theCompass mobile application is a winery, brewery, and distillery locator for North America.

White grapes, fermented just like reds, on the skins and pips for days. Sometimes allowed to oxidize. Sometimes fermented in open casks. The skin contact gives the wine its orange color.

Our chardonnay is done in the classic style with oak contact and malolactic (ML) fermentation. ML is a bacterial ferment in addition to the normal yeast ferment and converts malic acid (the acid in apples) to lactic acid (the acid in cheese, yogurt, etc.). Lactic acid is a weaker acid, hence the wine is softened and less sharp. ML also produces diacetyl, which is the chemical that gives butter most of its flavor. So when a chardonnay claims to be buttery, it's the truth! Oak enriches the tannins, plus, believe it or not, imparts some vanilla flavor (oak lumber has a wee bit of vanillin in the lignin.) ML takes away some of the bright, fruity character of a wine and makes it more austere.

Small trees, bearing fruit on strigs (small little side branches) like currants. The fruit is small, generally dark blue-black, with its own distinct cherry flavor and lots of tannin. Easy to grow, hard to keep from the robins!

Deep Purple is a blend of labrusca varieties of grapes, the ones that taste like grape jelly. In parts of the central and eastern US, this is a very popular wine. For the rest of us, we drink it only in churches which use wine for Communion. We believe it is horrid dry, but as a sweet wine, it can be an enjoyable, very familiar flavor. Unoaked. Sweet.

I've tried before and only turned out horrid stuff. This year I finally figured it out. This is the only fruit I don't use raw, but cook or steam out the juice. It is absolutely loaded with anthocyanins and antioxidants. The color is so dark it is listed by the federal alcohol bureau as an accepted wine colorant. It stains everything, including your hands. It contains a type of latex that makes cleanup difficult. We finish our elderberry with French Oak. It is getting more lovely every day!

We allow the Frontenac to ferment warm, with additional ML ferment to soften the acids. Although we've produced some in steel alone, we prefer to oak this wine to give it smoothness and a touch of vanilla. This wine is made fully dry or just off dry.

La Crescent is cool fermented with no ML. It retains a rich crisp fruitiness, similar to riesling, but with an unmistakable apricot finish. We produce this wine with a hint of sugar (off dry) to bring out the apricot flavor.

The wine will be warm fermented, and is likely to be a medium dark wine with smooth tannins and a flavor leaning toward Pinot Noir.

I made a horrid batch years ago before I understood acidity very well. I added way too much carbonate, which totally destroyed the acid, and was left with a bland, chalky mess. This year's test batch was made with thinned out juice, actually some added acid, and left with 5% residual sugar. It is a lovely pale pink color with a rich rhubarb aroma and a flavor somewhere between Texas ruby red grapefruit and rhubarb. This, and chokecherry, are probably the two most popular fruit wines in mid-America.

Our riesling is cool fermented to maintain as much crisp fruitiness as possible. We make it either very dry or just off dry, since we prefer it to the more sweet versions of riesling. This is an old German variety.