Three Oaks in the Movies!

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Richard Riehle – Lead Actor Movie: Of Children and Wine

We are honored to be chosen as the filming location for “Of Children and Wine”, a short film produced and written by Nella Citino and directed by Francisco C. Torres.   Filming will take place here in Licking County at Three Oaks Vineyard from August 12 – 15 at the height of the grape season.

Nella is presently Chair of the Film and Video Department at Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus and Francisco is currently the Vice President of Madison Shakespeare Company and one of the founders of the theater production company Know Better Productions and the independent film production company Frozen Stage Films.

The theme of the film is Alzheimer’s and its impact on the individual and their family.  It centers around Archie, a man going through his first stages of dementia.   The script is written from the heart as Nella recalls her experience as she and her family watched her father go from a strong, robust and smart man with acute recall to having no memory at all.  She recalls that they could “bring him back” if they talked about children or making wine. He loved children and he loved his small vineyard and garden.

Filming will be in our vineyard and in our home.  Richard Riehle, of Office Space fame, will be playing the lead role while actors from Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus will fill out the remaining roles.  Each cast member has an association with this disease and is prepared to tell their stories for behind the scenes footage. In addition to this, at the end of the film will be a montage of all the people who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and have some association with the cast or crew.

The crew is made up of Columbus College of Art and Design students. They are prepared to make this story come to life. The premiere of the film will be at the college and will be open to the public with a talk back and discussion of the different ways Alzheimer’s affects a family.

The film is dedicated to one of Nella’s best friends who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at 58 years old.

 

Fridays and Kirwin’s Fork in the Road

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Start your weekend early on a Friday with a bottle of wine out on our patio!   In addition to wine, we have some of the most delicious cheese platters around.

Our cheese platters are made fresh on Friday by Mary Kirwin, owner of Kirwin’s Fork in the Road.  There’s quite a variety of cheeses, meats, breads, crackers, olives, eggs and more!  Great food to pair with any wine we offer.

Mary also offers a few other tempting foods, such as meat and cheese skewers or desert tortes.

 

She describes her passion for delicious fare as providing “Food fresh from the fields that surround us.”

A little about Kirwin’s Fork in the Road from their website:

“Our adventure began several years ago by baking bread, pastries and tamales for the Granville Farmers’ Market.  Although our menu wanders from the Middle East to Minnesota, South America to Asia we are seasonally minded and need look no further than our own backyard for ingredients.

We are fortunate to live in a beautiful abundant Ohio county.  There are fields full of nourishing food all around and Kirwins’ Fork in the Road has grown out of our desire to nourish the people around us.”

Looking for wine?

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Our tasting room is closed during the winter, but did you know you can still purchase our wines? Available wines from our winery include Cabernet Franc, St. Croix, Dry Niagara and Sweet Niagara. Just give us a call at 740-535-6257 to arrange a pick up time (no Sundays).

If you want Dry or Sweet Niagara, stop by the Fredonia Mall.  They are about a mile down the road from us at 6754 North Street.

What if your favorite wine wasn’t listed? We really had a great 2017. It was such a good year that we are currently out of bottled Peggy’s Pink, Sweet LaCrescent, Concord, Apple, Marquette and Dry LaCrescent. Right now we are working to get wine bottled so you can continue enjoying your favorites!

So what’s the delay?  This January has been challenging for us. It’s our time to work on the wines and Pete also uses it to make improvements to our operations. Pete decided to focus on the bottling area. But that terrible flu that’s going around got Pete. So he lost a few weeks of work and is trying to catch up. He’s making great progress now and we hope to have our Peggy’s Pink and Concord available again within the next week. And, of course, we’ll get some of those bottles to our friends at the Fredonia Mall!

Stay warm this winter!

Grapevine Flowers

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Did you know that grapevines have flowers? Just like other types of fruit, grapes start as flowers.  All of our vines are currently in the flowering stage and it’s really exciting to see so many flowers out in the vineyard right now.

The picture is of a Niagara flower.  The flowers need to be pollinated to produce the grapes.  Pollination of grapevines is done by the wind, not by bees.  Most of the vines can pollinate within the varietal (varietals are they type of grape).  However, there are some that require other varieties for pollination.   St. Pepin is one variety that needs to be close to another variety for pollination.  Ours are between the St. Pepin and the St. Croix.  Some, like Brianna, can self pollinate, but can benefit from surrounding varietals.

It will be a week or two and we’ll see grapes in place of the flowers.  Can’t wait!!

Diana

Time to Remove the Suckers

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We’re in the early stages of crafting our 2017 wines.  For wines prepared from grapes, it all starts in the vineyard.  An excellent harvest of grapes depends on good vineyard management.    In an earlier blog, I talked about pruning the vines while they are still dormant.  Well, once the vines start to grow in the spring, many of the grapevine varieties develop suckers. Suckers are new buds that produce shoots in the trunk of the vine.   If you look at Picture 1 below, you’ll see lots of shoots with leaves on the trunk that do not belong there.

Picture 1 – Vine with suckers.

First, these shoots (or suckers) take nutrients from the plant.  We want the nutrients to go to the upper vine where we want the fruit to grow and mature.

Secondly, in Ohio, we need to spray for mold and insects.   While we found we can’t grow grapes without spraying, we can do our best to limit the amount of spray and eliminating suckers is one way to accomplish that goal.  Otherwise, you’re using spray on shoots that will not be used in the production of grapes.

Today was a wonderful morning to be out in the vineyard working.   In just a few hours, we were able to remove the suckers from most of our vines.  Picture 2 shows the same vine as Picture 1 minus the suckers.

Picture 2 – Vine without suckers.

In addition to pulling the suckers, we have a great chance to inspect the vines.   We look for any winter injury or other damage.  They looked great today, so we are excited about our future 2017 vintage wines!

 

Diana

 

Getting Ready for Taste of Granville

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This is our third year to participate in the Taste of Granville event at Bryn Du Mansion.   The event is hosted by the Granville Rotary Club and they use the proceeds to support many worthy projects.  Check out their website at http://www.granvillerotary.org/ if you’d like to learn more about the Rotary Club.

Preparing for the event starts much earlier than today.   For the 2017 event, the club contacted us and other prospective participants back in November 2016 to get commitments.  By March, decisions need to be made regarding the wines we will be offering, the cost for the wines and whether we need a volunteer to help us.

So why do they need to know the cost of the wines.  Aren’t we just donating the wine? That would be great; but it is also illegal.  The State of Ohio requires us to charge for wine even if it’s to a charitable organization. Many organizations have asked us to donate wine for different events but we just aren’t able to do it.  The Granville Rotary Club sets it up so that we can participate including having the required liquor permit for the event.   And they ask if we need a volunteer because we can’t legally pour the wine for the tasting either.

It’s time for me to get all the wine in cases, gather the tablecloths and business cards, etc. for our table.  I hope the rain finishes up this afternoon.  The event starts at 5 pm with doors opening at 4 pm for VIP ticket holders.  We’ll be in the Field House, so we won’t get wet.   But the event is across three buildings and the Food Trucks are outside, so they get a lot more people attending when it’s nice out!  If you plan to attend, please stop by and say hello!

Diana

Spring Flower Beds, Hornets & Wasps

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We’re less than two weeks from opening and I’m working to get our flower beds in shape.  I love to work on the flower gardens and was very happy with them during the first few years we were here.  After we opened the winery, it became more and more challenging to do much at all with flowers with a full time job.  It got to the point that I only focused on the winery patio and the rest of the gardens were weeded and that’s about it.  Now, I am so excited to have the time to work more of the flower beds!  They won’t be exactly how I want them this year, but at least I can make some improvements.

Yesterday was the first day to start cleaning out the flower beds on the winery patio. The flower bed closest to the parking lot was first and it was the worst!   It’s full of day lilies,  irises, hostas and creeping phlox.  In between all of them were weeds, mostly grassy type weeds.  They were individual grasses that you had to pick from in between the plant leaves.  It took about two hours to clean that one flower bed.

While I was out there, I was constantly having to watch for wasps.  They have been out in force around here for the last week.  I learned a trick that’s targeted to keep away hornets, but tends to also reduce the number of wasps around, too.  It’s a simple trick using a paper bag.  Hornets build those big paper nests.  They are territorial, so if they see a nest, they’ll go elsewhere to build.  If you hang a filled paper bag in a tree or anywhere in plain site, hornets will stay away.  I filled mine with wine bottle corks.  The picture shows it tied up with a plastic bag, but I’ll replace the white bag with twine when I pick some up.  Some people fill the bag with plastic grocery bags.   Last year, the hornets kept building nests on the patio and we kept knocking them down.  Once we hung the bag out by the patio, they quit building nests.   I was amazed, but it makes sense.  I plan to try the same thing with burlap bags as soon as they get here from Amazon.

Enjoying Spring!

Introducing our New Website!!!

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We’re a small winery, so we do as much as we can ourselves and that includes web design and publishing.  A few years ago, I heard there was new website development software that could change your site based on whether the user was on a desktop PC, a laptop, cell phone, etc.   Our Three Oaks Vineyard website didn’t do that.  It got really small when you tried to see it on your cell phone.  So back in 2014, I purchased some software to upgrade our site.  What I didn’t have was the time available to learn the new software.  Fast forward to 2017 and retirement.  Now I have time and now I need to get it done before we open.  Why?  Because once we open, I won’t have time.  🙂

Of course, you can imagine, the software from 2014 just wasn’t going to do it.  So… time to upgrade.  I really have grown to love Coffeecup software and I went with their Responsive Site Designer.  Compared to other software, it’s low cost and the support is awesome!  I can ask a question at midnight and have an answer in a short period of time, sometimes a few minutes.

Our new site is much cleaner!  The menu is the same, so anyone who has used the site in the past should be able to easily navigate.   The page I like the most is our event page.  I struggled with it using my old VSD software.  There just wasn’t a good way to show the events.  This new software provides a number of ways to set up the page and organize information.

Please check out our new Three Oaks Vineyard website soon.  And go to the events page as you may see some events you’d like to attend.  Hope to see you in the near future!!

Diana

 

 

It’s time for some lab work

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Yesterday, I headed downstairs to the lab to work for the first time since I retired in March.  I had already spent a day scrubbing down the floors, tabletop and shelves.  I inventoried the supplies, threw away any expired items and ordered anything requiring replacement.   So why do any lab work now and what are we doing?

It’s April, so Pete and I are starting to do some final steps for the wine that we started last fall.  We have limited space in our production room and only so much tank capacity. We will need all of our tanks to be empty when harvest season arrives, so we have a deadline for bottling the wine.  Given we have not elected to barrel age any of our wine, we can bottle now and still allow the wine to age.

Since we will be working with all of the wine over the next month, any prioritization is based on the wine left in inventory.  We are out of Concord wine (oh no!), so I’m starting there.    At this point in the process, we need to know the pH (acidity) of the wine, the TA (Total Acidity), residual sugar level, percent alcohol by volume and the total SO2 (sulfites).

Getting into the details  (Geek alert!)

Why pH?  We measure pH to understand the acidity of the wine and use the results to know the level of sulfur dioxide required.   Sulfur dioxide is used to reduce the risk of oxidation and as a preservative.  You see it mentioned on wine labels as sulfites.  The higher the pH (less acidic), the more sulfur dioxide required.

What about TA (Total Acidity)?  How is that different than pH?  Total Acidity measures the perception of acidity by the wine drinker.  It’s related to the tartness, sourness or crispness of a wine.  Based on the TA test results, the winemaker may want to work with the wine to get it to be within a certain range.

Residual sugar is a measure of the sweetness of the wine.  There are many ways for a winemaker to reach a desired level of residual sugar.   It starts with the level of sugar (Brix) when the grapes are harvested.  Next, the type of yeast used.  Yeast can only tolerate alcohol to a certain point.  Some yeast can tolerate more alcohol, some less.  The winemaker can use this to their advantage for alcohol levels and residual sugar.  Another method is called back sweetening wine and there are multiple ways to accomplish it.

We measure alcohol by volume for two reasons.  First, for you as the customer.  Many customers want to know how potent their wine is.  As alcohol levels change, the taste of the wine can be impacted.  Most winemakers have a target level based on a specific wine and will want to meet the level to get just the right taste.  Secondly, the State of Ohio wants to know.  We pay excise taxes on wine produced.  At a state level, it can change based on the percent alcohol by volume.

Last, and probably of highest importance, we measure SO2 (sulfur dioxide).  As long as the wine is in tanks, we need to maintain the right levels to protect the wine.  We also measure and adjust SO2 right before bottling to maintain the flavor and freshness.

Believe it or not, this is a fairly high level description.  You can do some google searches and find some very, very technical explanations.  I also only included the basic or generic version.   There are some standard practices, but I’ve learned that every winemaker works a little different.  It’s not a matter of wrong or right.  We all add our “fingerprint” to the wines we make.  That’s what makes it a craft and a joy!

 

Behind the scenes at a winery

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On March 10, 2017, I retired from my position as an IT Director at Nationwide Insurance. Nationwide is a wonderful place to work, the people are awesome, the work is challenging and it’s located in the beautiful city of Columbus, Ohio. I had been working in technical and leadership IT positions at large corporations for most of my career. The companies where I have worked include Firestone (which became Bridgestone/Firestone), SAIC and finally Nationwide. But it was time for me to take a big step and make a change.

My husband and I started a vineyard in 2006 and opened our winery in 2012. From 2012 on, we’ve been able to run the winery with Pete working full time and me working part time. Late in 2016, it become evident that we had to make a choice. If we wanted to continue the winery, I needed to go full time. So as of March 10, I retired from my career in the corporate world and here I am.

During my last week at work, I saw Brooke Ignet Hocker and commented on how much I enjoyed her informative Facebook posts and blog (not to mention her book and TED talk). She inspired me to post my first 30 days of retirement on Facebook. It sounded like fun, so I went with it. Each day that I wrote, I found that I actually enjoyed writing and my friends encouraged me to continue. Another friend, Kris Close, had the idea to write a blog about what we do “behind the scenes” at the winery.

And so, it begins. My plan is to inform and educate in an informal, hopefully fun and personal style. Enjoy!