, let us know. More heads have better thoughts then fewer heads, you know! oakhillwinery@yahoo.com

Lazy or Busy?

2009-12-04T09:08:00.001-05:00

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.

Its getting real now folks....

2009-11-23T09:00:00.003-05:00

Wow, what a weekend! I do not know if it was the great weather; the Nouveau wine tasting notice I emailed everybody; the approaching holiday season; or a combination of all these. We were very busy this weekend for whatever reason and it kept us hopping.

The Nouveau wine tasting went very well, everyone seemed to enjoy the novelty of trying young red wines, chilled. I was surprised at the number of calls and emails we got asking if we would have the wines available after Saturday or even the weekend for trial. We only bottled a very small amount of these wines, but there is still a case or two of each left, so we will have them as long as they last.

I think I was most surprised at how well they sold, being young as they are. Some folks bought some to use in their own nouveau wine tasting with friends, as a bit of a novelty. Others genuinely enjoyed the wines and bought some for drinking. We warned all to keep in mind the flavor of the wine is not stable; these wines should be bought and drunk with 60 days, at last, in my view.

My wife has been constructing gift baskets at a pretty good clip the past week or so. She is focusing in on the popular $25 price point and will spend this week working on the more expensive baskets. It is quite nice to hear all the favorable comments about our baskets, the funniest one being, “These baskets are too cheap!”. I remind people we sell gift baskets as a way to sell wine, we are not a gift basket company, we’re a winery.

I am working on a sales promotion we’ve used before, the three-bottle gift box. We will offer it with either three bottles of regular production wine, or with two bottles, an Oak Hill Winery wine glass, and wine opener for $27.95. In years past, these handy packages have been popular with the “we forgot to get a house-warming gift and don’t have time to get anything else” crowd.

In the Prove-Me-Wrong category, I had gotten a call last summer from a gift supplier who told me she had a hot item, "cork cages", and I needed a bunch of them. Now I thought that was a stupid idea and said no. Then we went on vacation and saw these things all over the place. My wife enquired at several wineries as to their success in selling these unique items and all agreed they were good sellers. I expressed my skepticism and did not order any. I had several customers ask for these things in October, so I ordered a few and they look nice, seem to do the job they are assigned, but I still think they are silly and will not sell. Prove me wrong…

A new wine? I am working on a wine I had not expected to be ready for distribution until late winter, but it seems to be coming along pretty well. My wife says, “Bottle it!” I am not yet sure, but will play with it over the next few days and see what I think. The big issue with wines that taste good ahead of schedule is whether that flavor is stable and will remain, or will the wine move on to a different flavor structure? Watch here for the POSSIBLE release of our new “WATER TOWER” Gewürztraminer, semi-sweet wine.

We have a few dates left in December for parties, check out the website at www.oakhillwines for more details…

Apple's Smell!

2009-11-19T08:51:00.000-05:00

So I stopped by Hainlen’s Orchard the other day and ordered our apple juice for next year’s batch of KOKOMO CIDER. We went and picked it up Wednesday evening, pumped it into fermentation barrels so it can start the long journey to becoming apple wine.

As I walked into the store at the orchard, the apple smell hit me right between the eyes. I had vivid recollections of youthful visits to similar places with my parents. I glanced at the baskets filled with the many varieties: Rome, Winesap, Yellow Delicious, Macintosh, and many more. An older couple was picking through a bushel of red apples, choosing the biggest and best for a gift basket. I walked through the store into the back room, the coolness and aroma becoming almost a tactile sensation.

I sampled the new apple juice, unfiltered and un-preserved. There has been a lot of complaints about the fact that orchards can no longer sell raw, un-pasteurized cider. It seems there are real apple cider connoisseurs, who feel the raw cider has a much better flavor then the pasteurized stuff. As a winemaker I have to buy it raw, since the pasteurization process makes it impossible to ferment. It has been suggested that is one reason cider lovers miss the raw cider, it does not turn into a nice hard cider in the fridge anymore. Humm?

Last night we finished up labeling the Nouveau wines for our special tasting this Saturday (1-6 pm). This is a first for our winery, but we felt since we were going to offer European “vinifera” grape wines next year, we might try following the European tradition of the Nouveau wine release. If you’re planning on coming, remember we have very short supply of these wines, but will have tasting all day Saturday the 21st.

I think you will be pleased with these very young wines, we tried some of the Shiraz chilled the other evening and I was very happy with its flavor. We hope you’ll come by and try it yourself!

Anger Management

2009-11-11T08:39:00.002-05:00

I think on of the great joys of owning a small winery, as compared to a big one, is you can make small batches of wine and see what people think of them without making your life too complicated.

One of the problems of making small batches of wine is people who like them often come back wanting more after you’ve run out. You suggest they might try something else, they insist they want more of the now long-gone wine. You mention you might make some next year and they seem appalled they might have to wait a year to get more of this small batch of wine. In toto, we appreciate the support but find the whining aggravating; All out of proportion with what we should. I need to have a glass of wine and mellow out.

A case in point is a wine we have been making for a number of year, BORDERMEN, a cranberry-grape blend we have each fall. We typically make a 100 cases and it sells quite well in November and December and is gone by January. I have been asked about 100 times, “When are you going to have Bordermen again?”.

I am happy to say we have bottled the first of the 2008 vintage of this fine wine and it is in the winery ready to be tasted and bought. I popped in the winery one afternoon and asked our staffer, “See we got Bordermen, now they will quit complaining!” She replied, “Well yes, but this batch does not taste like last year’s.”

Now, this wonderful employee is great at her job and I often over-react, but to avoid a stroke or possibly a murder rap, I left the building. Of course the new wine does not taste exactly like last year’s, it’s a new batch, a new vintage, its all new and bound to be a bit different and she knows that. Most wines taste a bit different year to year, its one the the things I like best about wine, the variety and the hunt for a great wine every year. Its was just a harmless comment and I got over-wrought by it. Mellow, mellow, mellow, and have a glass of wine.

So help me stay out of trouble and anger management classes: when we run out of Bordermen this year (or next), don’t ask me when we’ll have more. Ask my wife…

Nouveau Release, Yea or Nay?

2009-11-06T08:33:00.001-05:00

Ok, we gave them a try, a barrel tasting with some friends and I think, YES! We will have a release of our new 2009 vintage red wines on Saturday, November 21. So what is that all about?

In a previous post I talked about the tradition of Nouveau wine releases in Europe and how they are celebrated on the third Thursday of November. These wines are typically served chilled, unusual for dry wines, and are described as light in character and simple in flavor. What that means for sweet wine drinkers is they should give these refreshing selections a try, they might just be surprised. Plus, its a great excuse for a litle party!

These wines are great to chill and serve with cheese and crackers, they compliment Italian foods with red sauces very nicely. I found them to have enough body to play well with hamburgers or pot roast.

We will have a very small supply of these wines bottled for sale on the 21st, but it is a small supply. Why? Because these wines I expect will be very nice in 12 months, or rather now nine months as serious dry red wines for next season.

More on Missouri wine

2009-11-04T08:34:00.000-05:00

The tour of selected Missouri wineries continues: We headed out on a Saturday to hit several wineries in the St. James area, enjoying decent weather and expecting crowds. We were surprised at how few people we found out on this delightful autumn day.

We wanted to hit a few old favorites and a new spot or two. We headed for FERRINGO’s winery, located in an old barn just outside town. In our last visit in 2007, we met the owner who had suffered a recent stroke. As we turned into the drive, we found the old name was gone and new sign, TWO SQUIRREL’s winery, was in its place. A gentleman working outside said the winery was not yet licensed, but should open in the next month or so. I hesitated, thanked the man and pulled out of the lot. I wanted to ask, but decided not to ask after the previous owner.

We headed on to the next stop, HEINRICHHAUS vineyard and winery, well out in the country. The owner was born in the Rhine Valley in Germany, speaks with a thick accent, and has some strong feelings about wine and winemaking. Heinrich only makes dry wines, typically has five to six for sampling off an old oak wine barrel in his small tasting room. Its best to taste all the wines or you may get “The Look” when you say you don’t care for reds or whites. His wine is excellent, unique, and the experience is well worth the drive up his long, narrow lane.

We had never stopped at ROSATI winery and vineyard, in the very small town of Rosati, so we drove the short distance to see what they had. We drove along rows of grapevines, for mile after mile ad when we got to the winery, it was closed! The sign said “Winery Museum open 2010”, so we headed back into St. James proper.

We always enjoyed visiting the ST JAMES winery, it is one of the largest in the state and has a different approach to wine sales. Their wine tasting is self-serving, you grab a small plastic cup and pour a sample of whatever of the many wines they offer. The prices grab your attention, from $3.99 to $12.99 a bottle with generous discounts for case purchases. We talked with some of the staff who agreed they get a lot of questions about prices, but their whole concept is to sell a lot of wine and build a strong and loyal customer base. They distribute their wine nationally, so you can find it even locally.

All-in-all, we found a lot of great wines and bought a good bit ourselves. We enjoy this annual visit to the wine country of Missouri, but there are many more wineries we have not visited, including a wine region south of St Louis that is gaining national recognition. We’ve got to work that in next year, maybe?

NOUVEAU WINE TASTING: We are planning a tasting of the 2009 vintage wine on Saturday, November 21 during regular business hours of our three dry red wines. Watch here for more information!

Break Time is Over

2009-11-02T09:57:00.001-05:00

It was a long rainy week in the hills of Missouri but we had a good time anyway. In the nine days we were away we visited 15 wineries, several wine shops, and met some interesting people. It was a different trip for us because we hit the wineries on the weekends, we usually hit them on a weekday, and you get a different experience between those two choices.

First, many wineries offer abbreviated tasting lists on the weekends due to the volume of customers, limiting tasting to six popular choices. We sweet-talked our way around that though; they appreciate the dry wine drinkers who buy more then a bottle or two. Second, there is often live entertainment in open air venues or even karaoke as we found in one case. Third, parking is a real pain at the larger wineries and you have to do some walking from your car to the tasting room. Here are a few places we visited:

We wanted to visit MONTELLE winery located just outside Augusta to try their new vintage Dry Vignoles, but we were too late! The 2007 vintage had won best Missouri wine in 2008 and the new batch got hammered as it was bottled and put on the market. We did enjoy their wines very much, this new winery is partnered with an old favorite of ours, AUGUSTA winery, and we know the winemaker pretty well. Montelle is designed for the big crowds, the people looking to spend an hour or two, they offer a nice place to taste, drink, and even eat while sitting on a hilltop overlooking the wine country scenery.

Next was AUGUSTA winery and there was a line to get in at opening. This winery above all others we visit anywhere has consistently offered exceptional wines at very low prices. They have a strong offering of dry reds and whites with case prices well under $10 a bottle.

We skipped the other local winery, MOUNT PLEASANT, since we have never been real fond of their wines. It’s a beautiful setting and a huge place, but we also heard they were the first winery in the area to introduce paid tasting! So we drove by and headed towards BIAS winery and micro-brewery. This place is way off the beaten path and up a narrow lane, it’s small and quaint, but had a large crowd of folks who looked like they were settled in for a while.

BLUMENHOF winery, near Dutzow is a nice newer winery with good wine. We had a mission to stop there because my wife had made friends with an employee the previous year and promised her a bottle of our wine she thought sounded good. They were cranking up the music as we left and the parking lot was filling, everyone had a picnic basket and was headed for a table.

We headed for Hermann with its numerous wineries and another must-visit place, STONE HILL winery. We always enjoy stopping here and tasting their many wines, Stone Hill is one of the big players in MO wine and has tasting rooms around the state. They also have a great eatery called the Vintage restaurant, but it was packed and had a long waiting list.

Passing by many other wineries, we headed towards St James where another cluster of wineries awaited us. Watch here later for an update on those wineries and how it rained almost all week. But now the vacation is over and we are back and headed into the busy season, ready to get it done! Lots of new stuff coming, so stay tuned…

A Busman's Holiday

2009-10-20T08:45:00.002-04:00

So we are getting amped up for a trip to Missouri this weekend, we’re going to hit as many wineries as we can in two days along the Missouri River. I was asked recently why we enjoyed visiting other wineries while on vacation from our winery.

I think this goes back to one of the key points in owning a winery. I have met people who thought owning a winery was “cool” (Sure); I have met people who think there is good money in the winery business (Wrong); I have met people who want to be their own boss (Reasonable); and I have met people who thought it would be an easy business to run (Crazy).

Finding work that speaks to a passion you hold in your heart has to be a dream for many and a goal for some. For many of us who own wineries we do this because we love it, we love the wine business, we love wine. When you can make a living off your passion, life is good.

But for us, we have not reached that goal; we cannot yet live off the winery financially. Every year is better then the year before and we have met our financial goals set five or more years ago. When we started thinking about a winery, it was a dream. As it approached reality, we were able to see our plan was reasonable and measurable. We hit our first year sales goal and five out of six years we have exceeded our expectations, following that plan. We have adjusted the plan, adapted our methods, and moved forward. The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel has gone from dim to quite bright. The business is a passion for us.

But when we think about vacation, we always ask, “What wineries can we visit?” because wine is truly a passion for us, not just the business, but enjoying wine itself. When we go to Missouri, we search out the outstanding wines, those that make us smile. We want not just the average, but the outstanding.

Last year we were surprised to find a Dry Vignoles from Montelle Winery was the best wine we tried and we came home with a case. Strangely, we would have not even tried it had not an employee at another winery pointed it out to us. She said it was a fabulous wine and well worth the drive out-of-the-way to visit the winery and try it. She was right and we all loved it.

A great side benefit from our taking several winery tours each year is we can give visitors to our winery advice on where to go for weekends and vacations to find the style of wines they might prefer. In a future post, I will give a sketch of what we have found in our travels: Where to find the best sweet, off-dry, dry white, dry red, and just about every kind of wines you might want.

LOVERS OF KOKOMO CIDER: Keep in mind we only have 200 gallons (1000 bottles) this year of our popular sweet apple wine. The locally poor 2008 apple harvest kept us from getting as much of this wine as we usually get, so if you are planning on serving this delightful wine as a hot-spice holiday treat, come in and get you supply soon!

Bitter Wine

2009-10-16T09:05:00.002-04:00

It is said by many that an aged wine is a better wine. But that is a broad statement which is not true in general terms. For example, the vast majority of sweet wines do not improve with age, it’s our recommendation you should not buy more of our sweet wines then you can drink in six to 12 months.

The issue as to whether a dry wine improves with age is a bit of a trick question. It can be said that wine CHANGES as it ages without argument, the question is whether those changes are improvements, -does the wine taste better today then it day a year ago? Only much experience and taste-testing will answer this question.

I recall the example of the man who paid over $3,000 for a bottle of an 1898 French wine at auction and gave it as a gift to a dear friend, who was a bit of a wine enthusiast. The wine was opened on a special occasion and found to be bitter, quite undrinkable. The recipient of this “fine wine” was said to say, “A bottle of wine is very much like a human being. In its youth its shallow and thin, but can be interesting to some. As it matures, it gains fullness and complexity, as well as a wider circle of admirers. But too often at the end it can be sour and distasteful. Such is too often life for us all.”

As I have aged, I have found this story to contain a fair amount of truth and relevance. This week I heard of a dear friend who had been fighting cancer successfully, until now. The cancer has spread and the outlook is bleak.

The taste in my mouth is sour over this, I believe a part of who we are, is who we know. Our friends are the landscape of our life, adding color and interest, flavor and tenor. Take them away and we become less.

A crucial part of this process is we may impress ourselves into this situation. We can feel and see the grief of the family and knowing the inevitability of life and its end, we see our future grief and hurt. We cannot avoid it, it happens to all and that is the sourness of ageing for humans.

Like the old wine, as we age the potential for a bad ending increases. Yet I think the people who surround those we lose suffer in some ways more then the patient. At some point, the suffering ends for the patient. For those who cared, the hole in our hearts remains for many years and with time the bitter taste will diminish, never gone but manageable.

Those of us who remain must move on to other "bottles of wine" knowing they will not be bitter and joy can yet be found in many. We move on knowing that is what our dear friend would want us to do and we hold close the memories of the many bottles we shared during their too short time with us. Yet still we do grieve…

Reading the Customer's Mind

2009-10-12T08:24:00.002-04:00

One of the ongoing challenges we face as a small business is the question, what else do we want to sell besides our wine? When we were considering opening the winery, we talked to a lot of small winery owners to get advice and input.

One consistent comment I heard in the way of advice was, “Don’t spend a bunch of money on accessories!” It was suggested that too often you tied way too much money up in do-hickies and gadgets that only a few people might want to buy. Your money was better spent on items directly related to wine and wine drinking that are proven winners, sales-wise.

Let me tell you, even a small place like ours gets many calls each week from salespeople with wine-related stuff they want us to buy from them so we can sell. Recently, I had a call from a guy who sells wine and grape themed jewelry, he claimed we could make “big money” selling his stuff. Yea, right.

We have made some good choices and a few bad ones. We bought a bunch of glass cutting boards, those have not sold well, but I still like them myself. We recently brought in a new wine bottle stopper made of silicone, rather then the old plastic models we had been selling. They are supposed to last longer and give a better seal. We’ll see…

I have always been cheap when it comes to corkscrews, preferring a simple $10 model to the $25 fancy-pants gizmos some people use. We have sold a few of the fancy ones, but at least one broke the first time it was used and it took me three months to get a replacement.

We have always had a few artists and craftspeople whose goods we sell on consignment during the gift-giving season. This year we have some hand-painted glasses and wine bottles that are beautiful and have been selling very well! They have been very popular as wedding gifts I notice and I suspect they will continue to sell well as we get farther along in the year.

Keep us in mind when you are shopping for that hard-to-satisfy friend or relative, where else can you find locally-made joy-in-a-bottle that makes a great gift?!?

hot-n-spicy wine?

2009-10-09T18:30:00.001-04:00

The cool weather has taken hold and I think we might need to whip up a new batch of our sweet apple wine, KOKOMO CIDER. Its been a best seller for many years here and we hope the 2009 version will live up to expectations.

The interesting thing is, we sell a fair amount of KC in the spring and summer, it’s a refreshing warm-weather drink. But sales go through the roof beginning in late fall through the holiday season. The key is adding a few key spices and warming the KC up a bit. It has been called wassail, hot-spiced cider, a hot toddy, and even “Super Cider”.

We do offer some cider spices, made right here in good old Indiana from a company called Marion-Kay, plus a recipe on how we make it taste for samples here in the tasting room. Many people make it in a sauce pan in advance, make a gallon or more, then heat it up in crock pots when needed. It stores surprisingly well for a week or more.

We expect to introduce our new Kokomo Cider in the next week or so, so stop by and check out how the new batch tastes cold and hot-n-spicy .

Honey, where are the TV trays?

2009-10-02T15:38:00.002-04:00

The mess has officially begun! Every fall we dig out the boxes of stuff we need to build the gift baskets we sell by then bunch load and thus, we lose our dining room.

Oh, for those of you who do not know, we live next door to the winery. We do all the winemaking, sales, bottling, and tasting in the old 1894 carriage house we converted into our small winery. The problem is its really not big enough, so we do a few things in the house and one that always makes a big mess is the gift basket assembly area i.e. the dining room table.

For the last three months of the year I eat among bows, ribbons, grass packing material, wine glasses, and all the do-hickies that we put in the gift baskets, Boxes and boxes of stuff, piled six to seven feet high, its an obstacle course to just get through the place.

Now, I am not complaining. Its great when someone comes in during the winter and says, “A friend gave me a gift basket with your wine in it and we decided to come over and do a tasting!”

I have to laugh when I remember the harried guy who came rushing up the stairs, burst into the tasting room, and said in a loud voice, “Honey, we’re golden, they do have gift baskets!” It seems someone forgot to pick-up a house-warming gift and halfway there it dawned on them they had nothing with which to warm the new house.

My favorite though will remain the solid looking, gray-haired man with a mustache who came in and said, “I had never tasted your wine before, figured ot was all sweet. The I got a gift basket from a business friend with your dry reds and I thought they were good. So here I am to see what you’ve got in toto.” Made me think of the actor Ronald Coleman and a heavy English accent. He would have made a great butler, but acted more like he had one himself.

So, pay attention to the gift baskets next time you are in, $19.95 to $49.95, my wife went to a lot of work to make them, so take one or two home!

Ponderings and Rackings

2009-09-28T21:42:00.002-04:00

I guess Fall fell today, with lower temp’s and gusty breezes. I noted the leaves turning, almost overnight, from green to golds and reds. I note new TV shows are also turning up, like those leaves I noted, even more old shows are starting new seasons. Yet I find my joy in the slippery goo I scrub from the bottom of my fermentation barrels. Yes, I did watch a bit of football and PBS’ new feature, The National Parks, by Ken Burns.

Both football and TV have their devotees and fanatics and those who do not share these affectations find it hard to understand the devotion, the obsession. I was asked Monday by a coworker at my day-job if I had a restful weekend and I laughed. I mentioned I had worked myself to exhaustion or at least to extreme tiredness. My day job is often more relaxing then winemaking and I like my job a good bit. But winemaking is my obsession.

As I pumped the new wine from barrel to barrel, it frothed and foamed. As the fermentation slows almost to a stop, a move into a new container injects some air and evident energy into the almost-wine. It reawakens the remaining yeast to action and the last bit of sugar contained in the fluid is attacked and transformed into alcohol and CO2. The almost-wine is a step closer to becoming what we hope it will be.

I revisited the barrels I had filled (racking we call it) a few days ago and opened the lids and stared into the still almost-wine. I took a few drops and set them on my tongue, the yeasty nature speaking the words, “Not yet, not yet!” Of course a wine newly fermented was not yet wine of a drinkable nature, but there is promise in those tastes.

Winemakers tend to be optimistic about new wine, we look for the good in the new vintage, --oh that we would do equally the same in our dealings with people. Every month for at least six months I will taste the almost wine and tracks its maturity and progress as it turns into a worthwhile beverage. Pride in our craft drives the hope that we have done something more then average, something that people will find pleasure in drinking.

This year I have an exceptional pride in our wooded Seyval Blanc, I feel it is more then just good and worthwhile as a serious wine. We have many wines I feel this way about, but I keep quiet when asked because that’s just an opinion, not a fact. Let the taster make his or her own judgment because in the end, it’s the taster’s opinion that counts.

Beaujolais or Bust?

2009-09-25T08:58:00.001-04:00

Work, work, work! Yes, I have been busting the chops a bit in the winery (whaaaa!) No pity huh? Well, that’s OK, its what it is after all. Its funny how you can have a true passion for your work but still have days work sucks. But I suspect that’s true of many people, good days, bad days.

So the juice is fermenting and the wine is getting bottled and we are getting tight on space in our little 25’ x 30’ winemaking area. We keep talking about adding on, but I am a bit cheap, so I keep squeezing in barrels, tanks, and other stuff.

This weekend we will start to consolidate the fermenting wine into new barrels. You cannot fill a tank or barrel full because fermenting juice foams up quite a bit, some more then others. Once the primary fermentation is done, you need to transfer all the almost-wine to full tanks and barrels, where it continues to make its way to becoming drinkable wine. We have six different batches that are ready to move, so my weekend is pretty much scheduled.

On top of that, we are behind in getting the new fruit wines bottled, blackberry and red raspberry in particular. We did get a new wine on the shelf, an off-dry, slightly sweet Vidal we call WINDFALL you might want to try. The new version of SWAYZEE is on the shelf, a great food wine with the barest hint of sweetness. The new dry red, HANGING ROCK is a Foch we are very happy with, we hope tasters like it too.

We have had a lot of requests for our BORDERMEN cranberry wine and we hope to have that out before November. We should be able to keep up this fall with all the fruit wines, once we get them back on the shelf.

We have pretty much all the 2008 vintage on line now and are hard at work on the 2009. We hope to have some surprises for you when you come back in six to nine months to see the first of the new vintage. I was asked the other day whether we would have a Beaujolais Nouveau style wine to offer this year. Oh, what is“Beaujolais” you ask?

It’s a French tradition of drinking the first wine of the new vintage which began a long time ago, but became popular in the early 20th century. The release and process is regulated by law in Europe but not here, so here in the USA when a winery talks about its Beaujolais wine, it’s the first release.

Typically, these early French wines are light in character, often served chilled (!), and fruity in taste. It seems the concept of having a Beaujolais party on November's third Thursday (19th this year) is more about having a party then the wine itself. Half the fun is knowing people around the world are doing what you are doing, drinking red wine before its time.

Now, back to the question “Will Oak Hill Winery have a Nouveau style wine this year?” I don’t know yet, but I was thinking we might see if any of our new reds were drinkable by the 21st, the third Saturday in November (we’re not French, after all) and we just might have a barrel tasting that day…?? We’ll see, keep checking back and we’ll let you know!

Grape New Year

2009-09-16T21:12:00.000-04:00

The phone rings, the emails ping-pong back and forth. Prices, brix, acid, and juice-or-fruit questions fly around. Its harvest time and we are scrambling to buy the best fruit and juice to make the new season’s wine.

I admire farmers in general but in my line of work I especially admire vineyard owners. A few days can make for a better or worse crop in terms of when-to-pick; a late rain can dilute the sugar; no sun can inhibit ripeness; and so much of these factors are out of control of the owner.

They can be smart and they can be just fortunate in weather, rain, bugs, and timing. The difference for the wine made from the fruit can be huge and the financial rewards are also up in the air. Some vineyard owners grow for wineries and some grow for their own winery, only their excess is available to us other guys.

But we are happy when we find some great fruit at a good price. I never complain about prices because I know how much work growing grapes is, if the price is too high, I don’t buy. Most often the higher priced fruit comes from the independent growers, they have no winery to subsidize the grape growing. I try to buy at least half my fruit from these folks, they allow small wineries to make great wine through their efforts, they deserve whatever premium they can get for the work.

I love the smell of yeast in the morning, it smells like, victory! Ok, I also love the smell all day….

Cheesecake Details and more

2009-09-08T13:35:00.001-04:00

So what is the Cheesecake Festival all about? Well, before we opened we visited many wineries and asked them about many things, including promotional events. Wilson Winery in Delaware County mentioned their BIG EVENT was their own cheesecake making contest, we liked the idea and set up our own the second year we were open.

It was well attended and everyone liked sampling the home-made cheesecakes and the commercial entries as well. The next year I sent a press release out to the surrounding newspapers a few weeks before the event, hoping to get a mention so we could get more entries. The Kokomo Tribune has a very nice entertainment section every Friday (called “Friday” interestingly enough) and the editor is a bright and delightful young lady named Erin Shultz. She called us and came out for an interview and brought a photographer and told us they’d run “a bit” in the Friday newspaper about the event.

They ran a front page “teaser” on both Wednesday and Thursday; then had a large photo of wine and cheesecake on the cover of the section. The article was several pages and clearly, people read it. Over 400 people showed up for our second cheesecake festival. We had people waiting to get in line; to get in the door; to get in line for a taste of cheesecake and wine. We had customers who saw we were swamped and pitched in and helped service cheesecake. I think this big turnout was what helped make this event so big.

I still send out press releases, but we don’t get a quite the response from newspapers these days we did then and honestly, I am glad. Our little building can’t really handle 400 people and that many stresses me and the staff out.

Saturday is also Converse Homecoming Days, a nice town festival in its own right with a parade, vendors, contests, etc. Check it out at:
http://townofconverse.com/homecoming-flyer-2009.pdf

Oh, the entries, yes. If you want to enter the contest, commercial entries can be dropped off Friday or Saturday by 2 pm (open 1-6 both days). Amateur entries can be dropped off Friday all day and Saturday by 4 pm. We suggest you use disposable pans, but we will have any non-disposables ready for pick-up by Monday. There will be a form to fill out and all award winners will be contacted, grand prize winners will have their photo taken and posted in the winery for a year.

I must mention we have Chad Shrock coming by to perform his wandering minstrel show of celtic-to-elvis music from 2-to-5 pm. Come buy and enjoy his show, like all special events at the oak hill winery, its free!

Red hands at night...

2009-09-02T10:18:00.001-04:00

Ahh yes, I have them now! Working with red grapes tends to dye your hands a deep, dark, shade of maroon and this does not even consider your clothes. Red wines always stains and yes, we have special cleaner to remove red wine stains, but these are work clothes. The red stains are a mark of honor or at least of effort put forth.

Truth be told this is the work that really makes you take notice of what shape you are in and how old you are. Certainly we use pumps to move most of the juice around, but that still requires a good bit of physical effort.

Recently, we got in a load of white grape juice from out-of-state and the vineyard had frozen the juice to keep it from fermenting while in transit. The unseasonably cold days and nights we have been having did not thaw the containers out as they have in the past by the time they hit our building. The result was grape juice slushy and the first thing to freeze and last thing to thaw is the water portion of the juice.

Now an old hand like myself should have known that, right? Well, I was tired and did not think it through very well. So when I went back the next day to check the sugar and acid level, one tank was 29-brix (very high sugar content) and the other was 16-brix (somewhat low). SO… --I got the pump out and started pumping from one tank to the other until I had a nice 22-brix balanced across both tanks.

Now we just have to wait for the temperature to come up to about 75 degrees and we can add the yeast, then its just another short 6-12 months and it will be wine! Patience is the key in winemaking; oh, and sanitation too.

Indiana Cheese or Cheesecake?

2009-08-28T09:11:00.000-04:00

We are coming up on two special events held fairly close together: "Cheese Days" at the winery will begin Saturday, August 29, from 1-6 pm and go until you guys eat all the cheese. What are Cheese Days? We buy many pounds of several specialty cheeses and when you come in to try our wines, we give you free samples to eat along with the wine.

Now, the cynical will say, “You are trying to sell us some cheese!”. Actually, no. While we do sell cheese to anyone who might want to nibble a bit here at the winery, cheese sales represent about .00001% of our business volume; Ok, I made that number up, but its not like cheese sales is a part of our master plan, we sell a little cheese because people expect to be able to buy a chunk of cheese to have with their wine.

Normally we keep a few pounds of cheese in our cooler for customers. We would like to find a regular line of cheese we can stock and sell that is unique and pairs well with our wines. A few years ago we teamed up with an Indiana cheesemaker from southern Indiana, but they stopped selling wholesale. Last year we tried another Indiana maker, but had problems buying wholesale from them because we were not Kroger. Marsh, or Walmart. This year we are trying another Indiana brand from Berne (www.swisslandcheese.com) and we hope you’ll like them.

On Saturday, September 12, we will have our most popular event, the Cheesecake Festival, with free cheesecake samples (yes, it goes with dessert wines) and a cheesecake contest for professional and amateur entries. Watch here next week for more details!

Not-so-pithy Comments on our Michigan trip

2009-08-21T19:23:00.002-04:00

We visited several wineries in southwest Michigan this past weekend, a few in northwest Michigan this week and I thought you’d like a report on what we found. Starting on Saturday, August 15, I got irked right off...

We stopped by Lemon Creek, but they wanted $5 for five tastes. Then we went to Round Barn, an old favorite, where they also wanted $5 for five wines, plus one dessert wine, and one vodka taste, - - -the trick was you could also get five tastes at their “sister” winery (Free Run) up the road for that same fee.

We walked out of both since I have a problem (read prior posts here) with fee-based wine tasting AND short wine flights for tasting. I talked to one tasting room manager who was apologetic, explaining why they charged and limited tastes. First, they get hundreds of visitors on weekends and pouring that much wine is expensive (boo-hoo! – my comment). Second, because the wineries are so close together, they worry someone who tastes a lot of wine at each winery will be too drunk to drive.

A basic responsibility of pouring wine samples is you may not pour for someone who is under the influence already. This limit of four, five, or six wines for tasting is supposed to help this problem; it might give them some help in a court case where they are being sued for negligence? Ask a lawyer, but I think better training is the answer…

Hickory Hills was the first winery where we tasted wine and we were very pleased with its efforts. The whites were above average and the reds very good. The tasting room had a window that allowed us to watch them bottling that day. The setting is modest and the tasting room is a bit small, but they got it going on where it counts, the wines were great.

Tabor Hill is the "big monkey" in this part of the state, St Julien’s covers more ground, but Tabor Hill is as well known regionally as ST.J. The tasting room and restaurant are nice, but not great. The tasting room seems geared towards groups and the tasting crew acted a bit bored with their repetitive job. The wine was good, we were limited to six tastes (no charge!). We found several good buys there, but the whole feel of the place was not to my taste. They featured a gourmet chocolate line made in Florida (?) and I thought their tasting room was a bit small for a winery where its known to pack-them-in on the weekends.

Our last stop this day was Founders Cellars, a brand new winery in Boroda, literally a week away from their opening celebration and not yet done decorating. But they were selling wine, so we did a tasting (no charge, no limit) and we met the winemaker. It seems he was formerly with Tabor Hill, then moved to Kentucky where he opened a winery for a number of years. Actually, a good bit of his wine on hand was from his Kentucky winery and labeled as such, but he has a few locally vinted wines already. Good wine, nice folks and reasonable prices too.

Later in the week, we stopped by a unique winery called Douglas Valley, near Manistee. They advertised the fact they were 100% organic based and they were selling lots on their 640-acre land for vacation homes in which you had to have an organic fruit or vegetable plot of one acre or more. I was trying to get whether this was a housing development using a winery to sell land or a winery selling land using a developer? I should say the wine was good, I especially liked their hard cider.

Our last winery jaunt was through the very popular Traverse City area, where wineries are springing up all over the Old Mission and Leelanau peninsulas where they grow grapes and cherries like we grow corn and soybeans. I’ll mention just a few of the more then 25 wineries in this area less then 30 miles across and 20 miles tall, we hit a few of our favorites and one new one.

Chateau Chantal is a favorite because it looks the way my winery would look if money was no object. Sitting on a hill overlooking more then 100 acres of vineyard, you can see water on both sides of the peninsula. The tasting room is well designed and handles a crowd well. The wines are top notch, both red and white. The tasting staff gives everyone six tokens to use for six tastes, so we were limited, but our pourer seemed to forget to take a token for each taste, so we got eight.

Next we went to a small winery making superior white wines, Bowers Harbor. I have been drinking their “unwooded” Chardonnay for many years and it is one of the wines I buy without much regard to price (almost no regard). We tried our six allotted tastes and our server was quick to offer a couple more.

The last stop I will write about is a new winery on the Leelanau Peninsula called 45 North. I wanted to stop there in particular because the owner had stopped by our little winery a few weeks prior and bought some wine. It was a huge surprise when we learned the owner hails from Warsaw, Indiana, just about an hour from our place! This winery is not yet complete, the tasting room is not yet done and there is much landscape to finish. The wines are finished, however, and I would like to recommend the 2008 Pinot Gris, which is one of the best I have tasted.

As an Indiana winemaker, I encourage fellow Hoosiers to visit our local wineries, but if you happen to pass a Michigan winery, it might be worth a taste, unless they charge you! J

Your anonymous comments can be made by clicking the “comments” right below this post…

On the Road Again?

2009-08-13T13:43:00.000-04:00

So this weekend we’re going to take a little wine tour of our own, we’re going to hit some of the SW Michigan wineries to see what they are up to. This is an exciting time in the wine biz, we are about a month out of harvest and the forecast is good here in Indiana and in Michigan.

We talked about trying some mainstream grapes as a trial this year and we are going to move ahead with that, focusing on red wines and rhine-style wines. I feel our weakest line has been our dry reds, we’ve had some good ones, but there are not a lot of red grapes that make great dry red wines that grow well in the Midwest. So we are going to take a shot with some Shiraz, cabernet franc, and pinot noir. Small batches, so we will keep those interested up-to-date on “when” they can try them and even buy them if they like’em.

I have been toying with a new batch of Foch I think might do well as a dry red wine, but my intent was to release it as a semi-sweet. Our last batch of SWAYZEE was made with Chancellor grapes, but the batch before that was Foch. Both grapes have a nice flavor with a bit of sweetness. I was very happy with the Chancellor, but it was a test batch (120 gallons) I tried at the urging of a supplier. I had a few folks disappointed that the Swayzee was not a Foch, but many liked the Chancellor version as well or better.

We tend to be flexible with the grape we use for an established label, but we keep that wine in the same style as prior versions. There are a few exceptions due to popularity, like FAIRMOUNT, BUNKER HILL, KOKOMO CIDER, and JALAPA. We have so many people who walk in and ask for these wines by name, we hesitate to monkey with them much, although we always suggest a tasting.

So a future blog will talk about what we learned on our swing through SW Michigan’s wine country, we expect good things!

into a glass and darkly...

2009-08-05T09:07:00.001-04:00

Staring deep into a glass of wine can be mesmerizing. White wine shows shades of gold and amber, of straw and wheat, the light beams through making the glass glow.

Red wine varies from light reds like a stop light to deep purple-black that absorbs the light more then refracts it.

Occasionally, we see small specks floating about the wine, some so small so as to barely visible. We look closely, is that a dead bug? No, just a speck of something left from the winemaking process. Is this something we want to swallow? Is it harmless? The answer is yes, but this begets the further question of why they are little specks in the wine?

Wine particles can be missed by the filtration process or are created when they precipitate out of the wine after bottling. We see this a good bit in our wines since we do not use the “fining” chemicals used by most wineries, preferring to offer “naturally-made” wines as a healthy alternative.

But we continue to learn. Recently we purchased higher grade filters for our bottling line that we expect will have a significant impact on the amount of residual particulate matter in the wine.

The degree to which a winemaker filters his wine is one of personal preference, some winemakers TIGHTLY filter the wine, as low as .45 microns for white and fruit wines. Others do not like to filter below 1, or 5, or even 10 microns for fear of damaging the flavor of the wine.

Filtering is just one process a winemaker can use to affect the appearance of the wine, most use various chemical additives to stabilize the wine, to cause the wine to drop out any possible solids that might fall out in the bottle.

We feel filtering by itself does not significantly deteriorate the flavor of our wines, so we will move forward with our new filters and see what effect it has on the appearance of our products.

For several months we have been using synthetic corks in our wines and with generally good feedback. We’d like to hear from more customers if they like, dislike, or don’t care about this new cork we are using. Can you get it out of the bottle with little problem? Write me and next time we’ll see what you readers write about corks… at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com

Decisions, Decisions

2009-07-30T08:42:00.000-04:00

I was reading a Dilbert cartoon book last evening and one series caught my attention. Dilbert asks his boss to choose between two options, diametrically opposed. His boss says, “Do both!” to Dilbert’s frustration.

It gave me pause as I have been pondering whether to jump in and make some vinifera wines or stick with native and hybrid grapes we’ve been using since we opened. The answer was so obvious I am surprised no one suggested it! “Do both!”

Now that is not as simplistic a thought as you might guess, especially with a small winery having very limited space and storage capacity. But if we do it on a reasonable scale, I think this could work. We will produce a line of vinifera wines to offer in tandem with our regular fare. Of course, we will have to limit how much we make, but this is a solution to allow the customers to taste and decide which they prefer.

One suggestion that a reader did make was to offer both naturally-made and more conventionally made wines. We have been offering low sulfite, naturally made wines since we opened, although there is some frustration with suppliers who sulfite their juices in storage. We’ll address the issue of what impact the “naturally-made” angle of our wine has had on sales and the effect it has on market in an upcoming blog.

Now, does anyone have a really good Pinot Noir recipe? :)

Six Years already?

2009-07-27T13:46:00.003-04:00

Yes, we've been open here for six years now, plus two more making wine and remodeling the carriage house, plus two years before that planning and pondering whether we could be successful. But the place has been open to the public for six years...

The traditional sixth anniversary gifts are candy, iron, or wood. Now, we are not wrangling for any gifts ourselves, but we are looking forward to having a nice party for our customers 1-6pm on Saturday, August 8th. I will not promise we will have any candy, iron, or wood for you either, but we will have some fun things going on.

From 1-5 pm we will have free tours of our modest winemaking area at the top of each hour (1-2-3-4-5 pm); We will have live music from 3 to 6 pm outside, under the deck. Chad Schrock is returning to the winery with his unique blend of celtic and modern music, playing mandolin and guitar.

We will be introducing an oaked version of our popular white wine, MISSISSINEWA WHITE, made with Seyval Blanc and spending many months soaking in Hungarian Oak. We’ve been sneaking some sips from the barrel and its going to be good, if I do say so myself. But we only made one barrel, so don’t miss it!

There will be some other stuff happening and some other surprises. We hope to see you there…

Your opinions do count

2009-07-24T08:25:00.000-04:00

You guys are funny, no really. 17 emails so far and there is truly no consensus as to what direction the wine drinkers think the wine-maker should go. I love the comment “I think you should keep making sweet wines”, which of course we will. Another thought, “Does it matter what grapes you use, does it make much difference?” The answer to that is “YES!”. Even within the native American grapes, we see a surprising variance from year-to-year on what the juice tastes like and what the wine you make from it tastes like.

Take the sweet (2008) Concord wine we make called “Bunker Hill”, its our best seller and has been since our first year. This vintage is lighter in color (red garnet?) then last years wine, yet it came from the same vineyard. The flavor is pure Concord, but it does not have the intensity or volume of flavor we’ve had in past vintages. Yet some people say, “Like this batch best!” and others say, “Its good, but not as good as last year”.

In my discussions with regular customers, I try to convey the swing it is to start making wines from the European varietals as opposed to the native or hybrid grapes. One person said, “Are you afraid to compete head-to-head with the Big Boys?”. Well, yes and no. My feeling has been I can buy a chardonnay anywhere, but a good seyval blanc is harder to find. I think small local wineries should look at making different wines, wines consumers can’t buy elsewhere.

Yet, there is the question in my head, “How good of a cabernet could I make?” So the thought process goes on, what do you think? Send us an email or click on the “comment” below, no need to register, you may post anonymous or not.

To Vint or not to Vint?

2009-07-20T08:49:00.001-04:00

So, we were discussing what grapes we wanted this year to make next year’s wine from? What are the issues and what are the choices? For a small winery it is difficult to make long-term commitments with a particular vineyard.

If a vineyard can produce a couple of tons per acre and we want two tons of a certain grape, what are they going to do with the other six tons? Hopefully sell it to another small winery? We small wineries need to look hard at banding together so we can buy the whole output of a vineyard, assuring them of a fair price and no hassle in disposing of the harvest. But thats another post...

What many small wineries do is buy their juice from large juice resellers, who buy a lot of grapes from a lot of vineyards. The question we are facing right now is what path to take for our better wines and the harvest drives that a bit. Availability and price are key...

This spring we were offered the chance to buy “vinifera” grapes (chardonnay, cabernet, reisling, merlot, etc) at a very good price from a juice supplier who claims high quality PLUS low prices to even us small guys. The vinifera grapes are what the Big Boys make their wines from; the public knows them and asks for them.

For more then seven years we have been promoting hybrid (Foch, Baco, Vidal, Vignoles) and native American “labrusca” grapes (Concord, Niagara, Catawba) and learning to maximize the flavor using our old-fashioned, natural methods.

So, do we try to make Oak Hill Winery versions of the classic French grape varieties, or do we stick with the less traditional grapes we have been venting for over seven years? What do you think dear reader? You may comment below (click on “comments”) or email us at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com.

What grapes from where and when?

2009-07-15T13:17:00.001-04:00

So we are pondering our choices for the fall grape harvest. Like most wineries, we do not have our own vineyards, so we seek out vineyard owners and see what grapes they expect to have for the upcoming harvest.

Small wineries like us face the most difficult challenge. We do not have the capacity to buy the whole production of a typical vineyard, so we are often there to ask for a “ton or two” of grapes. We are often called by vineyard owners at the last minute, “We’ve got some extra…” and we appreciate that.

Our own press/crush facilities are small, so we prefer to buy juice for white and fruit wines to simplify the process. Red grapes for serious wines are still necessary, although there are some “cold press” wine-juice producers doing an admirable job of extracting color and complexity in juice form.

When all is said and done, a number of our sweet wines are made with straight juice from juice-suppliers who do a great job of providing excellent quality products at good prices. There are very few wineries in Indiana who do not buy some juice from one of the numerous outlets, although we all prefer to buy locally grown fruit.

What does that mean for the consumer? It’s a fair comparison when you look at buying vegetables or meat or even pasta, there are many sources for these menu ingredients. Some cooks prefer certain suppliers products to get the desired outcome (been watching the Victory Garden too much?). Other chefs give us excellent entrees with ingredients from our local market. This means its up to the consumer to decide what’s important when they make a wine buying decision.

What decisions are we pondering at the Oak Hill Winery this year? Watch here for our next posting…

Notoriety

2009-07-13T10:18:00.000-04:00

The primary inspiration for my blog here was two-fold: (1) the fact I wanted my regular customers to be able to keep up with what is and is not happening at the winery; (2) and I enjoyed reading several of the wine blogs that centered on Indiana and Midwest wine specifically. I liked to whole concept of a blog once I got used to it, old dogs, new tricks?

In particular I have enjoyed reading the Indiana Wine Blog (http://indianawineblog.blogspot.com/) by “Charles”, an attorney based in here in Indiana. I had read his blog for several weeks and then checked into the blogspot website for information on having my own. I had tried to keep up a blog on our regular website (www.oakhillwines.com) but found the method tedious, having to use my website program to update it regularly. Blogspot lets you update from any computer at any time and that worked for me a lot better.

The website keeps track of the number of visitors and views each day and its great to see the number grow as time goes on and more people find it. Thanks you for visiting the blog and I will work to keep it up and worthwhile for you to visit, wine is a passion, but writing is a chore.

Winery Vacations?

2009-07-12T08:38:00.001-04:00

Have you ever thought about taking a whole vacation built around winery touring? I have, I see those European travel shows where they cruise down the Danube or the Rhine and hit the many wineries perched on the backs of these historic rivers.

I have thought about a swing through France, Italy, or Spain visiting the big and the small, chateau’s and wine cooperatives. The variety of tastes, the scenery, and the people.

Well, I have done this very same thing in Missouri, in Michigan, and in Indiana and found much the same, except no castles of course. This summer we will be visiting a favorite spot, the Traverse City, Michigan area, where there are dozens of wineries in a 30 mile radius, too many to visit in a day or even a weekend.

We will take our annual Missouri fall trip in October and we are considering hitting some old favorites, but quite possibly visiting a new part of the state where we will find a whole different style of winemaking. Of course, we often find a variance in styles from winery to winery within a region or area, but the local fruit often drives a general style with the individual influence of the winemaker making a wine good or great.

One of the driving forces behind the promotion of wine trails and regions is to make it easy for consumers to plan wine-themed trips and vacations. Some folks spend a day, many a weekend, but a few will spend many days making visits to theses wineries and having a great time doing it.

If you’d like help planning your own get-away, we ‘re always happy to make a few suggestion, stop in or email us anytime, oakhillwinery@yahoo.com - www.oakhillwines.com

Summer Event List

2009-07-06T08:31:00.002-04:00

Ok, I got a good bit of email asking, "When are these great events of yours?" so heres the list:

Special -Free- Events at the Winery

CHOCOLATE DAYS: Saturday, July 25 we will begin offering free gourmet chocolates with our wine tastings for as long as the good stuff holds out! If you've never had a great red wine and a piece of chocolate in your mouth at the same time, you need to try it!

SIXTH ANNIVERSARY: On Saturday, August 8th we will celebrate our 6th anniversary! Watch our website and blog for announcements on special happenings that day! WINE CLUB: special invitations coming for that evening's special celebration, just for Wine Club Members!

CHEESE DAYS: Saturday August 29 we will begin offering a variety of cheeses with our wine tastings as long as it lasts. Wine and cheese were born to be together, stop in and pick you favorite pairings with our localy made wines.

THE CHEESECAKE FESTIVAL: Saturday, September 12th. Yes, this is our biggest event. Customers bring in cheesecakes for judging and visitors judge the commercial entries. Cheesecake and wine, you say? Oh, yea, this is a great time and the best attended event we have each year. Its also the same weekend as Converse Festival, so come and spend the day...

Other stuff: Ok, so I had problems painting this weekend, it rained Saturday and that screwed my whole schedule up. I'll get back on it and get it done sooner or later....

Summer Time Fun

2009-06-26T08:37:00.001-04:00

I was in the winery yesterday and a lady came up and told me how much she enjoyed our wine and the winery and she would be back again and again. I am never sure just how to say “thank you” to comments like that, the two words by themselves seem inadequate. Wine making is a something of a personal thing you share with your customers, our wine is a product we sell, but our philosophy and methods are very personal.

I remember when our first six months in business was wrapping up, we’d had a great beginning and the holiday gift-buying crowd had encouraged us. We were sitting around and talking about what we could do to grow and maintain our sales momentum. I said I was less worried about sales then I was disappointing both repeat and new customers, so many people had said so many nice things about our business and how it was good for the community. I felt we needed to balance these kinds words with actions.

When I suggested regular free events I the winery to our informal “marketing committee”, the discussion turned to how we could leverage these events an maximize wine sales. I said, “No, the free events are our way of saying THANK YOU to our customers.” One of the people there said, “You don’t mind if you sell a little wine too, do you?” Well, of course not, but my response was that was just a side benefit.

So we set up our now familiar rotation of free events. January thru May we offer free in-house seminars on wine related topics, like home winemaking, planning winery vacations, wine basics for beginners, and so on. June through September we would have events to tickle the taste buds. June is the bread baking contest; July we have certain days we offer free samples of gourmet chocolate; August we pair our wine & free cheese samples; and in September, our biggest event, the Cheesecake Festival! Now, we do not offer special events October through December because we are just too busy, but that’s when many new wines are introduced, so its still worth a visit then.

So, I hope you did not miss the bread baking contest on June 27th, but if you did, be sure to watch the website for the dates of our other special events at www.oakhillwines.com.

Limited tasting or "Flights, Good or Bad?"

2009-06-17T12:59:00.002-04:00

So you stop into your favorite winery and the well groomed tasting room employee asks the usual, "What kinds of wines do you enjoy?" You tell them you like most all wines and you see them hesitate before responding, "Great, what are your favorites?"

You tell this capable pourer you like dusty dry reds and sinfully sweet fruit wines, plus everything in between. The taster-facilitator says, "Glad to hear it, we would be happy to pour any eight wines for your tasting flight, here's our wine list."

Why have some wineries taken to limiting their customers free wine tastings? Many reasons are given, many are the same as mentioned in the previous post regard paid tastings. Too many pours for too few sales, people coming in for a free tasting and buying nothing, among others.

One issue for many wineries is drunk driving liability. In our small winery we presently are offering nine dry and ten sweet wines. If we pour one ounce samples (a suggested amount) we have provided more then two glasses of wine, enough to have someone be over the legal limit. At our winery, we shoot for about 1/2 ounce samples, two good sips, and only about one glass of wine. Of course, not every one tries all our wines, so they get much less then a full glass in total.

In the wineries I have visited that offered "flights" or limited our tasting, the numbers are between four and eight wines. They suggest you and your spouse share different samples, effectively doubling your tastings, but the amount poured is generally shy of what two people would need for two good sips each.

Like we all things, a balance is needed. One lawsuit lost would put a winery out of business, so we owners must reflect a concern for our livelihood. Yet, over-limiting tasting can limit sales, so the balance must be sought. What do you think? Comment here (see below) or email me at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com.

Paid tastings? pro and con

2009-06-11T08:02:00.002-04:00

We offer free winetasting and we always will as far as I am concerned. Many wineries are reconsidering paid winetasting and/or limited tastings as a policy and even a few have adopted such measures for their own business model. What are their motivations?

I will keep the respondents names and wineries unmentioned, I do not ask such questions with the intent to "out" someone on the Blog, but I know its useful information for many.

First, most wineries who now charge (excepting states that require it) do so due to what they describe as "large numbers" of visitors who taste and do not buy. Three wineries mentioned specifically bus tours that use their winery as a "rest stop" on trips to or from somewhere else. One person stated that they had a bus stop by recently with over 40 people on it. Most of them used their restrooms, about 2/3 of the bus people tasted wine, the sales were a total of eleven bottles. Another winery employee complained that they get alot of gambling-boat bus tours that seem to just want to 'catch a wine buzz' as part of their trip and typical sales is less then one bottle per three people tasting. (Our little winery averages just shy of two bottles sold per person tasting).

Two wineries I talked to said they had "several groups each day" that tasted wine, but did not buy. In one case I asked specifically, "Everyday you are open, you expect to see more then ten people who taste, but do not buy?" The answer was a resounding "YES!". The majority of the wineries I talked to tell me they see few people who do not buy after tasting and that is pretty much what we see as well. We generally have less then one person per week who tastes, but does not buy, for whatever reason.

I think it is open for discussion as to whether or not a winery location tends to have it have more non-buyers. A location in a shopping center or downtown with foot traffic will certainly have a higher percentage of drop-in tasters, who do so on a whim, who choose not to make a purchase. The point here is (IMHO) that you chose the location due to higher traffic, do not be surprised at the result of that traffic, more looker/tasters who do not buy.

The main point I carry forward is that free wine tasting is the very foundation of the local winery business. Charging for tasting is certainly the right of the owner, but your business is not growing to your satisfaction after instituting such a policy, I can tell you why sales are not climbing.

I have gotten several emails on the issue of limited tastings (flights) and will get to those in the next installment of this Blog. Please keep in mind our annual BREAD BAKING CONTEST is June 27, 1-6 pm, we will have free bread samples to go with the free wine tasting. All commercial entries must be in by 2pm day of the contest, amateur entries by 4 pm. Email me for more details @ oakhillwinery@yahoo.com or www.oakhillwines.com

Pay to Taste - evil or good?

2009-06-03T15:42:00.002-04:00

So we were on a tasting tour or wineries a few years ago, up near Traverse City, MI, and I took my friends into a favorite winery, one of the big ones. The greeter says "You can pick up your tasting glass over there. $5 each person." I was stunned, I had been there the year before and there was no charge or tasting limits, except for their "premium" brandies and sparkling wines in a special room off to the side.

I turned to my buddies and said, "Sorry guys, they want $5 for a tasting, how about we move on to the other ten or twenty wineries up here that do not charge?" We moved on...

A few states, including Ohio, require a fee be paid for wine tasting, its usually $1 for six, what some call a flight of tastings. The number in a flight seems to vary from place to place, but thats not a big issue.

The question is, dear reader, what effect will paid tasting have on you, as a regular visitor to a winery? What effect would paid tasting have on the nouveau wine taster when he peaks in the door and sees they want $5 for a tasting, limited or no?

What sells wine at our place is the tasting, I would guess 50% of our sales involve wines that the test-taster would not have selected based on description (we'll talk about that) beacsue they generally do not find that wine as good, when tried in the past. Many of our regulars have moved from sweet to dry wines because we encouraged them to keep trying to find a dry wine they liked. Would they have done that for $5 a visit?

Next time we will consider the reason why wineries do charge for tasting, other then when required to by law. Feel free to comment (click comment below) or email me at oakhillwinery@yahoo.com

hot weather, good grapes

2009-05-27T10:13:00.002-04:00

We took a nice trip up into Michigan for the holiday weekend and we happy to see many new acres of grapes being planted in the southwest portion of the state. Due to the Lake Effect on this region, this area produces very fine white wine grapes like Riesling, Traminette, Vidal, and Chardonnel.

We stopped at a local Michigan winery I had not been to for a long time and were surprised they limited tastings to five samples, yet offered more then two dozen wines. The hostess suggested we share the one ounce pours between us to spread our tastings a bit wider, yet I thought they should drop to 1/2 ounce tastes and give us ten choices.

The hostess said the limit was the owner's policy, not the law. I think its a bad idea myself, I will hesitate to return to that winery knowing I can only try five wines on a given day. I am not courting a free wine buzz, I just think the winery is limiting its sales and hurting return business with such a severe limitation.

Where should you draw the line? Its a fair question, many wineries allow open tasting, some limit it to flights of six to eight wines, a few even have started charging for as few as six tastes. The other consideration is inebriation, how much wine can we serve a customer reasonably at a taste test? I'd like to know what you think, either email me at oakhillwines@yahoo.com or place a comment here (click "comment" below) as to what you think.

Next time we'll address the issue of paid tastings specifically, so be thinking about what your stand on this hot issue is...

www.oakhilwines.com

Ok, there it is now...

2009-05-19T12:27:00.003-04:00

When last we talked, there was a question about to be or not to be. Well, we still don't know for sure where we are, but there are a couple of things we do know. First, we did bottle a small sample batch of the dry Vidal and it is a big hit, we called it Pipe Creek Falls and it was well received over the weekend. The dry Riesling, Iron Bridge, was also introduced and described as a good light wine, easy on the mouth.

I had a new barrel sample of our RiverWalk, a dry red made from Cabernet Franc and Chambourcin, that I offered to a few of the Wine Club members for their comments. They said it was good, better then the last batch (you love to hear that) and one test-taster said it was the best wine we had ever made! I guess I'll have to bottle some of that pretty soon.

We have made some small changes in the tasting room recently. We picked up an antique nine-foot oak bench and used it to expand our seating area by about a third. While it has never been our intent to operate a bar in the traditional sense, we have found we are getting more repeat business from folks who like to share a bottle onsite and hang out for an hour, enjoying the atmosphere our little winery has to offer. The Wine Club folks also seem to enjoy the seating area, we see some of these people almost every week!

As we approach the summer season, we look forward to our hours expanding from the present "weekends-only" to a full seven day schedule (1-6 pm) starting June 1. We have our three regulars returning and we are on the lookout for a "weekender" who would work a few (2-3) days each month on Saturdays or Sundays. We need someone with an reasonably open schedule, can work with us through December 31, and is good with people. let us know if you are that person!

www.oakhillwines.com - oakhillwinery@yahoo.com

To be or not to be...

2009-05-12T13:41:00.004-04:00

I really like dry Rieslings. I try to get a trip into the Michigan southwest and northwest wine countries every year to see what they got new each year. The last couple of years I have stretched the wine-grape budget some and bought a bit of Riesling we could have it in our line-up, even for a few months. We make some as an off-dry, or maybe more of a semi-sweet, somewhere in there sweetness wise. We make some in a dry style and its has been boffo the last few years.

This year I am quite happy with how the semi-sweet is turning out, but less happy with the dry. But mine is only one opinion, I ask my guinea pigs (?) what they think and they say, "Its greeat!" (sorry Tony). So I am going to bottle a little of the dry this week and let the customers feedback whether they like it too.

We will also be releasing a dry Vidal in the next few weeks, its is only nine months old, but seems to be coming along very nicely. A few test-tasters think I should blend it into a semi-sweet due to the nice fruit it shows in the mouth, but I cannot decide.

Another good example is our new (and last) batch of 2007 Bordermen, our cranberry blend wine. I was working alone in the winery, making it up following my recipe for the blend and when I was done, it did not taste right. I messed with it some more, no better. It was darker and tarter then is was supposed to be. I adjusted the sweetness to try to get a balance of the flavor, could not get it right.

It was getting late and I was tired, so I started from scratch, just as if what I now had was what I had to work with, -since it was! I tweaked it a bit and tasted it again, it seemed better. Then the wife came home, I offered her a taste and she said, "Humm, not the same as the last batch, what did you do different?" Duh! If I knew that, --well you know. So I went ahead and bottled some and everyone said "This is great!", so I guess sometimes it just happens and sometimes you make it happen. This the last of the 2007, i takes a good year or more for the cranberry to be ready, so we'll be without Bordermen for a while once the present stock is depleted.

Son of Snarkey Comments

2009-05-08T08:28:00.002-04:00

OK, so earlier we heard about the evil Story Inn...

Wait, I think it was the evil anonymous commenter, not the Story Inn that was evil, whatever. The gist of the story was Story's advertising "nearly all" of Indiana wineries were going to be at the Story Wine Fair, while in reality about half were actually there. A correction needs to be made also, this year the Inn charged the wineries $100 each to participate, last year it was free.

The result? Great weather and a tremendous turn out made this years fair a huge success by most reports. "Most" you say? Well, as with all things the comments are both good and bad. Some wineries reported near sell-outs on the sweet wines they'd brought along, others reported very modest sales, although it seemed that was in the dryer wines that sales were less impressive.

One complaint I heard from one winery was Story was selling beer onsite. They do have a bar in the restaurant, but the impression (not fact) was they had an outside place selling beer, more or less in competition with the wineries selling wine. That ticked some people off.

The only complaint I heard from any attendee was, "There was alot of people there!", and that's a hard thing to complain about. The 2009 Story Wine Fair was a success and those who were not happy can choose not to attend next year, winery or wine drinker alike.

I do hope Story will be a bit more truthful in their marketing efforts in 2010, they got a good thing going on and there is no reason to muck it up with such inaccurate advertising, honking off people who should be helping them promote the event.

irked over oil

2009-05-06T08:40:00.002-04:00

Ok, I recognize this is a wine-related blog, but give me a minute to get this out of my system.

Oil prices went up roughly ten percent Monday-Tuesday of this week. Every gas station raised their prices more then ten percent by end of the day Tuesday.

Yet CNN reports: "The nation's stockpiles of crude are at their highest levels since 1990, while demand for oil is down nearly 11% to its lowest level since 1999."

Does this make sense to anyone? Its should because this constant price changes allow gasoline suppliers to make alot of money when they can raise the price of on-hand product they paid alot less for. What really galls me is they all do it at once, which shows there has to be some form of communication between the gasoline companies, thats not right!

OK, I am done now, thanks!

More wine news in the near future...

a rose by any other name

2009-05-01T13:34:00.002-04:00

Its been about eight years ago since we first started talking about wine label names. I had spent hours considering what to call the wines and I had wandered numerous stores and wineries considering what worked best. One choice is to use a simple varietal name, like "Seyval Blanc" or "Niagara"; yet this seemed a little uninspired to me. Plus, if I changed what grapes I chose to use or could get, I'd have some unusable labels.

Fanciful names have caught on big in recent years, some using "impolite" words or slang terms to catch a shoppers interest. We do not sell our wines anywhere but at the winery, did not plan to distribute to stores or restaurants, so pure "shelf appeal" was not a consideration. But yet, I wanted a name our customers could relate to.

I began to make a list, Ii wanted 24 names to start with. I realized by using generic names I could use almost any label for almost any wine. So went the list, cool sounding names like "Zenith" (OK, not a a TV?); "Fraternity"; "Wistful" (descriptive?); and so on. Within a month I had my 24 names and we went on with making wine, re-habbing the carriage house, and developing marketing plans.

At some point, someone said, "How about "Converse" for a wine name?"; "Nah, that's a tennis shoe...", then my mind started thinking about other local names that did work, maybe, just maybe...;

So we decided to go forward, using local names of towns, points of interest, and Indiana rivers as our wine names. Its was one of the best ideas we had, yes, "we", because when I started asking friends and family, they are said "YES!" and made a few suggestions, some of which I actually used.

To use a label name, you have to get it approved by the federal government. One amusing point here is the government does not charge anything for wine label applications and approvals. How they missed that one, I have no idea. Some names are zapped because someone else is already using it, although there must be some latitude, possibly by location, since I have seen duplicate names before.

I am working up some new names for wines in years to come, if you'd like to make a suggestion, send it to us here at the winery by email or postal carrier, we don't pay anything but I'll slap a label on a white t-shirt and give it to you if we use your idea! So generous...

Sunshine on my shoulder

2009-04-24T09:11:00.003-04:00

Now we have had a piece of summer dropped on us, at least a few days. This can really help with grapes; a warm, early spring with lots of sun and warmth. Of course, a day of frost and a drop below freezing can smack the buds hard enough to kill a huge share of the crop.

A comon question in the tasting room is "Do you grow your own grapes?" and we do not. What suprises most people just how many wineries do not grow their own fruit or, those who do have some vineyards, grow a very small percentage.

Is this a good or bad thing? There is a preference among many winemakers I have talked to to use local fruit, but using out-of-state suppliers is not just an economic decision. Indiana's vineyards cannot produce more then about 200,000 gallons of juice a year, well under the one million-plus gallons of wine produced in-state.

But for myself, it comes down not to just the dollars, the land, equipment, labor, etc. I am no farmer and I know enough about grape growing to talk about it, but not enough to actually do it, beyond the few vines we have in our yard. Vines are very labor intensive, with little mechanization possible, so alot of stoop work is called for beyond the knowledge and assoicated costs.

It is an interesting fact that while California has over 1/2 million acres of grapes (Indiana under 500 acres), less then ten percent of California wineries are 100% estate grown. Estate grown means they grow their own grape and make their own wine from those same grapes. Of the 90 percent remaining, less then 50% have producing commercial vineyards, the grapes they grow around the place are just for ambience.

When you consider that about 45% of all US wineries are located in California (2700 of 6000 in 2008), that speaks to the fact that all winemakers are not farmers and not all farmers, or winegrape growers, are not winemakers; at least commercially.

Its about time...

2009-04-18T08:21:00.002-04:00

Yea! The statehouse did drop the statewide alcohol tax increase under what was described as "extreme pressure" from the public. I suspect the pressure was from the distributors as much as any actual public response. It seems the tax has remained the same since 1981 and Indiana has the lowest level of taxation in the midwest, alcohol-wise. I think they might have considered an increase, but not a doubling of the tax as a good compromise.

After much effort, we are happy to announce Bunker Hill and Fairmount are back in stock. Its the 2008 vintage and as with every year, the flavor is slightly different. We enjoy getting fruit from Michigan when Indiana-grown is not available, the flavor is great, and its got its own unique charactor. My favorite point in Michigan Concord grapes is how RED they are, not the traditional deep purple, but a bright red. This has to do with the soil they grow in, more sand then dirt, so the mineral up-take is different. Its very pretty in the glass...

There's still a few places open for the free home winemaking seminar next weekend, so let us know if you'd like to come.