Monday

The harvest of the 2017 grape crop began on Monday in the Soldier Creek Vineyards and in the Cooper Vineyards. We grow grapes on 10-acres, but we do need to supplement with local grapes– Cooper Vineyards are 10-acres and also located in the Fort Dodge area.

Monday morning started and finished with the harvest of Brianna in both vineyards. The harvest is usually started very early in the morning and completed by lunchtime or early afternoon.

tuesday

An entire day to press! We had 12 macrobins of Brianna to change from grape–> juice.

processing

1. fork/scoop grapes into the hopper of the de-stemmer/crusher machine

2.  pump the crushed grapes to macrobins while they wait to be pressed

3. get all the juice from the crushed grapes in the press

4. move juice to stainless steel tanks to begin fermentation

5. repeat until all 4.4 tons of brianna are in tanks

Well. I can see how it took all day (until 10:00PM) to process all of those grapes!

next up

We will be harvesting St. Croix on Sunday! Any volunteers?

with midbest love,

Meg