September Update

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

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

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

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!

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

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!

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!