September 7, 1995
"Minnesota Vinter Let Grapes Suffer, Hopes Customers Won't"
San Jose Mercury News
By Timothy Taylor
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LOOK OUT, California wine industry. A hot new grape-growing region is on the rise, and its name is Minnesota. Here's the bad news in the words of a brochure from the Minnesota Winegrower's Cooperative:

"Minneapolis lies at the same latitude as the Bordeaux region of France (45 degrees N), and several hundred miles farther south than the great Rheingau region of Germany. As in these regions, the summers in south-central Minnesota are well-suited to grape vines - sunny, warm and with ample rainfall. Also, we too have an abundance of good vineyard sites, with rolling hills and bluffs along rivers and lakes."

Of course, every great breakthrough in wine production has had its skeptics. There was a time, not so long ago, when many believed that California wines would never measure up to the French. But the doubters didn't stop David Bailly from starting Minnesota's first winery in 1973.

As another brochure points out: "Bailly, however, cited French winemakers who maintain that in order to produce great wine, the grapevines must endure hardship - wind, sleet, snow, drought. Enthusiastically, he adopted the motto, 'Where the grapes can suffer.' "

It seems clear that our cultural image of wine and grapes is about to shift. Instead of families like the Mondavis and the Gallos, drinking wine with a nice dinner of garlic sun-dried tomatoes and smoked salmon tossed with avocado, artichokes and pasta, you'll become familiar with families named Olafson and Svenson sipping their wine with walleye pike and wild rice. The stereotypical wine drinker will look like a young Mary Tyler Moore, except blonder and more wholesome.

There are a couple of itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny problems to be solved before Minnesota takes its place among the great wine-growing regions of the world.

Again quoting the Minnesota Winegrowers Cooperative: "Early autumn frosts often cut short the growing season here. The severe winters sometimes damage even the hardiest of grapevines. The noble wine grapes of Europe can neither ripen their fruit here nor survive our winters. So, the challenge to Minnesota grape growers has been to find alternative grape varieties that can be grown within the limits imposed by our climate."

Saying that the Minnesota climate imposes limitations shows a certain mastery of understatement, like saying that a few people have paid some attention to the O.J. Simpson trial. Minnesota winter is rip-your-ears-off, hurts-to-breathe cold. As Garrison Keillor has said, it's nature's way of telling you to die.

Minnesota wine-growers have coped in several ways. Classic grapes like chardonnay and gamay beaujolais can frequently survive the winter if they are cut down from their trellises every fall, covered with dirt or straw, and then put up again the next spring.

New varieties of grapes can be bred for the cold and the shorter season. Better-known grapes can be cross-bred with grapes indigenous to Minnesota, like the wild riverbank grape. A grape breeder from the Horticultural Research Center at the University of Minnesota reports that there are now nearly 10,000 vines being tested, and that "the grape-breeding project has become a top priority."

Moreover, the collapse of the Soviet Union has meant access to new cold-resistant grapes like V. amurensis, which is native to parts of Siberia and Manchuria. Minnesota grape researchers are now working directly with counterparts in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

According the ever-optimistic Minnesota Winegrowers Cooperative: "Improvement of grape varieties will be the key to unlocking the wine-growing potential of this region... We are well on our way to that goal."

I lay no claim to a sophisticated palate. I've been known to eat Velveeta cheese and peanut-butter-and-bacon sandwiches. But I did live in Northern California for 10 years, which at least entitles me to an opinion about wine.

Minnesota wine is full of unexpected tastes, probably because the grape varieties are unfamiliar. Several of the Minnesota white and blush wines I've tasted are passable as summer-sipping picnic wine, especially if chilled.

However, I haven't yet found a local red wine that I would purchase even to make sangria, much less to accompany a good meal. The Minnesota wines remain a long, long, long way from my personal favorites, like a good Grgich chardonnay, Acacia pinot noir or Silverado cabernet.

But the Minnesota viticulturists are learning more about those fabulous Siberian/Manchurian varietals every day. In a decade, or maybe two or three or four, they'll be unlocking the latent wine-growing potential of Minnesota. Napa Valley had better be looking over its shoulder.

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