The fall has arrived, and that means time to plan some time to enjoy some of the local grapes and the landscapes our vineyards provide.
One of my favorite wineries is Blumenhof Vineyards and Winery in Dutzow, Missouri. Right now they are halfway through their 2018 harvest, and they have been busy picking their white varieties (Seyval, Vignoles, Rayon d’Or, Vidal, and Valvin Muscat) and it looks like the crop is one of their best.
“Yields are down slightly this year due to prolonged temperatures around -10 degrees Fahrenheit this past winter, but the hot, dry summer was fantastic for our grapes,” the winery writes. “We thought we were going to have an enormous amount of rainfall from tropical storm Gordon earlier this month, but we luckily only had enough to soak the ground (and not enough to split open the berries still hanging on the vine).”
The next harvest date is Wednesday, October 3rd – and they’ll be picking and crushing the first red variety of the year, Chambourcin. If you live nearby and want to see the first steps of the winemaking process, the public is invited.
“We’ll be just outside the winery (to the right of the building). We hope to start crushing the grapes around 3 p.m. (date and time subject to change if the weather sours on us).”
