Late Fall in the Vineyard
2009

The vines are dormant now and thanks for a great season this year!

I would like to thank everyone that came to the vineyard this season to pick grapes. The ripening conditions were not perfect since we had little heat this summer and many things ripened very late, but I am sure a lot of interesting wine & jelly were made and table grapes picked. Pictures ........

The vineyard is dormant now, and all bird balloons, alarms and netting are packed away until next year. The racoon electric fence we made worked very good keeping the racoon damage to a minimum in the concord area in the back.

Over the winter & spring we are going to try a little grafting. I would like to graft Venus & NY Muscat on to concord vines to improve the strength of these varieties. They have been growing weak in our vineyard.

I finally made some wine this year - Most years we get picked out and there is not much left. This year we made about 10 -15 gallons of Steuben Red. Fermented on the skins about a week and then pressed. We will see how it progresses in our next newsletter.

Some of our grapes are winning awards by winemakers!

Larry & Cherie Hartwick

Larry & Cherie Hartwick won prizes this year at the State Farm. Cherie's homemade wines and jam/jelly did very well. She entered 9 wines and received 6 ribbons.

She received a first place blue ribbon for her Concord Grape wine in the sweet red/rose/blush wine category ;
A second place red ribbon for her Canadace wine (made from a seedless table grape) in the same category;
A third place for her Wild Black Raspberry in the sweet non-grape wine category; another
A third place for her Seyval Blanc wine in the sweet white wine category;
An honorable mention for her St. Pepin in the sweet white wine category; and another
Honorable mention for Red Raspberry wine in the non-grape wine category.

More info on the State Fair Site....

I would like to thank the many friend that brought samples of wine to our farm. A few of them are: