Long Term Home Wine Storage

My son is becoming quite the collector of wine. Personally, if I part with cash to purchase a bottle of wine I like to enjoy that wine sometime in the not too distant future. Nick (my son), on the other hand likes to have some wine that he imbibes and other wine that goes onto the shelf to enjoy (hopefully) in the distant future. This brings us to our topic for today . . . storing wine.

Wine storage does not have to be expensive but it does need to be done properly.

Three elements can affect the future well being of your wine collection. These three things are air, heat and light. Wine will rust (I mean oxidize) if exposed to air.

Minimizing air contact is accomplish by purchasing wine which has been corked with high quality cork and then by laying the wine on its side to keep the cork moist. Corks which dry out (caused by the wine bottle being stored vertically) will allow air to pass through.

Red wines are typically bottled in dark green bottles and many whites are bottled in cobalt blue or dark amber bottles. These bottles reduce the amount of ultraviolet light that the wine is exposed to. Ultraviolet light can break down the structure of the wine. Heat can also potentially damage wines.

So, to reduce the chance of environmental damage to your wine, follow these suggestions:

1. Purchase wine with quality closures and store corked bottles on their sides.

2. Purchase wines which are bottled in darker colored glass and store your wines where it is generally dark.

3. Store your wines in a cool place (not too warm, not too cold).

This cool location for wine storage is best if the temperature remains fairly constant and there is a reasonable amount of humidity (too dry and corks will suffer). A good temperature range for basement storage is from a minimum of about 40 degrees (F) to as high as 65-70 degrees. Most homes will not maintain a constant temperature but if the changes in temperature are gradual this type of storage will suffice.

A more expensive way to approach wine storage is creating an area which is both temperature and humidity controlled but in some locations this could be the only alternative for long term wine storage.

BlueStem Winery operates as a licensed and bonded Iowa winery and also operates a retail store selling beer brewing supplies, homebrew ingredients, homebrewing equipment, winemaking supplies, wine making ingredients, equipment for home winemaking, WinExpert wine kits and and also ingredient kits for making wine from Cellar Craft.

Have the perfect place to store your wine but have no wine? Let us show you the how to's of home wine making. If you want an easy way to get started in this hobby, let us help you decide on either a WinExpert ingredient kit or a Cellar Craft wine kit and with a little bit of patience you can have your wine storage full and still have wine to enjoy. Prefer a cold one? Bluestem also can help you with home brewing supplies and home brew ingredients and can help set you up with brewing equipment to get started on another fulfilling hobby. Cheers!

Remembering Summer

A long Sunday afternoon working at BlueStem Winery today (with very little business!). Today was the first January day we have had where the temperature has been decent. Well, it isn't California but it was over 30 degrees today and compared to the -29 degrees we had just a few days ago it seemed like a heat wave! I think everyone was out enjoying the warm winter day. Tomorrow it is supposed to be over 40 so we'll have water running in the streets as the 30+ inches of snow we have on the ground gets to melting.

Global warming doesn't seem possible when you consider the cold, cold weather we have had this past month. Ice wine would have to be on our mind for the next wine making project if we had our own vineyard.

My wife was busy editing photos she took last summer when we were camping and trout fishing along South Bear Creek in Northeast Iowa and it made me nostalgic for my favorite getaway. This picture has thistles in bloom with honey bees and butterflies enjoying the nectar. I am so ready for summer so we can get the camper out, pull it up to Highlandville and enjoy the scenery and a trout fry on Saturday night. Campfires along the trout stream are probably the most relaxing thing I could ever find to do. We watch the skies to see who can pick out the first satellite and on rare occasions the northern lights are fabulous.

We have been busy making wine all winter long and have two varieties in the bottle (a Riesling dessert wine and a Cabernet Franc dessert wine), one ready to bottle (a Montepulciano), four more with several months of aging need prior to bottling in about June (a Riesling, a Gewurztraminer, a Gruner Veltliner and a Gewurztraminer dessert wine) and one more that we have the juice purchased for but haven't even started fermenting yet.

We would love to teach you how to get into home winemaking. We have all of the winemaking supplies, equipment and ingredients you need to make some really great home made wines. We feature Cellar Craft wine kits and also wine ingredient kits from WinExpert.

Rather make home brew? We also stock a complete line of homebrewing supplies, equipment and ingredients plus our own line of beer brewing ingredients kits known as BlueStems Best.

To Samsung or NOT to Samsung!

Andy at The Big Bald Blog got me revved up about Samsung again. His blog article yesterday about his vacuum cleaner experiences with Sears (where not to buy anything that SUCKS because it won't). You can read Andy's blog for his slant on vacuum cleaners . . . my experience is with over-the-range microwave ovens.

Yes, I know, this blog is supposed to be about BlueStem Winery, selling home brewing supplies and making wine but my tag line also says that I sometimes rant and rave about things that make me angry (or make me feel good). Today it is angry!

Apparently Samsung feels that before you purchase one of their over-the-counter microwave ovens you should read the warranty so that you know that if you install the oven and it does not work that you are responsible for paying the bill to install it, remove it and then reinstall another one. Apparently I did not understand that because Samsung makes junk and then sells junk this somehow becomes my problem.

I guess if you are big enough you obtain a license to dump on your customers at will. I operate a small winemaking supplies and homebrew ingredients store and we also retail our own label Iowa wines. If one of my customers bought something that was defective, even though they opened it in the process of finding out that it was defective, I would take responsibility for the item sold and replace it or refund the money. No cost to my customer!

We (my wife and I) bought a Samsung over-the-counter microwave oven with the thought that it would work at least for a reasonable amount of time. Silly me! It didn't work long enough to heat up one slice of cold pizza. In fact, we never were able to use it at all. But . . . we paid $268 (plus sales tax of $19) to Lowe's and then paid $140 to have the microwave installed. This was a fairly major job as we had to disassemble part of our kitchen cupboards to get the thing in. So, we are now in this for a total of $427. Before I forget, Samsung treated us like crap, Lowe's treated us with a tremendous amount of respect.

Never fear, the goods are under warranty. This means that Samsung will repair, replace or refund. Well, it turns out that there isn't a Samsung repair facility within a hundred miles so that takes out option 1. Option 2 was replacement. Now why on God's green earth would I want to replace this Samsung beauty with another one of their pieces of junk. Remember, it cost me $140 to put it in. Now I get to pay another $80 to remove the bad one plus another $140 to put in the replacement. We took Option 3. Not because it was a good option but because I was sick and tired of dealing with the morons at Samsung Customer Service. Do me a favor! Ship these peoples jobs off to some non-English speaking place. I couldn't have been near as mad if I had not been able to understood what they were trying to tell me as they were screwing me over!

So, we now have a new microwave oven. The total damages were zero as regards to the microwave. We paid $268 and we got back $268. But . . . we are out the $19 sales tax, the $140 for install, the $80 to remove, about $6 postage because we had to mail in the cord for the defective microwave (like I was going to fix it myself or something!) and another $20 plus gas to haul the damn thing to the landfill and dispose of it. That little Samsung gem didn't heat up even one bowl of soup and it cost me $265 plus fuel to the landfill and a whole bunch of frustration.

Thinking of buying a microwave? I think you know what my advice is. In case you don't, let me remind you that SAMSUNG SUCKS! Maybe they should start making the vacuum cleaners that Andy needs. After all, if they can make a microwave that SUCKS making a vacuum cleaner should be a piece of cake!

Looking for a great deal on some beginning wine making equipment to begin a home winemaking hobby or some homebrewing supplies to continue your beer brewing hobby? We can help you and when you call with a problem, you won't get the crap that Samsung hands out from their customer service department in New Jersey. You get to talk to me. No lies, no excuses, no problems! If it is broke we will fix it. If FedEx breaks it we will replace it (not meant to be a slam against FedEx as they do a marvelous job handling my shipping needs).

In addition to homebrew supplies and brewing equipment BlueStem Winery is a retailer for WinExpert wine kits and for Cellar Craft wine kits. Both WinExpert and Cellar Craft ingredient kits make world class wines and it is a great hobby. Where else can you spend so little (a maximum of $4 per bottle) and have a wine that is truly first rate to drink and share with your friends. Lots of friends! The more wine you make the more friends you will have! It works the same way if you are buying beer brewing supplies . . . just more friends.

And Around and Around We Go!

Fortunately, Wall Street was shut down today for Martin Luther King's birthday. The overseas markets were doing downward spirals in fear of where the U.S. economy is headed. I received an e-mail from my primary wholesaler today telling of large increases in wholesale prices that are coming for the WinExpert wine kits that I sell in my winemaking supplies store. The biggest reason for the large price increase is the value of the U.S. dollar against the Canadian dollar (WinExpert is located in British Columbia). The news people are trying to explain what seems to be an economic death spiral and blame, among other things, the housing market. Then they show a dated (obviously!) tape of George II praising the lenders for low interest rates and the boom in the housing market.

Hey! I am busy selling wine making equipment and homebrewing supplies now but in my prior life I was a mortgage lender. I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to know that if you artificially lower interest rates (with a promise of a huge rate increase a few years down the road) so that borrowers who would not normally qualify for a mortgage (or at least as large a mortgage as they need to buy their new palace) can obtain one that trouble is looming in the future. Couple that with a whole bunch of sub-prime second mortgages, moving all the manufacturing jobs to Mexico and several other things that our government has done to sell us all down the river and voila, welcome to an American recession.

By the way, a depression is defined as your neighbor losing his job, a recession is you losing yours.

I know that the Democrats are not perfect but bring them on. Any one of them! It does not matter! I have been a Republican cynic since the days when Richard Nixon swore up and down (I happened to read about it in Stars and Stripes while serving in Viet Nam) that there were no American soldiers in Cambodia. Oh, did I mention? I was flying in Cambodia several times a week, plus Laos and northern South Viet Nam. And George II makes Nixon look like a prelate. Maybe in these times that is a rather poor analogy.

So, because of George II it will be more expensive (about 20% more) for my customers to stay involved in their wine making hobby. On the brewing side of the equation, hops (one of the essential beer brewing ingredients) are not only expensive but they are scarce as hen's teeth. The last time I ordered hops I received exactly zero of what I ordered. We're going to have to start brewing rather mild (hopless) beer!

Since the juice that I purchase for making wine here at BlueStem Winery is also for the most part imported from Canada I am anticipating a fairly substantial increase in my cost to operate our winery.

Another part of the equation not mentioned is petroleum. That cost is a double whammy for the home winemaking and homebrew equipment that we sell. Much of the winemaking equipment and brewing equipment that we sell is made from plastic and plastic is made from petroleum. Add to that the fact that we have to truck in (from Ohio to Iowa) all of these home brewing supplies and winemaking ingredients and the prices just continue to spiral (upward instead of like the stock market!).

Our Cellar Craft wine kits will also, undoubtedly, suffer a large price increase sometime soon, too. Cellar Craft is located in British Columbia also and the kits I purchase from them have to be trucked all the way from BC to Iowa. I think I am going to just take some of my home brew supplies home and make some beer. I need a drink! No, George, I won't be doing a toast to you!

Home Brew Ale and Lager Recipes

BlueStem Winery is soliciting all home brewers to provide recipes for publishing on our home brew recipe pages on our website. Pick out your favorite recipes and forward them to me at bluestemwine@mchsi.com and we will publish as many as we can.

BlueStem Winery is a licensed and bonded Iowa winery. We also operate a full-service retail winemaking supplies and home brew supplies store at 305 Third Street in Parkersburg, Iowa. Our inventory includes wine making supplies, home brewing supplies, ingredients, equipment, our own BlueStems Best beer brewing ingredients kits, a large inventory of WinExpert wine kits and our new kid on the block, our new Cellar Craft wine ingredient kits.

WinExpert ingredient kits have been a staple here at BlueStem since we opened but we are ecstatic about the addition of the Cellar Craft wine kits to our inventory.

Looking for a new hobby? Wine making and beer brewing take only a small amount of time and the results are fantastic. Making wine is an enjoyable hobby with inexpensive world class wine being the added benefit. Home brewing is every bit as enjoyable with only your imagination keeping you from your next great beer.

Procrastinator? Then Making Wine is Your Hobby!

When a couple comes into our store and I start talking with them about making wine as a new hobby, I usually tell them that women make better winemaking hobbyists then men because there are only two simple rules: Keep your equipment clean and read and follow directions. Women are better at both!

Another attribute that makes helps when wine making is the ability to procrastinate! The great thing about wine is that if it is good today, it will be better tomorrow. This statement is for the most part true but during the very initial stages in the winemaking process you do have to stay on schedule in the addition of the various additives and moving the wine to a clean vessel when necessary. Once the process is a few weeks on its way the calendar becomes more flexible and you can go through the various stages with quite a bit of variance in the timing of the winemaking steps. In fact, I have delayed bottling wines for up to two years but for a very good reason. Wine that is stored in bulk ages about 50% faster then which which has been bottled. Here is a time when dallying is a good thing!

BlueStem Winery carries both WinExpert wine kits and Cellar Craft wine ingredient kits and both make superb (even world class!) wine. We have had customers make various kinds of kit wines which they declare are the best they have ever had.

One of our special wine kits this year is one Cellar Craft's Limited Edition kits, the Super-Tuscan Rosso Fortissimo Reserve Cuvee. This kit provides twice the amount of Tuscan Sangiovese juice than Cellar Craft's Showcase Rosso Fortissimo. The crushed grape pack is 30% larger at 2.6 liters and the crushed grapes have been upgraded to Walla Walla Appellation Quality grapes.

This Rosso Fortissimo is truly special and would be a great way to start your wine making hobby.

In addition to the WinExpert wine ingredient kits and the Cellar Craft wine kits we carry, BlueStem Winery also carries its own line of homebrew ingredients kits known as BlueStems Best. BlueStem carries a complete line of wine making equipment, winemaking ingredients, and wine making supplies plus all of the homebrew supplies, home brewing ingredients and beer brewing equipment you need for these great hobbies.

So . . . Educate Me Already!!

I read John Cow's EntreCard obituary the other day as he removed his widget. Whatever! My first contact with computer science was at the University of Northern Iowa (then State College of Iowa) back in the late 1960s. Computer Science at that time was based on punch cards! Everything that I have learned since has had to be force fed to me as I like computers when they work and hate them when they don't.

But . . . back to John Cow. He talked about the whole EntreCard thing, bounce rates, etc. and I actually understood (some of) what he was talking about. I don't necessarily agree, I just understood. I am probably part of his "bounce rate" problem as my approach has been to bounce from one blog to another to spread my card, increase my advertising rate so I can buy more widget time and increase my traffic. What is my goal? I have only one goal and it has absolutely nothing to do with my blog. It has to do with the BlueStem Winery website and my drive to get it further up the Google rankings so that I can sell more winemaking supplies and home brew supplies, equipment and ingredients.

So, what do I perceive that EntreCard has done for me? I launched my new website (our other one was crap!) in the early summer of 2007. I started searching Google for 38 key phrases in late July of 2007 just to see where I stood with the big guys who have been out there hawking their wine making supplies and beer brewing equipment for much longer than I have. On several (actually, quite a few) phrases Google did not have enough pages shown to find me!

I started blogging in about September of 2007 at the recommendation of my personal web guru, friend and also my website designer, Andy of Impact Marketing in Waterloo, Iowa (and also the author of The Big Bald Blog). He put me on to EntreCard a month or so ago.

So, what is the impact on my Google rankings?

I am still researching 38 key phrases. My average placement for these 38 phrases is on page 3 (number 27 to be precise). I have 11 key search phrases in the top 10 and am at number 1 for 3 of these. Am I a dedicated blogger? Most times I am. But . . . I sometimes take a break from blogging when we are busy making wine here at the store or if I have an abundance of packaging to do from sales of winemaking equipment or brewing supplies on the internet.

Usually when I took a break from blogging my rankings would slip. Well, I have not blogged in the last several days and my rankings have been doing a steady climb and I am now at the highest average rank that I have ever been. In fact, 21 of my 38 search phrases are at the highest point since I started tracking them. I have not done anything other than to work EntreCard fairly seriously (I am not a fanatic about it!). A few people have linked blog with comments and one even listed me as a Technorati favorite.

My conclusion: Since I have not been blogging nor have I done any updates to my website in the past few days the only answer that I can reasonably deduce is that my persistent pattern of dropping cards and buying widgets on EntreCard is pushing me up the Google ranks. So, go ahead and bounce me! I would prefer that you link to a post or list me as a favorite on Technorati and even better yet, if you have anything to do with the wine or beer business let's exchange website links. In the meantime, good-bye John Cow and I am sorry it did not work for you. Maybe I will find a better way to spend my time on the web in the future but for now I will spend a few minutes every day dropping away.

Almost forgot! I need to get WinExpert wine kits and Cellar Craft wine kits into this blog so I can link them to my website. Almost forgot the whole purpose of what I am doing here!

Remembering (those who rescued) Dad!

For several months now I have been writing sometimes daily blog articles about making wine an selling home brew supplies here at BlueStem Winery. Occasionally I would write about some other event or life experience that didn't relate to wine making supplies or beer brewing equipment and the other day I wrote a short blog article about my Dad and just a little, little bit about his experiences as a soldier with Battery Chicago of the 60th Coast Artillery on Corregidor Island in the Philippines prior to World War II and his subsequent imprisonment in several Japanese POW camps in the Philippines (Cabanatuan, Bilibid, Palawan) and then his transfer by hellship (the Canadian Inventor) in 1944 to Moji, Japan and then on to Nagoya Camp No. 3 at Funatsu, Japan for the remainder of the war.

Several months ago I started making up my own brewing ingredients kits at BlueStem Winery and I started to name a few of them after experiences my Dad had during the war. But, I digress! There is a story to tell before I get to naming a beer!

When my father was released from captivity he was transported by train to Nagoya harbor on the east coast of Japan. After a short medical examination he was issued a new set of clothing (to replace the rags he had worn for the last 3-1/2 years) and taken by U.S. Navy barge out into the harbor and taken aboard the British destroyer HMS Wizard (pictured above).

The Brits promptly had the ex-POWs throw their new clothes over the side. Dad was not happy! But . . . the Brits then deloused their new charges and collected extra clothing from the crew to outfit the newly freed POWs. Then it was off to the mess! Dad said they started eating breakfast in the morning and were still eating breakfast well into the evening.

Anyway, I knew that Dad had been aboard the Wizard for a short trip from Nagoya to Tokyo and when I wrote a brief article for Roger Mansell's website about Japanese POW camps, little did I know how small the world really is.

Not too long after Roger published my photos and information about Dad I received an e-mail from England. A member of the HMS Wizard Reunion Society had found the article and had read them at a meeting of the Society. It seems that a lady who attended the meeting wanted to correspond but did not have e-mail and so they had contacted Roger who provided my e-mail address and contact was made. I have been corresponding with Adeline Medford from Wales ever since. Ady's husband was a crewman on the Wizard the day they picked my Dad up off the coast of Japan!

So, my first beer brewing ingredients kit was named Morrison Hill Pale Ale (after the hill on Middleside on Corregidor where my father's battery was stationed) and I then wrote to Ady and asked for the help of the Wizard in naming the second beer. Although Ady reports that some of the ideas were a bit bawdy, the final decision was to name the brewing ingredients kit HMS Wizard Magic Circle Mild Ale.

So, in a fit of excitement over the naming of my beer, I wrote to Ady and told her that I was going to send enough ingredients to England for everyone to have a beer at the next meeting.

Soon I received a package from Ady with a Wizard silk necktie and a certificate naming me as an honorary member of the Wizard Reunion Society. Before this all could go to my head, Ady told me that she thought the the honor had little to do with the service of my Dad or her husband but more to do with free beer!

So, while I remembered by Dad in my blog article the other day, today I remember the brave crew of the very small British warship H.M.S. Wizard and all they did in the service of their country and in the rescue of my Dad from the shores of Japan. Cheers, mates!

BlueStem Winery is a full-service winemaking equipment and homebrewing supplies store located in Parkersburg, Iowa. While we are purveyors of home winemaking and homebrew supplies and both WinExpert and Cellar Craft wine kits we also are busy wine making, too! Our own label BlueStem wines are about to become 3 with the soon to be released Number 2 (Red Crescent) and Number 3 (Dark Side) to join our first issue Once in a Blue Moon. Blue Moon is a Riesling dessert wine, Red Crescent is a Cabernet Franc dessert wine and Dark Side is a Chilean Montepulciano.

Remembering Dad

It is slow at BlueStem Winery today which isn't really unusual for a Thursday afternoon in January! My normal blog writing consists of writing about our home brewing supplies and wine making equipment business here in Parkersburg, Iowa and trying to get as many links from my blog back to my website as is humanly possible without being too redundant. To be honest, that really gets kind of boring.

It has been almost 66 years since my father (Holger Larsen Holm) left the family farm in Grundy County, Iowa (in February 1942) and went to Fort Des Moines to take his army physical and then come home to await his call to active duty. That never happened! The coming home part, that is. After taking his physical he was put on a troop train bound for San Francisco and soon was aboard the USS Republic on his way to the Philippine Islands.

I have bumped into (well, figuratively anyway) several bloggers from the Philippines while blogging around on EntreCard and it just reminded me again of Dad. To make a very long story short, Dad wound up stationed on the tiny fortress island of Corregidor in the mouth of Manila Bay, served with Battery Chicago of the 60th Coast Artillery (Anti-Aircraft), was awarded three Silver Stars, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts in about a 30 day period of time in late April and early May of 1942 prior to the surrender of Corregidor.

He then was imprisoned for about 3-1/2 years at Cabanatuan, Bilibid and Palawan POW camps in the Philippines and was transported by hellship (the Canadian Inventor) in mid-1944 to Mogi, Japan and then on to Nagoya Camp No. 3 at Funatsu, Japan. Links are provided to articles about Cabantuan and Bilibid. Dad was lucky enough to be sent away from Palawan prior to the murder of the POWs remaining there. A link is provided for reading about this atrocity by the Japanese, too. A special link is provided for information about Nagoya Camp No. 3 including information I provided to Roger Mansell who maintains this site about Japanese POW camps.

You know, wine making is my job. Selling homebrewing supplies, brewing ingredients, and beer brewing equipment is something I also do. Teaching people about home winemaking using either Cellar Craft or WinExpert wine kits is fun . . . but, that whole thing pales in importance when I think about the sacrifices my father (and his whole generation) made by bringing the Germans, Italians and Japanese to their knees during World War II.

Somehow, talking about WinExpert kits, Cellar Craft wine kits, winemaking supplies and home brew supplies just is not too significant in comparison. Dad has been gone since 1995 but he always was and always will be my hero. He won 4 very distinguished medals for bravery in combat and won 2 medals for being wounded and he never fired a shot himself! He was a lineman who repaired the wires in the communication equipment so that the anti-aircraft batteries would fire in unison. If what had happened to Dad had happened to me, I would have hated the Japanese for the rest of my life. Dad never felt that way. In fact, my brother's son lives on Okinawa (he is a civilian employee of the US Air Force there but had been stationed there previously with the Marines) and is married to a lovely Japanese girl. So, Dad, if you are watching . . . it has been 12 years . . . and I still think of you every day.

Slogging . . . er . . . Blogging away!

Finally I get a minute to sit down and write a short blog. January is always a busy month for us as we are busy making wine for our own BlueStem Winery, our walk-in store traffic is busy, especially with customers purchasing both WinExpert and Cellar Craft wine kits, our annual federal reports regarding our wine making activities are due and website traffic is usually brisk with our WinExpert kits, Cellar Craft ingredient kits plus quite a bit of home brew supplies being purchased or ordered.

We have had a very successful winter marketing our new Cellar Craft line of wine making ingredient kits and it looks like we may be nearly sold out before we get to our next scheduled order date in April! I have had worse news! Our WinExpert wine ingredient kits sales have hung in there even though we took on the new line of Cellar Craft kits.

It is time to restock shelves. I had to bottle up a few winemaking supplies today because the cupboard was bare. I always start well before Christmas getting the shelves fully stocked and by this time of the year it is looking a little thin.

If you love wine, why not check out our BlueStem Winery website and let us help you get started with a great new hobby! We can give you all the help you need to get a new home winemaking hobby started! Prefer home brewing? We have the homebrew supplies you need to do that, too, and are more than happy to give you the advice you need!

To blog . . . or not to blog!

Just a quick post today just to make my presence known. For whatever reason in our business January is usually busier than December. I guess people are spending the Christmas money they got. In a small operation like ours busy times on the internet mean lots of time spent boxing things up for shipment. That's what I did today. Tomorrow it will be getting my annual federal wine making report done. That will feel good to have finished again. Maybe when that is done I will have time to do a little serious blogging again about our winemaking supplies and home brew equipment business.

We have been shipping out a good number of our Cellar Craft wine kits and just as many of our WinExpert wine kits, too. In fact, I have had a pull a couple of types off our BlueStem Winery website because we are sold out. It will be April before we restock as the snow is too deep at the back of the winery to get a delivery truck in.

Winter wine making is going well. We have about 750 gallons in the fermenters right now with another 150 gallon batch ready to start as soon as the primary fermenters are empty.

Enough about WinExpert, Cellar Craft, homebrew supplies and wine making equipment for today! Maybe I will have an epiphany by tomorrow evening and write something of substance. I don't think I have done that for a few days!

Are you listening, Andy?

If you are an EntreCard member this post is especially for you!

I know that many of you enjoy reading Andy's blog (The Big Bald Blog) and look forward to his almost daily rantings about this and that. I have a special interest in Andy because he is the person (at Impact Marketing Technologies in Waterloo, Iowa) who works with me on both my own blog and on my BlueStem Winery website.

Andy's blog is called The Big Bald Blog and so even though I could enlarge the picture I cannot make it life size for you! Too much big! Too much bald! I am not sure if Andy is at the far left or second from left. I assume he is in green at the far left because that caricature is taller (the hood blocks my seeing the bald!).

Andy's article today on buying locally struck a nerve with me but I don't know which side of the fence I should fall on (I am straddling it now!). I operate a small (very small) business in a small (very small!) town. Our business is four fold: we operate BlueStem Winery and we are in the business of making wine and retailing it from our store, we sell home winemaking supplies including Cellar Craft and WinExpert wine kits, we sell home brewing supplies plus our own line of beer brewing ingredients kits known as BlueStems Best (clones of the more commonly known Brewers Best kits) and we have a gift shop which sells wine accessories, gourmet foods, art, Amish quilts, antiques and old books. I handle the winery, the wine making supplies, and the homebrewing supplies and my wife takes care of the gift shop area.

Back to the nerve! We knew going into this business that we could not survive (at least the wine making and homebrew supplies part of the business) without retailing on the internet. But we also counted to some extent on local traffic supporting our business. My mistake! I guess I wanted the best of both worlds. About 4% of our business comes from our home town. I have had months where I grossed more from the country of Peru than from the town of Parkersburg, Iowa. Today was the frosting on the cake! I have a customer come in who purchases two muslin grain bags. You don't purchase muslin grain bags for brewing beer unless you have malted grain to put in them. I asked where the ingredients were purchased and was told that they came from a big box brew supply store in Minneapolis because they were $10 cheaper (shipping according to their website is $7.99). I checked their website and in actuality they were $2.96 cheaper for a similar product to mine. Granted, I have to charge 7% tax for the governor but when push comes to shove, their product (plus shipping) was $2.44 more expensive than mine (including sales tax!). So, for a perceived savings of a few bucks the customer supports a big box store which is out of state, takes business from a local merchant and pays a delivery service $7.99 (rather than paying the State of Iowa $2.59 in tax) to bring their ingredients a day (or more) later than they could have had it if purchased locally.

Why am I riding the fence on this issue? Because I also sell on the internet. In fact, I just got off the phone with a customer in Minneapolis (isn't that a coincidence?) who was ordering from my website. There just are no boundaries any more!

And here I am talking to a whole crowd of folks who live and breathe the internet! Call me old fashioned but I still prefer face-to-face dealings with my customers. But . . . since that appears to be mostly a thing of the past, I will have to concentrate on applying the old values (quality products, knowledgeable advice, good service) with a new value: prompt shipping!

Anyway . . . if you live in the Parkersburg, Iowa area . . . stop by the store if you need some beer brewing equipment, some home wine making ingredients or one of our WinExpert kits. And . . . if you are not from the Parkersburg area and you need some brewing equipment or winemaking supplies or one of our Cellar Craft wine kits you can receive the very same quality products, knowledgeable advice and good service as our local customers plus you get an added bonus . . . prompt shipping!

Have a prosperous New Year whether you are in Parkersburg, Waterloo, Minneapolis or anywhere else in the world because as we all know, you are all potential customers in the age of the internet. We have all the things you need in the way of winemaking equipment, home brew supplies and wine making ingredients plus we are just good, honest folks to deal with.

And speaking of good, honest folks to deal with, the cream of that crop is Andy at Impact Marketing. If you are looking for a top drawer person to work with on building a web presence, give Andy a call. You can find him at impactmt.com and you will not be disappointed! You can also read Andy's daily blog for his insights on the business world (and in particular, internet marketing). No charge for the plug, Andy.

Busy, busy, busy . . .

It's that time of the year at BlueStem Winery. We are what I like to call a boutique winery in that we produce small amounts of wine that we like to consider high quality wines. Because we produce in small amounts we only have to do our federal reporting once a year and . . . it is that time of year! Ugh!

After being a school teacher (that seems like light years ago) and a commercial banker for most of my career I developed a loathing for paperwork. I should have never opened a winery! Well, it is not that bad but I will just say that I much prefer making wine to doing reports on all the wine making we have done!

Another day and I should have it whipped for another year and then I can get back to the business of selling wine making supplies, brewing equipment, WinExpert wine ingredient kits, Cellar Craft wine kits, our own BlueStems Best homebrew ingredients kits, and making our own BlueStem label wines!

Andy at Impact Marketing (Waterloo, Iowa) continues to push me to write a blog every day about winemaking equipment or homebrewing supplies or the WinExpert kits we sell but there are many days where it feels repetitious doing so!

Traffic on the blog has increased since we started using EntreCard but I seriously doubt it will generate any business in itself. My hope is that by increasing the traffic on the blog it will push my search engine rank closer to the top on our website and that this will actually generate some home winemaking or home brew supplies sales. Time will tell!

I suspect that almost all EntreCard traffic is just clicking on through and don't stop to take the time to read about our beer brewing supplies, home brewing equipment or anything to do with wine making. Well . . . just click on through . . . and let's hope that all this time spent pushing on EntreCard has some positive benefit for BlueStem Winery.

Marketing Cellar Craft kits has been a plus as traffic on the website has increased since we added this product line in mid-2007. I think it is because there are lots of WinExpert dealers but few Cellar Craft wine kits dealers in the USA.

Happy New Year 2008!

In about 5 months BlueStem Winery will celebrate its 4th birthday. It has been an interesting second career! After 4 years of teaching high school business I ventured into banking and spent over 25 years working for several miserable organizations whose bottom line was more important than their customer's well being.

I guess I should have known early on that a left leaning public educator would never enjoy working in for right leaning (leaning?) commercial banks who really don't give a d... about anything but the bottom line. The one thing that I have learned in almost four years of owning my own business is that I know more about customer service than any of the CEOs who ran the three banks that I worked for. That and knowing that a good night's sleep and a clear conscience are worth more than making just one more dollar.

Sour grapes! Must be so! Going into the wine making and brewing equipment and supplies business was a fluke but what a fun fluke it has been. I only wish I had done this 30 years ago. My wife would have thrown me out of the house if almost 40 years ago I would have said we were going to start our own winery and sell home winemaking supplies and beer brewing equipment plus make a living making wine!

We have had the pleasure of starting our own winery business from the ground up and have had the opportunity to meet many of the best people in the homebrewing supplies and wine making ingredients business including the folks at Cellar Craft (makers of very fine Cellar Craft wine kits), the people at WinExpert (makers of the superb WinExpert wine kits) and probably a few people who we wish we had not met (hey, every nook and cranny has a few of these).

As we begin another year in the home winemaking and beer brewing supplies business and another year of wine making at BlueStem Winery, we want to say thanks to all of our customers and friends and greetings to all of you future hobbyists who will soon be making wine and purchasing home brew ingredients from us. Check out our website (it features shipping costs included in the cost of the merchandise). You will always receive knowledgeable advice, friendly service and prompt shipping of your purchase.