4/23/15 newsletter

4/23/15 8:33 am Good Morning:

All is well here this week. Yesterday we had our oldest son Doug arrive home with his wife Angie and daughter Lisa, two year old. Last night we played with Lisa and Iza at Iza's house. I really had a problem getting the names mixed up with Lisa and Iza when talking.

Jon arrived home safely early Wednesday morning from Vegas. He sounded to me like everything out there is now expensive and home looked good upon his return. Yes, to me that is a vacation.

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If you like Minnesota Crisp come to the winery now. We do have some of the 22 ounce bomber left, but leaving fast.

Speaking of MN Crisp, I received a nice email last night from an upcoming bride.

" Hello, I am curious...do you sell kegs of Minnesota Crisp? We are enjoying a glass of it right now in Faribault and fell in love. It is delicious! We would love to serve it to our guests at our wedding. Please let me know. Thank you so much!"

Letters like this keep me going when cleaning, repairing, and maintaining.

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This morning I awoke with a thought in my head for a video, here it is. It is called the "Who You Mauma Rap." We are now up to 42 on our reservation list, call now. 320-237-1958 or email to donmillner@gmail.com include your best phone number, I'll return call for cc number. thank you, don.

Who You Mauma?

4/18/15 newsletter

4/18/15 10:33 am Good Morning:

I guess this was a good news week for someone, how's that? We are now living in Dassel, we lived almost 35 yrs. in Paynesville. We still receive the local Paynesville newspaper and each week when it arrives I have two things I look for on my quick scan. First the front page, if anything really big happen in town and second, yes you guessed it, the obituaries. I know many of the people in this section from the dental practice, all nice people. Well this was a good week because no-one died, not bad.

In other news, Scott our youngest son is cooking this evening. He is planning to cook shrimp seasoned with cilantro, sweet basil, and rosemary with assorted seasonings. We may be playing some cards later. He made a pan of his recipe one evening a earlier this week and wanted to know if I wanted to taste it, turned our I ate every bit of half, thanks Scott.

Also Jon is leaving today for a quick vacation to Vegas, traveling with another guy. They are considering to tour the Grand Canyon and maybe death valley. He is over due for a vacation, but then it's hard to get away when you are the wine maker and vineyard manager. I told him many times before that he should have gone to dental school.

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If you like Minnesota Crisp come to the winery now. The last of the 22 ounce bombers are in the bottle shop, I think they will sell out in the next couple of weeks, by the keg we have more inventory.

You can still sign-up as a bottling volunteer. It is always fun. Soon we should be hitting the bottling with vigor. This is the only job I know of where you can drink on the job.

To join us send your info to donmillner@gmail.com with the subject line "I love a good bottling party." Try it, You'll Like it!

Very important, please be sure to include your best phone number and also very helpful to include what days of the week you are available. Thank you _______________________________________________________

Yesterday we bottled our new label, "What the Foch." Made from the grape Marechal Foch.

I have to tell you that this is a slightly sweet, or also called an off-dry, wine with very much fruity flavor. (The fruitiness derived from a fermentation with a white wine yeast.)

Also, the name is eye catching intentionally for the wholesale, liquor store sales, where you are competing on the shelves with thousands of other names. So don't be offended by the name. The word foch is pronounce with an "O" sound. The official pronunciation click here.

Enjoy this wine, it is a very good flavor between dry and sweet.

4/10/15 newsletter

4/09/15 9:330 pm

Good Evening:

Another week has slipped into history. This week Jon hauled two loads of wine and cider to our two distributors. While he was in the metro last night with the second load, he called me with news he had a flat tire and wanted to know if I had triple A. He solved his problem by borrowing a mobile air pump, inflated the tire, and was able to drive home. Today our repair garage found a big nail still in the tire, hence plugging the hole giving him time to drive home. It happens. In the old days my parent would have said he spun his wheels too much, but than it was in a rear tire on a front wheel drive.

Last Sunday we celebrated Easter in the evening. Iza came with a basket full of plastic eggs to hide. She is now having more fun hiding the eggs and watching for if we can find them. She is growing up so fast and yet she is only in second grade.

Last Saturday Iza got the idea to sell lemonade at the winery to earn some money. The day before she bought some lemons, a bag of sugar, and some paper cups using her own money. On Saturday morning Anna helped her make her lemonade and set up her table in the winery. The lemonade was good and she sold out plus got some money as tips. In the end she ended up with $23 total. She talked about that if she puts the money in the bank into her savings account, Jon would then match this money. Mary and I did the same when our kids were small, I still think it was a good lesson for our kids to save.

In the end Iza took a different path, Jon saw her with the neighbor kids with $5 worth of candy. He first thought the other kids persuaded her to buy their candy, in the end Iza fessed up that she drove her bicycle to the store and bought the candy for the neighbor kids. Hearing this it scared Jon and Anna that she took off to the store alone, given today's world. It was nice she wanted to share her good fortune, but she knew going alone wasn't allowed. On Sunday Jon told us they gave her a Don Millner punishment. What's that? She got to pick her own punishment with the condition that if it was too easy, they'd give her a really big punishment. From what I hear, Iza chose to do cleaning, including scrubbing toilets. Sometimes the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

_______________________________________ As of tonight we are now down to about 3/4 of a row of Marquette left to prune. Today we worked in the drizzle and tomorrow we are planning to finish-up. After that

we need to tear all the cut canopy from the top wires to get it ready for the spring fungal spray. One spray in the spring is standard in grapes to kill one type of spores, it needs to happen before the buds open, that the grapes are still dormant.

We had a scare in the vineyard yesterday. My son Scott was pruning with me when he suddenly screeched out. In the corner of my eye I caught that he had both hands on his long handled loppers so his hands should have been safe. It turn out that he had his little pruner in a chest pocket on his coat and he pressed it closed with one of his finger between the blades as he was pushing with the loppers to cut a big grape trunk. He cut the finger but at least didn't cut it off. It bled good, he wrapped with tape and later sealed it with super glue. He was back to work today, he should be OK.

___________________________________________________ On the Wine side today Jon unloaded the 2013 vintage of Draga, made with the Marquette grape, from the barrels and loaded the 2014 vintage to start the barrel aging for this vintage. The 2013 vintage is now ready for bottling.

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4/3/15 newsletter

4/03/15 11:00 pm

Good Morning: Before anything else, Happy Easter. I know today is Good Friday, but you may-not read this until Sunday. This is the first year we will be open on Easter Sunday, when you are done hunting eggs, come hunt for some wine. After 6 pm we will celebrate Easter.

Last week's news was the wine Little Iza is back on our shelves, this week we have MN Crisp, our hard apple cider, back on our shelves also. This is in the 22 ounce bombers, I believe this is the last cider bottling for this year. It goes fast, if you'd like to buy some do it now. For us it has been interesting to see how fast the cider has sold. Jon has been receiving calls from beer wholesalers wanting to include MN Crisp in their inventory. We are in the process of ordering three more 1,600 gallon tanks for next year, this should help very much to increase the quantity of MN Crisp. Below are to piece of art submitted by Shawn and Heather Orton from one of their sons. The first is Little Iza and the second is MN Crisp. I like them, the originals will be posted at the winery today.

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This week I have been working the vineyard quite regularly. We have just 5 rows of Marquette grapes left to prune. This grape has been more work than the others to prune this year because of damage they received two winters ago, the cold winter. What happened according to John Thull, from the U.of M., the extreme cold and wind dehydrated the trunks and cordons of the plants that now this thick woody part of many of the Marquette grapes are cracking. All we can do is to cut off this big wood and grow new from the ground level. I guess this too is called "Farming" and a part of our life. ____________________________________________________

Mother's Day is May 10th, below is our flyer. __________________________________________________

1. Note: Easter Sunday April 5th, we will be open at the winery until 6 PM. Our family get-together will be that evening. Iza will have to hunt for eggs by sunset lighting.

2. We are now back to our Thursday to Sunday store hours.

3. If you'd like to be part of a bottling crew, email me at donmillner@gmail.com with the subject line "I love a good bottling party." Try it, You'll Like it! Very important, please be sure to include your best phone number with this message. Thank you _______________________________________________________

Time for Trivia and Free wine.

It is time for a new trivia contest. About 3 wks ago Mary, Iza, and our youngest son Scott did an afternoon painting with acrylic paints. Below are all three painting they did together. To win a free bottle of wine, attach the correct name to each painting. The painting are labeled A, B, & C for your reference. Painting A Painting B Painting C Send your answers of matching A,B, and C with Mary, Iza, and Scott to donmillner@gmail.com with the subject line "No Way Monet". (The letter t on Monet is silent.) To read more on Monet the artist, click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet

Thank you for your time.

Don Millner Millner Heritage Winery www.millnerheritage.com 320-398-2081 April 1st through December 31st Open: Thursday 11 - 7 Fri. & Sat. 11 - 8 Sunday 11 - 6

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