the BEACON Newspaper, Indiana beacon8-18web | Page 5
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]
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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
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