Tassel Ridge Winery

Tassel Ridge Winery–July 2008

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July is Red, White, and Blue Month

Red, White, and Blue is the very popular Concord-based sweet red wine that reminds many people of wine their grandparents made on the farm. It has the traditional grape flavor that many people associate with grape juice. In fact, some call it “grape juice with a kick.” Most people like to serve it well chilled.

Because it is so sweet, it is not a food-pairing wine. It is best consumed as a wine to sip before or after dinner.

Price: Red, White, and Blue in a 750 ml bottle is $11.00 plus tax and bottle deposit.

Join us at the Winery for our
Wine and Food Pairing Dinners

Saturday, July 12 — Wine Tasting 7:00 p.m.
Dinner 7:30 p.m. Foods from Thailand and Vietnam

Chef Hang will create the cuisine of Thailand and Vietnam including homemade egg rolls, crab Rangoon, red curry Thai chicken, and a traditional Thai dessert. Each course will be paired with an appropriate Tassel Ridge wine. The wines will include our Dry Riesling and Oskyfizzante Red. Reservations accepted through Thursday, July 10. Price is $50 per person, plus tax.

Sunday, July 27 — Wine Tasting 6:00 p.m.
Dinner 6:30 p.m. Flavors of the Mediterranean

Treat yourself. Experience Mediterranean flavors at their best, paired with Tassel Ridge wines… Spinach tarts, Greek olives, Greek salad, and grilled striped bass with sherry cream sauce will be served with risotto, shiitake mushrooms, and leeks. Reservations
accepted through Thursday, July 24. Price is $60 per person plus tax

Tassel Ridge Winery Harvest Club

We are pleased to announce the formation of the Tassel Ridge Winery Harvest Club.  Members receive four shipments of Tassel Ridge Wine each year in March, May, September, and November. We’ve picked those months because they are usually temperate enough that we can ship wine without excessive heat or cold damage. Each shipment contains two bottles priced at retail plus shipping unless club members pick the shipments up at the Winery. In that case, there is no shipping charge. The average price of each shipment with shipping is $45. 

We offer two wine preferences:  

Re-orders of full case quantities of the Harvest Club selections are always priced at retail less 20% when orders are placed within sixty days of the original shipment.

Harvest Club members have the first opportunity to purchase limited edition wines before they are offered to the public. They are also offered special tasting opportunities when they visit the Winery. In the future, we plan to have wine and food pairing dinners for club members only, special tastings with the wine maker, and opportunities to see how wine is made all of which are designed to make the experience of consuming Tassel Ridge Wines especially enjoyable.

The Tassel Ridge Harvest Club is open to people 21 years old and older. Shipments are paid for with a credit card that is kept on file.

This is a great way to stay up-to-date on our new wines. Because some of our wines are never sold through retailers, you may not see some of these wines unless you visit the Winery regularly.

Consider a Tassel Ridge Harvest Club membership as the perfect gift for a person who enjoys wine. Call for more information.

Heart of Iowa Wine Trail 2008 Passport

The Passport is your ticket to fifteen different Iowa wine country experiences. You can take advantage of the fact that there are now fifteen wineries within a 60 mile radius of Des Moines and each offers different wines. The Heart of Iowa Wine Trail Passport guides you to each of the wineries while providing you with a list of amenities. Purchase your passport any member winery for $25.00. As you visit each winery, you will have the appropriate page in your passport stamped. When your passport is full, one page is removed and exchanged for two elegant commemorative wine glasses.

Purchase your 2008 Heart of Iowa Wine Trail Passport at Tassel Ridge Winery. Price is $25.00, the experience is priceless!

For more information about the Heart of Iowa Wine Trail, visit the website at www.heartofiowawinetrail.com.

Custom Labels are a Great Way to Recognize Success and to Celebrate an Accomplishment

Most Tassel Ridge Wines are available with custom labels that allow you to celebrate a big zero birthday, recognize a friend’s special achievement, or to thank the person who already has everything. Provide us with a photo and some guidance as to what you want on the label and we will do the rest. We have a one case minimum (12 bottles) and we charge a $10 fee for label set-up. Custom labeled wine does NOT qualify for the case discount. Check our notebook of special wine labels to find ideas for your label.

Do You Want To Ship Wine Out of State?

We can now ship to the following six states: 

If you’d like to be able to ship wine to other states not mentioned above, please let us
know and we will investigate what kinds of licenses and permits we need to ship there.

What’s Happening in the Vineyard?

Now that we are getting more dry days, we are really making headway in our vineyards.  And, it is just in time. The rain fuels vigorous grapevine growth. I think that some vines are growing at a rate of 4 inches or more per day! The regular winds combined with rapid growth mean that we are constantly retying vines to keep them on the high wire. In the case of vines on a vertical shoot positioning trellis, we are constantly tucking canes into the wire baskets. On a good day with a crew of about 15 people, we’ll get 25-30 rows done.  It sounds impressive but in one vineyard block alone, we have about 125 rows. We have a lot of work to do.

As fast as the vines are growing, the weeds are growing faster. We have to get the vines tied up securely before we can use any herbicides. We are clearly in a race to see whether we can stay ahead of weed growth while we get vines tied up. 

Soon, we will be combining and shoot positioning vines on high wire trellises, and on some varieties, we will probably have to thin the fruit load. Speaking of fruit, some varieties are heavily laden this year. Edelweiss, our most important variety, has an impressive fruit load this year. Brianna looks good, too. The Marquette is only second year but it has lots of fruit. We’ll have to drop that since we can’t allow much fruit on a second year vine. We want the vine to invest its energy and growth in its trunk and root system before we encourage fruit growth. We’ve finished all of the in-fill planting we are going to do this year which involved the replacement of vines that died for some reason last season.   

What’s Happening in the Cellar?

We’ve continued bottling and have a little more to do before harvest starts. 

During the week of June 23, we partially thawed some fruit that we’d frozen and then pressed it in our new basket press. The juice was very high in sugar…about 30%. Our objective is to make a sweet dessert wine that has lots of fruit character. When this is done naturally, the resulting product is called ice wine. In our case, the process is called cryo-extraction and we handle the partially frozen grapes in a way that gets us the sugar and flavor without all of the water that resides naturally in the grape.

We started the fermentation on Friday, June 27, and it should take 4-6 weeks. Hopefully, sometime this fall, we should have some dessert wine to taste. 

New Retailers:

Tassel Ridge Winery in Restaurants:

You can now enjoy Tassel Ridge wines with your meals at several Iowa Restaurants:

Waterfront Seafood in Clocktower Square, West Des Moines at West University and 28th Street is our latest new restaurant. They offer Candleglow White, Prelude, and Twilight. These wines pair very well with their menu that includes shellfish, sushi, and boned fish such as tuna, swordfish, and halibut. The Twilight pairs well with their steaks.

Our Hours:

In July 2008, we are open for tours, tasting, wine, and gift shop sales seven days a week during the following hours:

We are open seven days per week!

Our Location:

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, drive southeast and 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. view maps

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

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—Bob Wersen, President