Nouveau Celebration Weekend

November 08, 2009

The skies are clear, the red hue on the eastern skyline is showing the promise of a great day in the vineyards of Glenora and along the shores of Seneca—our temperature is 39 degrees, with the wind out of the west at 3 miles per hour. It seems that the weather guru as going to take another shot at Indian summer as they are predicting daytime temperatures this week ranging from the high 40’s to almost 60 degrees.

In the vineyards—Vineyard Manager Chris has started his annual “hilling up" project this week. This project involves creating a mound of soil around the graft on our grape vines. By covering the graft it is protected from the extreme cold temperatures that at times take place during the winter—sort of like putting a jacket or blanket on the graft. As well he has started winterizing and putting away the vineyard equipment and harvest bins. This coming week he will be taking soil samples to determine how much, if any, nutrients we will need to be applying to the vineyards this fall, or next spring.

In the cellar—the bottling lines were “up and running” at both Glenora and Knapp this past week. The Knapp Team bottled their first ever Ice Wine—harvested last December, along with Superstition. At Glenora it was Cayuga and Jammin Red. The Glenora team continued pressing out the red fermenters this week and on Wednesday morning received the last grapes of the season which went into the freezers at Dundee Foods. The plans are to pull them out next Wednesday and press them for Glenora’s Ice’d wine. As well the Glenora cellar team put the finishing touches on this year’s Nouveau wine—Noiret, which was made from grapes that came from Simmons Vineyards located on Keuka Lake (the broken one)—these grapes were harvested 15 days ago. This is our first time using this grape variety and from what we can tell at this point it has a lot of potential.

On the road—it was/is a busy week for Team Glenora this week. Greg criss-crossed the state traveling from Syracuse to Albany, to Buffalo and Jamestown, and back to Albany as he visited accounts promoting our combo packs, holiday labels, and our Lake Series Riesling rebate program. In store tastings were held at Exit 9 in Albany on Friday afternoon/evening and at Ryans in Canandaigua on Saturday. Retail Team members Karen and Karl made sure that we were represented at the Ontario-Yates Hospice benefit that was held at Ventosa vineyards on Friday evening. Our special events/festival coordinator, Barb Crosby, is currently in the New York City where she is pouring Glenora’s finest at an event titled “Cook, Eat, Drink, Live New York which is being held at La Venue. And mentioning NYC—the editor made a quick trip there this past Monday meeting with the folks associated with the I Love NY program.

Yesterday we celebrated the end (almost) of harvest by holding our annual (again almost) Nouveau Festival. This festival has been a tradition at Glenora since our early years. This year we even brought back “Henry the Hogg”—another tradition from years gone by. In years past Henry (a pig) was placed on a spit and roasted all night long in preparation for the next day’s festivities. The all night roasting required that someone, or several of the same, to spend the night caring for him—who in turn required plenty of libations, which in turn sometimes resulted in a less than perfect roasting. The consequence of that was that a “professional BBQ-er was hired for a couple of years which resulted in a great job of roasting but no fun for those who used to pull the “all nighters” roasting the pig (partying). While we did not use the spit this year we did BBQ Henry ourselves on a grill on Saturday morning—thanks to efforts of Orlando and Shawn with some “advice” from the editor. The only issue with doing the BBQ in this manner (in the morning) is that there was no party.  However the Nouveau celebration was great thanks to the efforts of the entire Glenora Team. Also thanks go out to the “Mayor of Glenora” Chuck Lincoln who once again presided over the opening ceremonies.

Thought for the week:   Emotions  -  Anyone can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success.

« Back