August 2021
Bottle 🍾 Service
We’ve set a new record at Windsor Run for most “bottles bottled” in a single week…70 thousand! Lots of effort and dedication from our whole team went into this endeavor, and hats off to our winemakers for preparing the 37 different wines in time for our big week.
Among the new wines bottled are several 2019 vintage reds for Shadow Springs and Windsor Run. 2019 was a fantastic growing season, and the wines certainly reflect it! We’ll let these age in bottle for a little while, but if you can’t wait for something new check out the First Light white port from Windsor Run (more info below).
Unlike many large wineries, we utilize a mobile bottling truck to package our wines. By contracting this service to a mobile bottler, we don’t have to own and maintain an expensive bottling line. However, that means everything must be in order by the time our bottler arrives - wines, glass, labels, corks, labor, etc. There’s no time for delays!
We’ve been working with Hunter Bottling out of Northern Virginia for several years and are very happy that they’re willing to make the drive down to NC for us. If you’re at all interested in impressive machinery, take a look at this video we made a couple years ago showing how the Hunter truck works:
First Light 🌅
Windsor Run has a new fortified wine! First Light is a white port-style wine, made from our Seyval Blanc grapes. We are well known for our Midnight Run ports, with the flagship Grand Reserve winning the NC Fine Wines competition for two years running, so we though we would try our hand at a white version. White ports are not a common wine style, so we’re very interested to see what you all think about this new addition!
Similar to the Midnight Run, First Light is produced in the traditional “port style” by adding our own high-proof brandy to the fermentation before the yeast have eaten up all the sugar. This results in a naturally sweet dessert wine that is then mellowed by aging in oak barrels.
First Light is now available at the Windsor Run Cellars tasting room and online store, cheers!
Protect the Grapes 🦅
We don’t like birds or deer eating our grapes, so once August rolls around we have to start thinking about protecting the crop with nets. These nets shown above are a relatively new style within the wine industry. They are designed to protect only the fruit zone, leaving the rest of the vine uncovered.
One major advantage of this design is that we can leave these nets out in the vineyard all year long. Once harvest is over, we simply unhook the top portion and bind the materials around the bottom trellis wire. This eliminates significant labor costs associated with applying and removing over-the-row nets each year, all while achieving better protection against pests!
In a year like 2021 where spring frosts wreaked havoc on NC vineyards, protecting what we have is especially important. All things considered, the vineyard is looking great right now, and hopefully these nets will get us through the final stretch before harvest. We’re about a month away!