February is when we do a lot of our pruning and fertilizing in order to get the vines ready to produce the highest quality grapes possible. Generally, it’s not our favorite job as we’re still mired in winter; however, with the wonderful weather we’ve been having this year, it’s been such a blast to be out in the vineyard that we’ve been nearly unable to get winemaker Dave to stop.
Due to our high maintenance vineyard, and the work to be done getting the 2011 wines ready to bottle, we are happy to announce that we have hired a new employee! Ben Gaeddert has all the qualities we were looking for: enthusiastic about wine, familiar with Kansas grapes, and capable of putting up with the Sollo family for extended periods of time. Ben has been helping out with winemaking and vineyard management, and will occasionally work in our tasting room. We’re happy to have him!
With Dave and Ben working in the vineyard, Jeff and Brian have been working very hard to get our sweet wines ready for bottling. We are currently out of Peckerhead Red, and only have a few bottles of Chloe’s Cuvee left. However, with any luck we should have both bottled and ready to drink very soon! We will be installing our new chilling system in early March. Engineers are welcome to come out and help.
The Sommeliers
Earlier this month, our manager of marketing Jeff Sollo and tasting room manager Lauren Taylor attended classes in Denver and are now certified sommeliers. They learned about wine regions throughout the world, and can now tell you exactly what you taste when you sample a wine.
We currently have two 59 gallon used barrels that we have retired and are now available for purchase for $100.
Our tasting room is open from noon-5 on Saturdays for free tastings and tours. We hope to see you out here soon!