27 Blocks
2021 Vintage
Our vineyard is composed of 27 blocks of grapevines. This wine contains fruit from each block, co-fermented to create something delicious and unique to our vineyard and the vintage.
It all starts with the Marquette harvest, a little-known grape developed for vineyards in Minnesota that claims Pinot Noir as a parent. This relationship caught our interest, and we planted some vines in 2010. As we began to see flowering and fruiting weeks ahead of everything else in the vineyard, we realized that our cool climate was too warm for this variety. Any fruit we harvested had sky-high sugars and high acidity. If we were going to continue, this fruit needed some balance.
In 2018, we picked the Marquette just after the sparkling harvest. The yield was too small for fermentation but too big to waste. The grapes also were in desperate need of balance. More out of frustration than foresight, our winemaker decided that the solution was to add more grapes. As the harvest progressed, we'd add more fruit to the Marquette bin each day (we nicknamed it Marquette and More). By the end of the harvest, our 1-ton capacity fermenter was packed, and we had a bit of a tasty mystery. What is this wine?
It took some time and a post-bottling family dinner to realize what this wine was: a wonderful single vineyard red. But what is it? Becky Kramer remarked in her matter-of-fact way that it's 27 Blocks, and the name stuck, especially after the label was designed. The patchwork art refers to our vineyard, where the blocks are the patches, and the quilt is the whole. With the way this wine is made, it'll never be the same twice, but that's what's so charming about it--truly a time capsule of each harvest from our estate.
MARQUETTE • PINOT NOIR • PINOT GRIS • CHARDONNAY • MÜLLLER-THURGAU • PINOT MEUNIER • GRÜNER VELTLINER • MUSCAT • CARMINE