Welcome to the Bridge - Monthly Newsletter of Grand Island Vineyards

Welcome to the Bridge - The Official GIV Newsletter

Gearing up in the Cellar for 2024. ------- Written by GIV Winemaker, Ed Seikel

We have been busy in the cellar the past few weeks, gearing up for our first bottling of the year. We always schedule bottling for late winter or early spring to ensure all our current vintage white wines are bottled promptly, along with any barrel-aged reds that are tasting exceptional and ready to be shared.

Our first step is to always taste through every tank and barrel individually, so we can evaluate all of our blending components on their own. Next is to work on finalizing our blends, like the new Holiday Red and the Rouge et Blanc. Once we have our blending plans, we can start racking the wines off of their lees and into tanks. Once all the wines are racked, blended, and into tanks, they are ready to be filtered and finally bottled!

And of course we always have our own favorites, but I think we're all very excited to get the new Rouge et Blanc and 2022 Malbec into bottle and out to all of you!

2024 is already seeing some great events!

------- Written by Tasting Room Manager, Tess Jonson

A big thank you to all who came to our Valentine’s pick up party. It wouldn’t have been a success without you. 

It’s a Gouda day to make cheese is coming up in a few weeks make sure to get your ticket before we sell out. These cheese classes are a hot commodity. GIV and Kim Mack of Scratch Made Life join forces again and will be offering a Gouda cheese making class, March 24th at 11am. Space is limited! 

We always welcome outdoor picnicking so pack up your lunch and make a reservation to taste some delicious wines. We’ll see you soon! 



Barrels... Is there anything they can't do? ------- Written by GIV Winemaker, David Shattuck

This month, I thought we'd talk about something beyond the actual wine.

Barrels.

As we are very excited to be bottling this week, and with the plethora of new wines that will be finding their way into the tasting room over the next few months, I wanted to talk about this incredibly important, more under-appreciated aspect. 

As we empty barrels getting ready for our bottling, we assess the barrels and determine if they are still appropriate for our ongoing wine program. The barrels that have gotten too old are culled from the program and that is GREAT news for anyone that wants to pick up a barrel (and/or a bottle from that barrel) here at the winery.

To begin with, used barrels are a great conversation starter and can be used in so many various projects around the house. When you leave them whole, they make a great cocktail height table to use outdoors. You can also remove the heads of the barrel for a charcuterie board. Personally, I use the half barrels as planters in the garden to grow greens, peppers, and tomatoes. 

Additionally, the barrel staves are great to use on a smoker/grill to add a little bit of oak flavor to your outdoor cooked meals. Finally, domestically, there are lots of interesting furniture, coolers, and other projects you can do or find online if you enjoy woodworking, and you can even use them to create artwork, as seen here in the Tasting room!

Looking at Fungi, Trunk and Vascular Diseases.

------- Written by Operations Manager, Joe Salman

It's raining. 

Much like 2023, it is wet, but not stopping vineyard work totally. 

Our hand crews are still pruning vines. We wait as long as possible before bud break on certain varieties to eliminate certain vascular diseases in grapes. Eutypa dieback, Botryosphaeria dieback, Esca, and Phomopsis dieback make up a complex of "trunk diseases" caused by different wood-infecting fungi. By waiting when less of the fungi is around or when pruning wounds heal faster or protected by sap flow, you dramatically decrease severity.

When cutting into a vine shown above, Eutypa dieback, and some of the other diseases causes an interesting wedge shaped wood canker that expands in years to fully killing the entire vascular system and the vine. And as mentioned earlier, we have determined as well as other professionals the varieties that are the most susceptible to these diseases. We prune those now, which include Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Petite Sirah, and all the Cabs.

As we are on the home stretch of pruning, I can already see other verities like Chardonnay having swelling buds, which tell me we're not far from bud break and that the growing season is starting. I hope you can come out and see for yourself: the growth, the fruit, the birds, and yes even the diseases if you can find them. Cheers.

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