To our wonderful friends and customers,


Subjects:  Harvest on September 10th, Wounded Warrior Project fundraiser on the 9/11 concert, Concert Update!, new wines, and fermentation 2011


Typing this email while enjoying a glass of new Syrah...ahhhh...I know, I know...I'm a white wine drinker.  As tempting as it is to pour a glass of Vignoles 2010, this new Syrah is incredibly captivating with rich mocha notes, intense berry, cherry, blueberry notes, and an all captivating lingering finish.  I just typed this entire sentence after finishing the sip of wine after "lingering" and the flavors are still lingering...I guess I have to keep typing until it fully fades away...let's see what else can I type about...the tannins are quite complex but not excessively robust as the barrels softened their rough edges..there we go!  Time for another sip...ahhh...

Our last harvest will occur on Saturday morning, September 10th, starting at 8:00.  As many of you know, we use our harvest as a way to give back to the community.  For instance, when we picked vignoles two weeks ago, groups such as the Lions Clubs from around this area, St. Joseph's Catholic Church, Corydon Central Cheerleaders, the Boy Scout Troop 36 and several others came out to pick grapes and raise money for their organizations.  Everyone wins.  We get our grapes picked.  They raise money without having to ask others to donate!  It's all good...Others will simply come out to enjoy a morning out in the country.  If you can make it, we start around 8:00 and finish around Noon.  Additionally, if you are coming from Louisville, New Albany, Georgetown, etc, the Lanesville Heritage Festival parade will be taking place.  I would highly suggest that you go to Corydon, head downtown, then head east on Indiana 62, instead of getting off at the Lanesville exit.

A big call out to one of our customers Sherry for coming up with this idea!  "Hey Laura and Jim at Turtle Run, how can we support the troops on your 9/11 concert with The Vinyl Kings?  After kicking around a few ideas, we are going to donate 15% of the proceeds from Sunday's concert to the Wounded Warrior Project!  So come out and enjoy some great vino and support the fine men and women who keep us out of harm's way.  

Concert Update!  Years ago, a fine young lady named Gretchen at the Louisville Jaycees thought Laura and I looked cute together, so she paired us up for a fundraiser.  After meeting, six weeks later we were engaged and a year later we hopped a plane to Jamaica for our Honeymoon!  Many folks have told us that we need to have the Louisville Crashers here for a concert.  Many have told the band members of the Louisville Crashers that they need to play here.  So here we go.  On September 18th, we welcome out for the first time The Louisville Crashers!  The Crashers will bring high energy and great entertainment to the old and new songs!  We expect a good crowd, so come early.  Additionally, as fans of Turtle Run Winery, we need your help!  Because The Crashers are going to bring a lot of new customers to Turtle Run, we need to be ever vigilant about our alcohol policy.  Specifically, only Turtle Run Winery wines can be consumed on our property.  No other alcohol is permitted.  We are going to have folks canvassing the area for this concert for other alcohol.  Please note that if other alcohol is being consumed on our property and police or ATC agents see it / know about it, we could lose our license to operate, thus ending the pleasure of delicious Turtle Run Winery wines.  All of our concerts are free, and everyone on this list that have come out for concerts have been great about this.  Please, if you come out to this free concert, or any other free concert, please let me know if you see any other alcohol in the area.  Our only way to pay for these bands is via wine and tasting room product sales.  

As a reminder, here are the other captivating concerts:

September 25th:  The Monarchs!
October 2nd:  Bomar and Ritter
October 9th:  Melody Resurrection
October 16th:  Circus
October 23rd:  Lick Creek Band
October 30th:  Added date!  Have a call out to a great, great band!  We'll see..
November 5th:  Vinyl Kings and the bonfire, hayride and cookout!

Harvest 2011 notes:  As soon as I finish typing this (switched from the syrah to Scottish Breakfast Tea -- bone jarring tannins in this stuff!), I'll be back to work on our vino!  This beautiful circulating low with extreme low temperatures for this time of year, and deep cloud cover allowed me to do something in winemaking that I have always wanted to do.  Freeze the winery!  As Charla can attest to on Wednesday, it's 49 degrees in the production area!  With those cold temperatures we can do all sorts of moderate winemaking -- including cool barrel fermentation!  Ahh...again.  In the future, we'll debut barrel fermented traminette, chardonel, and vignoles!  Yum!  Can't wait for that!  We are following the exact same procedures for those three wines as we did to make our stellar Indiana grown chardonnay from 2010!  Luscious complexity from the barrel fermentation aided in making one of the most dynamic wines we have ever made!  

Yesterday, Christine and I zapped one of our tanks of vignoles 2011 through our filter.  As the wine was fermenting we removed the yeast to give us a delicious wine with a generous 4% natural residual sugar.  As many of you know, we do not add cane sugar to sweeten our wines.  We solely rely on the natural sweetness of grapes either by pressing juice from the current vintage and adding it to last year's dry wine, filtering during fermentation, freezing the yeast during fermentation or adding super expensive, high quality, non flavored white grape concentrate (or a combination of all of these).  The vignoles is simply awesome with great, intense fruitfulness!  Our property produces some of the smallest berries I have seen in any vineyard, which aids in concentrated flavors.  Simply put, with an eye always on exact quality, we can flat out nail our wines to exactly the way we want them.

Additionally, with the holidays coming up, please keep Turtle Run Winery in mind.  Perhaps you would like to have us custom label bottles for you or may want to have a small event out here.  Just let us know how we can assist you.

And finally, back to the concerts, my tasting bar outside will have more wines available than the inside tasting bar!  Hint, hint--stop by outside for the best selection!  

Cheers,
Jim