From our planted net 48 acres with this cropload we should yield approximately 200 metric tons of grapes easily. But if we do this we will have thin, watery and industrial wines that we've never had any intention to make.
Starting next week we will deploy our vineyard crew to carefully select and cut crowding clusters and reduce the cluster number per shoot to 1 or 2 that will reduce the total expected yield to around 80 tons. By doing so we will sacrifice 120 tons of meticiously grown certified organic grapes that could potentially make 100,000+ bottles of VQA wine. If you crunch the numbers with a modest $25 per bottle, you will probably think how dumb we are to give away $2.5 millions.
But Icellars' journey in Ontario's wine scene has always been and will be about the quality not quantity. We want to make the finest wines Canada can make out of our Certified Organic vineyard.
If Niagara one day will be recognized for the quality of their wines around the world, it will be from the combined results of small scale craft wineries owned&operated by families not driven by corporate rules.
|
