Happy Holidays!

We had a lovely (and quiet) Christmas at Grace Hill Winery, and we hope yours was good too.

We had a huge crowd come out last weekend on the 20th, which was so fun and so gratifying, but a little overwhelming. We sold a record amount of wine (not too tough in your first year). But mostly we enjoyed the chance to share our wine with so many people. Thank you all so much! And for those of you who were so patient with us when we got busy, thank you again. We were really blessed to have friends who pitched in to bring out more wine and give impromptu tours when Dave and I got swamped in the tasting room.

When we closed up a little after 5, we realized that we never had lunch, and never had the chance to even think about it. A friend who has much more experience in retail than we do later gave us advice about how to sneak in some nourishment on such crazy days. "Keep a granola bar or something quick around at your desk, because you never know what a day will bring." I think we have a lot more retail advice to get from her, because clearly this is an area outside our experience. But we will get better, and next year we will hire some help!

We sold out of our Dodging Tornados wine, as well as our Red Barrel Reserve, so now we only have the White Barrel Reserve and the Cabernet available. But Dave spent yesterday in the cellar, getting the 2008 wines in place for bottling in the spring. We hope to have a full complement of wines back by April. Now we are looking at the other details, like how many pallets of bottles to buy and how many labels to order. And I am pulling together numbers for all my end of the year reports for the government.

We will be going to the annual meeting of the Kansas Grape Growers and Winemakers Association in Emporia in a couple of weeks. It looks like it will be a good meeting, with a solid agenda and some fun times too. Grape and wine meetings are generally much more fun than medical meetings, that's for sure!

We will remain open by appointment for the rest of the winter. So if you need some wine, give us a call.

"In the bleak midwinter..."

Actually, although we are now covered in snow (way more than predicted), it has been anything but bleak around here. We are having a great month!

Our talks at the Sedgwick County Medical Society (with wine) and the East Side Rotary (without wine) went really well. We seemed to be able to share our excitement about the winery, and it was so gratifying to see people get excited about it as well.

We have had a lot of traffic the past two weekends, and the party for the Whitewater Memorial Library was especially fun. The food was excellent! (Thank you, friends of the library- you were awesome!) Wine sales have been better than we expected. OK, we had no idea what to expect,but still they have been better.

And then on Sunday, in the Wichita Eagle business section, we had a beautiful story published about us and the winery. You can read it here, I hope: http://www.kansas.com/business/story/630776.html. We have received lots of calls and emails as a result, from people all around the country. Some are old friends, and others are people who got interested in our story. It has been amazing and humbling to see how many people are cheering us on.

So, if you are anywhere near Whitewater this Saturday, stop in between 11 and 5. You don't need an appointment, and we would love to let you try our wine and see what all this work has produced!

(By the way, Dodging Tornados Silver is sold out.)

OK, so it's December. I didn't get around to posting in November, even though a friend reminded me that time was running out. It seems like there is always so much to do this time of year. And blogging requires a certain amount of thought, I'm finding. I always thought newspaper columnists had it easy, but now I'm not so sure.

Anyway, the big news is that the 2007 Cabernet is now available, and it's really good! This Big Red Cab has plenty of Big Red Fruit with a long finish that should keep even the most discerning eonophile happy. It has enough cherry and raspberry flavors to withstand its 15.2% alcohol and enough tannins to allow one to lay it down in the cellar for a few years and see continued improvement over time. It spent 12 months in new American Oak before being bottled just 4 weeks ago. (Description by Dave)

We had a great open house on the 22nd of November- a lot of people came out, and we had so much fun! We are looking forward to being open the next 3 Saturdays, and are especially excited about the wine and food pairing event to benefit the Whitewater Memorial Library on Saturday evening, December 6th. (Call or email for details- tickets are still available).

We will be talking about the adventure of the vineyard and winery at the Medical Society meeting tomorrow, and then at the East Wichita Rotary on Wednesday. Public speaking is not what we are trained in, but somehow our enthusiasm for what we are doing makes it a lot easier. We do get excited talking about all the things we are doing, and especially why we like making wine so much. Although the three themes of the wine business seem to be

• That was more work than I expected,
• That took longer than I expected, and
• That cost more than I expected,

we still have to say that we love what we are doing, and we hope to continue to grow grapes and make wine for a long time.

Happy Halloween!

Out here in the country no one rings our doorbell. It's awfully quiet, but usually that's part of what we love.

All our wines are quietly aging in the cellar at this time of year. Dave is feeling a little lost with the vineyard quiet now. The days are shorter, and although today was beautiful, we've had our first freezes and the vines are quickly losing their leaves. It's not as picturesque as it was a few weeks ago, but that is all part of the cycle. We do feel the seasons more acutely now.

And yet, the planning for next year is already happening. The vines we will be planting (April 4th-mark your calendar!) have already been ordered. The endposts are in and the vineyard has been laid out. The midposts will be installed in the next month or so. The posts have to go in when the ground isn't frozen and is soft from recent rains-it has been perfect lately.

I am sure that when we are open regularly the Christmas season will be a busy one for us, but I don't think that will be the case this year. Maybe something will prove me wrong! Anyway, we are gearing up for the days we will be open this next couple of months. Come out then, and try the wines! We will be here on November 22, Dec 6,13, and 20th from 11-5. And other times by appointment. (That means just call and see if we are around. If we are home, we can be open.) 

We are pressing grapes tonight, but I had to come back to the house to get this post going. If I miss tonight, I miss September. Hard to believe, but true.

Harvest is over. We finished last weekend, with the help of lots of friends and family. We are so grateful to Heather, Adam, Glen, and Mary. Tom and Chris and Ray and Janet. Steve and his son Alex. Nancy and Ann. And as always, we count on Pat. Thank you all, so, so much! And Jeff- did we mention that we never could have done this harvest without you?

We came close to missing this last harvest. We somehow had the bright idea to travel to California wine country last week to see how things are done out there. (We figured harvest would be long since done, and Jeff could keep an eye on things.) Dave was concentrating on the winemaking and I was taking copious notes on the tasting rooms. We had a great time, made a side trip to the ocean, and tried lots of good wines. But at the end we were eager to get back to our own grapes, still on the vines. However, our flight home got diverted by a thunderstorm, so we missed a connection and ended up flying to Tulsa and then driving home to Wichita from there. We got in at 2:30 am, then got to get up for that last harvest. We made it, (caffeine helped) and had a really good day. Sunday was rough, though!

The processing goes on, and there is always more work to be done, but we are making progress. Most of the wine is in tanks or barrels, though we still have one lot of Cabernet Franc fermenting.

The wines from last year taste really good right now, and we are working on getting the tasting room ready for more regular hours. We will be open this Saturday, October 4th, from 11-5. Come on out!

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.