Morgan Vineyard grapes for sale

The Buzz editorial staff received this email from a local grape grower today. We thought we'd pass along the information in case anyone was interested.

Chris,

This is Heath from Morgan Vineyard. We spoke Saturday about mentioning our grape sales on your blog. If it is not too late, I will be harvesting Frontenac Gris grapes this Wednesday, September 21, which will be available that same day, and if customers would like juice it will be available Monday, September 26. These grapes are best used for dessert or ice wines. The cost of grapes is 70 cents per pound and the juice is $12.00 per gallon. We are located in Coopersville just off the highway, twenty minutes from Siciliano's. The address is 15907 40th Avenue. Contact Heath at 616-638-9353 or Anita 616-648-3025 for more information. Thank you.

Heath

Buy grapes, crush & press them with our equipment

To all winemakers interested this year in making wine from fresh grapes--starting September 24th, 2011, Siciliano's will be providing access to our grape crusher/de-stemmer and presses. For more on this as well as information regarding the procurement of your own fresh wine grapes, please see below.

By Steve Siciliano

If you’re a winemaker you know how gratifying it is when the cork is pulled from one of your nicely aged, home-made creations. Whether that wine was produced from a Winexpert ingredient kit, a can of Vintner's Harvest fruit base, or from raw materials procured from backyard gardens and fruit stands, there is wonderful sense of fulfillment when you’re finally able to enjoy the fermented fruits of a labor that inherently involves a degree of delayed gratification. While drinking a hand-crafted product from the aforementioned sources can be extremely rewarding, it seems to me that the reward factor is intensified when the cork is popped from a bottle of wine that was produced from fresh grapes.

Unfortunately getting your hands on fresh grapes is not as easy as procuring ingredients and raw materials from winemaking supply stores, farmers markets or home gardens, and in response to this we are passing along two wine-grape order forms sent to us by separate yet trusted sources. The first is from our friends at Taylor Ridge down in Allegan who are now taking orders for this year’s harvest. The second is for grapes from the Lodi region of California. In the case of Taylor Ridge please note that you will have to place orders with them directly and they will notify you when the grapes are ready for pickup. You will also have to contact the folks for the Lodi grapes and arrange prepayment with them. However, as a service to our customers, you can arrange to have your prepaid orders of the California grapes delivered directly to our store.

Order forms are available for download 

by clicking here.

We will be offering the free use of our crusher/de-stemmer and presses from 9am to 4pm on the five consecutive Saturdays beginning with the 24th of September and ending with October 22nd. On these particular Saturdays, we will be showing folks how to use the equipment and how to adjust their juice for sugar and acidity. Also, if so desired (and for a nominal fee), the equipment can be rented on-premise on days other than the specified Saturdays. All crushing, de-stemming, and pressing will take place in the parking lot behind Siciliano's. Please contact us for more details.

The first, most important rule of homebrewing

By Steve Siciliano

This is a post for guys whose “significant others” don’t share their passion for beer. More specifically, it is for the aforementioned males who also homebrew and who might have been guilty of trashing the kitchen, who might have been scolded for leaving Designing Great Beer on the bathroom floor, who have argued the necessity of putting a raging fermenter in a clothes closet and who are quite capable of responding to the question “Honey, what shall we do this Saturday?”, with some version of the following: “Uh, five of the guys are coming over and we’re having an all-day brew session.”

If you fall into the above category and have been guilty of any of those transgressions or are quite capable of committing them in the future, I put to you this question: What is the first and most important rule in homebrewing?

Sanitation, you say?

Nope.

Pitching the proper amount of healthy yeast?

Sorry.

Maintaining proper fermentation temperatures?

Wrong again.

Here it is gentlemen—the first rule for guys like you is keeping that non beer-loving, significant other happy.

Let's get right to the point. If the woman in your life is not, for whatever reason, happy about your hobby, there's a good chance that you won't be happy either. In fact, there's a distinct possibility that your homebrewing days are numbered and that your fermenters, carboys, bottles, hydrometers, stir plates, cappers and corny kegs will someday end up on the front lawn with hand-written price stickers on them. But don't despair—there's something you can do to make your beloved hobby more palatable to your beloved, especially if your wives and girlfriends love wine just as much as you love beer.

What I'm suggesting, of course, is that you keep your better halfs supplied with batches of delicious wine made from the ingredient kits available at our store. Much of the same equipment used to brew beer can also be used to make wine. You might have to add another primary fermenter, a six gallon carboy and a corker to your inventory, but, I think you'll agree, it's a relatively small price to pay if it helps maintain a blissful relationship and the continuation of a blissful hobby.

Come to think of it, I have no doubt that it would also work wonders with mother-in-laws.

Siciliano's offers an extensive selection of Wine Expert ingredient kits, ranging in price from $60 to $150. All kits make about 30 bottles of wine (6 gallons).

The art of homebrewing and wine-making: helping restore the balance

By Steve Siciliano

Our aging golden retriever sometimes does something that is both amusing and annoying. Before lying down for one of his frequent naps, Cody Joe often rotates in a tight circle, pawing occasionally at the carpet, until he is satisfied that his resting place has been properly groomed.

It’s instinctual of course. Something hard-wired in Cody’s brain resurfaces at times and reconnects him to his feral past. I doubt, if given the choice, that Cody would trade his cushy life for one that relies on instincts for survival. But maybe it does Cody some good when one of those buried instincts works its way to the surface. Maybe it reminds him of his essential dogness. Maybe it provides a balance by serving as a reminder of the time when his distant ancestors didn’t eat dried pellets out of ceramic bowls, when they weren’t leashed, collared, and fenced, and when they were free to chase small animals around without fear of reprisals from exasperated keepers. Instincts fade but they’re never entirely eliminated and that’s a good thing—for dogs as well as for humans.

The rational mind takes a sugar reading.

 
We modern humans also have cushy lives relative to those of our distant ancestors. Like our domesticated pets, we no longer have to rely on instincts for survival. We have taken the wonderful instrument that Nature has given us—the rational mind—and have honed it into a tool that we have used to create remarkable, life enhancing technology. But in the process we have forgotten about an equally wonderful instrument —our intuitive mind. The intuitive mind is an integral part of our essence, of our humanness. It is what connects us to Nature. It is what gives us access to a higher consciousness. It is what allows us to exist in the present moment. It is what allows us to Be.

“The intuitive mind,” said Einstein, “is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” I believe that if we are to become completely human we need to find ways to restore the balance between rational and intuitive thinking. We need to find ways to become, in effect, both Thinkers and Be’ers.

The intuitive mind watches run-off.

There are ways to restore the balance. Any activity that quiets the rational mind helps restore the balance. Art is one such activity. When we create we are following an instinctive urge to be mindless and when we are mindless, when we have disengaged rational thought processes, we are reconnecting with our essential humanness.

I have often been asked why homebrewing and wine-making have become so popular. Here’s my answer—making beer and wine is an art form that nourishes the intuitive mind. Sure, brewing and wine-making can be technical but at their core both are pretty simple. And the end product, like a symphony or a painting or a Shakespearean sonnet, is divinely inspired and almost magical.

And so the next time someone asks you why you brew beer or why you make wine, tell them that you’re an artist. Tell them that you’re following an instinctive urge to reconnect with your essential nature. Tell them that you are restoring balance in your life.

Of course a wonderful byproduct of this balance restoring activity is that you can drink, and share, the artwork that has been created.



Steve Siciliano is a merchant, philosopher and writer and is currently putting the finishing touches on his first novel, “Putting Butterfly Wings on The Thinker”. He and his wife and business partner, Barb, live in a fine, ninety-year-old house with Cody Joe and Ellie Mae, a two year-old terrier/lab mix that constantly exasperates them.