Tassel Ridge Winery

Tassel Ridge Winery–November 2006

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Our Hours

Effective November 1, 2006, we are open for tours, tasting, wine, and gift shop sales as follows:

We are closed on Monday and Tuesday except by prior arrangement. 

Tassel Ridge Winery is easy to find.  It is just south of State Highway 163 on 220th Street in Leighton.  From Ottumwa and Oskaloosa, drive northwest on 163 to 220th Street and turn left towards Leighton.  From Des Moines and Pella, turn right at 220th Street.  Drive west on 220th about 0.7 miles from the Highway and right into the Tassel Ridge Winery parking lot. 

2006 Tassel Ridge Nouveau Released November 3

The Nouveau (pronounced ‘new-vo’) is a red wine that is traditionally the first wine of the season to be released.  It is typically very light and fruity.  This year, our Nouveau is slightly spritzy.  This combination of attributes makes this an ideal wine for holiday celebrations and meals.  It is light enough to go with almost all traditional holiday food including turkey, ham, and mashed potatoes, while having enough structure to complement the spicier foods including stuffing and some of the accompanying vegetables.

Our Nouveau is made from roughly equal amounts Marechal Foch and St. Croix, all of which was grown in our vineyards in Mahaska County, Iowa.    

A Nouveau is typically made using carbonic maceration. That means that the fermentation is started in a sealed tank without oxygen. We usually use whole fruit and we leave this batch of wine alone for about a week. We then press the juice off the skins and seeds and return the wine to a tank to complete its fermentation.  Although this is a dry red wine, we want to preserve the fruit character so we do NOT do a malo-lactic fermentation and we do not expose the wine to oak at any time during processing. The wine is then cold and heat stabilized.  We adjust the mouth feel with the addition of a little sugar, clarify through our cross flow filter, and bottle. 

Now, for my editorializing!  I think our Nouveau is sensational this year.  I like its fruity character and the spritz makes it really easy to enjoy.  In fact, it reminds me of the first Nouveau I remember drinking.  As a young man in my very early 30’s, I had reason to be in Paris several times a year.  Late one afternoon, I adjourned with several colleagues to a little bar-restaurant called Le Chiroubles located just east of Les Invalides.  I remember enjoying two or three glasses of the Chiroubles Nouveau.  It was a very light, fruity red wine with the spritz I like so much. This wine became my “gold standard” when thinking of a Nouveau. I have usually been disappointed since because most Nouveau is made to come across like a light Beaujolais.  Wine producers seem to think that Nouveau is slightly disreputable because it doesn’t conform to their ideal of a fine wine (never mind that customers really like it). The Nouveau made in Chiroubles was unique and enjoyable on its own merits.  French Nouveau comes from Beaujolais, a wine-producing area just south of Burgundy.  In fact, Beaujolais wines are usually light versions of the great Burgundies (and are much lighter in price, also).  There are ten villages or “crus” in Beaujolais, one of which is Chiroubles, and, as I understand it, most Beaujolais Nouveau is made by big négociants like Louis Jadot and Georges Duboeuf who purchase their fruit from all over Beaujolais and then sell the Nouveau worldwide through far-flung distribution chains. Not surprisingly, this wine is designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of taste and all of the big producers seem to target just about the same flavor profile. 

So, consider using 2006 Tassel Ridge Nouveau for your holiday entertaining.  This wine is available NOW and is priced at $12 per bottle with a 10% discount for full cases.  By the way, you can mix other wines to earn the case discount.

 

Tickled Pink Makes an Appealing Semi-Sweet Wine for Holiday Events

Tassel Ridge Winery’s Tickled Pink is a very versatile semi-sweet wine that complements a wide range of food while still appealing to your guests who prefer a semi-sweet wine.  Made entirely from Zinfandel, this wine has a nice acid-sugar balance and a citrus-based tartness that provides the backbone necessary to complement food. 

Tickled Pink is priced at $10 per bottle and the 10% case discount applies for full cases.  Consider mixing some Tickled Pink in your case of wine for the holidays.

Tassel Ridge Winery Now Ships Wine to Iowa Addresses:

We can now ship wine to Iowa addresses via UPS provided the shipment can be received by an adult. The approximate cost for shipping two bottles of wine in Iowa is $10-15 and the cost for shipping a twelve bottle case is about $15-20.  Normal delivery time is 2-3 days from date of shipment.  Are you out of your favorite Tassel Ridge Wine and can’t make it to the Winery to pick up a new supply?  We will make it easy for you to keep your wine cellar full.  Or, would you like to give someone a gift of Tassel Ridge wine and have it sent directly to them?  Give us a call.  We will get your order on its way to you.

Tassel Ridge Winery Harvest Festival

Join us at Tassel Ridge Winery for our first annual Harvest Festival.  It started on Friday, November 3 and will continue through Sunday, November 19.  On Saturdays (November 4, 11, and 18) during this time, we will have Johnsonville Brats for $3.00 that you can enjoy on our visitors’ gallery with a taste of the 2006 Nouveau.  This is a great time to come out to visit the winery.

What’s New in Our Vineyards?

Our vines started to shut down for the winter with the first frost.  The vines interpreted successive harder frosts as signals that the time had come to send all of the energy that exists in the vine down to the roots and shut down to survive the progressively colder weather that is coming.  The leaves have turned brown and autumn winds have already stripped most of them off the vines. The energy stored in the roots will surge forth in form of new leaves in early June once the ground warms up.  And, it may be my imagination, but the canes that seemed so robust when they were covered with leaves right before harvest, seem thin and spindly now.  So, yesterday when I walked the vineyards at Tassel Ridge, there were just a few brown leaves left and without the leaves, it was once again possible to see right through nearly 100 rows of vines into the setting sun.  It was a great spectacle!

What’s Happening in the Cellar?

October is a very busy time in the cellar.  We received our Zinfandel grapes from Lake County, California and started and completed the alcohol fermentations on the dry blush, our semi-sweet blush, and the red Zin.  We are actually working on 20 different batches of wine at this point. 

In last months e-letter, I described the wine making process up to the point of the malo-lactic fermentation.  Malo-lactic fermentation usually takes 3-4 weeks.  The wine is then racked (moved from one tank to another) and we begin a series of processes and additions to remove any protein left in the wine as well as any solids left after fermentation.  We may also blend two or more batches of the same variety that came from different vineyards at this point.  The next step is to cold stabilize the wine so that when you put it in the refrigerator and forget about it for a week or so, you won’t have to contend with tartrate crystals that might otherwise form on the sides of the bottle.  At this point, we make a decision on how sweet we want the finished wine to be.  We may want nothing more than to improve the mouth-feel of the wine and we can choose to accomplish that by adding enough sugar to increase the residual sugar (R.S.) to 0.8 to 0.9% R.S.  Alternatively, if we want  a sweeter wine, we may add enough sugar to increase the R.S. to 3% for a semi-sweet wine or as much as 12% for a fully sweet wine. The last step before bottling is to clarify the wine and we do that in our state-of-the-art cross flow filter.  Then, we bottle the wine on our 25 bottle per minute line.  The bottling line fills the bottles first with nitrogen and then wine, puts the screw cap on, and then applies both the front and back labels.  Theoretically, we can fill 1500 bottles per hour or 9000 in a six hour shift.  We steam clean the bottling line both before and after we bottle. 

Most of what is happening in the cellar this time of year include the operations described above.  Because of the large number of batches we are working on right now, we are constantly juggling priorities.  We will probably bottle about once a week from now until the end of the year.  Upcoming bottling operations will include our Raspberry, Blackberry, port-style dessert wines, and our Edelweiss. 

We have now finished installation of the rest of our catwalks.  These allow our cellar personnel to safely get up on top of the tanks to perform pump-overs, to set up the cleaning apparatus to pressure wash the insides of the tanks, and to drop dry ice into the tank in order to prevent oxidation of the wine.

Tassel Ridge Winery Poster

The 2006 Tassel Ridge Winery Poster is a celebration of great wine photography.  It is 23 by 35.5 inches and is suitable for framing.  This colorful poster features several bottles of Tassel Ridge Winery wine in a setting that suggests a picnic with an assortment of cheeses and bread.  Warning: don’t look at this poster late in the afternoon.  You WILL get hungry!  The 2006 Tassel Ridge Winery Poster will be a great addition to the wine cellar and will also work well in the dining room. Price rolled and ready for framing is: $8.00

Calendar

The 2007 Tassel Ridge Winery calendar is now available.  It is produced in a large 10.5 by 16 inch format and includes 13 full color images of Tassel Ridge Winery, our vineyards, and our cellar.  The calendar includes some interesting facts about some of the varieties of grapes we grow in our vineyards as well as images of members of our winemaking team. Price is: $12.00. 

Gift Cards

Just in time for holiday giving, Tassel Ridge Winery announces its new gift cards.  They can be issued for any amount.  All gift cards are valid for purchase of wine and non-wine merchandise only and no cash refunds will be made.  Gift cards are sold in an attractive gift envelope.  They make a great gift for people who like wine.

Introducing Rhonda Taylor, Assistant Winemaker

Rhonda plays an important role as our Assistant Winemaker.  She is in charge of scheduling all work in the cellar and keeping track of all of our wine batches.  She also does most of the lab work which involves testing wine in accordance with regulations and to assure that we make a high quality product.  And, she helps out with almost all other cellar operations. 

Rhonda has a degree in Biology from Iowa State University.  Prior to coming to Tassel Ridge Winery, she worked as the Lab Manager at Pella Regional Hospital.  Although she had no prior wine making experience when she started at Tassel Ridge Winery, she has learned fast and is already starting to make wine production decisions under the guidance of Brett Hay, our Winemaker. 

Rhonda lives in Oskaloosa with her husband, Rob and her two teenage sons Michael and Austin. 

See Tassel Ridge Winery at:

Three weekends in November: November 3, 4, and 5; November 10, 11, and 12, and November 17, 18, and 19: Tassel Ridge Winery Harvest Festival and 2006 Nouveau release at Tassel Ridge Winery.  Hours on Friday are 9-6, Saturday 10-6, Sunday 12-6.

From 11-4 on Saturdays, November 4, 11, and 18, join us for Brats ($3.00 each) and tastes of our 2006 Nouveau.

Friday, December 1: Festival of Trees Gala at Pella Opera House.  Hours 7-9 p.m.

Three weekends in December: December 1, 2, and 3; December 8, 9, and 10; and December 15, 16, and 17: Tassel Ridge Winery Holiday Festival.  Join us for mulled wine on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.  Hours on Friday are 9-6, Saturday 10-6, and Sunday 12-6. 

Sign up a friend!

Email Brian Babcock at info@tasselridge.com to sign up a friend for our enewsletter.

Previous Issues:

October 2006: www.interpower.com/trwinery/newsletter10-06.htm
September 2006: www.interpower.com/trwinery/newsletter9-06.htm
August 2006: www.interpower.com/trwinery/newsletter8-06.htm
July 2006: www.interpower.com/trwinery/newsletter7-06.htm