Nimble Hill Journal


Cellar Update

It's been a long winter, but the wines in the cellar are finally nearing the bottling stage. There are finishing touches that need to be done to the wines. We will be doing an initial filtering and add sugar to our sweeter wines, after which we will do a final cold stabilization. The wines went through cold stabilization individually, right after fermentation, however blending the wines together, or adding sugar, will cause a change in pH which may create a need to cold stabilize again. We will also be doing checks to insure the wines are both cold stable and protein stable. Any last minute adjustments will be made based on those tests and then we will be able to do final sterile filtering and bottling.

Bad News Good News

The bad news, as many of you know, is that we have sold out of several of our wines. Nimble Hill Red, Chardonnay, Vidal/Riesling, Niagara, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon are all sold out. The good news is that we have increased production in our 2007 vintage and will have a larger quatity of each of these wines when we bottle in the spring. Last year we produced slightly over 3,100 gallons of wine. As I write this, we have 6,100 gallons in tanks and barrels at the winery. About 600 gallons of this wine is being made for Maiolatesi winery which experienced a fire this past year and is currently without a winemaking facility. All in all, after racking, filtering and sampling losses, we will end up with over 5,000 gallons of wine which will help to avoid shortages next year. Thank you all for your support as it is you, our customers, who have made our sales such a success. Here's wishing each of you happiness in the New Year.

Harvest Season 2007

Well we are almost through the harvest season and all is going well. We had a late night Monday crushing and pressing 5 tons of Vidal grapes from Chester county. It was innoculated with yeast yesterday and will begin fermentation. Chardonnay has completed fermentation and is aging on it's lees in both oak barrrels and stainless steel tanks. Merlot is aging in oak barrels and going thru Malolactic fermentation. Cabernet Franc is fermenting and the cap is being aggresively punched down several times a day to extract flavor and color and to incorporate air which is very important at this stage. Cabernet Sauvignon grapes will be arriving at the winery today. The fruit this year has been very ripe and the flavor development has been excellent, which should provide for some very good wines. We had our first harvest from our vinyards this year and the result is that Nimble Hill Red will be 100% grapes grown on our farm at Nimble Hill. We are increasing production on most of our wines, particularly Nimble Hill Red, which is sold out, and Chardonnay, which is almost sold out.