Raise a toast to Kansas’ bumper crop of grapes

Kansas oenophiles rejoice: Next year will be a good one for you.

The timely rains that are producing records for Kansas’ main crops this year are also leading to a strong grape harvest. The grape harvest is just beginning and will run through early October.

And the strong harvest for Kansas vineyards likely means more wine from Kansas wineries, which can never seem to get enough Kansas-grown grapes.

Grace Hill Winery, near Whitewater, is seeing a near doubling of its grape crop, mostly because of an increase in yield.

Marketing director Jeff Sollo said Grace Hill’s 10 acres of vines produced about 16 tons of grapes last year. A greater yield this year, along with some new vines, has pushed that to an expected 25 to 30 tons of grapes.

The winery put out the word for volunteer grape pickers early this year and expects to have enough people for the first weekend’s harvest.

“We are going to use it all,” Sollo said. “We use every grape we can.”

Grace Hill produces much more wine than it produces grapes. It buys the production from five or six small vineyards in the area.

One of those is Prairie Hill Vineyard, near Colwich. Owner Dan Stockemer has planted and developed about an acre of grape vines.

“It’s a good year,” he said. “I have a lot of fruit.”

He said the weather contributed, but it’s also knowing how to control the diseases that prey on grape vines. He said that, compared to California’s wine growing regions, Kansas actually has too much moisture.

Kansas vineyards generally grow robust hybrids designed to handle the intensity of the Kansas cold better than better known wine grape varieties such as cabernet sauvignon or merlot.

Sollo said he has seen two or three new vineyards in the area start producing this year.

“They’re not very big, but we’re always looking for more grapes,” he said.

Kansas wine must contain 30 percent Kansas grapes to be labeled as a Kansas wine, Sollo said. The rest come from out-of-state vineyards.

Dan Fuller, owner of White Tail Run Winery in Edgerton, said he got a lot more grapes than expected.

“The rains were timely and the temperature was about right,” he said.

He said he expected the extra fruit to go into producing extra wine, which he expected to keep keep in inventory for years in which the grape crop is weak.

“You still want to produce as much as you can,” Fuller said. “Next year might be a drought, and product might not be quite as good, with this we should be OK.”

This story was originally published August 18, 2016 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Raise a toast to Kansas’ bumper crop of grapes."