Big Kids on Easter

Today children both big and small came out to Cassel Vineyards to enjoy the first taste of real spring weather so far this year.  The sunshine and warmth made everyone feel like a kid as we entertained many people in our first adult only Easter egg hunt.  It seems like we have tapped into a very under-exploited market. We enjoyed big kids stopping by to look for eggs all day. Some even brought their children! Thanks to Jody, the little kids had candy to look for while their parents walked through the vines looking for gifts like hats and t-shirts. With the beautiful weather, everyone had such a nice time it made it a pleasure to see so many smiles

Finished with Pruning!

We finished up our pruning today at noon.  As you can see in the picture the vines are still completely dormant.  What a change from last year when our vines were completely full of leaves and we spent the next month worrying about frost and freeze warnings.  This year we are waiting for the sunshine and warm temperatures so that we can begin tying down and training vines.  What a difference a year makes!

The picture shows our contribution to the Easter bunny to help him with this coming Saturday's Easter egg hunt.  If you haven't heard it through the grapevine, there is going to be an adult Easter egg hunt this Saturday, March 30th in the vineyard.  With sunshine and the first warm weather in the forecast for this weekend it would be a great time to pour a glass of wine and stroll through our vines to inspect our work.  Everyone should be lucky enough to find an egg and redeem it at our tasting room for prizes like t-shirts, hats, free tastings, discounts and glasses.  When you return, we would love to sit in the sunshine and talk about the weather and wine  (two topics that never grow old) but I will warn you that we try not to talk about politics or work.

The Easter Bunny is at Cassel Vineyards

The Easter bunny is hopping down the bunny trail to Cassel Vineyards of Hershey this Saturday morning.  The Sunshine is on its way too!  After a whole Winter of this cold and snow it looks like the bunny has some nice gifts to warm you up.  The eggs will contain adult gifts including wine discounts, tshirts, hats and special deals on tastings.  The warm weather of summer may not be here yet but that doesn't mean you can't warm up by walking down the rows of vines looking for Easter eggs.  The number of eggs are limited so there will only be one per family.  Come out early and enjoy a glass of wine while strolling the rows of vines.  Avery may even bring her bunny up to visit us at the winery.  Happy Easter and we hope to see you to get your adult Easter gift.

The First Day of Business

Here are the pictures from our opening day at Cassel Vineyards.  As you saw in my last post, the weather was terrible.  But as these pictures show, the weather inside was warm.  We had an amazing day.  At the top we all posed for a picture before we opened the doors.  The middle picture shows some of our fun-loving customers.  The bottom is a picture of our Jody and brother Rick working in the back room.  It was such an awesome day with so much energy and so many happy people.

  All of our hard work in the past year was greatly appreciated as friends tried our new vintages.  Truth is, our wines continue to improve as our vines get older and the quality of our fruit continues to improve.  The second variable that continues to effect the quality of our wine is our equipment and wine making  skills.  This year we were able to incorporate new tanks and barrels into our grape an d wine processing along with new technologies to monitor acid, pH and sulfite levels.  We made some minor changes in yeast strains and sugar levels to adjust for the improved fruit quality and these changes were all met with customer satisfaction which is our measure for improvements.  If you were not able to make it out last weekend for our Grand Re-opening, we will continue to be open on Friday and Saturdays from 12 - 6:00 each week until we change to our Summer hours in June.  We hope to see you all soon.

Onion Snow on Day One

Although the weather outside was miserable on our opening day today, we had an incredible turnout.  It is so gratifying to think that so many people dropped everything they were doing today to drive through the snow, cold and slush to enjoy a glass of wine with us in our tasting room.  The numbers speak for themselves as it turned out to be our single largest day of sales in our 4 years.  To everyone who made it to our door we want to say thank you.  It was so fun to reconnect with all our customers from the Farmers Market of Hershey, and our fans from our 1st Friday in Fall Jazz Concerts.  Friends from Saunderosa, Chambersburg, Washington DC, VA and all over the place stopped by to say such nice things.  I don't want to sound too sappy but it is both humbling and gratifying that you all thought enough of our farm and family to drive through the snow to spend opening day with us.  Thank you all, it was a great day. Now it is officially time to start planting the onions in the family garden.

Smoking with Grapevines

I am going to share a new technique of food preparation with my readers that you can tell your friends about.  Each spring as we finish our pruning I collect several bundles of grapevine branches to use as smoking wood on my gas grill.  One of my favorite preparations is fresh salmon planked (on foil) and smoked using Chardonnay vines.  I have also prepared chicken, beef and pork using Cabernet Franc and Chambourcin trimmings.  The results are amazing and the trimmings are free.  If you would like to try this technique I will share the preparation directions and all you need to do is stop out and collect some of the vines.  Just let me know when you stop by and I will direct you to the varieties I have had the best results with.

Chardonnay smoked salmon

1 large salmon fillet

3 sprigs of rosemary

3 Tbs. olive oil

1/2 c. Brown sugar

Sea salt to taste

Fresh ground pepper

1 bundle of Chardonnay

1 bottle of Cassel Vineyards Chardonnay 

Place salmon on a foil lined tray on top of 3 Tbs. of olive oil and 2 sprigs of rosemary.  Cover fillet with brown sugar, salt, pepper and remaining rosemary leaves.  Now pour a glass of Chardonnay and relax while the grill heats up.  Place 1/2 of the green wood under the grate and put the salmon on the grill.  Tent the salmon to channel smoke and heat over the top of the fillet. Relax and have a second glass if necessary.  Before the bottle is done, you may have to add the rest of the vines to finish smoking the salmon.  

If you read this and need some vines or Chardonnay to try my recipe stop by the vineyard on Friday or Sat. 12 - 6 PM.

Change of Seasons

It seemed like only a little while ago that we were relaxing in front of a warm fire preparing our Christmas lists and relieved that our busy season at Cassel Vineyards was behind us.  We had closed for the season and looked forward to the cold weather, dormant vines and the wine resting in barrels and tanks.  But time slips by and here we are on the cusp of Spring and our Grand Reopening celebration this Sat.  

Yesterday as we hurried to finish off the final block of pruning in the vines the spring frogs began to peep, a killdeer flew by searching for a mate and robins ran and flew down the rows, sure signs that Spring is going to arrive on schedule.  If the excitement that our friends on Facebook and Twitter are any indication, it is going to be a lot of fun this Sat. As we offer FREE tastings of our Chocolate Port, Strawberry, Peach and other new vintages.  So if you want a taste of what Spring has in store and can't wait to have a sip of Summer, stop by and get a taste of our sunshine in a bottle.  It will put a smile on your face despite the chill in the air.

Before and After

Last week I took a picture of our bottling crew in our nearly empty production and storage facility.  Here are Luke, Chris, Rick, Leroy, Rod and Jim.  We worked for 3 days to get our wines filtered, transferred, bottled and stacked.  The second picture was taken today, only 3 days before our grand reopening.  Our stock room is so full we can hardly even move around.  If you can make it here on our opening day we are going to offer free tasting on all of our wines as well as specials on our few remaining bottles of 2011 wine which include Niagara, Concord and Blush.  The special is going to be 3 bottles for $25 which is nearly half the price.  I hope to see you there if you can find the time.p

An Unexpected Opening

Saturday at Cassel Vineyards found us hard at work preparing the production facility and tasting room for next weeks Grand Re-opening.  The weather brought the first Sunshine and warm temperatures we have experienced since last September.   You might think that we were open if you happened to drive by because we opened up the windows and doors to dust and mop.  When Chris had the bright idea to take down our Closed Sign, the floodgates opened and cars began driving in faster than we could stop them.  We could have let it ruin our day but instead we just went with the flow.  The tasting room filled up and the time flew by.  I noticed a couple of people texting their friends and before you know it we had a flash mob on our hands.  People were coming in and we had to call in more workers.  It's amazing how many people just dropped what they were doing to stop by and try our new vintage.  It's so gratifying to have so many friends to share our experience with.  Thank you all for the visit and if you didn't get there this Saturday we will see you next Saturday at Noon.

Cassel Vineyards on Hershey on the Web

We had some great press today in the local paper.  After an interview on the phone with Paul Vigna, this excellent story came up today.

Link to Paul Vignas blog

Bottling 3800 Gallons in 1 Day

What a weekend and what a day!  Yesterday we put two-thirds of our wines into bottles.  The only wines we did not bottle were the fruit wines and the unfiltered reds including our chocolate port and our first year reds which are still tucked away in our French oak barrels.  

With the help of Mark at Virginia 

Wine Bottling and our crew of volunteers we worked 12 hours and got our Vidal Blanc, Niagara, Blush, Concord, and Finish Line Red.  In the end, we now have all of our wines double filtered, first to two microns using the Crossflow filtration, then using the absolute 2 micron sterile filter on the bottling line.  The bottles are washed, purged with CO2 and filled, then corked under negative pressure.  The capsules are added and in the end all we need to do is put the labels on the bottles.

After the bottles leave the

 truck, our winery volunteers pack cases and stack and wrap the pallets.  I will take a picture of the production facility which is now splitting at the seams with our new 2012 vintage.  I can tell you the fruits of our labor are our best vintage to date.

A Very Busy Weekend

We began our weekend at Cassel Vineyards of Hershey as we prepared for Brendon from Mid-Atlantic Crossflow filtration LLC.  This was one of the best investments we have ever made in our wine quality.  In 2 days our wine became beautifully clear and transparent.  The colors became much more vibrant and it tasted so pure and clean I can't imagine not having this done before.  We worked for 2 daydream filtering our Vidal Blancs, Chardonnay, Niagara, Concord, and Finish Line Red.  The work and cost were just one more step in our investment in improved quality.  By Sunday night we were ready for a break but we then had to turn around and prepare for Mark  from Viginia Wine Bottling who rolled in at 9:30 with a mobile bottling machine.
The video I have enclosed is not Brendon but it gives you a brief narrative explanation of the counter Cross-flow filtration system.

Crazy Busy

Just a quick update to inform readers that I will begin writing again later this week.  Unfortunately, I have no new pictures to upload because I have been so busy pruning, filtering and bottling along with Chris, Greg and all our wonderful volunteers.  More tomorrow when we finish our last bottling and have our 17,000 bottles completed.