America Recycles Day—Nouveau Weekend at Knapp
November 15, 2009
It is beautiful morning along the shores of Seneca and over the vineyards of Glenora as we await the arrival of the sun—6:59 AM (daylight continues to shorten each day—or the nights get longer). Our temperature is a mild 45 degrees and the wind is out of the southwest at 42miles per hour.
In the vineyards—Vineyard Manager Chris and “Doc” (Cellar Master Rich) finished washing and putting away the big harvest bins this past week, all that is left now is the smaller picking trays that are being used to harvest the grapes for our ice wine. Chris did more hilling up and started the soil sampling project. It will not be long before the pruning shears come out!
In the cellar—The Knapp Team bottled Cayuga, Brandy, Limoncello and Limencello this past week along with “running the still” and helping with preparations for the Nouveau Festival that took place there yesterday. The Glenora team bottled Bobsled Red on Tuesday. The balance of the week was spent pressing out red the fermenters along with 3 days of ice wine pressing. It takes almost a full day to press one ton of the frozen grapes. Both Winemaker Steve and Cellar Master Tracey are pleased with the yields and Brix. There is another ice wine project taking place as well. This one is being overseen by Cellar and Press Deck Team members Shawn, Tasha and Tom. They secured 10 trays (about 300 pounds) of Vincent grapes from Tom’s parents’ vineyard (Tom & Sara Hunt-Joyful Vineyards) and then froze them. On Thursday they put them (one tray at a time) into a small basket press and then pressed them getting about one half gallon for each 30 pounds pressed. It will be interesting to see how the wine turns out—if effort counts it will be great!
Our hats are off to the Glenora Maintenance Team—Joel, Jamie and Norm. These guys, while often behind the scenes, are responsible for the keeping our facilities a beautiful condition. Recently they have spent time repainting the large redwood casks, redoing and creating new signage, and repairing our driveways and sidewalks. We often hear comments on how nice our campus is – which is a direct result of the Maintenance teams efforts—Thanks guys, it is appreciated!!
On the road—Sherry and Leslie get the “farthest distance travelled award’ this week as they attended trade shows in New York City. While there was concern that they would go on a buying spree we have not seen any tractor trailers full of “goodies” arriving—yet!! Greg covered central New York this past week again promoting our holiday labeled wine and combo packs. Barb C and Tasha are in Syracuse this weekend taking part in a Pride of New York Harvest Festival that is taking place in the Horticulture Building at the State Fair grounds. Like many start up events there have been or were a few hic-cups from an organizational standpoint—running out of wine glasses and using plastic cups on Saturday being one of them (George Riedel would suggest that you drink out of cupped hand before putting your wine in a plastic “glass”) however to this point attendance has been very good and everyone seems to be pleased with the event.
This coming weekend both Team Glenora and Team Knapp will be taking part in Holiday Wine Trail events. For Team Knapp it is the Cayuga Wine Trail’s Holiday Shopping Spree (tickets are still available — www.cayugawinetrail.com. Team Glenora will be a part of the Seneca Lake Wine Trail’s 18th annual Deck the Halls (the initial holiday wine trail event). While tickets are sold out for this coming weekend’s Seneca Lake event there are still some for the second weekend (Dec 4-6) www.senecalakewine.com Tickets are also available for second weekend of the Cayuga Holiday trail event as well. On Saturday evening November 21st Chef John will be presenting another Wine Dinner at Knapp. The theme for the dinner is “Holiday Fare Our Way” and along with featuring a “twist” on a few of the traditional Thanksgiving recipes it will feature wines from Knapp, Glenora and Zugibe Vineyards. The menu can be seen at www.knappwine.com .
Thought for the week: Fate - A prudent person will think more important what fate has conceded to him, than what it has denied.
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