Since opening in 1995, Winehaven has always picked our grapes by hand. This year, that changed as we acquired a new French-built grape harvesting machine. A row of grapes used to take two people at least two hours to pick. Now, we can pick the same row in about 60 seconds. Mechanical harvesting is incredibly efficient because the grapes go from being on the vine to crushed and into a tank within the span of a half an hour.
Our harvester is amazing! It straddles a row of grapes while shaking the vine to cause the berries to fall off the stem. Conveyer belts carry the fruit into two bins on the shoulders of the machine. Along the way, there are a few high speed fans that remove the leaves and other debris that may have fallen from the vines along with the fruit.
We are lucky that our estate vineyard is a short distance from the winery. We are able to receive grapes that are cool, fresh, and mostly still whole. There is no doubt that the short time between picking the grapes and getting them into the winery preserves their quality which yeilds an even better wine.
Winehaven's Stinger Mead won a silver medal and Winehaven's Cinnamead won a bronze medal at the 7th annual National Mead Crafter's Competition! The Stinger Mead is made from a blend of Minnesota wildflower and basswood honey. The Cinnamead is infused with natural cinnamon to create a smooth, balanced wine with intense cinnamon honey flavors and a crisp, delicious finish. The competition is sponsored by the National Honey Board and included nearly 300 meads from throughout the United States! This is the 7th consecutive year Winehaven's meads have earned top honors at this competition!
Check out the KARE-11 news segment about the impact the Minnesota State Fair has on local brewers and winemakers!
Check out Winehaven's Segment on FOX 9 at the Minnesota State Fair!
Chek out Winehaven's segment on Kato Living!
There is no wine competition that excites us more than San Francisco! It's like sending our wines into the lion's den. The competition is fierce! All the 'big guys' enter their wines in San Francisco, and the judges come from all corners of the wine world to evaluate them. This year, five of our wines emerged from the competition with medals! Our Stinger Mead, Marquette Reserve, Lakeside Rosé, Raspberry Wine and Franconia wines all won silver medals at this year's competition! We are so proud of all of our awards and delighted that our Minnesota wines have once again been recognized as some of the best in the world!
We had a great time sampling wines with Ben and Elizabeth from Twin Cities Live! Check out the segment here!
Winehaven's Stinger Mead and Cinnamead each won Bronze medals at the 6th annual National Mead Crafter's Competition! The Stinger Mead is made from a blend of Minnesota wildflower and basswood honey. The Cinnamead is infused with natural cinnamon to create a smooth, balanced wine with intense cinnamon honey flavors and a crisp, delicious finish. The competition is sponsored by the National Honey Board and included nearly 300 meads from throughout the United States! This is the 6th consecutive year Winehaven's meads have earned top honors at this competition!
We enjoyed hosting KSTP-TV at Winehaven as they checked-in on us about the dry conditions starting out the 2023 growing season! Check out the story here!
Winehaven was recently interviewed for an article about the future of fruit wines! Check it out here!