GSM 744 is on its way!

We have a brand new wine hitting the shelves in about a month!  GSM 744 is a blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mouvedre.  For those of you unfamiliar with some of these wines, here's a quick tutorial:

Grenache (pronounced gren-aash): is one of the most widely planted red wine grape varieties in the world.  It is generally spicy, berry-flavored and soft on the palate with a relatively high alcohol content.

Syrah: Not to be confused with Petite Sirah, this is touted as Australia's spicy, big-hitting red wine.  Why the confusion between Shiraz and Syrah?  It's the same grape!  In France it is known and grown as Syrah, and responsible for some of the Northern Rhone's big, bold red wines.  However, in Australia and South Africa it goes by Shiraz.

Mouvedre: This variety can be a difficult grape to grow, preferring "its face in the hot sun and its feet in the water."  The vines produce intensely flavored fruit  that is not overly jammy or herbaceous.  The wines often has wild game and/or earthy notes to them, with soft red fruit flavors.

Now that you know about the varieties, here's a bit of info about our wine!

• The grapes all came in fresh from California.
• Our winemaker barrel-aged the separate varieties for nearly a year.
• The finished blend is described as fruity and oaky.  

GSM is pretty obvious, but what does the 744 stand for?  Good question!
There were 7 barrels of Grenache, blended with 4 barrels of Syrah and 4 barrels of Mouvedre. Naming magic!

September Recap!

Wow--September has been an exceptionally busy month for us.  From making wine to stomping grapes to serving a record number of tastings, we're all pretty excited about how the month went!  It seems as if everyone loves wine as much as us!

Lobster Boil

This was a sold out event and everyone that came had a great time, including us!  It was an awesome kick off to our 2nd annual Grape Stomp Festival.  Each guest had a full lobster and following that, the chefs dumped out pots of crayfish, sausage, corn, clams, shrimp and potatoes.  A true New England experience!

Grape Stomp

The next few days were a crazy blur of grape stomping!  It started with our celebrity grape stomp on Friday night and continued into team stomping on Saturday.  There were some awesome costumes!

The grapes are ready to be smashed!

Post Bulletin editor Jay Furst stomped with his wife!

Betsy Singer took on Team Post Bulletin.

Tom Overlie, dressed as a newsman, was a stomping machine.

Jennifer Koski, from Rochester Magazine, stomped with us for a second time.  Read about her experience here.  She also took all of these photos!

Betsy Singer (KAAL) and Tom Overlie (KTTC), former co-anchors, went head to head!

Defending champs, Dunken & Samm, from the KROC morning show, were the team to beat.

In the end, it was almost too close to call.

So we brought in the big guns--Betsy.  Tom Overlie was the winner!  He donated the Four Daughters' annual grape stomp charity check to Paws & Claws this year!

On Saturday, we welcomed our team grape stompers.  Check out the video below to see how that went!

KTTC Rochester, Austin, Mason City News, Weather and Sports

And now, we wait patiently as the 2013 vintage ferments and turns into wine!  Big month around here!

Setting up for tonight!!

Largest lobster eating group you've ever seen?

How to press grapes and start making wine, explained in 30 seconds or less.

You dump multiple bins (called picking lugs) into the top of the crusher/destemmer.  Voila!  The process has begun.

The crusher/destemmer has that name for a reason.  Notice how cleanly the stems shoot out?  Don't you wish you had known about this machine when you were feeding your hungry 3 year old grapes all afternoon???

The crusher part of the equipment cuts open each grape, preparing it to be pressed momentarily.  

We employ many pumps.  This powerful pump moves the crushed grapes from the crusher/destemmer over to the press.

And right into the press.  Isn't that nifty??

The crushed grapes wait patiently in the press until their cycle begins.

 Even before the pressing begins, the juice starts flowing out.  Music to our ears!

 Our gigantic press is ready to begin!  This is a new addition to our harvest equipment this year.

Now, let's put all those steps together in live action. 

Who's ready to help with harvest now?  Let the wine making begin!

Is the production room starting to look different?

For those of you that ever been inside our production area, you can tell that it's starting to look a little different around here!

Here are a few pictures of what it looked like when we first moved in:

Little did we know, the tanks were not nearly large enough to store the amount of wine we would need to make one year down the road.  So, for the 2012 vintage, we bought some even bigger tanks!  Surely, this would be large enough, right?

Notice the big new tanks in the back?

Well, we're now preparing for some pretty exciting changes in the production room.  Our tanks are quickly being shuffled around as we prepare.  More info soon!