Starting Sat. May 1, we are opening for our Tasting Room Season.
We’ll be doing limited tastings inside, and carry-out flights in good weather.
We have all our small batch ciders for the year – they won’t last long.
Mask up and come see us.
Category Archives: Tasting Room
Winter Hours
We’re now in our winter hibernation. We won’t be keeping regular hours, but you may call/message and set up an appointment for us to meet you at the winery.
This year we can also ship ciders (but not spirits). Check the ‘Compliant Shipping’ page.
Stay well, and we’ll see you about bloom-time.
Inventory Update: Dec-4-20
We’ve had a run on Blackbird Berried Cider and Apple Brandy.
The Blackbird is now gone from the Tasting Room – but available through retailers. I can help you find one. Apple Brandy isn’t gone from the TR, but there’s more in distribution.
We are very low on: Appely Brut, Apple Brandy
We are merely low on: Summers End Apple Wine, Sparrow Spiced Cider
Reminder: Winter Shipping Sale Coupon: WINTER20. Through March.
Change to Pick Up Only
We’ve decided to stop Tasting Room tastings for the remainder of our season. No one is telling us to lock back down – we feel it’s the prudent thing to do. We’ll still be there Saturdays and Sundays until Dec. 20th, weather permitting for packaged sales pickup.
End of October Hours Change
As a reminder, this is the last week we will have scheduled weekday hours.
After All Saints Day (Nov 1), if you’d like to visit us midweek, you’ll need to contact us ahead of time to arrange a mutually agreeable appointment.
Also, as we enter our Early Winter Hours, after Nov 1, we’ll be closing at 4pm, rather than 5. It gets dark out here in the country – especially after the switch back to Standard Time.
Code RED Re-activated
In order to comply with Emergency Order #3, we are returning to our Code RED plan.
Our restricted operating plan:
- We are asking that all tastings be the 6 for $5 To Go Tastings. We will be a little flexible (1-2 at the bar), but please work with us.
- Also, please pick up a Tasting Sheet and/or Flight Idea Guide and make your selections before coming up to the bar.
- Please have non-tasters wait outside, including under-21s not being carried and people ‘just looking’. We’re trying really hard to limit exposure – and you wouldn’t bring children to a bar, would you?
Clarrification: No Reservations Needed nor Taken
We received a lot of calls for reservations today (Friday 9/25) and I just wanted to clarify – we aren’t taking reservations. We tried it – it didn’t work.
If it gets really busy on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, we’ll do a waitlist with text-back notification.
And a reminder – we can’t do groups bigger than 7 right now. If you’ve got a big group, a subset may come in to get Take Out Flights for the rest.
And if I can figure out where it says to call us for reservations, I’ll try to get it fixed.
Standing Down From Code RED
We are standing down from our Code RED Tasting Room plan. The biggest change will be that we will be going back to up to 5 samples Face-Face at the counter. We’ll also have some more flexibility with youth-too-big-to-carry-but-under-21, but when we fill up the barn space, we will still request they wait outside.
A single day spike in the number of reported local Covid cased caused by a change in reporting has rippled it’s way through the 7 day rolling average filter that I and other websites use, and it’s possible to now see the size of the the underlying surge that happened at the same time. And while in some WI counties it’s very large, in Kenosha, it’s 2-3X the prior new case rate. While not great, it’s not RED territory, either.
We post a graphic from https://globalepidemics.org/key-metrics-for-covid-suppression/ each week in the Tasting Room as a visual aid, but your cidermaker also builds his own graphs from the same database. (And does side explorations of the data I won’t detail here.) Today’s is pasted above.
The Y axis is the 7-day rolling average smoothed daily new cases per 100,000 people. The X-axis is total cases since the start of the pandemic per 100K. It’s overlaid by county. Using these axes gives me a quick overview of both how fast spread is at a given time and how deep it’s penetrated into a county at one glance. I use new cases because it’s a leading indicator – I’d rather be looking forward than at metrics that describe how well counties are handling the burden right now (hospital cases and beds), or metrics of past tragedy (deaths).
Cross-checking WI DHS public data against the CDC reveals what happened – other than Covid. On 9/15, the numbers for the counties that spike change from matching the WI DHS Confirmed Cases number to matching the CDC Total Cases number. Total = Confirmed + Probable. Now the difference is only 5%. 19/20 cases are confirmed. But the difference, built up since March, appears in one day. Boom. And it’s such a big jump that it breaks the predefined color bands in my script – hence the white portion. Interestingly, it doesn’t happen in all counties in WI. And it has happened in other states’ data at other times since spring. But I think this is the biggest in the dataset.
So what did we learn?
- Firstly, that we can run the Tasting Room under our Code RED restrictions. Nothing like putting a plan to a real test. Most people were understanding and co-operative. THANK YOU! We actually had a record sales week.
- Secondly, I wish we had better way to handle families with youth who come to the orchard, and then to us. That’s a work-in-progress, but we have finite square feet and ventilation, and on a September or October Saturday afternoon, we just run out.
- Thirdly, encouraging folks to take a flight outside really helped with waiting for a counter spot. Something to think about for the future.
- Fourthly, your humble ciderwright should wait 1 day before panicking. I don’t actually follow these graphs every day for that very reason. One day’s data isn’t enough. The second day either follows the trend – or makes one start asking hard, but interesting, questions.
That’s the update. Thanks for reading, and I hope to have a sip with you soon.
Change To Reservations
It turns out that trying to do online reservations just isn’t working, so I’ve removed it from the website.
It seemed like a good idea, but we just don’t have a good (read ‘any’) way to close the loop and figure out who has appeared and is waiting, versus who has appeared and gotten served without making themselves known. I’m keeping the waitlist service in case we need it in October – just not the self-registration ahead of time portion.
Also, with the changes to Face-Face tasting that we’ve done because of Covid, we’re actually getting people in and out much faster than in prior years and waits are way down.
As a reminder, right now the biggest group we can handle at one time is 7, and we’re asking under 21s that aren’t being carried to wait outside unless you’re the only visitors at the time,
I’ll be posting a Covid status update this Thursday, I think. I figured out what caused a single day 30X spike, and while there -has- been an uptick locally (in addition to the glitch), I’ve got my fingers crossed Kenosha will drop back under the 25/100K daily new cases that’s my RED Line.
CODE RED IS ACTIVE!
As of 9/15/10, the whole area experienced a large spike in new cases. “Large” as in Kenosha reporting 220/100K new cases when the running average had been 7/100K.
So we are tightening our operating plan:
- We are asking that all tastings be the 6 for $5 To Go Tastings. We will be a little flexible, but please work with us.
- Also, please pick up a Tasting Sheet and/or Flight Idea Guide and make your selections before coming up to the bar.
- Please have non-tasters wait outside, including children and people ‘just looking’. We’re trying really hard to limit exposure – and you wouldn’t bring children to a bar, would you?
