Vintage Harvest
In 12 years of growing grapes, Doug Grave has never seen a more bountiful crop than what’s been harvested from his family’s Bodega Victoriana vineyard over the past two months.
“This year, we’re having a bumper crop – probably the best crop we’ve ever had,” Grave said during a recent interview. “We’re having a bumper crop with every variety, except for one of the 12 that we grow.”
Grave has been growing grapes at the vineyard southeast of Glenwood since retiring from a long military career that took him to Spain where he developed a passion for wine. For several years after returning to Iowa, he supplied grapes from his vineyard to several local wineries, including Sugar Clay, Breezy Hills and Vine Street Cellars, where he was one of the original partners.
In April 2015, the Graves family opened Bodega Victoriana winery. With a tasting room and rental hall, the winery became an instant hit and Grave and his staff have been kept busy producing enough wine to keep up with the demand.
“We used to grow for other wineries, but now all our grapes stay home,” Grave said. “We have 10 acres with 6,000 grape vines – 12 varieties (six red, six white).”
The grape harvest season at Bodega Victoriana and other vineyards in southwest Iowa, typically takes about two months – from early August to early October. Extensive planning went into selecting the varieties of grapes grown at Bodega Victoriana.
“We knew it would be hard for us to harvest 10 acres of a single variety when they become ripe. That’s a lot to tackle, so we wanted to plant a number of different varieties that ripen at different times so that we can spread that harvest out,” Grave said. “Most years, we’re harvesting every weekend. This year was a little bit different. It was a such a warm summer, we had a lot of varieties ripen pretty quickly.”
Each and every grape is picked by hand, typically on a Saturday or Sunday morning. The wine making process begins immediately.
Processing the red grapes involves a fermentation period that can last up to two weeks before the skin, seeds and juice are sent to a press. The juice is extracted at that point and poured into stainless steel tanks where the juice begins turning into wine
“It’s different with the white grapes because we don’t want to extract anything from the skin,” Grave said. “We go from the field to the crusher-to-stemmer and then immediately into the press where we press the juice away from the skin and seeds and directly into the stainless steel tanks. We ferment the white in the stainless steel.”
From the time it’s picked off the vine to the time it’s corked for consumption is typically a six-month process for a white grape and a year for a redIdeally, Grave said, he’d like to give the red wines two-three years before they’re ready to sell, but keeping up with consumer demand has proven to be a challenge.
Red wines from the 2015 harvest are just becoming available now. Wines sold earlier this year were produced from 2014 grapes.
“We didn’t run out of wine this year, but we came darn close,” Grave pointed out. “Just as the new wine was coming ready and we were ready to bottle it, we were down to literally one or two cases from the year before.”
Production at Bodega Victoriana has increased steadily since the decision was made to open the winery. About 10,000 bottles of wine were produced from the 2014 grapes and 15,000 from the 2015 harvest.
“I think if I had to peg a number, we’re going to be approaching 20,000 bottles with this crop,” Grave said.
Bodega Victoriana could produce even more, but the winery is committed to only using grapes grown in the Loess Hills. Earlier this year, the Western Iowa Grape Growers Association was given an American Viticulture Area (AVA) designation by the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. The designation requires wines in the region to be produced almost exclusively with grapes grown in the Loess Hills.
“We use exclusively Loess Hills AVA grapes, but they’re not all our own,” Grave said. “We make all the wine for Bella Terre so all of their grapes come here. We are trying to source more grapes from other growers, there just aren’t enough growers in the area.”
Making enough wine with locally-grown grapes to meet a growing retail market is a challenge for Grave, but one he’s willing to take on.
“We’ve had an increase in production, but also an increase in tasting room demand. It’s eating up the increase of production we’ve achieved,” Grave said. “We’re tying to get to the point where we can satisfy the full demand of our retail and still have wine left over so we can do wholesale. We’re just not there yet.”