Holy-Field: Michelle Meyer’s world of winemaking
Written by Maddie Ross. Posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008
Les and Michelle Meyer planted their first grape vines in 1986.
Today the father-daughter team grows more than 12,000 vines on 14 acres at Holy-Field Vineyard and Winery in the Leavenworth County town of Basehor. With help and enthusiasm from the surrounding community, the winery has been turning heads and changing minds about wine production in Kansas.
The vineyard is located on 158th Street, originally named Holyfield Road, which inspired the name. In the combination gift shop and tasting room, visitors may sample 16 different wines and browse through hundreds of wine-related gifts.
Michelle Meyer runs the place. “I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as Mich does. She works twelve hour days, running mostly on wine and caffeine,” said Mandy xxxxxx, who pours in the tasting room.
On a personal tour with Michelle, I got a lot of insight into her world of winemaking.
The Vineyard
The Meyers believe that great wines can only come from carefully tended grapes.
Climate affects the grapes. This year’s long, cold winter didn’t kill their vines. Meyer explained that temperature fluctuation is a bigger problem than low temperatures. This winter stayed consistently cold, which is good for the vines, unlike last winter when it warmed up early in February then froze again in March. That hurt the Meyer’s vineyard because the warm weather started the maturation of the grapes that froze in March.
New vines are planted as needed in late March to early April, but they will not produce usable grapes for three years.
During harvest in August and September, the winery depends on volunteers to pick grapes. The nearly
two hundred pickers each year take the job seriously, but still have a good time. The volunteers taste the grapes right off the vine, taste the juice before it is fermented, and are invited back to taste the finished wine.
The Meyer standard estimate is that every 13 pounds of grapes yields one gallon of wine.
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