Grace Hill Winery is now open every Saturday from 11-5, as well as by appointment. Come out and try our new wines!

Our current offerings include the 2008 Seyval (sweet), 2008 Rose (slightly sweet), 2007 Barrel Reserve White (dry), 2008 Dodging Tornados (dry), 2008 Norton (dry) and our Cabernet Sauvignon.

We have been busy lately and this week will be even busier! Tomorrow night our wines will be featured at a reception for Cokie Roberts, who is in town to speak as a part of the 60th Anniversary of KMUW, our local public radio station. Friday night we will be pouring our wines at Emporia Main Street's Taste event, along with 5 other Kansas wineries. Then Saturday we will be open at the winery, and then will go to the Midwest Winefest, where a Grace Hill Winery harvest party will be featured in the live auction. We're excited!

The new vineyard is in now. The grow tubes are all in place and the wire has been strung. It's pretty amazing to think that the field is full now. It feels really good to have all that accomplished.

This weekend was another adventure at the winery, this time again with signage! Dave had put together a beautiful sign to put out on K-196 to show people where we are. He wanted to make it extra sturdy to stand up to the Kansas wind, and when he got it together, it was (at least to us) huge and heavy. So he got out the forklift, as he loves to do. We were fortunate that no one came down the road as we were headed out with the new sign. And getting it into place went really smoothly, except for getting the forklift stuck in the mud. (That's why we keep an SUV around- to pull things out!)

Spring has been painfully slow to come. The blizzard at the end of March really set things back, although I don't think it hurt anything. The vines are finally starting to wake up, and the buds are swelling. Pretty soon it should start looking a little green out there!

Planting day was amazing! We got all 750 vines in and the irrigation in place before lunch.

We were so lucky and blessed to have great weather and a great crew. The weather had been iffy after the blizzard last weekend, so we watched and waited as things dried up over the course of the week. But the ground was dry enough to dig on Friday and plant on Saturday. The sun came out and though the wind was blowing, it wasn't uncomfortable. In fact, it felt really good to be out there. We had a great crew of about 25 people, and they literally made the proverb about many hands making light work come true. Many of them have come out for years, and so are very experienced, but they all were very helpful, enthusiastic and hard-working.

Then we had a great lunch with some Grace Hill wine, which made it extra fun!

Today it was bitterly cold with a stiff north wind and intermittent snow. Tomorrow is supposed to be not much better. But the plants are in, we have wine to sell, and we have great memories of a good day with wonderful people. It doesn't get much better than that!