Category: News
January 10, 2009
Steve Grossnickle, Owner
While researching names for new release wines, I have found a multitude of names and vintages among the perhaps fifty percent of the wineries who release them. The word “Nouveau”, French for “new”, is easily the most popular name associated with these wines. Wine to many connotes an aged grape product that improves with age. And although in many respects that is true, young wines may be measured in weeks and months rather than years and yet still have a clean-crispness and what I describe as a “fresh from the barrel” taste. There will be no hint of oak, only stainless steel on the…
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August 7, 2008
Steve Grossnickle, Owner
Although I’ve searched the Mormon family tree website, I can find no documentation of an Amish-Grossnickle connection; however, this weekend I felt the DNA connection with the raising of our tasting room barn. My good friends, John Clay and Steve Curley, helped as we assisted David Ciolek and his able bodied aide, Cody, in the setting of the major end beams for the barn, all done without aid of a crane. It was an exhilirating experience as we climbed ladders, swung ropes over beams, set diagonal braces, and fit it all together with an ingenious device called a “come along”. One can…
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April 12, 2008
Steve Grossnickle, Owner
Shawn called me the other day apologizing that he did not win a gold medal at the Finger Lakes International Wine Competition (FLIWC). Over two hundred wineries were represented with over 2400 wines judged. Forty-Five North has entered multiple wine competitions including the FLIWC, Pacific Rim, Indianapolis, etc., with the first being Finger Lakes. Those wines submitted were barrel samples and not completely finished wines, and this, honestly, sounds like an excuse, but nevertheless the truth. These wines were no more than four months old. Shawn is more…
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April 28, 2008
Steve Grossnickle, Owner
The title, a word play on the cinematic farce, indicates that the results from the Pacific Rim International Wine Competition, as in the afore mentioned Judging! entry, are in and I am overwhelmed. Shawn was called by the head judge and given the news that his Dry Riesling was voted “Best White Wine” in category and that the judging of best of categories placed it second overall in the competition of 2800 judged wines, losing to a cream sherry. I don’t…
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September 22, 2007
Steve Grossnickle, Owner
I am not reliving a freshman fantasy, this is the first wine crush. When I reported this to my ophthalmic technicians and surgical assistants, they immediately and to the person said “Lucy” recalling from their rerun days, the Lucy segment with Lucy and Ethel with hair up in buns, stomping grapes holding their skirts. Lucy is now an eight foot long stainless steel apparatus with a large bladder that progressively expands and squeezes the grapes, in this case pinot gris, and later auxouis, a white hybrid. The photos show conveyor belts, grape filled bins, and…
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July 21, 2007
Steve Grossnickle, Owner
I’m sure the line, “The Tanks are Coming”, is uttered in German in the movie, “Patton”, by those in the direct onslaught of the American General. However, in this case, even though the tanks are Italian from Prospero and Co., the phrase will remain in English, “The Tanks are Coming” and as I write this, the tense has changed to “are Here!” Yes, three container ship semis arrived last week at Forty-Five North and the contents, tanks, destemmers, and punch down tanks have now been set in the production building. Again, my naivete is genuine, there now comes the…
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While researching names for new release wines, I have found a multitude of names and vintages among the perhaps fifty percent of the wineries who release them. The word “Nouveau”, French for “new”, is easily the most popular name associated with these wines. Wine to many connotes an aged grape product that improves with age. And although in many respects that is true, young wines may be measured in weeks and months rather than years and yet still have a clean-crispness and what I describe as a “fresh from the barrel” taste. There will be no hint of oak, only stainless steel on the…
