Kirkwood Winery Program

Each year students at Kirkwood Community College produce 3,000 bottles of wine from 24 different types of grapes that are grown on the main campus. The college offers winemaking and winery facility management program since 2009. This program is divided into eight parts that cover planting, harvesting, vine crushing, fermentation, clarifying, bottling and marketing the wine.

The eight part series are Vineyard Establishment, Winter into Spring Vineyard Management, Spring Vine Yard Management 1 and 2, Sumer Vine Yard Management 1 and 2 and Harvesting Vineyard Management 1 and 2. During the process, students are allowed to see and experience from the day the grapes are planted through the harvesting.  

According to Lucas McIntire, vineyard manager, Kirkwood sets the classes to match the time of planting and harvesting program in order to give the students actual learning during the classes. Therefore students can earn their vineyard management certificate in one year.

McIntire stated that currently there are about 750 vine trees planted in an acre and half vineyard that consist of 24 kinds of grapes that Kirkwood gets from University of Minnesota. Further, McIntire also hopes to breed knew grapes variety in the near future.

McIntire states that the wines sell to various restaurant and retailers in Cedar Rapids.  Besides, Kirkwood winery joins various national and international wine competitions every year. In 2012 and 2013, Kirkwood wine won bronze in international level.

Every year, according to McIntire, the Kirkwood winery comes up with new taste. The winery products cover red, whites, rose, berry and bubbly wine. There are four types of red wine master’s cuvee’, foch, gour Point OH and frontenac dessert wine. There are six whites wine verities including frontenac blanc-rich, la crosse, summer sabbatical, edelweiss and niagara. There are two types of roses wine, namely cellar achievement and bluebell. Berry and Bubbly wine each has one type, aronia berry and la madeliina. Each type of wine has different flavor and different basic ingredients. This varieties keep growing in number as Kirkwood winey produce new wine recipes.