Welcome to the September 2007 edition of our newsletter!

Fall In The Vineyard

What a great time of year it is - especially in the vineyard. The fruit is ripe…or ripening. The weather is starting to cool and thoughts turn to winemaking. Whether you are making wine from fresh grapes, other fruits or kits, its all fun and exciting. This is also the time of year I scramble looking for my favorite winemaking books. Below are two of my favorites - especially useful over the past few years as I have embarked on my grape-growing and winemaking adventures. These books might not be for the more technically inclined winemakers out there, but I think you’ll find that even seasoned vets will be able to glean a nugget or two of useful information from them.

	Cox’s guide to growing grapes and making wine is a great introductory resource on both topics. Click to check it out on Amazon.
	This book is chock full of recipes and insights taken from years of winemaking experience. Whether you are looking to make a classic red varietal or are wondering what to do with all of those apples in your backyard, this is a great resource. Click here to check it out in Amazon.

Fall Tasks

This fall I have a number of things I need to do to prepare the vineyard for winter. Chief among them are making sure that young vines have enough insulation to keep their roots from freezing:

• clean up weed and debris around base of vines
• hill up dirt around vines
• spread rodent deterrent powder (gophers seem to be pretty active in the fall)
• remove dead vines - one Valiant and possibly some others
• determine how many new vines are needed for next spring - 6 or more total

Fermenting

I have a small amount of my own grapes to ferment. I likely will just place whatever amounts of all varieties I grow into one batch of wine. On top of that, last winter I stashed away a Winexpert white wine kit. I am also planning on finally getting that one going.

On a related note, a friend of mine has been bugging me for a few years to try making a batch of hard cider out of apples that grow in his yard. I think we finally will get this done this year. I’ve pressed samples of juice from the apples and it has a good balance of sweetness and tartness. I’ll try to provide an update in a future newsletter.

Yet another fermented beverage that always comes to mind this time of year (or any time for that matter) is…BEER! Last fall I rounded up a group of guys for an evening of ‘brewing’ at a brew-on-premises place in St. Paul - called Vine Park. It was a good time. The beer making is very closely controlled. As a matter-of-fact, customers really only add the pre-measured ingredients to the kettles and then come back two weeks later to bottle the final product. With the size of the group we had, we reserved six kettles and made a batch of cider on the side. So each person went home with 36 22oz bottles of beer and/or cider. It was a really good time. This fall I’m thinking it would be even more fun to just host a home-brew event at my house.

Weather

After such a dry and hot summer, our weather has begun to cool off a bit. On top of that, we have received a great deal of rain in the past month. Its been quite amazing - our pond was completely dry six weeks ago but now it is larger than it has been all year!

Despite the recent rains, a summer like this past one has pretty well convinced me that I need to install some sort of manageable watering system in the vineyard. I do not know that it will be fully automatic, but at a minimum something that I can attach a garden hose to that will water the entire vineyard at one - or at least one row at a time. A system like that will make my life much easier.

Whats Coming Up?

What else do I have planned? Well, there’s always something. Besides vineyard maintenance and wine or beer making, I also spend a fair amount of time working on this website. I have a few things up my sleeve. Soon I plan to offer a new discussion forum open to anyone that has an interest in growing grapes and making wine. On top of that, I am working on some tools to assist grape growers and winemakers. Stay tuned as I begin to roll out some of these new features.

Thanks and have a great fall 2007!

Don

Time for more beer info! Tonight I took a little bit of time and racked my batch of beer to a glass secondary. I plan to leave it there until at least the 14th and then bottle it. I might leave it for another week. Below are a couple of images from racking night.

This first image shows the empty (almost) primary fermenter with a little bit of beer left in it. The rest of the gunk is spent yeasts and hops.

The image below shows the glass secondary once racking was completed. This carboy holds 6.5 gallons and the batch of beer is 5 gallons - hence the extra headspace.

Last night I decided it was time to bottle a small batch of wine I started in the fall of 2005. It is 80% Frontenac and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. The bottling went just fine - I didn’t expect to but ended up with 5 full bottles. It’s not a great wine, but it’s not bad. The Cabernet was a more recent addition as the Frontenac needed a little more body.

Once the wine was bottled and tucked away, I decided it was time to break out a beer kit I recently purchased. The kit is from Midwest Supply and is a Red Amber Ale. Its from their ‘20 minute boil’ line of kits. Since it was my first time making beer, I thought this one sounded good and simple. The process went very well with no major problems. One issue I did run into was that my wife was pretty grossed out by the smell - to the point of gagging. Future batches may have to be done in the garage or when she’s not home. Other than that, the beer is happily fermenting away in the basement. I’d like to hear what others have done to counteract the odor from boiling wort. Add a comment and let me know.