Where did the summer go? It's the end of August and it never got blisteringly hot, we are just now finishing the harvest of our white grapes, and somehow I feel like summer eluded us. Is it age or strange weather that leaves me feeling confused? Dave kept announcing that the hot weather was finally here to stay, but it never was. So harvest is weeks behind what we have come to expect. I guess that's OK. 

In any case, the whites are now done, and we are preparing for harvest of the red wines. I don't know when that will be. Two weeks from now? Longer?

Harvest has been fun, and we have had the opportunity to get to know people in new ways as they came out to help. "Many hands make light work" has never been more true. People as diverse as middle and high school students and retirees, friends and family, and people we didn't really know well before have come out to help. A few more weeks and this year's harvest will be completely done. I have to admit that I feel sad when I look at the vineyard, at the vines that no longer have grapes. I know it's part of the cycle, but there is a feeling of anticipation when the grapes are still on the vine that I miss once the harvest is done. 

However, there is a satisfaction (and relief) when the grapes are safely harvested and are fermenting away, becoming wine. The cellar smells really good right now! 

We are very happy with the taste of our wines from last year. They have matured very nicely, and we are proud of them. We took them to the Taste of Butler dinner, where they were quite well received, and where we had a great time. It was an excellent dinner, and reminded all of us there what opportunities we have in locally produced foods. We do live well out here in the country. 

Harvest season has finally arrived!

It has been such a cool and rainy summer that the grapes are ripening very slowly, but they are finally ripening. The photo shows some of our Norton grapes, finally making progress. They will be deep blackish purple before they are ready.

The white grapes are starting to really arrive. We harvested the Seyval and Vignoles grapes last weekend, and we hope to bring in the Chardonel on Saturday. The Traminette still have a ways to go. It is such a relief and a joy to have wine starting to ferment in the cellar. It smells really good down there!

So if we can keep the grapes protected from the rain, the bugs, the birds and the deer for a little longer (did I mention fungus?) we should have a harvest to be proud of.

We will be taking wine to the Taste of Butler, a dinner of Butler County foods, on Thursday. We are actually in Harvey County, but I guess we are close enough. And our White Barrel Reserve will be in the People's Choice Wine Judging at the State Fair on September 5th. (If you go, vote for us!) But if you really want to try the wines, come visit.

Growing grapes is not for the faint of heart. (Actually, I don't think any type of farming is.) We are waiting anxiously for the grapes to ripen, but the weather is not cooperating. Neither are the pests. We have had cool and rainy weather for the last several days, so the grapes aren't making much progress but are more susceptible to fungus. (3 inches in the last 4 days-hard to believe it is August.)

And the birds and turkeys which last week were just decorative have become dangerous. The grapes are ripe enough to attract them!

This year for the first time we have applied bird netting to try to slow them down. It does seem to be helping, but we don't have everything covered. I think in the future we will. Dave put together a device to apply the netting that worked really well, surprising even him. So we hope that at least some grapes will survive until harvest. I just keep thinking we will start that process any day now, but no. Not yet.

However, one of the red wines that we bottled a couple of weeks ago tastes really good! It is our Dodging Tornados wine, Chambourcin blended with a little Cabernet, made dry. We are really excited about it, and we are starting to selling it now. The other reds should be ready for release within a few weeks if all goes according to plan.

If you read this blog and are interested in helping with harvest (whenever it happens), let us know. Send an email to info@gracehillwinery.com and we will add you to the email notification list. No obligation, lots of fun and a free lunch too!

Thank goodness July is over. It wasn't an easy month.

I could say that I haven't written because we had too many family obligations, which would be somewhat true. We went to Colorado for a family reunion to celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. (An absolutely marvelous time, by the way!) Then we had family members visit here-Dave's parents, his cousin, his brother and wife... Then we got to move the boys home from Lawrence. It has been busy, but now we have Jeff here doing an internship with us, which I think will be a very good thing.

But the truth is that the wines have been frustrating. So have the grapes. The grapes seem to be taking forever to ripen. Last year at this time we were harvesting. This year the grapes are so slow, painfully slow, to even start to turn color. I don't know when harvest will start, but not this week or next.

And we have had some ups and downs with the wines. The Seyval and the Rose had some issues, so we have suspended sales of them for now. (We do still have the Barrel Reserve White.) We have bottled some reds, so when they get through bottle shock, in another month or so, we will have reds to sell as well. We have certainly learned a lot in the process.

We survived our inspection by the Kansas Department of Agriculture today, so I guess that's good news. It was scary, but not as bad as I expected.

So the bottom line is that, like all procrastination, once I started avoiding this blog it became easier to just keep avoiding it. And it hung over my head, calling to me. So I'm back. And anyway...

Life at the vineyard is still sweet. We see the birds and butterflies, wild turkeys and quail, and just soak in the peace and quiet. We have kittens for a constant source of entertainment. It's a good place to be, and August will be a better month. Come visit!

Talk about a week of ups and downs...

First the good news! We had a great time at our open house on Saturday. The crowd was big enough that we felt like we were really open, but small enough that we weren't intimidated trying to remember how to use the cash register. We actually sold our first bottles of wine that day, so after 5 years of planning and work, we now have revenue. (Not profit, of course, but revenue never the less.) It was extremely exciting. We are now officially open by appointment, and would love to have people call us and come in for a tasting. We won't have regular hours until the fall, when we have red wines available too.

The other big pleasure is seeing the grapes grow. The vineyard looks absolutely beautiful this week. The grapes look like the real thing, though hard and unripe. They still have a ways to go.

Which leads to the bad news.

We were out in the vineyard last evening, as we are most evenings, and found we have fungus in some of the grapes. This has been such a wet year that we are even more vulnerable than usual. We have tried to be proactive with our spray regimen and our vineyard management, but problems have crept up anyway. We try to be minimalist with our spray regimen, but haven't found any way to completely avoid spraying for fungus. It's very discouraging when we have worked so hard to keep the grapes doing well. However, we think we caught it quickly enough that we won't lose too many grapes. We try to be philosophical and take the approach of our friend and farmer Willard, who tells us when we complain about the weather not cooperating, "That's farming."

Open house at the winery! This Saturday, June 21, 2008, we will be open from 1-5 pm for anyone who wants to stop by for a tasting. We are so excited to finally have wine, bottled and labeled, ready for sale. We probably shouldn't do this until our wine has had a little time to stabilize in the bottle, but we are too excited to wait. Besides, this way we can have a chance to try things out with a very small crowd. So if you read this blog, you're invited. And if you mention this blog, Dave is offering a discount on purchases. We have a dry white, a semi-dry rose, and a sweet Seyval now for sale. (If you are looking for red wines, you will have to wait for fall. They are still aging in the barrels.)

It has been busy and fun around here lately. We got the labels in (finally!) on Friday night, and immediately got to work on labeling the White Barrel Reserve, our dry white wine. Then Saturday we finished labeling it, and then bottled the Rose and Seyval wines. Today we labeled those wines, and now we are ready for business.

The work on the building is done for the moment, and we are ready to go. (We hope!) The drainage work on the area around the building is done; it has been tested thoroughly and worked well with all the rain we have had lately. We have been fortunate not to have had severe weather or flooding, but our parking lot is still a little soggy.

So come by Saturday. We are going to have a good time!

Bloom has about finished in the vineyard and baby grapes are now appearing on the vines. The wind is doing its best to destroy our trellis structure, but the vines are holding on fairly well. We are lucky in that we have not had the hail (or tornados) that have been all around us for the past week, but we are craving some peaceful weather. The sun, rain and warm temperatures have made the vines grow like crazy, and the weeds too. There is always more to do in the vineyard.

We are wondering if our labels will ever arrive. They were supposed to be here weeks ago, but problems keep cropping up. All we can do is hope that they will be worth the wait. If they ever come, we will actually be able to sell some wine, which is a very exciting prospect after all these years of planning and work. We should finish bottling the white and rose wines this weekend, and with any luck will have them labeled as well.

We have been doing some construction on the winery building, to get the tasting room ready for business. As with all construction, it seems to take forever. Although we are almost done, there are still several loose ends that need to be tied up. For example, we have a lovely new ramp but the access to it is a mess. We are having an open house this week for the Whitewater Area Chamber of Commerce. I hope they are forgiving of the poor access, and I hope it doesn't rain, because we had another big tree blow over, this one into our fledgling parking lot.

Yet with all the setbacks and frustrations, we have wine that we are really proud of. We can see the next step in the whole project, opening up the winery, just around the corner. It is very exciting!