Winemaking season is in full swing at the
The Blind Horse Restaurant & Winery in Kohler. A shipment of approximately 30,000 pounds of freshly harvested grapes – including Grenache, Petite Sirah and Zinfandel varietals – arrived in mid-September from Lodi, California. It was the first of four or five shipments the winery will receive this season, for a total of 100,000 pounds of grapes, yielding 4,000 to 5,000 cases of wine.
“What makes us unique compared to a lot of different wineries in the Midwest is our process,” said Tom Nye, general manager of The Blind Horse.
Prior to fermentation, its red wine is “cold soaked” for five or six days – either manually using dry ice or inside two new temperature-controlled tanks that the winery purchased last year. The wine later ages for two to three years in barrels.
“We’re really a hand-crafted small winery, we’re able to do things like this,” said Nye. “We’re able to really take our time and craft that wine the way we want to before we release it.”
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