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August 2018 THE BEACON Page 5A Winemaking- Mixing Business with Pleasure for Decades Donnie Stutz (behind the bucket) and Greg Foote per- form the sticky task of crushing grapes. (Photo provided by Debby Stutz) Avery Holtkamp, center, stands in the vineyard named for her with parents and vintners Doug and Julia Holt- kamp. (Photo by Susan Ray) buy it unless you’d like it.” Mr. Ahaus says, “I think it creates a special bond when you’re actually grassroots. It’s one of the few things that you do from end-to-end: plant it, nurture it, harvest and finish it right here in this building. We JOIN US FOR SUNDAY BRUNCH can do it all right here – and there are very few things that you see started and finished really in one spot. It takes four years to get a grape off of a vine and into the bottle. It’s a process, but you start it here and finish it here.” Smoked Salmon with capers Bacon Goetta Sausage Scrambled Eggs Seasoned Potatoes French Toast Pancakes Pasta Fried Chicken Baked Chicken Eggs Benedict Fresh Fruit Grilled Asparagus Assorted Salads Create your own Omelet Beef carving station Chocolate Fountain Assorted Desserts $14.95 * * saturday * * * JULY 28, 2018 * 857 Six Pine Ranch Road, Batesville, Indiana [email protected] THANKS TO OUR PRIME SPONSORS: Rural Alliance for theArts nd FEATUR IN o n t ’ s y B Pe ig D 28 1 8 SATURDAY 07 Continued from page 4A humidity levels. Mr. Holt- kamp’s experience is that in addition to frigid winters, moisture is a real challenge to vineyards. He says, “Obvious- ly it rains a lot here. You can spray fungicides and whatnot to prevent rot, but if it rains a lot, you’re still going to have troubles.” Throughout the summer, the grapes are ripening on the vine, but no part of the process is without trials. Mr. Stutz says, “Last year was pretty challenging. It rained quite a bit, so they didn’t ripen evenly: one cluster was ripe, the other one not ripe yet, but I’m still learning.” Summers at local winer- ies often include live music, delicious food made onsite or provided by local food trucks, tours of the cellars and vine- yards, and much more. With the arrival of fall, the harvest begins. Mr. Ahaus says, “Be- fore we harvest the grapes, I get a sample, but I don’t take clusters - I get a bucket and I pick a berry from the sunny side, and one in the shade, a berry in the sun, a berry in the shade. If you do clusters, you don’t get a good representative sample. I want to be more fo- cused on the pH, not the sugar. I have bags of sugar if I need to add sweetness.” Mr. Ahaus continues, “The lab is the most critical room in this building because I can’t do anything without that. I don’t make a move without my analysis of what I’m har- vesting, what I’m getting and where we’re actually at. “When we start picking grapes, we’re working seven days a week; fifteen, sixteen hours a day from the last half of August through the first week of October. When it comes time to harvest, if you don’t have twenty people out there helping you, you’re in trouble.” Mr. Stutz says, “We have two acres of grapes, so the 2,000 gallons of wine, some of that is made from concen- trates from California because those grapes won’t survive these winters, so we have to outsource either from there or from the Finger Lakes region.” Mrs. Stutz says, “We do get local grapes, too. This past year, we got grapes from a vineyard in Dillsboro and also Rose Hill Farms. We got grapes in from both of those, but a lot of times we start with concentrate or juice. That pro- cess is a lot quicker because it’s already started practically.” Following harvest, the wine- making process follows basic steps: destem, crush and press, then cool, ferment and rack. The vintner’s skills are put to the test in knowing when to make adjustments in the pH values, the optimal time to cool, or stop the fermentation, and how much, if any, fruit, sugar, or acidity to add to the wine – and when. “Over time, the pH goes up, but you want it to be a true creep if that bottle of wine is going to be good for two or three years. If you make mistakes with your lab work, if the fruit is way overripe at harvest – and since acidity is the counterbalance to the pH, I need to keep an acid level in there, too. Everything’s based on that pH level. It sounds easy when I say I can add acid, I can add sugar, but it’s more than that - it’s a balancing act. One living cell of yeast can ruin an entire bottle of wine,” Mr. Ahaus says. “Cleanli- ness is a humongous part of what we do - everything goes through massive sanitation.” In late fall, early winter, bottling begins. Mr. Holtkamp says. “I can never see straight any time of the year, but I’m still busy in the winter. You would think that would be an off-time for us, but it’s not. This past winter we were bot- tling constantly to try to get ahead, to keep up, and we did get ahead but now we’re back behind again - but that’s okay. When it’s cold and dark early, we’re very busy at the Cincin- nati tasting room, so that keeps us busy. We sell a lot of wine out there between Christmas and the start of the vineyard season, so, for the most part, we’ve got two months where you’d think we’d be twiddling our thumbs - but we’re not!” Mrs. Stutz encourages anyone unfamiliar with winer- ies to stop by. “I think that people don’t have to be afraid to come in our winery … the nice thing is you get to taste the wine so you don’t have to Other great local artists too! Also playing: Samantha Fish, Duke Tumatoe and the Power Trio, Harper and The Midwest Kind OUR ADVERTISERS ARE YOUR NEIGHBORS. SHOP LOCAL AND TELL THEM YOU SAW THEIR ADS IN THE BEACON.