Always more to learn...

[ValleyVintner]

Just a brief introduction. We have been making wine, especially fruit wines, for many years and are transitioning to commercial production and building a winery in southwest Iowa. My family's ancestral home was in Schaffhausen Kanton along the Rhein river in Switzerland. The only thing I enjoy more than making wine it is learning more about making wine. You can never know so much that there is nothing more to learn. After watching the forums and discussions it looks like there is some interesting and helpful information available here. It seems like people here are civil to one another. So many forums I have been reading on line these days seem to be nothing more than endless exchanges of insults and wrangling that generate more 'heat' than 'light'. I look forward to sharing knowledge with others whenever I can be helpful. Zum Wohl!

 

[IslandLizard]

Welcome to our forums!
Wishing you good fortune with your new commercial winery.

As you know, many things change quite a bit when you move from leisurely winemaking at home to a serious business endeavor.
I hope you'll be able to find or solicit information here that you can apply or extend to larger scale production.

As one of my brew friends says: "It's all about timing..."

 

[wallyLOZ]

Welcome from Missouri, neighbor!

Good luck with the commercial winery. Keep us posted on the progress.

 

[ValleyVintner]

Welcome to our forums!
Wishing you good fortune with your new commercial winery.

As you know, many things change quite a bit when you move from leisurely winemaking at home to a serious business endeavor.
I hope you'll be able to find or solicit information here that you can apply or extend to larger scale production.

As one of my brew friends says: "It's all about timing..."

Thanks for the reply.
A little background on our winery project: In our area there are plenty of vineyard/wineries and cideries too. We are located between a state park and a county wildlife area. There are so many deer that they would never leave grapes alone here so we planted a ‘meadow orchard’. We can protect our semi-standard sized trees from the deer. But let’s just say that we never have windfalls on the ground. So we specialized in making fruit wines. Some people call it “country wine”. We are “country people” so that doesn’t bother us at all. Our main production is apple wine. We have to explain over and over that it’s not hard cider but apple wine. (If you drink it like cider you will have trouble) We grow various fruits but mainly 50+ varieties of apples, modern, heirloom and ancient. We have been making single variety and blended varietal wines for family enjoyment for a long time.

The inspiration for our winery comes from Swiss ancestral traditions of small family ‘micro vintners’. These are little rural wineries that have been making wine for generations. We will limit quantities in favor of high quality and combine the latest techniques with traditional practices and what we have learned over decades of making wines that our family enjoys. We believe that carefully made fruit wine can be just as rich and nuanced as wine made from grapes. We just want to share the goodness to a wider group of people. Our goal isn’t to make a lot of wine, but to make very good wine. Like Grand dad said: “Klein aber fein”, “Small but fine”. But not for sale - yet...