Kinkead Ridge Vineyard and an Estate Winery Weblog

Only in a small town!

We released our 2008 white wines this weekend, to great acclaim and lots of sales!

Most of you probably know Ripley is a small town located along the Ohio River across from Kentucky, with its own boat dock.

We had two sets of boaters this weekend who wanted to visit the winery, which is not walking distance from the dock... the first set could not get a taxi to come get them; so they called the winery for help. We were well staffed, and I was able to send our Judy out to pick them up and return them after the tasting! The other set was even MORE creative. They had lunch at Rockin' Robin's Soda Shoppe... and asked the waitress if they could BORROW HER CAR to go over to the winery and back... someone they'd never met! And she agreed! I hope they left her a good tip!

I have so much paperwork on my desk that I managed to knock a full glass of wine into my MAC keyboard; so far we have rinsed it and tried to dry it in the oven, no luck yet. So who can I borrow a keyboard from in a small town? Oh yes! Maybe the local library has a spare! They did! And they lent it to me!

Here's an early review of the wines.

http://dogswine.blogspot.com/2009/05/kinkead-ridge-2008-white-wines.html

And other days are better...

We had a fantastic Saturday white wine release. The winery was steadily full of 20-30 people all day. Open again Monday. The youngest visitors ever, two nine week old twins! I did a couple of private tours of the garage door that Ron damaged on Friday! Everyone had a big laugh over that!

Some days are just like this...

On the eve of opening the winery for the release of our 2008 white wines.

This morning, I needed to get a wine delivery to one of our grocery store customers before 10 a.m. Well, needless to say, I got stuck behind THREE separate farm vehicles creeping along the highway next to a double yellow line at about 3 mph. Got there exactly at 10, and was paid with a Western Union money order... which I promptly managed to lose somewhere in the store. Went to the front desk, and put the manager through phone hell as she tried to connect to a person to void the money order and reissue another one. I went through the store one more time, and found the original slapped up against a tray of sirloin steaks in the meat department. Joyfully brought it back to the counter, and was too late, she'd already cancelled it.

Meanwhile back at the winery, Mr. Last Minute, Ron Barrett, had concrete poured this week. The job was not up to par. There are still piles of dirt and branches around the winery, which were supposed to be taken care of yesterday, no sign of the contractor. He had concrete poured so he could get a ductless air conditioning system installed. It's 12.30, it's still not working, the installer had to drive home for 2 hours to get a missing part. And we can't put the window air conditioner in, in case of emergency, because where we would put the ladder now has part of the ductless unit installed. And on top of this, the garage door broke. When I left a few minutes ago, Ron was hammering holes into the door to get in there to open it up... which I need, because much of my tasting room collateral is in that building.

SO YOU ALL THINK IT'S GLAMOROUS TO HAVE A VINEYARD AND A WINERY! THINK AGAIN! I'll probably be up until midnight getting things set up. Aarrgghh!

Nancy
Your stressed wine blogger

2009 bottling is almost over!

All the 2008 white wine is in bottle. Only 2007 reds to go. We were hoping to get it all done before the Memorial Day opening for the white wine release, but can't. So we open May 23 and 25, then tear everything down to bottle red wine, then set the whole tasting room up again for the summer. We learned the hard way a few years ago, the wine CANNOT be cold when you bottle, or the labels don't stick. 2005 Syrah was a nightmare. Nancy, Emily, Ron Hitt, Gretchen, Judy and Ron. Photo by Gretchen and Emily's brother Logan. Logan is so tall he can stack the 7th tier on a pallet without a ladder! Note Nancy's T-shirt. It's a stamp... for .33 cents. Must be an old T-shirt since first class mail is .44 as of Monday.

Here's the happy crew on Riesling day.

  Your friendly wine blogger,
Nancy Bentley
Owner/Managing Partner

Bottling the 2008 whites, and eye-popping COGS

On May 7 and 8 of 2009 we bottled 360+ cases of Viognier/Roussanne. A big change from last year, when the Easter frost took out 90% of the white grapes from 2007, resulting in only 48 cases of this blend! Gretchen, Amy, Megan, Ron Hitt and cellarmaster Judy helped Ron and Nancy; it was a smooth bottling, no major catastrophes! This wine is an stunning 14.8% alcohol by volume. We have also completed the white Revelation (predominantly Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon), and the River Village Cellars Traminette that was sourced from Rock Springs Vineyard, Kentucky. Still to go, Riesling and the 2007 reds. The winery re-opens on Memorial Day weekend, May 23 and May 25 to release the whit

Here's a 2009 Kinkead Ridge mini-movie of this bottling:

I have been writing BIG checks. The Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) gets higher and higher; thankfully gas prices are down from last year, it was costing us a fortune to deliver wine. One check for almost $13,000 went out today to our glass company, $4,000 plus for corks, $4,200 for capsules and $2,400 for labels.

We continue to garner kudos...  Andrew Hall and friends (see his blog) blind tasted Ohio wines vs. the world. Kinkead Ridge Revelation bested Clos de la Siete. "The Clos de la Siete was generally found to be too hot and monolithic while the svelte profile and acidic balance of the 'Revelation' gave it the edge. I like the Michel Rolland Clos de la Siete more than I expected (and far more than other vintages), but the more pure Meritage-like character of the 'Revelation' gave it an integrative personality." 

And River Village Cellars Syrah bested Cycle Buff Beauties.  "I will admit that in good part I choose the 'Cycle Buff Beauties' (a Syrah/Malbec blend) because of the label. It is a disjointed and flakey wine which I enjoy more than I had expected. The River Village Syrah is a nice wine, not deep, but having a nice Syrah character and spice. It was also a 6-1 winner. From the comments, the peppery nature of the Syrah was the kicker and it was clear it would be better with food than the Aussie."

Your friendly wine blogger,

Nancy Bentley, Owner/Managing Partner, Kinkead Ridge