6666

Long term results! BlueStem Winery is a small town business located in Parkersburg in northeast Iowa (not Idaho!). No potatoes here, just corn and soybeans and lots of pigs. BlueStem has a multi-faceted approach because in the competitive environment in which we operate, simply having a winery would not generate the income needed to stay in business. So, we have a winery plus a retail store. Our retail store sells a variety of things but is mainly focused on winemaking supplies plus WinExpert and Cellar Craft kits for our wine making customers plus brewing ingredients and home brew supplies for our beer brewing clients.

Not many people think of Iowa as wine country but a hundred years or so ago Iowa was the sixth leading producer of grapes in the United States. So what happened? Three things. Agri-chemicals, King Corn and prohibition. Fence row to fence row planting of row crops (mainly corn) and the pesticides and herbicides which were used on them plus prohibition pretty much did away with the viticulture industry in Iowa. Now the business of making wine is going through a resurgence as the number of wineries has swelled from under 20 five years ago to over 70 today. The number of acres planted to vineyards is also swelling.

So what is the 6666? It is the monthly average number of visitors we have had to our blog since we put a counter on our site on February 4, 2008. That puts us on track to have over 80,000 visitors to our blog in 12 months. So what! For me, the whole purpose of our blog is to push our website up in the search engine rankings. I research 38 key phrases (almost every day) on Google and during this three month period our average page rank has moved from 30 (end of the 3rd page) to 20. I don't think it will be 10 in another three months (it gets tougher!) but I hope to see gradual progress. It would help if I could find the time to write a blog article every day but the demands of the retail store and the winery prevent that at times.

The last few days have been part of this hectic time as we had three deliveries of Cellar Craft and WinExpert ingredient kits plus a restocking of our homebrew supplies and home wine making inventories. Many of the WinExpert kits and Cellar Craft wine kits were this year's limited edition kits and had been pre-sold. That meant that in addition to unloading the Cellar Craft and WinExpert wine kits we also had to package a bunch of them up and ship them out on FedEx.

Space Needed!

Today will be a day for unloading Cellar Craft and WinExpert wine ingredient kits as I have trucks coming in from Canada and Ohio loaded with these wine making ingredients. My wife and I have been talking about the necessity to build a new storage building here at the winery as the basement of our building looks like a family of pack rats have moved in with narrow aisles through the pallets full of home winemaking and home brewing supplies and the pallets full of wine that we have bottled for sale. It is only going to get worse today as we have pallets of bottles coming in for four different wines which we will be bottling in the next few months.

Our home wine making and homebrewing equipment inventories will get a boost today, too, with many pallets of new and replacement items coming in. In you need some brewing equipment, home brew supplies or one of our WinExpert or Cellar Craft wine kits we still will find time to package it up and get it out the door. Every time one of our Cellar Craft or WinExpert kits gets shipped it gives me just a little more room to maneuver around our building (and maybe buy something to fill the space back up again!). Non-stop fun!

Decanting Wine (or Aeration vs. Oxidation)

A quiet spring Sunday at BlueStem Winery. April is always a quiet month as people start to get yard work done after a long winter. We received a large shipment of Cellar Craft wine kits last week and we have more Cellar Craft ingredient kits coming in on Tuesday. Our new supply of WinExpert kits along with a resupply of wine making supplies, homebrew equipment and home brewing ingredients will arrive tomorrow.

Yesterday's blog visited the importance of using a good cork when making wine. Today we are going to talk about removing the cork and enjoying the wine.

So, you have made 30 bottles of either WinExpert or Cellar Craft wine from a kit and you bottled it and you have waited the appropriate time and it is now ready to enjoy. I don't like to generalize but my rule of thumb on white wines made from either WinExpert or Cellar Craft kits is that you should wait a minimum of six months after bottling to enjoy the first bottle and a year is better. On red wines made from either Cellar Craft or WinExpert wine kits you should generally wait a minimum of a year and two is better.

But, as I said, you have waited the appropriate amount of time and it is time to enjoy. You have been told that oxygen is the enemy of wine and during the wine making you diligently tried to isolate your wine from oxygen as much as possible. Now it is time to drink your first bottle and I am going to tell you that prior to drinking your wine you should mix oxygen with it.

Yesterday we talked about corks and how a poor cork could lead to the oxidizing of your wine. There is a difference between oxygenation and aeration. Oxidized wine is wine which has been allowed to come in contact with oxygen during its storage life. Oxygen has attacked the wine and ruined its flavor and this wine can no longer be enjoyed.

Aeration is the mixing of oxygen with wine just prior to enjoyment. Wines which have been in storage will develop a smell which does not mean spoilage, it just means that we are unaccustomed to this aroma because we are used to smelling food which has been in contact with air, not isolated from it. Wines which have been in long-term storage may have chunks of sediment in them and will also have this slightly foul aroma. Use a special wine funnel which has a screen in it to do two things. Filter out the chunks and mix oxygen with your wine. This aeration will, in a few minutes, remove the unpleasant aroma. Will it damage your wine? No! Oxidation takes a little time, maybe hours and maybe a day. Open your wine, aerate it and enjoy!

As always, BlueStem Winery not only carries the winemaking supplies you need for your home wine making hobby but we also carry a complete line of home brew supplies for our home brewers. Our website is open all day every day or if in the area please feel free to drop in even if just to say hello!

The Importance of a Good Cork

It is a good day to write a little bit about the importance of a good cork when bottling wine. It is a Saturday, the store is open but not yet busy, and on Monday I will be getting in a shipment that includes WinExpert wine kits, winemaking equipment and home brew supplies. On Tuesday I am expecting in the second shipment of Cellar Craft wine kits in the last week. These two shipments might must keep me too busy to write blog articles so best get it done today.

I know there are many home wine making people out there and you use a number of different kinds, styles, lengths, and diameters of corks when you bottle one of your Cellar Craft or WinExpert kits or some of your backyard fruit wine. When people are in the store my criteria for helping them select corks initially centers on what type of corker they own or wish to purchase. If they own (or want to purchase) a plastic hand corker (or what I call the brute force method of putting a cork in a bottle) I recommend either the #7 or #8 diameter corks. The #7 corks are the smallest diameter corks and are also the lowest quality. The #8 corks are a medium diameter cork and are of marginally better quality. Why do I recommend these two corks if they are of lower quality? Mostly based on the corker itself. The #9 corks are the largest diameter corks but are virtually impossible to insert into a bottle using this corker. The #7 and #8 corks also have chamfered ends which assist in insertion. We do sell one style of #9 cork with chamfered ends but these are of the same grade as the #8s.

The next choice in corkers is to purchase either a Portuguese or Italian double lever corker. They operate on the same principle (tapered sleeve for the cork to slide through prior to insertion) as the plastic hand corker but instead of pounding on the top of the corker with your hand or a rubber mallet, you pull two levers apart which in turn drives a plunger downward which pushes to cork through the tapered sleeve and into the bottle. Do they work well? No! I personally like the plastic hand corker better. Do they work with a #9 cork? Maybe if you are Hercules!

If your hobby is important enough to you to own a floor corker then the choice of corks comes down to style and quality as opposed to diameter. A floor corker will insert a #9 cork into the bottle easily. Pick the quality cork that you need based on the length of time your wine will be in the bottle. Cork choices range from first quality corks (these are the same grade as the #8s) to winery grade twin disc which are an agglomerated (compressed ground up cork) cork with a disc of natural cork on each end to Altec corks which are agglomerated suberin (this is the highest quality cork available) to synthetic corks. I personally use either the twin disc corks or the Altec corks for bottling our wine here at the winery.

So what is the importance of a good cork?

The whole purpose of the cork is to establish closure. Closure to me is defined as the ability to seal the bottle so that air does not transmit from outside the bottle to inside the bottle. Please do not believe anyone who tells you that a cork breathes! This would imply that air passes through the cork and this simply is not true! Air can pass by the cork if your cork is of a smaller diameter or if it is damaged in some way or if your corking process puts a crease down the side of the cork. If corks did breathe then I would not be in the business of making wine. I would be in the business of making a liquid that had a taste similar to vinegar!

If wine does aerate because of a poor quality cork or a leaking cork the wine will oxidize and in turn it will lose the protection of the free SO2 (sulphites) and then the tannins, pigment and polyphenolic protections of the wine will leave followed by the loss of flavor and discoloration of the wine.

My advice is to purchase the very best corker that you can and then purchase the very best corks to put in your wine bottles. Lots of cork shoved into a very small space makes for longer lasting wine.

Not to forget our beer brewing customers, BlueStem Winery carries a complete line of homebrewing supplies, homebrew ingredients, and home brew equipment in addition to our fine line of WinExpert and Cellar Craft kits and other home winemaking supplies. Our beer brewing supplies inventory has grown significantly and we look forward to serving either your home brew or wine making hobby!

To Hell in a Handbasket

Another rainy April day in Iowa. We have had our share of these. Already we are at double the amount of rain that we normally receive for the whole month and we have a forecast for another week of rainy weather ahead to finish the month.

We had a large shipment of Cellar Craft wine ingredient kits come in a couple of days ago and we were fortunate to have the truck arrive from Canada in between the rain showers and we got it all tucked away inside before it started to rain again. I have a really nice wine making customer who farms and he has been busy tending to his wine in process just to keep his mind off the fact that he is not able to get out into the field to do tillage work. Other than the rain it has been a typical April in the store--slow sales of winemaking ingredients and even slower sales of homebrew supplies. Sales usually slow during April, May and June and then July starts the increase in sales of home brewing equipment, winemaking supplies and WinExpert and Cellar Craft wine kits. Will it follow that pattern this year?

I am so ready for a change in control in Washington! I am not sure that this country would survive another four (or even one!) years of the trampling on the constitution and moronic decisions we have seen over the last eight years. I long considered myself to be an independent but as I have moved into my later years I have moved further to the left. My first real memories of Republican lies was reading in Pacific Stars and Stripes (while serving at DaNang, South Viet Nam) that American troops were not fighting in Cambodia. Funny thing! The day before I read this in Stars and Stripes I had been flying in support of our troops in Cambodia and had been in Laos just the week before. One of my card playing buddies died on a mission over Laos.

I asked a blog reader who had written me if she felt she was better off now than she was eight years ago. Maybe I should have asked a more specific question! She thought she and her husband were better off. Hello! Is the light on inside there? The Republican bankers have driven the mortgage market into the ground (I was a mortgage banker most of my life! These people should have known better!) . It's all about greed. Now the fix is to lower interest rates to bail out the bankers. Excuse me! You dug the hole. You dig yourself out! Lowering interest rates lowers the value of the dollar. The dollar goes down in value and so it will not buy as much oil. Oil prices go up. So, let's make corn and soybeans into fuel to fix that problem. Oops! Now the price of food is going through the roof because grains are more expensive because they are being used to make fuel rather than food. Now hog farmers are shutting down their operations here in Iowa because they cannot afford to buy corn to feed their pigs. Anyone noticed the price of say, eggs, milk, cereal? Hell, the price of anything! But, just bury your head in the sand and say that everything is alright. Why not just deny that global warming is a problem while you are at it? I'd wake up and smell the roses but who wants to waste their money on roses?

Next week I have a shipment of WinExpert wine kits, home brew ingredients and supplies for making wine coming in on Monday. On Tuesday it is another load of Cellar Craft kits coming in. Maybe I'll take a little time off from blogging and send in a contribution to Barack's campaign. Sorry, but no one will ever convince me that putting another Republican in the White House is a good plan for America. If the price of your evening glass of wine is getting too expensive (along with everything else) you can lower that cost by getting one of our Cellar Craft or WinExpert wine kits and making some very good (and reasonable) wine. The hobby will get your mind off the assault on the constitution that has been going on for the last 8 years.

Busy Day Tomorrow!

We started a big spring sale on our WinExpert and Cellar Craft wine kits about six weeks ago and it has been hugely successful! We have only three Cellar Craft kits left in the store and maybe a half dozen WinExpert kits and it is getting pretty hard to sell a customer a wine kit because there just aren't many of them left.

That all changes tomorrow! Sometime tomorrow morning the tractor-trailer arrives from Cellar Craft with a little over 200 Cellar Craft wine ingredient kits. It will be a long day of taking inventory, stocking shelves and storing duplicates. It will be a few days before we are back making wine and getting back in the groove selling our other winemaking supplies and homebrewing equipment.

As always, we encourage everyone who likes a good glass of wine or a cold mug of beer to give either home winemaking or home brewing a try. We carry an excellent stock of home brewing supplies, brewing equipment and wine making ingredients and we can help you get started with a new hobby.

Tomorrow, Cellar Craft! And then on Monday the truck comes in with our new supply of WinExpert wine kits. Another long day (or two) of unloading, counting and restocking. I'm too old for this!

You Could Have Heard A Pin Drop IV

I will be back to talking about selling brewing ingredients, home brewing supplies and WinExpert and Cellar Craft kits tomorrow. For today, this is the last in my pin drop series so I will be done beating up on the French as of today. Then it is back to the subject of home winemaking and beer brewing.

A group of retired American teachers were on a trip to France. One of these retired teachers, a gentleman of 83 named Robert Whiting arrived in Paris by plane.

At French customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport which was in his carry-on. "You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously.

"Then you should know enough to have your passport ready."

Mr. Whiting replied, "The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."

"Impossible! Americans always have to show their passports upon arrival in France!"

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long, hard look. Then he quietly replied, "Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944 to help liberate this country, I couldn't find any Frenchmen to show it to."

You could have heard a pin drop.

Is wine making your hobby of choice? Or maybe you like to home brew! We would like to opportunity to be your source for any homebrew equipment or wine making ingredients you might need. We carry a large inventory of both WinExpert wine kits and also Cellar Craft wine ingredient kits and have the expertise to make either hobby an enjoyable one for you. Contact us at BlueStem Winery for all your hobby needs.

You Could Have Heard A Pin Drop III

The third (of four) in my pin drop series, I will again spend my blogging time not selling wine making equipment or home brew supplies but will instead exercise my option to editorialize.

A U.S. Navy admiral was attending a naval conference that included admirals from England, Canada, Australia and France in addition to the United States.

At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of these nations. Everyone was chatting away as they sipped their drinks when a French admiral suddenly complained that "Europeans learn many languages, Americans only learn English." He then asked, "Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?"

Without hesitation, the American admiral replied, "Maybe it is because the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German."

You could have heard a pin drop.

My legs are still aching after a hard day yesterday of racking wine (about 800 gallons). Making wine is relatively easy most of the time and then it is really hard work for just a little bit of the time. Yesterday was one of those hard days. I never noticed that when we were home winemaking but then 6 or 12 gallons was the largest batch we ever made!

We are looking forward to a large shipment of Cellar Craft wine kits which will arrive from British Columbia on the 18th followed by a another shipment on the 28th which will include a shipment of WinExpert ingredient kits, winemaking ingredients, beer brewing equipment and home brewing ingredients.

We'll wrap up the pin drop series tomorrow.

You Could Have Heard A Pin Drop II

A very busy day at BlueStem Winery today. My wife and I came down to the store early this morning and started racking wine from one tank to another. We moved a total of 750 gallons of wine today and to tell you the truth, standing on a concrete floor for that long makes my old legs tired.

We finally finished about 2:30 and I found my way to my computer and justed waited for some beer brewing ingredients, brewing supplies and wine making business to wander in the door. Our WinExpert kits and Cellar Craft wine kits inventory is extremely low right now as we have had a very good sale going on for the past month in anticipation of getting our new supply of wine kits in from both WinExpert and Cellar Craft.

The photo above is of two EC-47 aircraft flying over Viet Nam. When I was in the AirForce back in the late 60s and early 70s this is the aircraft that carried me from our home base at DaNang on missions into northern South Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. War experiences are not usually my topic for my blog but it was a nice photo and segues nicely into my second You Could Hear A Pin Drop article. Again, I wish I could give credit where credit is due but I have no idea where this article originated.

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American.

During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying "Have you heard the latest dumb stunt that the Americans have done? They have sent an aircraft carrier to Indonesia to help the tsumami victims. What do they intend to do, bomb them?"

A Boeing engineer stood up and replied quietly: "Our carriers have three hospitals on board which can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day; they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day; and they carry a half dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships, how many does France have?"

You could have heard a pin drop! As I stated yesterday in my first pin drop article, we are not always right, we are sometimes wrong, but we always are in the lead.

Ready to start a new hobby? We have either the winemaking supplies or the home brew equipment you need to start a new hobby making wine or home brewing. Contact me and we can provide the help and materials you need to learn how to make great homebrew and world class wines.

You Could Have Heard A Pin Drop I

Normally I blog about making wine using Cellar Craft or WinExpert wine kits or wine making from backyard fruit or juice from fruit or grapes, wine making supplies or brewing equipment that can be purchased from the BlueStem Winery website but I also on occasion rant about other things.

I wish I could credit the author of the following (and of similar posts which will follow for the next three days) but I cannot. I can tell you that they were forwarded to me via e-mail by the daughter of a good friend of my Dad's. My dad became friends with her dad while they were both prisoners of the Japanese at Nagoya Camp No. 3 located at Funatsu, Japan. I have a photo of the 113 American prisoners at this camp and my Dad and his friend are seated side by side in the first row. Also at this camp were approximately the same number of POWs from Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain.

There are very few things that move me to any great degree but my love for America is one of them. I think this was instilled in me by my Dad who quietly went about his business even though he had truly been an American hero during World War II. During a very brief period of time (about 30 days) in April and very early May of 1942 while stationed with Battery Chicago, 60th Coast Artillery (Anti-Aircraft) at a place called Morrison Hill on the island of Corregidor in the Philippine Islands, my father was awarded 3 Silver Stars, a Bronze Star and 2 Purple Hearts for heroism and for wounds suffered. I think my father showed even more heroism when he returned from 3-1/2 years of brutality at the hands of his Japanese captors and never showed any animosity toward the Japanese during the rest of his life. In fact, my brother's son was stationed on Okinawa with the Marine Corps and married a wonderful Japanese girl and my father thought the world of her.

So . . . I love America but without considering myself a super patriot. I also despise the current administration and some of their policies . . . especially with regard to foreign policy. That being said, I also believe that there are times when you lead and other times when you follow and yet other times when you are best to set out the dance. I served in Viet Nam (126 combat reconnaissance missions, Distinguished Flying Cross, 4 Air Medals) and have always said that I am proud of the warrior, not proud of the war. Viet Nam is a dance we should have sat out.

If the United States had done the right thing after World War II, Viet Nam would have been an ally rather than a battleground. During World War II, Ho Chi Minh fought against the Japanese (with the assistance of the OSI which was the precursor of the present CIA). After World War II ended, we had the opportunity to help establish Viet Nam as an independent country. Instead we gave the Indo-Chinese peninsula back to the French (remember the French -- the Vichy French who cooperated with the Germans rather than fight). Ho Chi Minh immediately began the revolution against French rule which ultimately led to a fight against the United States. No matter how you cut it we were wrong many times in Viet Nam.

Wrong then, wrong other times, but still mostly on the side of right. And this brings me to my fist (of 4) You could have heard a pin drop stories:

When in England at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if our plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building.

General Powell answered by saying, "Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return was enough to bury those that did not return.

You could have heard a pin drop.

Even though my life today is just making wine and selling beer brewing supplies, home brew ingredients and winemaking equipment, I remember those who served with me in Viet Nam and those who did not return and my father and those who served with him, fought with him, died with him or spent many months in prison at Cabanatuan, Bilibid, Palawan or Funatsu with him and even though we are sometimes wrong we are mostly right and I remain proudly American.

Nothing But Problems!

If you bounce around EntreCard you've seen the widget to the left. I joined EntreCard at the urging of my web guru (The Big Bald Blog) to try to push up my Google search rankings, Technorati authority, etc. In case you have missed the message from prior blogs, my whole purpose in doing this is to push the BlueStem Winery website higher in the Google search rankings so that I can market more of the winemaking supplies and other items we sell for home winemaking, home brewing equipment plus both WinExpert and Cellar Craft wine kits. But . . .

It is getting very frustrating dealing with all the problems that EntreCard continually has. My widget fails to show up on ads that I have purchased (sometimes the widget there actually redirects to my blog, sometimes not). The credits needed to purchase an EntreCard ad is not even close to the actual amount required. Tonight the top three blogs in my category were all listed as 1,024 credits to buy an ad. Then, tonight I went to purchase an ad on a blog and the required Ec's listed were 131,000+. Then, EntreCard wouldn't let me purchase because obviously I didn't have over 131,000 credits in my account. When are they going to get it together? It seems like one thing is fixed and another breaks. Too many doo-dads and not enough substance!

So, if you are site bouncing on EntreCard, I hope you have a lot of credits because otherwise you are wasting your time. If you are interested in homebrew supplies, beer brewing ingredients, or making wine from Cellar Craft kits or WinExpert wine kits then we do have our act together. Our website functions and we accept cold hard cash, not EntreCard credits.

Home brew supplies are always in stock and our supply of brewing supplies will surge in a couple of weeks as the truck rolls in from our wholesaler. Our website is fairly bare right now in the WinExpert and Cellar Craft areas but we have a semi arriving in about two weeks from Surrey, British Columbia with a huge load of Cellar Craft wine ingredient kits and we are also restocking our supply of WinExpert wine ingredient kits, too. Don't you need to restock your home brew supplies inventory or your stock of wine making ingredients? Bottoms up! That seems to be the state of affairs at EntreCard, too!

Blogging Takes a Back Seat!

I have been remiss! My blogging consistency has been inconsistent! I have been trying very hard to drop 300 EntreCards per day but have been lucky to get to 150 for the past week. That, and my daily blog writing has drifted to closer to a weekly writing. We had a very brisk March selling our beer brewing supplies and our inventory of home winemaking items and had phenomenal sales of both our WinExpert kits and our remaining inventory of Cellar Craft wine kits. Part of this sales volume was due to a very good sale that we had been running on both the WinExpert and Cellar Craft kits both in our retail store and on our BlueStem Winery website.

Couple brisk sales for the month with the fact that we were very busy bottling our third wine issue (a Montepulciano wine named Dark Side) and labeling our second wine (Red Crescent). I am a little bit of an obsessive compulsive when it comes to the we are selling. I don't like going into a winery and purchasing a bottle of wine that is sticky from having wine spilled on the bottle during the bottling process. We physically wipe down every bottle and dry it off prior to labeling (this is a little time consuming!) and then, instead of using a shrink wrap on the top of the bottle, we countersink the cork and apply a little melted bottle wax on top of the cork. It is decorative and makes our finished product look very professional. Marketing, marketing and more marketing! But it all takes time (my blogging time!).

The other factor keeping me from blogging about our winemaking supplies and home brew ingredients business is that fact that Spring has finally sprung here in Iowa! The coming of spring usually means a downturn in sales of wine making supplies and home brewing equipment as the natives are anxious to get outdoors and enjoy the warm weather after a long winter of hibernation.

Usually we see a downturn in sales in April followed by a surge in May when school gets out and people start doing a little traveling on the weekends followed by a plunge downward in June as the locals head off on vacations. Sales then start to climb in July and the winemaking equipment sales start accelerating in August as backyard fruits start ripening. The sales of supplies for home wine making just keep increasing as we go through autumn and into winter. Sales of Cellar Craft and WinExpert wine kits start picking up again in late fall and are brisk through the winter.

BlueStem Winery takes pride in its one-on-one service. Making wine is our primary business but helping our wine making customers and our home brewers make the right choice when making a purchase of wine making equipment or home brew supplies is also very important to us. We are not the largest brewing supplies store nor are we the largest supplier of home wine making items but we can guarantee that any problems you have will go all the way to the top! Have a problem? Call or e-mail! You will either talk to me or your e-mail will be answered by me. Period!

Hey, a blog completed. See you in about a week! Maybe sooner if it is slow and I get my bottles all labeled.