October/November
All harvest is done, grapes are crushed,and fermented and are now in oak barrels and steel tanks.The numbers were very good this year, and we look forward to a good vintage year 2006.

We had good music during the Color festival, with Blues Brothers playing, and Country Classics. The weather is getting a little nippier. Fall is here and the air is fresh and the trees are colorfull. The Orchards around is now offering excellent apples.

We have got some new business in Alto Pass. On the board walk , there are two antique shops, one with items from 50's and 60's, and a store that sells rugs and other local arts items.

Our event dinner in Oct. was sold out, and we are on request holding the same dinner Nov .4. If you are interested you need to make reservations now, it's starting to fill up. See the event list for our other planned dinners, this year
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Gift shop: We are getting in very nice gift items, imported from Scandinavia, several times per week. So if you are looking for a different kind of gift, come in and check us out.

Zula our 11 month old puppy is now 100 lbs, and very playful, and cuddly.

September already, where did August go? We have been busy. We held our Grape menu dinner, which was a great success. A four course meal with paired wine.

Course 1	Green Salad with grapes, gorgonzola cheese and honey glazed pecan nuts.
Course 2	Scampi Shrimps served with a Spicy Grape Salsa.
Course 3	Catalan Chicken with grapes and walnuts, served with a wine sauce, and Rice with pine nuts and raisins.
Course 4	Grape tart with Vanilla Sauce.

We released our Late Harvest Vidal Blanc to the dessert, it's not bottled and for sell yet, so it was a special pre tasting.

The four course meal this month, September 23 will be Apple Menu Dinner, and of course with paired wine. Reservations required.

Shawnee Hill Wine Trail Festival, was held at Alto Vineyards, this weekend. All eight wineries at one place, for two days with great music and food-and wine of course.The weather was perfect.

The harvest is in full swing, and Anders are processing the grapes to wine. This year we will increase the production to about 6,000 gallons - 30,000 bottles. We still have no distributors, and are selling all wine at the winery, and restaurant. But we will start to look for help to distribute outside the winery. We have many customers, who ask were to get our wine. We do ship in Illinois and some other stats.

Anders and I went to Springfield, to receive the prize for Traminette, in Illinois State Fair Professional Competition. Governors Cup, which is a prestigious prize, where we also met with the Governor .

We felt like we had a vacation for a day, which doesn't happen too often. Driving with the top down on my convertible,with the sun shining, and a perfect temperature.That's all you need to "charge your batteries."

We had family visitors from Kansas City and St. Louise, which was very nice.We really appreciated the visit, even though it was short.

We will have a lot of music during September.
9/16 Poontwang - Country
9/17 Carlos Albert - Spanish Guitar
9/30 Tim Maring - Acoustic Classic Rock.
September is a busy month, with a lot of activities in the area.

Welcome, Gerd

July -- July has been hot, which is good for the grapes. We have started to harvest seedless Concord grapes. The grapes are sold as table grapes, and we serve grape pie with vanilla sauce in the cafe'. The Concord is also used as a blender in Tucker Hill Red, together with Chambourcin grapes.

Since the peaches were hurt by the hail, we are now making much more peach wine, than the year before. We also sell peach wine by the bulk to other wineries.

We held our Peach Menu dinner, a four course dinner with paired wine, that was very popular, we had 50 guests, which of many already signed up for the Grape Menu Dinner on August 26.

In August we also will have Carlos playing in the gazebo, Aug.19.
Come and listen, it's excellent guitar music.June We held a wine festival, June 24, celebrating one year as a winery. Carlos Alberto och Rio Corrientes was playing, very good music with Latin feeling- playing Spanish guitar. The weather was just perfect, and everyone enjoyed themselves.

It has been an exciting year, and Anders wines have been very popular. This week he took several awards for his wines, in 2006 Illinois State Fair Commercial Wine Competition. Traminette took Governors Cup White medal; Chardonel got gold, Chambourcin silver and Vidal Blanc bronze.The peaches is in, but we haven't currently any for sale, except for as peach cobblers and peach wine, due to a severe hail storm destroyed most of our peach crop this year. We may have some later in the season, and we can use the hail damaged crop for peach wine. We are known to sell perfect peaches, and don't want to sell dented fruit.The cafe' is getting busier and busier. Examples on our menu are:
Cheese trays, Pecan Crusted Chicken Breast Salad with Feta Cheese and Red Onion. Swedish Meatballs with Lingo berries, green beans, wedged potatoes and gravy. Salmon Spinach Quiche, Spinach- Tomato Quiche with Pine nuts, Beef Tenderloin served with Sauce Béarnaise, Rosemary-Garlic Zucchini-Squash and roasted Red Onion, Chicken Mozzarella Roulades served with Fresh Tomato Sauce and Caesar salad, Fish au Gratin, Wiener schnitzel with Sweet-sour Red Cabbage and Caraway Potatoes. See you over here.

May
It has stopped raining and it's warm and nice. Lightning bugs are flashing , they look like smalls stars in the grass. The tree frogs are starting to chirp, and the barn swallows are having their first batch of babies.

We had music in the Gazebo in May, and we are planning to have music out there every month-see our event list. I'm working on contacts with different musicians.
The Shawnee Wine Trail Festival was held in end of May.
We are going to celebrate our one year anniversary on June 24, with a fun festival- music, food and lots of wine. Come join us.

In the vineyard--We are working on thinning and removing suckers from the trunks, to get as much energy to the grapes as possible. The peach trees are also thinned, to produce big juicy fruit.

We are landscaping outside the winery and the gazebo, to get more of a court yard feeling. We are also arranging more parking space. Busy bees!

Grand children : Bror are now running, and Alva is coming in a good second in their races.

April
Pruning is finished. Samuel is building trellis for our NY70 grape wines that we planted last year. Unfortunately, the deer have been munching on the new growth, which of course we are not very happy about.The 2004 Traminette is now bottled, so we are able to sell it by the bottle. Traminette has been very popular, sold by the glass, and many customers have been waiting for its release. Jasmine and spirea are now blooming and attracting many birds and butterflies.April has been wet, with very heavy rainfall. Our gravel from the parking lot was flushed down to the pond and Anders is working on building a courtyard, for out door seating, and for erosion control .We celebrated Valborg with music by the Roundup-Gals. On May 13th, we are going to have acoustic guitar music by Marty McMorrow. He is very good.Please come and join us.
Gerd

March
Spring is here, peach blossom is in it's peak. The weather is warming up and birds are returning, life is good!

We have released our new Chardonel, and have barrel samples of the 2004 Traminette, which is turning out, very nice. We are still waiting on labels, before we can sell the Traminette by the bottle- but you are welcome to buy, by the glass.

We are going to celebrate Spring April 29, when we will celebrate Valborg. This is an old Swedish tradition, when we are having a big bonfire, burning out all of the winter, ( if weather permits) There will be music by the Roundup-Gals food and of course wine.

February
We went home to Sweden, to visit family and friends, it was a good visit. We stayed at Lena and Christer, and celebrated our grandchildren, Alva and Bror who turned one year old.They also started to walk when we were there!!!!!!!!!.

We visited a trade show, together with Malin, where we bought a very cool, wine glass chandeliers, that now hangs in the winery.
OOH, all the good food we ate, and got inspired for new dishes at the cafe'. Now on the menu: Wild Salmon served on a bed of creamy spinach, Hollandaise sauce and wedge potatoes.

We also went to Smaland, the southern part of Sweden , where Anders comes from. In Smaland we visited his sister and my niece Marie, and we visited the glass blowing factories Kosta Boda, where we went shopping to stock our gift store.

Back on the farm, Samuel is pruning peach trees, Anders grapevines, and it start to be springy outside, with spring irises blooming.
We have ordered 2 acres of grafted Chardonel to plant next year, and as usually, we orded them from Grafted Grapevines in New York/ they have excellent quality vines.


January
We have had a very mild winter, so far this year. It has felt more like spring than winter. BUT, you never know, it can change and be cold again, but it will not stay for long, that's the nice difference between Southern Illinois and Sweden- where they just had a snow storm, and cold weather, and the winter WILL last to, at least beginning April. But we're going there anyway in February, to celebrate our Grand Children's 1's birthday .We're also going to look for Gifts to the Scandinavian gift shop and get inspired from all the good food that is available in Sweden.

We have a new dog in the house, Zula. She is growing and we went to the vet. today, she is now 19 #, and 10 weeks old, she is part Lab., part South African Mastiff- very good minded, but full of energy.We just started puppy school, which is good for all of us.
It's really fun with puppies, but it's like having a baby in the house again, and Gubben our old dog is so good with her.
Wine:

We have sold out of the Villard Blanc, and re-released Peach wine. The last release of the 2004 harvest, will be in end of March -Traminette-which is a semi-dry German style, white wine, with a gentle floral aroma.

2005 News
December
Thank you, all customers for this year business.
It has been an exiting and interesting adventure.

We opened the winery in end June, and had our Grand Opening in end Oct., with perfect weather and a lot of visitors, good food and music.

This year fruit was excellent, and we expect next years wine to be superb. The Scandinavian Gift shop has also taken off, and we're excited about that too. The Bed and Breakfast has been busy, and we have met nice, and interesting people, from a lot of different places.

Now in December, we have had Swedish Christmas dinners, and we have been very busy, with all those reservations.
We got the great honors to be awarded BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT OF THE YEAR, for Union County Chambers of Commerce now in December, and we are very happy, about that.

We also become Grand Parents to Alva and Bror. We were back to Sweden in February and Gerd went back in October again.

We will take reservations for Winter dinners in January and February, and we'll of course also have our regular menu going on, were you don't need reservations- just drop in and we'll take care of you.

Happy Holidays, and we hope to see you 2006 again.
Gerd and Anders

NOVEMBER
A busy month, I came back from Sweden from visiting children, grand children, and family. Malin our oldest daughter and I went mushroom hunting, we only got a few chanterelles mushrooms, but it was nice to be together in the woods. (Swedes really enjoys being out doors together)
I stayed at Lena and Christer's house, since Lena needed help to take care of the "babies"-they were 8 months and needed a lot of attention, I loved it. Bror the boy, will become a great swimmer, he is a fast crawler, and he is always smiling, Alva is starting to stand by herself, and is a very charming young girl, smiling and giggling.

At the farm: I didn't realize that I left in one of the busiest times of the year, Anders and our excellent work staff was very busy.
The gift shop has been restocked, and I brought a lot of gifts from Sweden. You can find great and different gifts as well as ornaments for Christmas in our gift shop.

Thanksgiving is a big celebration with open house in the whole of Alto Pass- come visit.

In December we are taking reservations for traditional Swedish Christmas dinners, and we're going to hold a Lucia celebration the December 11, 2005.

Welcome

October
The Grand Opening was a success, wonderful weather, sunshine, no wind, good music,food and wine, and a lot of people showing up.So now we are officially open.

October has been hectic, with wine making and racking.
We were a little nervous for a moment, our labels to Vidal Blanc and Villard Blanc didn't arrive until Friday before the Grand Opening, when those two wines was going to be released.So it was labeling the whole Friday and evening, but it was in place in time Saturday.

The wines was a success,and we sold a whole lot of them.
The last wine from last summer to be released is the Traminette, we probably need to wait a couple of more month, before we'll release it.

I'm going to Sweden this coming Saturday 10/29, to meet our children and grand children. Anders are staying at the farm, it's to much to do with the wines for the moment, for him to go, so I'll take lots of pictures.

Don't forget that November can still be a nice month in our neighborhood, the fall colors are here now and the apples are wonderful, at the local orchards.

We are also offering Christmas parties for companies and private parties, serving Swedish traditional Christmas food.

September- Harvests of Grapes, crushing, maceration, pressing, racking, and ageing = wine that will be released 2006. The numbers of the grapes from 2005 is excellent, and we expect it to be superb wine.

Our Grand Opening will be held Oct.22.10.00-6.00. Music, food and wine.August- We have been very busy during August. We're now picking grapes and the wine making for this year has started. This year seems to be an excellent wine year, with good quality due to the very dry and hot weather we have had. The peach season is over, they were big and juicy, very good quality this year. The Shawnee Hill Wine Trail Festival was held this weekend, it was a lot of fun. Gift shop; we have order a lot of items for the gift shop, and are just waiting for the delivery.Grandma's report:
Alva soon 7 month, has got a tooth, so grandma is going back for a week, the first of November, to look at the tooth. Both Alva and Bror are starting to crawl, and they are now sitting. The air is now clear and stars are very bright in the evening. The late summer sounds are present in the evenings. This is a wonderful time of the year.

July- The winery and the cafe' are open and in full swing. A very popular standard dish, at the cafe' is swedish meatballs with lingon berries, wedge potatoes gravy, and green beans. We have our standard dishes, but are changing our menu slightly every week , to give a variety of swedish / european cuisine.

The peaches are here - this is a great fruit year quality wise, we will not have all varieties due to the cold winter, but the ones we have are excellent, and Anders has started to make peach wine for next years release.

Some of the grapes have starting to turn in color, and we have still not had any problems with birds or racoons eating them up, "knock on wood"- the deers are nibbling a little -and that's ok.
The weather has been hot, but we usually have a nice little breese on our gazeboo.

We have started, together with the other members of the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail, to plan for the big wine festival - labor weekend. It will be fun!

June-WE ARE FINALLY OPEN. The winery opening the 25th of June was busy and fun. A lot of people came, for our petite opening - the grand opening will be in the fall, when the Chambourcin is ready to be released --it's still ageing in the oak barrels.

The Peach barn Cafe' is also open, serving Swedish meatballs with Lingon berries. The Peaches have just started to be harvested, the first ones are Red Haven - my favorite as an eating peach.

The weather has been really hot and sunny, but we had a nice rain yesterday, which cleared up the air.

I had some family to visit - a cousin to my dad, and her son and girl friend. It was nice, I had never met that part of the family earlier. We also met country-men from Scandinavia, Annette a pastor working in Cobden the nearest town to us and her husband Kay - coming from Finland and their son.

July will be busy, that is when the really fruit season starts, and then it continues through September. If you haven't eaten a Southern Illinois Peach before, well then you haven't eaten a real tasteful peach previous. Come over and taste.

May- the warm nice weather is here . Jasmine, honeysuckle, tulip trees and the roses are now blooming. The construction of the winery is in the last phase, we are busy like bees . More and more wine is being bottled. The grape wines are now requiring a lot of attention, they need to be thinned and open up, and sprayed, and the trellises need to be repaired etc. etc. We did plant one acre of NY 70, a new variety of red heavy grapes, and they have already started to peek out, from the top of the tubes they are growing in. They grow in tubes, due to that the deer's who really like to eat the new fresh grape leaves that come up.
There was a lot of wine festivals during the May month , and there are more to come during June. Come down and see us. We open the winery on June 25.

APRIL is a beautiful month, with all peach and apple trees taking turns to bloom, the rolling hills dressed in pink and later white blossoms. Humming birds and barn swallows are HERE, -they are really busy eating and building their nests. The later part of April has been warm and pleasant.

We found out that the winter was colder and harder, than we realized, with a lot of the peach and nectarine trees hit by cold weather. We will not get the variety of peaches, as we usually do, and NO nectarines.The winery is slowly coming together, with Anders building and Gerd painting and decorating in old traditional Swedish style. Anders is concentrating mostly on working with the final touch of the wines. Some of the labels are finished, and we will have Kevin to help out with remaining labels.

Gerd is also on the go, ordering different items and planning for the Scandinavian gift shop, that will be in the winery. The plan to open the winery is now around the end of June.
The winter is over, the weather is beautiful, birds are singing -everything is starting to wake up. Spring is wonderful!

March- Spring is here! Magnolia trees are blooming and a lot of other flower buds are almost ready to open up, the frogs have started to sing their spring song. Purple martins just arrived for this year . The peach trees are pruned and fertilized and we are working on pruning the grape vines.We just came back from a trip to Sweden , where we visited our family and friends, and cuddled with our first grandchildren - they are beautiful - what else can a grandma say!

February- We are still working on the winery, there is still a lot of work to be done. We are making signs for the barn and the road. The pruning has started both for the peaches and the grapes .
The wine is cold-stabilizing, Anders is preparing to bottle the various wines, and he has started to order more and more equipment for the bottling line.

The weather has been a pleasant 50 F with sunshine the last couple of days .The daffodils, spring irises and snowdrops are blooming. The geese are heading north, which is a sure sign that Spring is approaching. So, come visit beautiful southern Illinois

Also, we are now grandparents to Alva and Bror, our twin newborn grandchildren- our first grandchildren !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are MORMOR and MORFAR (Swedish for grand parents on the mother side).

January- We had a great Christmas, with friends and family.
Malin and Mats, our oldest daughter and her fiancé spent the Christmas and New Year holiday with us.

On the wine front: Anders has been cold stabilizing the wine and our labels have been approved, and sent to be printed. Anders has finished the ceiling in the winery's retail shop and we have started decorating the old beams and post in the barn in the old tradition Swedish style.

2004 NEWS

December -Thank you all friends and customers for the year 2004.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Gerd and Anders Hedman

November-- passed in a snap. The weather has been rainy, but warm, most trees have lost their leaves by now. Anders has been busy working with the wine; racking and working with chemical balance, it looks like year 2004, has been a very good and flavor full wine year. We are in process of joining the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail, so there will be seven wineries in the trail next year - It will be perfect for a two day vacation trip, plus you can stay in a B&B over night.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with good friends, and now we are waiting for Dec.20th, when Malin and Mats (our oldest daughter and future son in law) will arrive for Christmas.

October--The fall is here and the trees have changed into their beautiful autum clothes; red, yellow, and orange. We are still having nice warm days and we are taking all the opportunities to be outdoors.

Anders is busy with wine making, testing the chemical values and racked all wine, to get rid of sediments that can affect the flavor of the wine . We went to Lebanon, Missouri the other day and bought 10 oak barrels and we are working on the difficult task of getting some nice labels made.

Our family now has three new babies - three kittens. They are playing around in our kitchen as I write. And soon they will be our new barn cats come spring.

There is still much to do in our area, so why not take a couple of days and come for a relaxing visit.

September-has been the primary grape harvest month. It has been a very busy month. We harvested all the grapes and the weather has been just perfect - with very few bees and wasps. We are grateful for that. On September 12 the Cafe' closed for the season. Next year, when we open the Winery, the Cafe' will be open year around.The bed & breakfast has been busy, with all activities going on in the area. In September alone was the Shanwee Hills Wine Trail festival , the Apple festival in Murphysboro, the big Pig Out festival in Carbondale, etc.

October is also a busy month in the area, as well. There is the Colorfest in Anna and the Vulture festival in Makanda, Illinois.

Our daughter , Lena and her husband Christer, come over from Sweden to visit for two weeks. It was wonderful to have the family over here and they had great news--we are going to become grand parents in February to twins!!The roses are still blooming, but the Sunflowers have faded for the
season. The sounds of the night are quieter but the tree frogs , cicadas and grass hoppers are still going strong. The air is fresh and clear and the stars and constellations are bright. Autumn is a beautiful time.

August is one of our busiest times. The harvest of peaches and nectarines are finished and sold out. Now we are harvesting wine making grapes. With August being a cold and wet month Anders has been fighting weather related diseases on the grapes. The Traminette grape is very sensitive to weather related diseases, but it seems like we will have a good Chambourcin crop .
The Cafe' has been busier than last year and more people are starting to find us here in the country side. We have many people coming from the larger cities like St. Louis and Chicago to visit us. The B&B is also picking up.

The Roses has been blooming the whole summer and so have the Sunflowers, which are attracting all kind of birds . We have only a couple of Hummingbirds left and a few Swallows, most of them have left to migrate south for the winter.
Fall is coming soon and with it comes many festivals and out door activities--it is a very nice time in the area. Plan on a visit to see for yourself.

July--The harvest of peaches and nectarines are in full swing. It's a good year for fruit and we've have plenty. Redhaven started the season (Hedman family's favorite), then there was Loring, a very large peach -which produces in abundance with the mild winters we have had. The Contender a sweet freestone peach and the Red Gold Nectarines are crispy and good. The king of peaches, the Cresthaven and the red skin, Ovation nectarine and Encore peach are next on the list. Our seedless grapes will be harvested on Aug.11. and will be sold on the farm and in the Carbondale markets.

The Peachbarn Cafe' is also open, serving full menu during the weekends and salads and sandwiches during the week.
The Cafe' will be open weekends only from 12.00 (noon) to 6.00 p.m. starting the week of Aug.16

June came and left very quickly , It has been a busy period , with thinning and open up the vines, so the sun can reach the grapes and peaches.The Redhaven peaches, which are our first peaches to ripen , are now starting to turn to a nice red color. We will open the fruit retail stand and the Cafe' on July 10th. The fruit stand will be open from 10-6.00 and the Cafe' from 11.00-6.00 daily.During June we have also landscaped a part of the sloop around the pond , but with all heavy rain that we have had - most of the top soil and the grass seeds are down in the pond.Celebrating Mid Summer with good friends we had a traditional Swedish Tips Promenad (a quiz walk), the weather was just perfect.Anders is working on the new construction of our new cool room, to improve the handling of the fruit. The old cool room is heavy to work with, and we reload the fruit by hand, but with the new one, we can drive in the fruit directly. It will save time and our backs.

May--The Hummingbirds are here and they are buzzing around the feeders. Trees are blooming. The yellow tulip poplar, black locust with their white, very fragrant flowers, and we will soon see the silk trees blooming.We spied the first fire flies and they are flickering like small stars in the night sky. The tree frogs are here, singing -- filling the night air with the typical sounds of summer and a true sign of the coming summer here in southern Illinois.News: Anders took "Best in Show" of the red wines, at the Illinois Amateur Wine Competition in Illinois. This is good for our coming venture in the winery business.
Work at the farm in May--thinning of the peaches and grapes, building trellis, and working to finish the pergola and the new cool room. We have had a very wet and cold spring, but the weather is now improving to a sunny pleasant 85 F degrees.

April--The winery is now finished and the federal applications sent in.The pruning in the Orchard and the Vineyard is finished. We just hope that it will not be a severe frost night, that will kill the becoming fruit. The Peach trees are still blooming, and it's very pretty in the area, now the apple trees are also starting to bloom in the rolling hills of Alto Pass.

We also have a lot of different spring bulbs blooming and blooming trees in the area, during the spring. During April , you can for example see Magnolia, Bradford Pear trees, Redbuds, Dogwood trees, Crab apple trees, Weeping Cherry, Paw-Paw. It's all worth a visit.Birds; the Bluebirds are here and the Purple Martins arrived two weeks ago , and the Barn Swallows arrived this week. I put out the Hummingbird feeders this weekend- they will soon be here. Next project will be to build trellis for new planted grapevines, and to keep the weed out and to cut grass. We just ordered new vines for next year, it's a new vine called NY 70 , and SIU has worked with this new grape for a while, we will plant one acre. We ordered them from Grafted Grape Vines which has very good quality vines.We are also going to landscape the area, around parts of the pond.The fish in the pond are growing, and the bass is VERY big. You are welcome to fish, when you are staying with us.

January--we received the local winery permit, and are now
working on the construction of the winery, which will be located in the barn. When the construction of the winery is finished in February/March, we will apply for a federal permit, so we can
use this year's grape crop for wine making.