Late every fall, our Head Winemaker, Russ Funk, assembles of team of employees to taste the newly fermented wines. I, fortunately, am included on that team! It’s an exciting time when we discover what the promises (and challenges) of the past growing year yield in the glass.
Harvest began early this year. Always a busy time, this year the production team was extraordinarily challenged by “simultaneous maturation.” Just like the saying, “ripe for the picking,” grape varieties have an ideal harvest window. In a typical year, these picking windows come in waves from late August through mid-October with varieties we source from California generally earlier than our Minnesota varieties. Not this year. The heat moved up the maturation of our Minnesota varieties resulting in everything ready at once. A virtual tsunami of grapes!
Along with the heat, many have asked how the draught affected our crop. We’re happy to report it did great! Grapes vastly prefer hot, dry, and dusty to cold, damp, and musty. Dry conditions also reduce pests and diseases and the sprays we use to control them. Plenty of heat assures grapes reach full maturation before fall frosts, though we did see some dehydration on a few of our dry-farmed blocks and in some California grapes whose resultant sugars approached near 30 brix (normal is 22-24).
Overall, the quantity of this year’s harvest was above average, and the quality will result in some stellar vintages. When we taste out the vintage, we look for grapes so good, they can stand alone to be bottled as 100% varietals. To label a wine as a varietal, 75% of the grapes used must be that variety. Only 25% can be from other varieties, added to balance what may be missing in the named variety: more sugar, more fruitiness, more tannin, less acid, etc. To taste that perfectly balanced, no help needed from anything else, thank you, grape, is a great joy each year.
Here’s some highlights of the 2021 vintage:
FRONTENAC GRIS/FRONTENAC BLANC
Some of you lament why some years we have Gris while other years we have Blanc. Well, we bottle whichever can stand alone as a 100% varietal. Sometimes it’s neither. This year, it’s both! A banner year for White Frontenacs. Still not sure if we’ll offer both as varietals, but whichever one(s) we do, will be phenomenal.
MUSCAT/PEACH
We haven’t fermented this California grown grape in quite some time. A shame. It’s fabulous! Well, at least this year it was. This grape has so much stone fruit, Russ says, “it’s peachier than our Peach wine!” Which is where it is destined to go. Brought in to be the white wine we add peach juice to, it almost doesn’t need any! If you’re a fan of our Peach wine, get ready for the best ever. Smother some French Vanilla ice cream with this for a sinfully delicious (and easy) dessert. And watch for a potential MUSCAT varietal as a club offering.
ITASCA
Though we fermented Itasca grapes from Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania, the panel just didn’t feel this grape is varietal worthy. Yet. As a brand-new varietal for growers, perhaps the vines need more years to mature, or maybe we haven’t found the best yeast to use or we’re still looking for its perfect harvest parameters. We’ll keep trying. In the meantime, we are happy to report that the 2021 Minnesota Itasca was the best. Look for this grape to blended into Wobegon or Minnescato or perhaps as the white wine in Raspberry.
BRIANNA/AURORA
We love this grape! If you pick it early! Brianna’s harvest window, already ridiculously small, was further tightened by this year’s heat. It went from no to go in like a minute. But two of Minnesota’s finest grape growers produce this grape for us, and they managed to pull off the hat-trick of grape growing and deliver Brianna perfection. 2021 looks like another stellar vintage for Aurora, our 100% Minnesota-grown, dry sparkling Brianna.
PETITE AMI
Was petite indeed. Both our growers experienced very light crops, likely due to poor pollination. Grapes are self-pollinating and rely on wind for pollination. Petite Ami is a fussy grape that demands perfect conditions for good pollination. But when the vine has fewer grapes to feed, the result is often amazing quality. That is what we saw with the 2021 vintage. A M A Z I N G. The small quantity could leave some Petite Ami aficionados with less wine than they need. Don’t let that happen to you! Be prepared to storm the Bastille (AKA Carlos Creek) as soon as it’s released.
CRIMSON PEARL
The pride of our Estate Vineyard did not disappoint. It produced LOTS of REALLY GOOD grapes! As we’ve waited for our vines to mature and our yields to increase, we’ve only had enough Crimson to produce a single style of wine – Rosé. And though it’s a beauty, we suspected Crimson would also make a fine, dry red. This year, we got the chance to try. Thanks to a group of case club members, who handpicked some Crimson for us this year, Russ was able to try open-topped, whole cluster fermentation, which resulted in a wine with deeper color and substantial, velvety tannins. It will still need a season of oak (we’re thinking only 1) before bottling, and a year or so more to bottle age before we release it. It’s going to be hard to wait for this one. But don’t worry, in the meantime, there will be plenty of Crimson Rosé for everyone.
