<h1>Hidden Legend Winery - Victor, Montana Pt. 3</h1>Welcome to The Best Five Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Forrest Kelly. From the seed to the glass, wine has a past. Our aim at The Best Five Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, the grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure.Our featured winery is as we conclude our interview with Ken Schultz of Hidden Legend Winery. We learn where that personality first started that would eventually make award winning Mead.I set out to see things in life a very, very early age. I blame my fifth grade teacher introducing us to National Geographic and I just could not stand it. I was like just fidgeting until I got out of high school and took off. I started as a merchant marine on the Great Lakes and then TWA started offering cheap tickets to Europe back in 69, 70, whenever that was. And I got one. And when I got there, I tore up the return trip and I was just gone four years. I'm not sure how many crowned heads I visited, but I got thirty three countries under my belt.Reading on your website, it says that you were across from Pioneer Log Homes in the Sheafman Plaza in Victor Montana. Tell me about your location. Well, it's a little tiny strip plaza. There's like five businesses in it on the corner. We're actually five miles south. We're right on the border between Victor and Hamilton, but we're five miles south of Main Street, Victor itself, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  So you're not getting a lot of foot traffic. Well, being in a small plaza and having a beverage like a wine like beverage, it's not something that people come in and have three or four glasses of. I keep threatening to put in one of those banks of drawers that the Japanese used for their executive power naps. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that, you know, after three or four glasses of Mead, I can just put you in there and set the timer. We don't have a lot of tasting room traffic. What we do have is wide distribution and Internet sales. We ship to thirty seven states in this pandemic world. It doubled it literally, literally from the middle of March on. If you would look at our warehouse room, our inventory, you would think all kind of Winery insists there's nothing. I'm making it. I'm not making it quite as fast as it's going out the door right now. We have a term for that. We call it full COVID. No, we don't have time to do much other than just try and keep up with the bottling and packaging.And we've recently been out of our two top sellers and just got those back online. And we've got other flavors that we're trying to get back online. We're I think we're down about four flavors right now. Seriously, that four o'clock glass of wine became more than just kicking back. Tell me about your Mead award winners. Well, we most of them have won top awards at one time or another since ninety since the 90s. And we've got some bottles on the top shelf of a display cabinet that pretty much you can't even see the bottles anymore. They're so laden with artwork. We pick on like the Finger Lakes in New York, Tasters Guild in Michigan, The Indie international at Purdue. Out here in Washington, we have the Tri Cities Wine Society and of course, the Mazer Cup International Mead Competition in Broomfield, Colorado. Every year we try and spread it out and get a good overview from reputable judges. It basically keeps me on track. And except for this year, there are usually a dozen shows that I like to go to, anything from Art shows to Highland Games to Renaissance festivals to Pirate festivals. And of course, I don't get to see much of the festivals I'm staying or serving Mead for eight hours a day. But it's fun to dress like a pirate and see everybody happy with my product. All right, Ken, thank you very much. And as we close out, go ahead and give us your Web address on how we can reach out to you. Hiddenlegendwinery.com Well, we do have a Facebook presence. I was in Ireland and I was talking to a barman outside of Dublin that we were talking about what I did. And it was he was just all over it. He was like, wow, I wish I could get some of that on tap here. I said, well, you know, we've got a good presence. Maybe we can pursue this. And I said, go ahead, take out your phone and hit “buy mead.” And sure enough, there we are. We dominate the first page of a Google search for me and the next four. My boys were optimizing before anybody was optimizing. Cool. Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of The Best Five Minute Wine Podcast was produced by IHYSM. If you like the show, please tell your friends and pets and subscribe until next time pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.

Hidden Legend Winery - Victor, Montana Pt. 3Welcome to The Best Five Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Forrest Kelly. From the seed to the glass, wine has a past. Our aim at The Best Five Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, the grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure.Our featured winery is as we conclude our interview with Ken Schultz of Hidden Legend Winery. We learn where that personality first started that would eventually make award winning Mead.I set out to see things in life a very, very early age. I blame my fifth grade teacher introducing us to National Geographic and I just could not stand it. I was like just fidgeting until I got out of high school and took off. I started as a merchant marine on the Great Lakes and then TWA started offering cheap tickets to Europe back in 69, 70, whenever that was. And I got one. And when I got there, I tore up the return trip and I was just gone four years. I'm not sure how many crowned heads I visited, but I got thirty three countries under my belt.Reading on your website, it says that you were across from Pioneer Log Homes in the Sheafman Plaza in Victor Montana. Tell me about your location. Well, it's a little tiny strip plaza. There's like five businesses in it on the corner. We're actually five miles south. We're right on the border between Victor and Hamilton, but we're five miles south of Main Street, Victor itself, pretty much in the middle of nowhere.  So you're not getting a lot of foot traffic. Well, being in a small plaza and having a beverage like a wine like beverage, it's not something that people come in and have three or four glasses of. I keep threatening to put in one of those banks of drawers that the Japanese used for their executive power naps. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that, you know, after three or four glasses of Mead, I can just put you in there and set the timer. We don't have a lot of tasting room traffic. What we do have is wide distribution and Internet sales. We ship to thirty seven states in this pandemic world. It doubled it literally, literally from the middle of March on. If you would look at our warehouse room, our inventory, you would think all kind of Winery insists there's nothing. I'm making it. I'm not making it quite as fast as it's going out the door right now. We have a term for that. We call it full COVID. No, we don't have time to do much other than just try and keep up with the bottling and packaging.And we've recently been out of our two top sellers and just got those back online. And we've got other flavors that we're trying to get back online. We're I think we're down about four flavors right now. Seriously, that four o'clock glass of wine became more than just kicking back. Tell me about your Mead award winners. Well, we most of them have won top awards at one time or another since ninety since the 90s. And we've got some bottles on the top shelf of a display cabinet that pretty much you can't even see the bottles anymore. They're so laden with artwork. We pick on like the Finger Lakes in New York, Tasters Guild in Michigan, The Indie international at Purdue. Out here in Washington, we have the Tri Cities Wine Society and of course, the Mazer Cup International Mead Competition in Broomfield, Colorado. Every year we try and spread it out and get a good overview from reputable judges. It basically keeps me on track. And except for this year, there are usually a dozen shows that I like to go to, anything from Art shows to Highland Games to Renaissance festivals to Pirate festivals. And of course, I don't get to see much of the festivals I'm staying or serving Mead for eight hours a day. But it's fun to dress like a pirate and see everybody happy with my product. All right, Ken, thank you very much. And as we close out, go ahead and give us your Web address on how we can reach out to you. Hiddenlegendwinery.com Well, we do have a Facebook presence. I was in Ireland and I was talking to a barman outside of Dublin that we were talking about what I did. And it was he was just all over it. He was like, wow, I wish I could get some of that on tap here. I said, well, you know, we've got a good presence. Maybe we can pursue this. And I said, go ahead, take out your phone and hit “buy mead.” And sure enough, there we are. We dominate the first page of a Google search for me and the next four. My boys were optimizing before anybody was optimizing. Cool. Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of The Best Five Minute Wine Podcast was produced by IHYSM. If you like the show, please tell your friends and pets and subscribe until next time pour the wine and ponder your next adventure. 

The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

Hidden Legend Winery - Victor, Montana Pt. 3

Ken Schultz explains how much honey they use and how often they make Mead in a year.

Ken Schultz explains how much honey they use and how often they make Mead in a year.  

Hidden Legend Winery - Victor, Montana Pt. 2

<h1>Hidden Legend Winery – Victor, Montana</h1>Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. Our featured winery is so basically I opened the Hidden Legend Winery for at Harvard Business School would call the worst possible reason to open a business, and that's because the neighbors thought it was a good idea.In this episode, we head to the state that has the largest migratory bird in the nation, the only state with a triple divide allowing water to flow into the Pacific, Atlantic and Hudson Bay. We head to Victor, Montana. I'm Ken Shultz and I am the founder and winemaker at Hidden Legend Winery in Victor, Montana. Ok, Ken, let's go back to the beginning. Where did this spark come from? Well, when we were kids, I had an uncle that was a research chemist and a serious hobby winemaker, friends with the head of the technology department at Purdue and various vineyard owners.  And things of that nature in his basement had all the right glassware. It was like Frankenstein's laboratory. So I guess that was the spark. Oh, yeah, that was early. You know, under 13, I turned 21. I was going to school in Lausanne, Switzerland. I worked overseas for a number of years and I came back. I got married when I was twenty three and the very first time I owned a closet I made. Me personally, I've lived all over Montana and I just love the big sky.  But how about, you know, I was still in Ohio when I got married and we came out here, we got married in seventy five, came out to Montana, saw it, fell in love with the place in seventy six and finally moved here in seventy nine. Well my wife is Norwegian and she thought it looked like Norway and because I had worked there I thought it looked like northern Pakistan but no monkeys or water buffalo. There's something captivating about the Bitterroot Mountains.You can look off in the distance and see a whole train. Well, you know, at some point when hiking and fishing and vistas and all of you know, the alluring things of Montana kind of settle down to a little bit.I thought I'd make some wine and evidently I hadn't thought it through very well because there's no grapes. However, I had read The Hobbit and I knew what meat was. And so I came across a bucket of honey that somebody was just disposing of and I thought I'd make mead. I mentioned it to my peers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and they were like, oh, my God, can no, don't make me. It's horrible. It's thick. Vikings drank it. You'll give winemakers a bad name. I thought, well, you snob's, I'll show you that I can make a mead every bit as complex as your wines. And so I made mead in the mid eighties. Let me just put it this way. I have a driveway that's a half a mile long, three switchbacks up a mountainside. And the guy that used to keep it clear for me in the wintertime would do it twice for a for a bottle.Ok, let's rewind just a little bit without getting technical, but getting technical just to fill everybody in and be especially neat is often referred to as honey wine, but that's not really accurate. You make the wine with honey water and yeast rather than fruit. So technically meat is kind of in its own category of an alcoholic beverage.Well, the word mead goes way back to the Sanskrit and the word Megu is honey in Sanskrit. And it's where the English word Medo comes from, which doesn't mean field of flowers. It means we're nectars gathered. And so Mead is actually a shortened meadow.Well, I imagine that the chemical process is very similar. You're dealing with sugars, but just different kinds of sugars. So are there some nuances to the whole process?The process is very similar, although we do have to create an environment for the yeast in honey because there's nothing in it but sugar and a grape contains just the right amount of nutrients and trace minerals and acids and sugars in it to make wine. And the powder on the outer outer skin is yeast. So if you break a grape, you can't stop it from making wine, whereas honey needs to be adjusted a bit before it'll ferment.  Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of The Best Five Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHYSM If you like the show, please tell your friends and pets and subscribe until next time pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.

Hidden Legend Winery – Victor, MontanaWelcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. Our featured winery is so basically I opened the Hidden Legend Winery for at Harvard Business School would call the worst possible reason to open a business, and that's because the neighbors thought it was a good idea.In this episode, we head to the state that has the largest migratory bird in the nation, the only state with a triple divide allowing water to flow into the Pacific, Atlantic and Hudson Bay. We head to Victor, Montana. I'm Ken Shultz and I am the founder and winemaker at Hidden Legend Winery in Victor, Montana. Ok, Ken, let's go back to the beginning. Where did this spark come from? Well, when we were kids, I had an uncle that was a research chemist and a serious hobby winemaker, friends with the head of the technology department at Purdue and various vineyard owners.  And things of that nature in his basement had all the right glassware. It was like Frankenstein's laboratory. So I guess that was the spark. Oh, yeah, that was early. You know, under 13, I turned 21. I was going to school in Lausanne, Switzerland. I worked overseas for a number of years and I came back. I got married when I was twenty three and the very first time I owned a closet I made. Me personally, I've lived all over Montana and I just love the big sky.  But how about, you know, I was still in Ohio when I got married and we came out here, we got married in seventy five, came out to Montana, saw it, fell in love with the place in seventy six and finally moved here in seventy nine. Well my wife is Norwegian and she thought it looked like Norway and because I had worked there I thought it looked like northern Pakistan but no monkeys or water buffalo. There's something captivating about the Bitterroot Mountains.You can look off in the distance and see a whole train. Well, you know, at some point when hiking and fishing and vistas and all of you know, the alluring things of Montana kind of settle down to a little bit.I thought I'd make some wine and evidently I hadn't thought it through very well because there's no grapes. However, I had read The Hobbit and I knew what meat was. And so I came across a bucket of honey that somebody was just disposing of and I thought I'd make mead. I mentioned it to my peers in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and they were like, oh, my God, can no, don't make me. It's horrible. It's thick. Vikings drank it. You'll give winemakers a bad name. I thought, well, you snob's, I'll show you that I can make a mead every bit as complex as your wines. And so I made mead in the mid eighties. Let me just put it this way. I have a driveway that's a half a mile long, three switchbacks up a mountainside. And the guy that used to keep it clear for me in the wintertime would do it twice for a for a bottle.Ok, let's rewind just a little bit without getting technical, but getting technical just to fill everybody in and be especially neat is often referred to as honey wine, but that's not really accurate. You make the wine with honey water and yeast rather than fruit. So technically meat is kind of in its own category of an alcoholic beverage.Well, the word mead goes way back to the Sanskrit and the word Megu is honey in Sanskrit. And it's where the English word Medo comes from, which doesn't mean field of flowers. It means we're nectars gathered. And so Mead is actually a shortened meadow.Well, I imagine that the chemical process is very similar. You're dealing with sugars, but just different kinds of sugars. So are there some nuances to the whole process?The process is very similar, although we do have to create an environment for the yeast in honey because there's nothing in it but sugar and a grape contains just the right amount of nutrients and trace minerals and acids and sugars in it to make wine. And the powder on the outer outer skin is yeast. So if you break a grape, you can't stop it from making wine, whereas honey needs to be adjusted a bit before it'll ferment.  Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of The Best Five Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHYSM If you like the show, please tell your friends and pets and subscribe until next time pour the wine and ponder your next adventure. 

Hidden Legend Winery - Victor, Montana Pt. 1

<h1>Summerhill Pyramid Winery-Kelowna, BC Canada Pt. 4</h1>Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure.Our featured winery is we conclude our interview with Stephen Cipes, proprietor of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia. As we've learned in past episodes from Stephen, it's all about making wine to its purest form, and that includes serving local and organic food in their restaurants. And what exactly does local and organic mean, and why is that so important?It's the largest impact on global warming is the food production for the eight billion of us. This business of 30-mile-long, that's a death in the oceans. And the sprays that come over on the jet streams from Asia to North America and the amount of carbon footprint to move all these, you know, thousands of tons of food everywhere. It's got to stop. It's ruining the earth at an astounding rate. If we go back to local and organic, we're going to have a much bigger difference in our breathing the air and keeping the planet alive. One of the biggest things that impacted us is the tractor. By going up and down in the fields, all the topsoil disappeared, and now we have to put chemicals to top topsoil and these pesticides. Already, according to The New York Times, 90 percent of the insects on the planet are gone, including the bees and the butterflies. And these are our pollinators. You know, I can understand why people don't realize that every time they buy something that's not organic, they are contributing to pesticides that are killing our insect. And if we don't have our insects, we are in big trouble in our conversation.Stephen, I could tell that you're very progressive in that you're continually moving forward and trying to perfect whatever process you're in the middle of. But in the upcoming years, what kind of goals do you have?I would say my goal is to get other wineries to convert to organic and other food producers to convert to organic. And I've started a declaration which has a website, organic, Okanogan dot com, organic Okanogan dot com. And you can sign the declaration online. And it's even if you're from California or Brazil or wherever you're from. It shows that you know, we are anxious to be a model and make a model of being organic. So that would be my wish is that our properties with some real property are a model to the world of man and nature and the beautiful wines we produce and also then, you know, the healthy wines that we make. I see the correlation in France, the amount of cancer in children of people living near vineyards there, and their population is so much higher than ours. And I have the link on our website. It's pathetic to see all these children with their hair shaved off, and you see the coffins going down into the earth. Children, you know. For what? For chemical wine. It's ridiculous. I can't believe that one child's life, to me, is worth all the wine in the world.The world is the way it is. And I'm sure I can't change it all in one and one day. But I'm going to try.Well, that's good, because you're trying makes me try. And then collectively, we start to make an impact on this whole thing, start to improve the planet for everybody. All right. As we close it out, let's get all of your contact information, Stephen, and you can contact me, Steve. I'm the proprietor at 250. 764.8000 ext 199 or ext. 11. Our websites are, <a href="https://www.summerhill.bc.ca/">https://www.summerhill.bc.ca/</a>I also have http://organicokanagan.com/ and <a href="http://alloneera.com">http://alloneera.com</a>That's the precious one that I'm working on with my Book, All One Era, which you can get on Amazon.com. Twelve dollars and 21 cents. Wonderful. Bless your heart. Thank you for all you do. Thank you very well.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. 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Summerhill Pyramid Winery-Kelowna, BC Canada Pt. 4Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure.Our featured winery is we conclude our interview with Stephen Cipes, proprietor of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia. As we've learned in past episodes from Stephen, it's all about making wine to its purest form, and that includes serving local and organic food in their restaurants. And what exactly does local and organic mean, and why is that so important?It's the largest impact on global warming is the food production for the eight billion of us. This business of 30-mile-long, that's a death in the oceans. And the sprays that come over on the jet streams from Asia to North America and the amount of carbon footprint to move all these, you know, thousands of tons of food everywhere. It's got to stop. It's ruining the earth at an astounding rate. If we go back to local and organic, we're going to have a much bigger difference in our breathing the air and keeping the planet alive. One of the biggest things that impacted us is the tractor. By going up and down in the fields, all the topsoil disappeared, and now we have to put chemicals to top topsoil and these pesticides. Already, according to The New York Times, 90 percent of the insects on the planet are gone, including the bees and the butterflies. And these are our pollinators. You know, I can understand why people don't realize that every time they buy something that's not organic, they are contributing to pesticides that are killing our insect. And if we don't have our insects, we are in big trouble in our conversation.Stephen, I could tell that you're very progressive in that you're continually moving forward and trying to perfect whatever process you're in the middle of. But in the upcoming years, what kind of goals do you have?I would say my goal is to get other wineries to convert to organic and other food producers to convert to organic. And I've started a declaration which has a website, organic, Okanogan dot com, organic Okanogan dot com. And you can sign the declaration online. And it's even if you're from California or Brazil or wherever you're from. It shows that you know, we are anxious to be a model and make a model of being organic. So that would be my wish is that our properties with some real property are a model to the world of man and nature and the beautiful wines we produce and also then, you know, the healthy wines that we make. I see the correlation in France, the amount of cancer in children of people living near vineyards there, and their population is so much higher than ours. And I have the link on our website. It's pathetic to see all these children with their hair shaved off, and you see the coffins going down into the earth. Children, you know. For what? For chemical wine. It's ridiculous. I can't believe that one child's life, to me, is worth all the wine in the world.The world is the way it is. And I'm sure I can't change it all in one and one day. But I'm going to try.Well, that's good, because you're trying makes me try. And then collectively, we start to make an impact on this whole thing, start to improve the planet for everybody. All right. As we close it out, let's get all of your contact information, Stephen, and you can contact me, Steve. I'm the proprietor at 250. 764.8000 ext 199 or ext. 11. Our websites are, https://www.summerhill.bc.ca/I also have http://organicokanagan.com/ and http://alloneera.comThat's the precious one that I'm working on with my Book, All One Era, which you can get on Amazon.com. Twelve dollars and 21 cents. Wonderful. Bless your heart. Thank you for all you do. Thank you very well.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox.Sign up for our Newsletter, which includes wine and travel discounts. We also give away free swag! 

Summerhill Pyramid Winery-Kelowna, BC Canada Pt. 4

<h1> </h1>Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Forrest Kelly. From the seed to the glass wine has a past. We look for adventures at wineries around the world. After all, grape minds think alike. Our featured winery is we continue our conversation with Stephen Cipes, proprietor of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in British Columbia, Canada.Well, we started out of our little garage making wine in 1990, 91, and we introduced the same Strutt in December 91 to right in the beginning in 92 in New York City to great reviews there, as I mentioned. So official opening is 92, but we've been making wine since the late 80s. You know, we came here in 1986, my family and I from New York for 30 years now. We've just dedicated to the amazing growing conditions here and the lovely people here. I have to say that British Columbia is a treat to be here. Such a lovely, honest, and wonderful people all around us at all times. Our crew, our employees like family. It's beautiful. A lot of people join Summerhill because they want to. I even get comments like Steve we'd work here for if you didn't pay us.We love this place. There are so few things in this world that give us energy. Most things take energy. Yeah. So that's wonderful.Something we learned in a previous episode was that Steven built a pyramid on the property to incorporate that pyramid into the winemaking process.What I think it is, is sacred geometry is related to the electrical nature of life itself. And it brings out I would say it's not it does not make any liquid worse or better. It clarifies it. So if you put a wine in there, for instance, that has flaws in it, it will bring out the flaws and make wine like cooking wine. You can't drink it. And if it has good qualities, it'll bring out good qualities—the same with milk or orange juice or any other liquid. And we've proven that time and time again in the last over 30 years now. And it's very conclusive, and we're very thrilled with the experiments and plan to go on bigger and better and more experiments to prove the value of sacred geometry on liquids. The size of our pyramid would be the exact size of the capstone on the Great Pyramid. Ironically, we didn't plan it that way, but it just happened to come out to be exactly what the size of the capstone on the pyramid would have been—sixty feet square and four stories high. Well, You are one of the most visited wineries in Canada. I imagine that you've got quite a few employees every year. We have about 170 employees in the season, and that drops down to about half of that in the shoulder seasons. But of course, with COVID, we're running way below that because most of the weddings have been canceled, not allowed to have more than 50 people and they have to be six feet apart. And the Chinese tourists that we get every day, busloads of tourists from China are not coming. We're not getting any tourists from the United States. Even our own in Canada are coming much less frequently. So we're way down in and visits this year because of COVID. And yet, interestingly, our sales have gone up incredibly because the Internet sales, the wonderful online sales have been fantastic. I think we had a fifteen hundred percent increase over the same months last year. So, yeah, people want to buy our wine. That's organic; it's the pyramid, this gold medal-winning, whatever. And they love the wine, so they don't come to see us anymore, whether it's ordering online and we deliver. And a portion of those employees that you just mentioned are working at the website. Your restaurant is just a wonderful restaurant.  Very proud of that. We have a 200 seat organic restaurant and catering. We usually do over 100 weddings a year. So we do a lot of food. We at one time were called by the suppliers, the biggest outlet in all of Kelowna, which is huge. That means all the hotels and all of the big restaurants and everything. We were the biggest one, Summerhill, because we do a lot of volume and food, and we have a fabulous chef who's the chef that the chairman of the chef association and the teacher at the school. And everybody really admires him and respects him is a pillar in the community and we're very proud to have him. That's Jeremy. We have an application now into the city and the Agricultural Land Reserve to actually build a world think tank on food production. It's called the Culinary College for Humanity, and it will feature classes and certifications to show the industry and homeowners, of course, how to cook and grow and prepare. Meals that are organic and local versus chemical and far distance in part four of our interview with Steven Cipes of Summerhill Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, we talk about how to make the Earth a safer place for all of us and his future goals for the winery.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.

 Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host, Forrest Kelly. From the seed to the glass wine has a past. We look for adventures at wineries around the world. After all, grape minds think alike. Our featured winery is we continue our conversation with Stephen Cipes, proprietor of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in British Columbia, Canada.Well, we started out of our little garage making wine in 1990, 91, and we introduced the same Strutt in December 91 to right in the beginning in 92 in New York City to great reviews there, as I mentioned. So official opening is 92, but we've been making wine since the late 80s. You know, we came here in 1986, my family and I from New York for 30 years now. We've just dedicated to the amazing growing conditions here and the lovely people here. I have to say that British Columbia is a treat to be here. Such a lovely, honest, and wonderful people all around us at all times. Our crew, our employees like family. It's beautiful. A lot of people join Summerhill because they want to. I even get comments like Steve we'd work here for if you didn't pay us.We love this place. There are so few things in this world that give us energy. Most things take energy. Yeah. So that's wonderful.Something we learned in a previous episode was that Steven built a pyramid on the property to incorporate that pyramid into the winemaking process.What I think it is, is sacred geometry is related to the electrical nature of life itself. And it brings out I would say it's not it does not make any liquid worse or better. It clarifies it. So if you put a wine in there, for instance, that has flaws in it, it will bring out the flaws and make wine like cooking wine. You can't drink it. And if it has good qualities, it'll bring out good qualities—the same with milk or orange juice or any other liquid. And we've proven that time and time again in the last over 30 years now. And it's very conclusive, and we're very thrilled with the experiments and plan to go on bigger and better and more experiments to prove the value of sacred geometry on liquids. The size of our pyramid would be the exact size of the capstone on the Great Pyramid. Ironically, we didn't plan it that way, but it just happened to come out to be exactly what the size of the capstone on the pyramid would have been—sixty feet square and four stories high. Well, You are one of the most visited wineries in Canada. I imagine that you've got quite a few employees every year. We have about 170 employees in the season, and that drops down to about half of that in the shoulder seasons. But of course, with COVID, we're running way below that because most of the weddings have been canceled, not allowed to have more than 50 people and they have to be six feet apart. And the Chinese tourists that we get every day, busloads of tourists from China are not coming. We're not getting any tourists from the United States. Even our own in Canada are coming much less frequently. So we're way down in and visits this year because of COVID. And yet, interestingly, our sales have gone up incredibly because the Internet sales, the wonderful online sales have been fantastic. I think we had a fifteen hundred percent increase over the same months last year. So, yeah, people want to buy our wine. That's organic; it's the pyramid, this gold medal-winning, whatever. And they love the wine, so they don't come to see us anymore, whether it's ordering online and we deliver. And a portion of those employees that you just mentioned are working at the website. Your restaurant is just a wonderful restaurant.  Very proud of that. We have a 200 seat organic restaurant and catering. We usually do over 100 weddings a year. So we do a lot of food. We at one time were called by the suppliers, the biggest outlet in all of Kelowna, which is huge. That means all the hotels and all of the big restaurants and everything. We were the biggest one, Summerhill, because we do a lot of volume and food, and we have a fabulous chef who's the chef that the chairman of the chef association and the teacher at the school. And everybody really admires him and respects him is a pillar in the community and we're very proud to have him. That's Jeremy. We have an application now into the city and the Agricultural Land Reserve to actually build a world think tank on food production. It's called the Culinary College for Humanity, and it will feature classes and certifications to show the industry and homeowners, of course, how to cook and grow and prepare. Meals that are organic and local versus chemical and far distance in part four of our interview with Steven Cipes of Summerhill Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, we talk about how to make the Earth a safer place for all of us and his future goals for the winery.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. 

Summerhill Pyramid Winery-Kelowna, BC Canada Pt. 3

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure.Our featured winery is; we continue our conversation with <a href="https://www.summerhill.bc.ca/Story/Biographies">Stephen Cipes</a>, proprietor of <a href="https://www.summerhill.bc.ca/">Summerhill Pyramid Winery</a>.  I'm not asking for the secret sauce here. What do you feel attributes to all of the awards that you get for your winemaking?Yes, it's a combination of things that we do. First of all, and most importantly, the grapes are grown organically and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodynamic_agriculture">biodynamic</a>. And they are processed in a certified organic cellar as well. What does that mean by everything? What does that mean by biodynamic is a term we can use if you get a <a href="https://www.demeter-usa.org/about-demeter/demeter-history.asp">Demeter certification</a> out of Germany, which is the highest way to get organic certification like it's the biggest test. And everything is done by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Steiner">Rudolf Steiner</a>, who is the founder of Demeter and Biodynamics, really. And he specifies when you can plant by the moon and when you harvest, and you put in making a tea from the right and grapes from last year. Everything is composted, compost, tea, there's a lot of the things that you need to do and be done with your plant is really at the end of the day, it's about nature and communication with man. It's a wonderful man and nature quencher. I call it.Going through those two processes sounds very complex in themselves, let alone having to do two of those. And yet you decided to add another element to try to raise wine to its highest form.And we took it to another process as well. And we built a sacred geometry chamber to put the wines in for the marriage period from dosaging to going on to the shelf. So when you make sparkling wine, as most people do know, you make a base wine like any other wine, and then you put that base one in a bottle that has a stick and can handle the pressure, and you add yeast and sugar and represent it in that bottle again, and it lays on the dead yeast cells. You sell the leaves for 18 months to 15 years. And each year, depending on what kind of grapes you have it made out of, produces more of the subtle flavors and nuances that you get out of fine sparkling wine. And then you wake up the bottle by riddling it and getting the dead yeast cells out of it. And then you dosage it with a sweet little reserve because the yeast has eaten all of the sugar. So its own dry and most people can handle it that way. And then the dosage period is what we call the marriage period. And in Europe, in Germany and Spain and France, many places where they make sparkling wine, they put the bottles in a sacred geometry chamber, which in those areas is almost always a Roman arch cellar. n Spain has, I think, 30 miles of Roman cellars to house their bottles after they've been discharged. And we built a precision pyramid after the Great Pyramid in Egypt to several trips that I was privileged to make with Egyptologists, then John Anthony West. So we did a precision pyramid, and we put all our wines now into that pyramid, which makes them again with a tiny winery, we're only 30,000 cases a year, and yet we win a huge amount of awards every year with our people. Love the flavors at the organic wine, and the pyramid adds a dimension to it as well.Well, listening to the details that you put into every single process of what you do, I can only imagine the painstaking details you went in to recreate the pyramid.We made it out of poured concrete, which has fiberglass rebar because we didn't want to use any ferrous metals and reorient the building back to the magnetic north. It's oriented to True North just as the Great Pyramid is. So we followed the Great Pyramid in every respect, and we did everything with few stones because the whole pyramid there is a fuzed stone structure, very rare and magnificent in so many ways. It's unbelievable. I have a book out called <a href="https://www.amazon.com/All-One-Era-Stephen-Cipes-ebook/dp/B077FXWCT2/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=all+one+era+stephen+cipes&qid=1597125046&sr=8-1">All One Era on Amazon.com</a>, and it goes into all these details. So and our <a href="https://www.summerhill.bc.ca/Story/The-Pyramid">website</a> has good details on the pyramid as well.Somebody answer that phone! Its time, boys, and girls for our listener voicemail.Hi, my name is Junie from Atlanta. And my question is, what kind of wine do you recommend for Red? You'd like to stay consistent in your cooking skills, use the same wine that you're going to drink for dinner as the marinade.If you're going to drink an expensive wine for dinner, keep that in mind that you're going to have to use it to marinate as well. Personally, I'd use two-buck Chuck, with Chuck Steak.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure.Our featured winery is; we continue our conversation with Stephen Cipes, proprietor of Summerhill Pyramid Winery.  I'm not asking for the secret sauce here. What do you feel attributes to all of the awards that you get for your winemaking?Yes, it's a combination of things that we do. First of all, and most importantly, the grapes are grown organically and biodynamic. And they are processed in a certified organic cellar as well. What does that mean by everything? What does that mean by biodynamic is a term we can use if you get a Demeter certification out of Germany, which is the highest way to get organic certification like it's the biggest test. And everything is done by Rudolf Steiner, who is the founder of Demeter and Biodynamics, really. And he specifies when you can plant by the moon and when you harvest, and you put in making a tea from the right and grapes from last year. Everything is composted, compost, tea, there's a lot of the things that you need to do and be done with your plant is really at the end of the day, it's about nature and communication with man. It's a wonderful man and nature quencher. I call it.Going through those two processes sounds very complex in themselves, let alone having to do two of those. And yet you decided to add another element to try to raise wine to its highest form.And we took it to another process as well. And we built a sacred geometry chamber to put the wines in for the marriage period from dosaging to going on to the shelf. So when you make sparkling wine, as most people do know, you make a base wine like any other wine, and then you put that base one in a bottle that has a stick and can handle the pressure, and you add yeast and sugar and represent it in that bottle again, and it lays on the dead yeast cells. You sell the leaves for 18 months to 15 years. And each year, depending on what kind of grapes you have it made out of, produces more of the subtle flavors and nuances that you get out of fine sparkling wine. And then you wake up the bottle by riddling it and getting the dead yeast cells out of it. And then you dosage it with a sweet little reserve because the yeast has eaten all of the sugar. So its own dry and most people can handle it that way. And then the dosage period is what we call the marriage period. And in Europe, in Germany and Spain and France, many places where they make sparkling wine, they put the bottles in a sacred geometry chamber, which in those areas is almost always a Roman arch cellar. n Spain has, I think, 30 miles of Roman cellars to house their bottles after they've been discharged. And we built a precision pyramid after the Great Pyramid in Egypt to several trips that I was privileged to make with Egyptologists, then John Anthony West. So we did a precision pyramid, and we put all our wines now into that pyramid, which makes them again with a tiny winery, we're only 30,000 cases a year, and yet we win a huge amount of awards every year with our people. Love the flavors at the organic wine, and the pyramid adds a dimension to it as well.Well, listening to the details that you put into every single process of what you do, I can only imagine the painstaking details you went in to recreate the pyramid.We made it out of poured concrete, which has fiberglass rebar because we didn't want to use any ferrous metals and reorient the building back to the magnetic north. It's oriented to True North just as the Great Pyramid is. So we followed the Great Pyramid in every respect, and we did everything with few stones because the whole pyramid there is a fuzed stone structure, very rare and magnificent in so many ways. It's unbelievable. I have a book out called All One Era on Amazon.com, and it goes into all these details. So and our website has good details on the pyramid as well.Somebody answer that phone! Its time, boys, and girls for our listener voicemail.Hi, my name is Junie from Atlanta. And my question is, what kind of wine do you recommend for Red? You'd like to stay consistent in your cooking skills, use the same wine that you're going to drink for dinner as the marinade.If you're going to drink an expensive wine for dinner, keep that in mind that you're going to have to use it to marinate as well. Personally, I'd use two-buck Chuck, with Chuck Steak.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. 

Summerhill Pyramid Winery-Kelowna, BC Canada Pt. 2

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike, let's start the adventure.Let's start the adventure. Our featured winery is; in today's episode. We head to the land of hockey, maple syrup, brutally cold winters. Butter Tarts, Duncker Roos, of course. Drake, Tim Hortons. Canada's most visited and largest organic winery, Summerhill Pyramid Winery, Stephen Cipes with a PH and the proprietor and founder of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia.Ok, enough of the kidding around. Let's get down to the wonderful story of Summerhill Pyramid Winery. Stephen, your accomplishments would fill a New York City phone book. But let's start back at the beginning. Where did all of this being in connection with the Earth of the land and begin?  It goes back to my childhood. I love growing things and being in the soil and being outdoors and climbing trees a little. As a little boy, I've always been an outdoor kid and I, you know, got involved in real estate developing in a way that would save the wetlands and the and the steep slopes and very involved in early in the 60s, 60s hippie, if you will, out there protesting the way people built things. I was one of the founders of why environmental rules are so strict today, why they can't just fill in wetlands and stuff like that was my original push in New York, which was a big suburb of Manhattan. Feel like I am part of the Earth, and I wanted to get closer and brought my little family of four little boys and my wife Wendy at the time. And we came up here and bought a little vineyard, and Kelowna had to take out almost all of the vines. There were grapevines that weren't really good for making wine. They were for table grapes and for hybrid grapes and things like that. And I went to France, bought some clones there that were making the finest sparkling wine in the world because I got an inspiration here that we had the ideal climate to make sparkling wine very exciting. You know, sparkling wine is made all over the world. But it's most famous, of course, in Champagne. Sparkling wine is the same thing as Champagne. It's just. Yeah, if it's not from Champagne, it can't be called Champagne.That's correct. Especially if you make it in the traditional way, which is to use the three grapes that you must use in Champagne in order for it to be called Champagne, which is Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, in any given amount, you can even have a two percent Monet doesn't matter as long as you have all three here. We don't call it Champagne because we're not allowed to in a strictly enforce that. But we actually won the most prestigious award in the world in France, the best sparkling wine in the world. They couldn't believe it from a little place in an unknown wine region like Kelowna, British Columbia. Who would have thunk it? Those are the vines that you when you went to France. Yes. One of the biggest reasons is that if you have intensely flavored grapes, they will hold their flavor through the second fermentation in the bottle. And we here in the Okanagan have a very dry climate. It's called a semi-desert. And this low rainfall as we growers keep the irrigation down off really, and we get these intensely flavored grapes that make the best wine that will hold the flavor through the second fermentation in the bottle. And that's just been winning awards all over the world. In fact, when we first introduced our Sipes brewed in New York, where I'm from, I got rave reviews in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. And oh gosh, it was a hit, and it was all sold out here at home because we got such great notoriety in New York.And the awards just keep coming. I understand your home to the most awarded wine in Canada.Yes, we also have an abundance of Riesling, and the reasoning here is extremely tasty and makes wonderful sparkling wine. And our biggest seller is the reasoning based sparkling wine called Sipes Brewed, which does have Chardonnay in it as well. But it's the Riesling that is kind of has the high acid, which goes beautifully with almost any food, and it's made people roll their eyes and say it's delicious and they don't like sparkling wine, but they love Sipes fruit. And it's actually gotten a gold medal every year since 1992, making it the most awarded wine in Canada. In part two of our conversation with Stephen Sipes of Summerhill Pyramid Winery, we learn how the pyramid plays a part in the success of the aftermath.It's time, boys, and girls for our Listener voicemail.Hi, this is Brenda from Montana, and I want to know, so how long does wine last, if you like, put the cork back in it, stick at the friend. How long will it last if you do it that way? Anyway, thanks for your information. Bye. Good question, Brenda. Well, the experts seem to agree that. Go ahead, stick the cork back in the bottle. That's a great way to do it. Plus, it's economical to months would be about as far as you'd want to push it.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.Sign up for our Newsletter, which includes wine and travel discounts. We also give away free swag!

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike, let's start the adventure.Let's start the adventure. Our featured winery is; in today's episode. We head to the land of hockey, maple syrup, brutally cold winters. Butter Tarts, Duncker Roos, of course. Drake, Tim Hortons. Canada's most visited and largest organic winery, Summerhill Pyramid Winery, Stephen Cipes with a PH and the proprietor and founder of Summerhill Pyramid Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia.Ok, enough of the kidding around. Let's get down to the wonderful story of Summerhill Pyramid Winery. Stephen, your accomplishments would fill a New York City phone book. But let's start back at the beginning. Where did all of this being in connection with the Earth of the land and begin?  It goes back to my childhood. I love growing things and being in the soil and being outdoors and climbing trees a little. As a little boy, I've always been an outdoor kid and I, you know, got involved in real estate developing in a way that would save the wetlands and the and the steep slopes and very involved in early in the 60s, 60s hippie, if you will, out there protesting the way people built things. I was one of the founders of why environmental rules are so strict today, why they can't just fill in wetlands and stuff like that was my original push in New York, which was a big suburb of Manhattan. Feel like I am part of the Earth, and I wanted to get closer and brought my little family of four little boys and my wife Wendy at the time. And we came up here and bought a little vineyard, and Kelowna had to take out almost all of the vines. There were grapevines that weren't really good for making wine. They were for table grapes and for hybrid grapes and things like that. And I went to France, bought some clones there that were making the finest sparkling wine in the world because I got an inspiration here that we had the ideal climate to make sparkling wine very exciting. You know, sparkling wine is made all over the world. But it's most famous, of course, in Champagne. Sparkling wine is the same thing as Champagne. It's just. Yeah, if it's not from Champagne, it can't be called Champagne.That's correct. Especially if you make it in the traditional way, which is to use the three grapes that you must use in Champagne in order for it to be called Champagne, which is Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, in any given amount, you can even have a two percent Monet doesn't matter as long as you have all three here. We don't call it Champagne because we're not allowed to in a strictly enforce that. But we actually won the most prestigious award in the world in France, the best sparkling wine in the world. They couldn't believe it from a little place in an unknown wine region like Kelowna, British Columbia. Who would have thunk it? Those are the vines that you when you went to France. Yes. One of the biggest reasons is that if you have intensely flavored grapes, they will hold their flavor through the second fermentation in the bottle. And we here in the Okanagan have a very dry climate. It's called a semi-desert. And this low rainfall as we growers keep the irrigation down off really, and we get these intensely flavored grapes that make the best wine that will hold the flavor through the second fermentation in the bottle. And that's just been winning awards all over the world. In fact, when we first introduced our Sipes brewed in New York, where I'm from, I got rave reviews in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal. And oh gosh, it was a hit, and it was all sold out here at home because we got such great notoriety in New York.And the awards just keep coming. I understand your home to the most awarded wine in Canada.Yes, we also have an abundance of Riesling, and the reasoning here is extremely tasty and makes wonderful sparkling wine. And our biggest seller is the reasoning based sparkling wine called Sipes Brewed, which does have Chardonnay in it as well. But it's the Riesling that is kind of has the high acid, which goes beautifully with almost any food, and it's made people roll their eyes and say it's delicious and they don't like sparkling wine, but they love Sipes fruit. And it's actually gotten a gold medal every year since 1992, making it the most awarded wine in Canada. In part two of our conversation with Stephen Sipes of Summerhill Pyramid Winery, we learn how the pyramid plays a part in the success of the aftermath.It's time, boys, and girls for our Listener voicemail.Hi, this is Brenda from Montana, and I want to know, so how long does wine last, if you like, put the cork back in it, stick at the friend. How long will it last if you do it that way? Anyway, thanks for your information. Bye. Good question, Brenda. Well, the experts seem to agree that. Go ahead, stick the cork back in the bottle. That's a great way to do it. Plus, it's economical to months would be about as far as you'd want to push it.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox.Sign up for our Newsletter, which includes wine and travel discounts. We also give away free swag! 

Summerhill Pyramid Winery-Kelowna, BC Canada Pt. 1

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. We wrap up our conversation with Bob Wickizer of <a href="http://www.pecancreekwinery.com/index.html">Pecan Creek Winery, Muskogee, Oklahoma.</a>OK, Bob, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. How many labels do you have?We actually have <a href="http://www.pecancreekwinery.com/our-products.html">20 labels</a>. There are dry and sweet labels. And there are there's only two that are not from grapes or products that we get locally. We started. Everybody in the world wants cabernet sauvignon. Cab is hard to get, and frankly, it's hard to grow here. We do grow some, and we have a limited production right now. We did win bronze at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Chronicle">San Francisco Chronicle</a> for a couple of years ago. So I start getting nice source grapes from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodi,_California">Lodi</a> originally and now from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_(state)">Washington State</a>. We make one line called <a href="http://www.pecancreekwinery.com/our-products.html">Purple Martin</a>. That's grapes that are not local, but it's a pretty darn good wine. And we also buy some mead from a Missouri mediary, and we add about five percent of one of our white wines to it to give it a little more acid and balance it up. And those are the only two at either end of the spectrum that we don't source and make entirely locally. So hypothetically, Bob, if a vineyard from California ever said you couldn't compete with what we produce here in California, what would you say?I still do say that any idiot can make good wine from West Coast fruit. But if you want a real challenge, you want to come out here, try it. The UC Davis field book for all the pests and bugs and viruses and bacteria and molds that affect wine is about 30 pages long. And the Oklahoma State University field book is about 200 pages. We have more things to worry about here than a grape grower in California would ever even dream about in their worst nightmares. And then we have the weather. Of course, you know, it was our meteorological data of last freezes, supposedly April 15th tax date. But April twenty-sixth this year, we had twenty-five degrees for four hours. And our <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_vinifera">Vitis vinifera</a> plants especially, we're pushing out shoots about two, three, four inches long and they just turned brown and fell off. It was like, oh my gosh. But, you know, you never worry about a freeze, especially. And after your butt out started pushing out chutes, that's unheard of in most grape-growing regions. So, you know, we have that, and we have ridiculously humid hot summers. So the difference between the day and nighttime temperature, it can be 30 or 40 degrees in California, nighttime. Sometimes it doesn't cool off below 80 degrees. It's hard for the vines to rest metabolically. That's one of the reasons why our sugar levels are not as high as they get in California, but our acid levels tend to be very good. I personally do not like high alcohol wines, anyway. I prefer 12 to 13, maybe 13, four percent above. Thankfully, we can't grow alcohol here, so we take what we can get. We're having fun, and we're kind of the contrarian's. My partner, Dr. Wilkinson, and our vineyard manager Gary Ketchum is just fabulous at managing the vineyard.And finally, Bob, because you take such great pride in your winery, you encourage people to test their local wineries, don't you?You know, if you believe in it and local business, then, you know, don't buy exclusive cheapo wine at the big, big-box and grocery stores come out to your local winery and enjoy something truly local. Ours is grown here. It's made here. It's as local as it gets. It cost a little more.But on the other hand, we tend not to use any chemicals or additives. I can tell you that our grapes and the soil around our vines have never seen a drop of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup_(herbicide)">Roundup</a>. Ever understand that most California wines, even the organic ones test with residues in them. And we don't use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Purple">Mega Purple</a> and the stuff that the big wineries use, and we tend just to take our time. And so our whites may take six months to come out, and our reds never see the light of a bottle for a year to four years. Let time do what time does best that we're not in a hurry to push stuff out the door for cash flow reasons. We're trying to make darn good wine that's respectable, and that reflects the characteristics of our region. The website is Pecan Creek Winery.com. Facebook, you look up <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/PecanCreekWinery/photos/">Pecan Creek Winery</a>. And you'll find us, and we're shipping through <a href="https://vinoshipper.com/">VINOSHIPPER</a>, we shipped to 40 states and California will be on board soon as number forty-one.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. We wrap up our conversation with Bob Wickizer of Pecan Creek Winery, Muskogee, Oklahoma.OK, Bob, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. How many labels do you have?We actually have 20 labels. There are dry and sweet labels. And there are there's only two that are not from grapes or products that we get locally. We started. Everybody in the world wants cabernet sauvignon. Cab is hard to get, and frankly, it's hard to grow here. We do grow some, and we have a limited production right now. We did win bronze at San Francisco Chronicle for a couple of years ago. So I start getting nice source grapes from Lodi originally and now from Washington State. We make one line called Purple Martin. That's grapes that are not local, but it's a pretty darn good wine. And we also buy some mead from a Missouri mediary, and we add about five percent of one of our white wines to it to give it a little more acid and balance it up. And those are the only two at either end of the spectrum that we don't source and make entirely locally. So hypothetically, Bob, if a vineyard from California ever said you couldn't compete with what we produce here in California, what would you say?I still do say that any idiot can make good wine from West Coast fruit. But if you want a real challenge, you want to come out here, try it. The UC Davis field book for all the pests and bugs and viruses and bacteria and molds that affect wine is about 30 pages long. And the Oklahoma State University field book is about 200 pages. We have more things to worry about here than a grape grower in California would ever even dream about in their worst nightmares. And then we have the weather. Of course, you know, it was our meteorological data of last freezes, supposedly April 15th tax date. But April twenty-sixth this year, we had twenty-five degrees for four hours. And our Vitis vinifera plants especially, we're pushing out shoots about two, three, four inches long and they just turned brown and fell off. It was like, oh my gosh. But, you know, you never worry about a freeze, especially. And after your butt out started pushing out chutes, that's unheard of in most grape-growing regions. So, you know, we have that, and we have ridiculously humid hot summers. So the difference between the day and nighttime temperature, it can be 30 or 40 degrees in California, nighttime. Sometimes it doesn't cool off below 80 degrees. It's hard for the vines to rest metabolically. That's one of the reasons why our sugar levels are not as high as they get in California, but our acid levels tend to be very good. I personally do not like high alcohol wines, anyway. I prefer 12 to 13, maybe 13, four percent above. Thankfully, we can't grow alcohol here, so we take what we can get. We're having fun, and we're kind of the contrarian's. My partner, Dr. Wilkinson, and our vineyard manager Gary Ketchum is just fabulous at managing the vineyard.And finally, Bob, because you take such great pride in your winery, you encourage people to test their local wineries, don't you?You know, if you believe in it and local business, then, you know, don't buy exclusive cheapo wine at the big, big-box and grocery stores come out to your local winery and enjoy something truly local. Ours is grown here. It's made here. It's as local as it gets. It cost a little more.But on the other hand, we tend not to use any chemicals or additives. I can tell you that our grapes and the soil around our vines have never seen a drop of Roundup. Ever understand that most California wines, even the organic ones test with residues in them. And we don't use Mega Purple and the stuff that the big wineries use, and we tend just to take our time. And so our whites may take six months to come out, and our reds never see the light of a bottle for a year to four years. Let time do what time does best that we're not in a hurry to push stuff out the door for cash flow reasons. We're trying to make darn good wine that's respectable, and that reflects the characteristics of our region. The website is Pecan Creek Winery.com. Facebook, you look up Pecan Creek Winery. And you'll find us, and we're shipping through VINOSHIPPER, we shipped to 40 states and California will be on board soon as number forty-one.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox.  

Pecan Creek Winery - Muskogee, OK Pt. 3

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. Our featured winery is, we continue our conversation with Bob Wickizer owner-operator of Pecan Creek Winery in Muskogee, Oklahoma.How do we get to your place? Well, first of all, you come down, I think one of the bumpiest roads on the planet, outside of the roads in the rainforest in Costa Rica. Once you've managed to traverse three or four miles of you, first see the vineyard on my partner's ranch. And a lot of people want to turn in there. But there are signs that say wineries another mile. We have about two or three hundred grapevines, cab, and Tempranillo around the winery. But the big vineyards down the road, the winery is in a 5000 square foot converted garage. I proudly tell the story of the origin of the word and the wine industry, Garagistes, it's a French or Italian word literally means someone who works in a garage like a mechanic. Then the big wineries picked it up to disparage the up and coming young winemakers who were, you know, they couldn't afford the Chateau and Napa or wherever. So they get a car garage, start making wine in it. So the Garagistes was originally a derogatory term. And lo and behold, over the last 10 or 20 years, people are paying attention. These small, artisanal wineries are making some pretty darn good stuff. And it might be worth visiting the small guys next time you go to Paso Robles and then then the giant places. And we're one of those. So we're proudly one of the Garagistes. We make wine in a car garage. Gosh, it was six bays or a couple of brothers and a big body shop in the back. And so they kept their high-end race cars, and they actually had a John Deere antique tractor collection as well in the garage where a winery is. So you'll see it, a nondescript metal building with a red door for the tasting room. And eventually, we're going to get our name on the building. But there's a sign out front on the road. But that's where we are for now. I mean, if we're in a wildly successful days, we could move over to the farm next to the vineyard. And we've got some really cool space over there that would be great to expand into. But we just have to run the business conservatively and make it all work.So when you started the winery, were you at all hesitant about whether it would work in your climates and your soil? They say if it grows peaches, it'll grow grapes. And where our vineyard is part of a former six hundred acre ranch. Our consultant came out there that first day, and we said, well, meet us in the peach farm.  And he said, oh, you won't even need it to get soil samples. If you had peach trees here. You're good to go. We took soil samples anyway, but you'll see that like the Palisades in California, I think there are some vineyards in South Africa like that where you'll see vineyards and peach orchards next to each other. So there's something about that. I guess the conditions are comparable, were favorable for both. We have a great site for a vineyard, and we grow about 30 percent of our production is hybrids.It's time, boys and girls for our listener voicemail. Hi, this is Judy from North Carolina. How do you choose the right wine glass? Me personally, I don't even use a glass. I just drink straight from the bottle. But if you're going to be sophisticated, you want a wide glass for reds, narrow for whites, tall, narrow flute style for sparkling. Thank you for your question, Judy. I'll get your free T-shirt out to you as soon as possible. Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all, grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. Our featured winery is, we continue our conversation with Bob Wickizer owner-operator of Pecan Creek Winery in Muskogee, Oklahoma.How do we get to your place? Well, first of all, you come down, I think one of the bumpiest roads on the planet, outside of the roads in the rainforest in Costa Rica. Once you've managed to traverse three or four miles of you, first see the vineyard on my partner's ranch. And a lot of people want to turn in there. But there are signs that say wineries another mile. We have about two or three hundred grapevines, cab, and Tempranillo around the winery. But the big vineyards down the road, the winery is in a 5000 square foot converted garage. I proudly tell the story of the origin of the word and the wine industry, Garagistes, it's a French or Italian word literally means someone who works in a garage like a mechanic. Then the big wineries picked it up to disparage the up and coming young winemakers who were, you know, they couldn't afford the Chateau and Napa or wherever. So they get a car garage, start making wine in it. So the Garagistes was originally a derogatory term. And lo and behold, over the last 10 or 20 years, people are paying attention. These small, artisanal wineries are making some pretty darn good stuff. And it might be worth visiting the small guys next time you go to Paso Robles and then then the giant places. And we're one of those. So we're proudly one of the Garagistes. We make wine in a car garage. Gosh, it was six bays or a couple of brothers and a big body shop in the back. And so they kept their high-end race cars, and they actually had a John Deere antique tractor collection as well in the garage where a winery is. So you'll see it, a nondescript metal building with a red door for the tasting room. And eventually, we're going to get our name on the building. But there's a sign out front on the road. But that's where we are for now. I mean, if we're in a wildly successful days, we could move over to the farm next to the vineyard. And we've got some really cool space over there that would be great to expand into. But we just have to run the business conservatively and make it all work.So when you started the winery, were you at all hesitant about whether it would work in your climates and your soil? They say if it grows peaches, it'll grow grapes. And where our vineyard is part of a former six hundred acre ranch. Our consultant came out there that first day, and we said, well, meet us in the peach farm.  And he said, oh, you won't even need it to get soil samples. If you had peach trees here. You're good to go. We took soil samples anyway, but you'll see that like the Palisades in California, I think there are some vineyards in South Africa like that where you'll see vineyards and peach orchards next to each other. So there's something about that. I guess the conditions are comparable, were favorable for both. We have a great site for a vineyard, and we grow about 30 percent of our production is hybrids.It's time, boys and girls for our listener voicemail. Hi, this is Judy from North Carolina. How do you choose the right wine glass? Me personally, I don't even use a glass. I just drink straight from the bottle. But if you're going to be sophisticated, you want a wide glass for reds, narrow for whites, tall, narrow flute style for sparkling. Thank you for your question, Judy. I'll get your free T-shirt out to you as soon as possible. Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox.  

Pecan Creek Winery - Muskogee, OK Pt. 2

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike, let's start the adventure—our featured winery in this episode. We head to Oklahoma City, where the average commute time is 17 minutes. Not bad considering mine is an hour and a half. The average household size is two. Median family income forty-seven thousand. Yes. Carrie Underwood was born here talking about Muskogee, Oklahoma, also home to: I'm Bob Wickizer. I am the winemaker and co-owner of <a href="http://www.pecancreekwinery.com/index.html">Pecan Creek Winery</a> in Muskogee, Oklahoma.Glad to be here. How did you get to this point where you started Pecan Winery? Well, wasn't that the Grateful Dead? Who's saying about what a long, strange trip it's been? My resumé and in brief ranges from being a physicist and medical imaging and starting and selling to companies, software companies, and Silicon Valley to firms. And that's where I learned winemaking and wine appreciation wine pairing than that after a number of years and three years of commuting to Asia for a semiconductor project, I went to seminary in Cambridge, Mass. Became an ordained Episcopal priest, was up and down the East Coast in Washington, D.C., at the National Cathedral for a year. And then I got tired of that and wanted to be under the radar. So I've been in Muskogee, Oklahoma, for about ten years. I would get frozen grapes and make wine as kind of a hobby. And a member of the community says, gosh, you got to do something with that. Well, we partnered up, and he's the farmer. I'm the winemaker with that background.Bob, I imagine that you get pretty adventurous sometimes in winemaking.I have made a little bit of wine from concentrates just to see what it's like in general. We do not use concentrate except in two parts of the production process. And by the way, those are completely legal in France and California. One is chaptalization, when in fermentation, and we may use the grape concentrate to boost our sugar level up one or two bricks just to get a desired final alcohol concentration. And we may also use grape concentrate in final sweetening back sweetening of the wine to produce a sweeter wine outside of that. No, there's no concentrate in this process at all.In the wine business, your job can be varied. Is there such a thing as a typical day for you?I wouldn't know. Typical if it hit me between the eyes. But a lot of times, I'm still the rector of an Episcopal church. Now we have virtual services and all that stuff besides writing and producing services. Every week I have three or four other articles I write online. And we're the only Episcopal Church in Muskogee. But I'm right church stuff for three or four hours, between four-thirty each, starting about four, 30 or five in the morning. And then myself, crew, I'll get something to eat some coffee myself. Our crew gets in about 9:00 every Monday. They have one or two pages of a detailed list of what to do. And I go over every day for about 45 minutes or so just to clarify and answer questions and occasionally do calculations.I get an aside, being a physicist, I'm astonished at the lack of math skills in the general population.So I'm doing all the dosing calculations and transfer calculations and filtering determination's stuff like that. So any problems need to get resolved. I may do them in the morning, or I'll go back to church or stay home, one of those three, and then the winemaking duties.Besides that, it also amounts to managing sales, managing finance, purchasing department. I think the other day; I counted up 17 hats I wear.So it's a good thing, too, because I don't have any hair all its time—boys and Girls for our listener voicemail.Hi, this is Alex from Muskogee, Oklahoma. I'm interested in knowing how different great and different grow based on different climates and different altitudes across the United States and how that affects the different quality of wine produced. Thank you.As the saying goes, some wines have an attitude. Some wines have altitude. But it's a good question. The Napa Valley in California maxes out at about 3000 feet. You head over to Europe, and you've got 4000 feet. And then Argentina checks in at the highest with almost 10. Thousand feet. You could make a case that the higher the altitude, the better the wine. However, you could also make a case that it doesn't matter. You could say what matters is the process. Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike, let's start the adventure—our featured winery in this episode. We head to Oklahoma City, where the average commute time is 17 minutes. Not bad considering mine is an hour and a half. The average household size is two. Median family income forty-seven thousand. Yes. Carrie Underwood was born here talking about Muskogee, Oklahoma, also home to: I'm Bob Wickizer. I am the winemaker and co-owner of Pecan Creek Winery in Muskogee, Oklahoma.Glad to be here. How did you get to this point where you started Pecan Winery? Well, wasn't that the Grateful Dead? Who's saying about what a long, strange trip it's been? My resumé and in brief ranges from being a physicist and medical imaging and starting and selling to companies, software companies, and Silicon Valley to firms. And that's where I learned winemaking and wine appreciation wine pairing than that after a number of years and three years of commuting to Asia for a semiconductor project, I went to seminary in Cambridge, Mass. Became an ordained Episcopal priest, was up and down the East Coast in Washington, D.C., at the National Cathedral for a year. And then I got tired of that and wanted to be under the radar. So I've been in Muskogee, Oklahoma, for about ten years. I would get frozen grapes and make wine as kind of a hobby. And a member of the community says, gosh, you got to do something with that. Well, we partnered up, and he's the farmer. I'm the winemaker with that background.Bob, I imagine that you get pretty adventurous sometimes in winemaking.I have made a little bit of wine from concentrates just to see what it's like in general. We do not use concentrate except in two parts of the production process. And by the way, those are completely legal in France and California. One is chaptalization, when in fermentation, and we may use the grape concentrate to boost our sugar level up one or two bricks just to get a desired final alcohol concentration. And we may also use grape concentrate in final sweetening back sweetening of the wine to produce a sweeter wine outside of that. No, there's no concentrate in this process at all.In the wine business, your job can be varied. Is there such a thing as a typical day for you?I wouldn't know. Typical if it hit me between the eyes. But a lot of times, I'm still the rector of an Episcopal church. Now we have virtual services and all that stuff besides writing and producing services. Every week I have three or four other articles I write online. And we're the only Episcopal Church in Muskogee. But I'm right church stuff for three or four hours, between four-thirty each, starting about four, 30 or five in the morning. And then myself, crew, I'll get something to eat some coffee myself. Our crew gets in about 9:00 every Monday. They have one or two pages of a detailed list of what to do. And I go over every day for about 45 minutes or so just to clarify and answer questions and occasionally do calculations.I get an aside, being a physicist, I'm astonished at the lack of math skills in the general population.So I'm doing all the dosing calculations and transfer calculations and filtering determination's stuff like that. So any problems need to get resolved. I may do them in the morning, or I'll go back to church or stay home, one of those three, and then the winemaking duties.Besides that, it also amounts to managing sales, managing finance, purchasing department. I think the other day; I counted up 17 hats I wear.So it's a good thing, too, because I don't have any hair all its time—boys and Girls for our listener voicemail.Hi, this is Alex from Muskogee, Oklahoma. I'm interested in knowing how different great and different grow based on different climates and different altitudes across the United States and how that affects the different quality of wine produced. Thank you.As the saying goes, some wines have an attitude. Some wines have altitude. But it's a good question. The Napa Valley in California maxes out at about 3000 feet. You head over to Europe, and you've got 4000 feet. And then Argentina checks in at the highest with almost 10. Thousand feet. You could make a case that the higher the altitude, the better the wine. However, you could also make a case that it doesn't matter. You could say what matters is the process. Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show, tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox.   

Pecan Creek Winery - Muskogee, OK Pt. 1

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. We finished our last episode with Angela from Prairie Berry Winery talking about their wine club and it's one of the biggest wine clubs in the United States. How big is it?So we have one of the largest wine clubs in the country. We have about 5000 wine club members from across the United States. We ship our wines four times a year to our members and then they enjoy other benefits, such as events and discounts and shipping perks and our wine clubs called Gen five. So it's a play on Generation five, which, as I mentioned before, is the fifth generation winemaker. I've never seen anything like it. When our guests come in this summer and they try our wines, most often they live outside of the region. They want to continue that relationship with us in the Black Hills. And then you go to the wine club information and you can enroll right online or you can call any of our wine club concierge and I can walk you through the enrollment process. But it's pretty simple. You just tell us what kind of wine you want to get. We do a mix, so that would be a dry and sweet wine. Or you can choose all the sweet. And then we include a beautiful newsletter that includes recipes and information about wine and some fun stories and tidbits from the company.I must say, I'm very impressed to look at the statistics of visitorship to Mount Rushmore and the visitors that you get at Prairie Berry Winery. They're very close. So pretty much everybody who goes to the park is also stopping by to see what you have to offer. Right. Yeah, You can't have one without the other. Right. The marketing campaign for this summer is actually South Dakota, home of red ass rhubarb and Mount Rushmore, where you take the lead on our campaign this summer. So your winery is just not about Red Ass Rhubarb wine. It's not just to fruit wines. You have a very large variety. Most people are eager and excited. They've seen our billboards. They've seen, you know, our social media. And so they have an idea of what to expect. But I think lots of people are pleasantly surprised when they try. You know, a wine, native rhubarb, or a wine native blackcurrants. We have a pumpkin wine. So I think the eye-opening experience for some who will maybe never experienced a fruit wine. We do also make great lines. You know, your traditional European style cabernet is in and things of that nature. So we have something for everybody. We are definitely proud of the fruit wines we make. And I like to surprise people who maybe have a preconceived notion of what a fruit, fruit wine is like. You know, based on either their family tradition or other wine experiences they might have had. Our Anna Pesa line is made kind of as a nod to that heritage from Eastern Europe. So those are going to be a more traditional style wine. You know, your drier reds and whites and some common grapes that you might recognize, such as Marleau, for example. But some other more Eastern European grapes that maybe people aren't always quite familiar with, like blouse franc issues is a great dry red wine that we make for the and a line. It's just a delight. Okay. As we conclude part three of our adventure to Prarie Berry Winery in Hill City, South Dakota. Let's get all your contact info.Our Web site is PrairieBerry.com. And our phone number is 605.574.3898. And you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter if you follow Prairie Berry.Will, somebody answer that phone? Its time, boys, and girls for our listener voicemail. Hi, this is Janet from New Mexico. I am not much of a wine drinker, but some of my friends are. So what would be a good way to start with?Thank you for your question, Janet. Surely can't be serious. I have no idea your taste preferences, but the experts suggest pinot grigio, Pinot Noir. Don't be shy. Go ahead. Jump right in any way. And whatever your friends are drinking, they may not want to give up their glass. I want to make them again. But go ahead, pry it out of their hands, and sample what they have.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.  Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox.

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I'm your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let's start the adventure. We finished our last episode with Angela from Prairie Berry Winery talking about their wine club and it's one of the biggest wine clubs in the United States. How big is it?So we have one of the largest wine clubs in the country. We have about 5000 wine club members from across the United States. We ship our wines four times a year to our members and then they enjoy other benefits, such as events and discounts and shipping perks and our wine clubs called Gen five. So it's a play on Generation five, which, as I mentioned before, is the fifth generation winemaker. I've never seen anything like it. When our guests come in this summer and they try our wines, most often they live outside of the region. They want to continue that relationship with us in the Black Hills. And then you go to the wine club information and you can enroll right online or you can call any of our wine club concierge and I can walk you through the enrollment process. But it's pretty simple. You just tell us what kind of wine you want to get. We do a mix, so that would be a dry and sweet wine. Or you can choose all the sweet. And then we include a beautiful newsletter that includes recipes and information about wine and some fun stories and tidbits from the company.I must say, I'm very impressed to look at the statistics of visitorship to Mount Rushmore and the visitors that you get at Prairie Berry Winery. They're very close. So pretty much everybody who goes to the park is also stopping by to see what you have to offer. Right. Yeah, You can't have one without the other. Right. The marketing campaign for this summer is actually South Dakota, home of red ass rhubarb and Mount Rushmore, where you take the lead on our campaign this summer. So your winery is just not about Red Ass Rhubarb wine. It's not just to fruit wines. You have a very large variety. Most people are eager and excited. They've seen our billboards. They've seen, you know, our social media. And so they have an idea of what to expect. But I think lots of people are pleasantly surprised when they try. You know, a wine, native rhubarb, or a wine native blackcurrants. We have a pumpkin wine. So I think the eye-opening experience for some who will maybe never experienced a fruit wine. We do also make great lines. You know, your traditional European style cabernet is in and things of that nature. So we have something for everybody. We are definitely proud of the fruit wines we make. And I like to surprise people who maybe have a preconceived notion of what a fruit, fruit wine is like. You know, based on either their family tradition or other wine experiences they might have had. Our Anna Pesa line is made kind of as a nod to that heritage from Eastern Europe. So those are going to be a more traditional style wine. You know, your drier reds and whites and some common grapes that you might recognize, such as Marleau, for example. But some other more Eastern European grapes that maybe people aren't always quite familiar with, like blouse franc issues is a great dry red wine that we make for the and a line. It's just a delight. Okay. As we conclude part three of our adventure to Prarie Berry Winery in Hill City, South Dakota. Let's get all your contact info.Our Web site is PrairieBerry.com. And our phone number is 605.574.3898. And you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter if you follow Prairie Berry.Will, somebody answer that phone? Its time, boys, and girls for our listener voicemail. Hi, this is Janet from New Mexico. I am not much of a wine drinker, but some of my friends are. So what would be a good way to start with?Thank you for your question, Janet. Surely can't be serious. I have no idea your taste preferences, but the experts suggest pinot grigio, Pinot Noir. Don't be shy. Go ahead. Jump right in any way. And whatever your friends are drinking, they may not want to give up their glass. I want to make them again. But go ahead, pry it out of their hands, and sample what they have.Thank you for listening. I'm Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.  Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. 

Prairie Berry Winery - Hill City, SD Pt. 3

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I’m your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let’s start the adventure.Our featured winery is, we continue our conversation with Angela of <a href="https://prairieberry.com/">Prairie Berry Winery in Hill City, South Dakota</a>. So we’ve won over a thousand international awards for our wine. When I tell people that sometimes, you know, they look at our labels are very whimsical and attractive, people enjoy the artwork on our labels. Right. And so when I tell them about the awards that we won, for example, for our flagship wine <a href="https://prairieberry.com/wine/red-ass-rhubarb/">Red Ass Rhubarb</a>, they’ll say, oh, it’s the name, but wine competitions are blind. So the judges don’t know what they’re tasting, speaks for itself. Okay. I would be remiss if I don’t ask about your most awarded wine and how you came about the name.Ralph, our winemaker’s dad was helping Sandy out of the winery one day with wine back then that we called it, Razzy Rhubarb wine. So the story goes that his face turned red. He felt like an ass for messing up the wine. And so the wine became red as rhubarb and then we added a donkey to the label. And it’s our most famous line now, our most award-winning wine. It’s a fine wine. It’s 90 percent rhubarb and 10 percent raspberry. It’s quite lovely. So <a href="https://www.hillcitysd.com/">Hill City</a>, where the winery is located, I see where the population is just under a thousand people. So doesn’t necessarily reflect on how many visitors you get your winery per year.  Doesn’t know our hill city communities are great and they support us very much. But being in the Black Hills of South Dakota, not too far from Mount Rushmore, it’s a very popular tourist destination. So our door count, the number of people and guests we welcome into our winery each year is generally around one hundred and fifty thousand people that come and visit us. We’re happy to welcome them when they’re out visiting Mt. Rushmore, touring Deadwood, and looking at the Web sites. Your complex just looks huge. So I imagine the two you’ve got guests when they come that they’re just not staying for wine tasting. They’re doing a multitude of things. We have not only very, very winery, but right next door. In 2013, we opened a miner brewing company. So a craft brewery, Sandy void, our winemakers, actually our brewmaster as well. She’s a woman of many talents. We also have an event center on-site where we host parties and weddings, reunions, things of that nature. And then we have a concert at normal times. Every summer we’d be hosting outdoor concerts. We have a basketball court, long games. So we really encourage our guests to join us for more than a wine tasting and spend an afternoon having lunch with us or enjoying some live music, having a pint of beer so you can really make a day of it. And I love it to the tune. Kind of a holistic approach at the winery because it’s just not about wine. You’re also helping with the community, with the farmer’s market. We do. We hosted a farmer’s market every Tuesday morning. It is a community’s farmer’s market and we just welcome them to our station and help promote it. And so that’s great for the community. The locals, as well as the tourists, have fresh produce once a week and in our area. Yeah. Yeah. Local farmers. Local growers. Yeah. You can pick up fresh meat at a farmer’s market in South Dakota. Nothing wrong with a big scoop of Midwestern charm. You sound very proud to work at Prairie Brewery. Have you been there long? Yeah, it’s been really amazing to see. I started as a tasting room associate. Just doing wine tastings in the summer is kind of a part-time job. And my husband and I first landed in the Black Hills and have been able to grow with the company myself and watch the company grow. And we’re all very, like I said, humbled, but very proud of what we’re able to do and what we’re able to offer. In part three of our conversation with Angela Prairie Brewery Winery, we’ll find out just how big their wine club is. I’ll give you a hint. It’s one of the largest in the United States.Thank you for listening. I’m Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by ISYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.

Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I’m your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let’s start the adventure.Our featured winery is, we continue our conversation with Angela of Prairie Berry Winery in Hill City, South Dakota. So we’ve won over a thousand international awards for our wine. When I tell people that sometimes, you know, they look at our labels are very whimsical and attractive, people enjoy the artwork on our labels. Right. And so when I tell them about the awards that we won, for example, for our flagship wine Red Ass Rhubarb, they’ll say, oh, it’s the name, but wine competitions are blind. So the judges don’t know what they’re tasting, speaks for itself. Okay. I would be remiss if I don’t ask about your most awarded wine and how you came about the name.Ralph, our winemaker’s dad was helping Sandy out of the winery one day with wine back then that we called it, Razzy Rhubarb wine. So the story goes that his face turned red. He felt like an ass for messing up the wine. And so the wine became red as rhubarb and then we added a donkey to the label. And it’s our most famous line now, our most award-winning wine. It’s a fine wine. It’s 90 percent rhubarb and 10 percent raspberry. It’s quite lovely. So Hill City, where the winery is located, I see where the population is just under a thousand people. So doesn’t necessarily reflect on how many visitors you get your winery per year.  Doesn’t know our hill city communities are great and they support us very much. But being in the Black Hills of South Dakota, not too far from Mount Rushmore, it’s a very popular tourist destination. So our door count, the number of people and guests we welcome into our winery each year is generally around one hundred and fifty thousand people that come and visit us. We’re happy to welcome them when they’re out visiting Mt. Rushmore, touring Deadwood, and looking at the Web sites. Your complex just looks huge. So I imagine the two you’ve got guests when they come that they’re just not staying for wine tasting. They’re doing a multitude of things. We have not only very, very winery, but right next door. In 2013, we opened a miner brewing company. So a craft brewery, Sandy void, our winemakers, actually our brewmaster as well. She’s a woman of many talents. We also have an event center on-site where we host parties and weddings, reunions, things of that nature. And then we have a concert at normal times. Every summer we’d be hosting outdoor concerts. We have a basketball court, long games. So we really encourage our guests to join us for more than a wine tasting and spend an afternoon having lunch with us or enjoying some live music, having a pint of beer so you can really make a day of it. And I love it to the tune. Kind of a holistic approach at the winery because it’s just not about wine. You’re also helping with the community, with the farmer’s market. We do. We hosted a farmer’s market every Tuesday morning. It is a community’s farmer’s market and we just welcome them to our station and help promote it. And so that’s great for the community. The locals, as well as the tourists, have fresh produce once a week and in our area. Yeah. Yeah. Local farmers. Local growers. Yeah. You can pick up fresh meat at a farmer’s market in South Dakota. Nothing wrong with a big scoop of Midwestern charm. You sound very proud to work at Prairie Brewery. Have you been there long? Yeah, it’s been really amazing to see. I started as a tasting room associate. Just doing wine tastings in the summer is kind of a part-time job. And my husband and I first landed in the Black Hills and have been able to grow with the company myself and watch the company grow. And we’re all very, like I said, humbled, but very proud of what we’re able to do and what we’re able to offer. In part three of our conversation with Angela Prairie Brewery Winery, we’ll find out just how big their wine club is. I’ll give you a hint. It’s one of the largest in the United States.Thank you for listening. I’m Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by ISYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure.Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. 

Prairie Berry Winery-Hill City, SD Pt. 2

<a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Forrest-Kelly-Prairie-Berry-Winery-Ep.-7-Pt.-1.mp3">https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Forrest-Kelly-Prairie-Berry-Winery-Ep.-7-Pt.-1.mp3</a> <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/2020/06/28/prairie-berry-winery-hill-city-sd/wildbill2017154/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i1.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/wildbill2017154.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/2020/06/28/prairie-berry-winery-hill-city-sd/foodfromtheprairieberrykitchen/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i1.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/foodfromtheprairieberrykitchen.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/2020/06/28/prairie-berry-winery-hill-city-sd/tastingsatprairieberrywinery/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i2.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/tastingsatprairieberrywinery.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/2020/06/28/prairie-berry-winery-hill-city-sd/exteriorshotofprairieberrywinery/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i1.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/exteriorshotofprairieberrywinery.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/2020/06/28/prairie-berry-winery-hill-city-sd/patioatprairieberrywinery/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i0.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/patioatprairieberrywinery.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I’m your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let’s start the adventure. Our featured winery is: We venture to Hill City, South Dakota. The oldest existing city in Pennington County. A 15-minute mule ride from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rushmore#Tourism">Mount Rushmore</a>. And about 70 miles from <a title="Belle Fourche, South Dakota" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Fourche,_South_Dakota">Belle Fourche, South Dakota</a>, which is the geographic center of the United States. Hi, this is Angela from <a href="https://prairieberry.com/">Prairie Berry Winery</a>. I am the director of sales and marketing. Hello, Angela. I’ve heard of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_oysters">Rocky Mountain oyster</a>, but what is a prairie berry? It came from our winemaker, Sandy Vojta as a family heritage, actually in the late eighteen hundreds, her family, who came making wine in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protectorate_of_Bohemia_and_Moravia">Europe</a>, emigrated to the plains of South Dakota when they got here. There wasn’t much to make wine from. Obviously no grapes, things of that nature. So her great great grandmother. Her name was Anna Pesä. She started picking berries and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prunus_virginiana">chokecherries</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepherdia">buffalo berries</a>, anything that she could find on the prairie of South Dakota. And she would refer to them as prairie berries. That story has been passed down for five generations and the winemaking tradition. And so when Sandy and her father and husband decided to start this business, it was easy to decide on the name. Prairie Berry Winery. And Anna Pesä comes here from Europe. What time frame in American history are we talking about? 1876. That was about the time in South Dakota with Deadwood was coming up in Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. And they happened to immigrate to the northern north-central plains of South Dakota, near Mobridge. Today’s what some Mobridge, South Dakota, not far from there. So 1876, Was she doing this for commercial reasons or just doing it because of what they did in her heritage to do it for themselves? Certainly, it was the tradition the women in the family would make the wine, course in the cold plains of South Dakota. That’s probably something they wanted to do to continue. Her husband would go down to the banks of the Missouri River and cut down oak trees, actually, and make her wine barrels so that she could continue producing wine just for the family. So your winemakers Sandy is a fifth-generation winemaker and she picked it up from her father, Ralph. Tell me about that. So he was making wine in his basement in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobridge,_South_Dakota">Mobridge, South Dakota</a>, long before the winery started. And she was a young girl learning, learning the ways. And it just became a passion for her and her and her husband, Matt, and Ralph. Her dad decided in the late 1990s it was time to make it real and start an wine actual business with it. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary as a winery. Last year, 1999 was our first vintage and so to speak, of wine. Now, 20 years later, we are one of the most award-winning wineries in the region. So we’ve won over a thousand international awards for our wine. That concludes part one of our interview with Angela from Prairie Brewery Winery. In our next episode, we’ll learn about how a mistake can accidentally turn into an award-winning product. Will, somebody answer that phone? Well, it’s time Boys and Girls for our listener voicemail. Hi, my name is Sarah and I’m calling from Coon Rapids, Minnesota. I am interested in wineries in the United States. And I am curious how many female-owned wineries are there? There’s a lot of different variables that go into that question. What is ownership, 51 percent or 50 percent? Is it all based on monetary reasons or knowledge? I reached out to Amy Bess Cook of wowsonoma.com, an organization that focuses on women-owned wineries. And she told me that nearly 600 out of the 10000 wineries here in the United States are female-led. Thank you for listening. I’m Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure. Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast" target="_blank">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt" target="_blank">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8" target="_blank">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162" target="_blank">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast" target="_blank">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899" target="_blank">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1" target="_blank">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us" target="_blank">Castbox</a>.

 https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Forrest-Kelly-Prairie-Berry-Winery-Ep.-7-Pt.-1.mp3 Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I’m your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let’s start the adventure. Our featured winery is: We venture to Hill City, South Dakota. The oldest existing city in Pennington County. A 15-minute mule ride from Mount Rushmore. And about 70 miles from Belle Fourche, South Dakota, which is the geographic center of the United States. Hi, this is Angela from Prairie Berry Winery. I am the director of sales and marketing. Hello, Angela. I’ve heard of a Rocky Mountain oyster, but what is a prairie berry? It came from our winemaker, Sandy Vojta as a family heritage, actually in the late eighteen hundreds, her family, who came making wine in Europe, emigrated to the plains of South Dakota when they got here. There wasn’t much to make wine from. Obviously no grapes, things of that nature. So her great great grandmother. Her name was Anna Pesä. She started picking berries and chokecherries and buffalo berries, anything that she could find on the prairie of South Dakota. And she would refer to them as prairie berries. That story has been passed down for five generations and the winemaking tradition. And so when Sandy and her father and husband decided to start this business, it was easy to decide on the name. Prairie Berry Winery. And Anna Pesä comes here from Europe. What time frame in American history are we talking about? 1876. That was about the time in South Dakota with Deadwood was coming up in Wild Bill and Calamity Jane. And they happened to immigrate to the northern north-central plains of South Dakota, near Mobridge. Today’s what some Mobridge, South Dakota, not far from there. So 1876, Was she doing this for commercial reasons or just doing it because of what they did in her heritage to do it for themselves? Certainly, it was the tradition the women in the family would make the wine, course in the cold plains of South Dakota. That’s probably something they wanted to do to continue. Her husband would go down to the banks of the Missouri River and cut down oak trees, actually, and make her wine barrels so that she could continue producing wine just for the family. So your winemakers Sandy is a fifth-generation winemaker and she picked it up from her father, Ralph. Tell me about that. So he was making wine in his basement in Mobridge, South Dakota, long before the winery started. And she was a young girl learning, learning the ways. And it just became a passion for her and her and her husband, Matt, and Ralph. Her dad decided in the late 1990s it was time to make it real and start an wine actual business with it. We just celebrated our 20th anniversary as a winery. Last year, 1999 was our first vintage and so to speak, of wine. Now, 20 years later, we are one of the most award-winning wineries in the region. So we’ve won over a thousand international awards for our wine. That concludes part one of our interview with Angela from Prairie Brewery Winery. In our next episode, we’ll learn about how a mistake can accidentally turn into an award-winning product. Will, somebody answer that phone? Well, it’s time Boys and Girls for our listener voicemail. Hi, my name is Sarah and I’m calling from Coon Rapids, Minnesota. I am interested in wineries in the United States. And I am curious how many female-owned wineries are there? There’s a lot of different variables that go into that question. What is ownership, 51 percent or 50 percent? Is it all based on monetary reasons or knowledge? I reached out to Amy Bess Cook of wowsonoma.com, an organization that focuses on women-owned wineries. And she told me that nearly 600 out of the 10000 wineries here in the United States are female-led. Thank you for listening. I’m Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure. Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. 

Prairie Berry Winery – Hill City, SD Ep.7 Pt. 1

<a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/todd-headshot/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i1.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Todd-Headshot.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/18dfw-fb-ad-16x9-certified-v1c/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i2.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/18DFW-FB-Ad-16x9-Certified-v1c.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> <h1>Dry Farm Wines</h1> <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Forrest-Kelly-Ep.-6-Pt.-3-Dry-Farm-Wines.mp3">https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Forrest-Kelly-Ep.-6-Pt.-3-Dry-Farm-Wines.mp3</a> Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I’m your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let’s start the adventure. We are speaking with Todd White, founder, and CEO of <a href="https://www.dryfarmwines.com/">Dry Farm Wines</a>. So having strict guidelines for your wine, how did you come up with the wineries? How did you select them? Because you just can’t go to Google and find these wineries and in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_wine">natural wine business</a>. There are very specific subsections of the wine industry. It’s tiny, very, very small. And so everybody basically knows everyone else. There are <a href="https://www.natural-wines.com/004_salons/004_accueil-salon-vin-nature.php">natural wine fairs</a>, about 50 of them. There are three in the United States, but there is about 50 across Europe. And so we attend all of these <a href="https://www.natural-wines.com/004_salons/004_accueil-salon-vin-nature.php">natural wine fairs</a>. We’re not right now, but historically we have. Now, today, we’re the largest buyer and seller of natural wines in the world by multiple of probably 25 X, maybe more than that. So we’re internationally known, you know, as a buyer. Now, in the beginning, when I started the company, there were probably about 40 natural wine importers in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States">United States</a>, meaning that all they sell are natural wine. Like in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)">San Francisco</a>. There are two natural wine bars I’m sorry, three now. They’re just activists. Right. Like, you just wouldn’t have a non-natural wine in there. It’s just not it’s a it’s a revolution. There are three, arguably only <a href="https://sf.eater.com/maps/natural-wine-sf-where-to-find-drink-bay-area-bars-restaurants">three natural wine retailers in San Francisco</a>. Right. And they’re very small stores. So in the beginning, you know, I started reaching out to natural wine importers. I discovered this importer in Paris and American his name’s <a href="https://www.pariswinecompany.com/about">Josh Adler</a>, who used to live in San Francisco and he moved to Paris and he started a national wine importing company into the United States. And he was the first one that discovered he owns a company called <a href="https://www.pariswinecompany.com/">Paris Wine Company</a>. We’re probably his largest customer today, I would imagine. But we do a lot of business with them. But in the beginning, I contacted him to learn about sort of the natural wine world. I began to uncover and discover people and get referred to other importers who specialize in natural wines. Now, today, we’re the largest importer of natural wines in the world. So we still work with about 80 importers today. But we also import directly our own wines. And we do that. We have normally this time of year, we would have four to six people on the ground spread across <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe">Europe</a> right now, buying wines that normally we would spend the first six months of the year in Europe buying wines. So you’ve got the sourcing figured out. So now comes the part on what to present to the customer, right? Well, we don’t sell wine by the bottle. We do custom curation for people. So. So every single box that our member gets is different and has different wines. And oh, no, we have wines that are requested. We also do customer fulfillment and specialize in fulfillment. And if somebody loves the bottle, they’ll, you know, write to us and want to potentially buy more or something similar to it. You know, Pinot Noir is probably our number one requested grape. But the interesting thing about us is because we deal with these small family farms and ancestral grape varietals around the world. Americans generally know the top eight with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chardonnay">Chardonnay</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauvignon_blanc">Sauvignon blanc</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabernet_Sauvignon">Cabernet Sauvignon</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlot_blanc">Merlot blanc</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlot_blanc">Pinot noir</a>. But we sell hundreds of varietals that people have never heard of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trollinger">Schiava</a> from Italy or, you know, Pino Dune from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loire_Valley_(wine)">Loire Valley</a> or, you know, many of these obscure ancestral grapes that people never heard of. So they wouldn’t know what to order. And then when we curate their box and they get this custom curated box, they order red white rosé sparkling and then we choose what goes in the box for them. So they’re getting this global, all these great varieties these are never heard of and they love and they get to experience, sort of like traveling around the wine countries of Europe. Right. And so if they were just going to order wine and order, you know, if they live in California, they want red wine, they’d probably water mellow cabernet sauvignon or Pinot Noir because that’s all the red wines they know. Right. They would know to order Schiava from Italy, which is lighter and fresher than a Pinot Noir, you know, or Pinot Dune, which is also like a very, very light and fresh version of Pinot that they just wouldn’t know. They get a lot of education just by allowing us to curate for them. I see on the website there’s a 100 percent happiness guarantee. Tell me about that. Yeah, we also have a 100 percent happiness guarantee. Any bottle. You don’t love will replace it. No questions asked. You don’t have to send it back. You can drink it. I don’t care what you do. Would you tell us you didn’t like it? We’ll send you. We’ll give you a refund or send you another bottle. That is a 100 percent happiness guarantee. That concludes our. Interview with Todd White, founder of Dryfarmwines.com Thank you for listening. I’m Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure. Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.

 Dry Farm Wines https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Forrest-Kelly-Ep.-6-Pt.-3-Dry-Farm-Wines.mp3 Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I’m your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let’s start the adventure. We are speaking with Todd White, founder, and CEO of Dry Farm Wines. So having strict guidelines for your wine, how did you come up with the wineries? How did you select them? Because you just can’t go to Google and find these wineries and in the natural wine business. There are very specific subsections of the wine industry. It’s tiny, very, very small. And so everybody basically knows everyone else. There are natural wine fairs, about 50 of them. There are three in the United States, but there is about 50 across Europe. And so we attend all of these natural wine fairs. We’re not right now, but historically we have. Now, today, we’re the largest buyer and seller of natural wines in the world by multiple of probably 25 X, maybe more than that. So we’re internationally known, you know, as a buyer. Now, in the beginning, when I started the company, there were probably about 40 natural wine importers in the United States, meaning that all they sell are natural wine. Like in San Francisco. There are two natural wine bars I’m sorry, three now. They’re just activists. Right. Like, you just wouldn’t have a non-natural wine in there. It’s just not it’s a it’s a revolution. There are three, arguably only three natural wine retailers in San Francisco. Right. And they’re very small stores. So in the beginning, you know, I started reaching out to natural wine importers. I discovered this importer in Paris and American his name’s Josh Adler, who used to live in San Francisco and he moved to Paris and he started a national wine importing company into the United States. And he was the first one that discovered he owns a company called Paris Wine Company. We’re probably his largest customer today, I would imagine. But we do a lot of business with them. But in the beginning, I contacted him to learn about sort of the natural wine world. I began to uncover and discover people and get referred to other importers who specialize in natural wines. Now, today, we’re the largest importer of natural wines in the world. So we still work with about 80 importers today. But we also import directly our own wines. And we do that. We have normally this time of year, we would have four to six people on the ground spread across Europe right now, buying wines that normally we would spend the first six months of the year in Europe buying wines. So you’ve got the sourcing figured out. So now comes the part on what to present to the customer, right? Well, we don’t sell wine by the bottle. We do custom curation for people. So. So every single box that our member gets is different and has different wines. And oh, no, we have wines that are requested. We also do customer fulfillment and specialize in fulfillment. And if somebody loves the bottle, they’ll, you know, write to us and want to potentially buy more or something similar to it. You know, Pinot Noir is probably our number one requested grape. But the interesting thing about us is because we deal with these small family farms and ancestral grape varietals around the world. Americans generally know the top eight with Chardonnay, Sauvignon blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot blanc, Pinot noir. But we sell hundreds of varietals that people have never heard of Schiava from Italy or, you know, Pino Dune from Loire Valley or, you know, many of these obscure ancestral grapes that people never heard of. So they wouldn’t know what to order. And then when we curate their box and they get this custom curated box, they order red white rosé sparkling and then we choose what goes in the box for them. So they’re getting this global, all these great varieties these are never heard of and they love and they get to experience, sort of like traveling around the wine countries of Europe. Right. And so if they were just going to order wine and order, you know, if they live in California, they want red wine, they’d probably water mellow cabernet sauvignon or Pinot Noir because that’s all the red wines they know. Right. They would know to order Schiava from Italy, which is lighter and fresher than a Pinot Noir, you know, or Pinot Dune, which is also like a very, very light and fresh version of Pinot that they just wouldn’t know. They get a lot of education just by allowing us to curate for them. I see on the website there’s a 100 percent happiness guarantee. Tell me about that. Yeah, we also have a 100 percent happiness guarantee. Any bottle. You don’t love will replace it. No questions asked. You don’t have to send it back. You can drink it. I don’t care what you do. Would you tell us you didn’t like it? We’ll send you. We’ll give you a refund or send you another bottle. That is a 100 percent happiness guarantee. That concludes our. Interview with Todd White, founder of Dryfarmwines.com Thank you for listening. I’m Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure. Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. 

Dry Farm Wines Ep. 6 Pt. 3

<a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/todd-headshot/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i1.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Todd-Headshot.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/18dfw-fb-ad-16x9-certified-v1c/"><img width="150" height="150" src="https://i2.wp.com/thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/18DFW-FB-Ad-16x9-Certified-v1c.jpg?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1" alt="" /></a> Dry Farm Wines <a href="https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Ep.-6-Pt.-2-Dry-Farm-Wines.mp3">https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Ep.-6-Pt.-2-Dry-Farm-Wines.mp3</a> Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I’m your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let’s start the adventure. We go on a different journey. We don’t drop into a specific winery. We are speaking with Todd White, founder, and CEO of <a href="https://www.dryfarmwines.com/">Dry Farm Wines</a>. There are 76 additives approved by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_Drug_Administration">FDA</a> for use in winemaking. Four of them are quite <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxicity">toxic</a>. The most toxic is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_dicarbonate">Dimethyl dicarbonate</a> marketed under the brand name <a href="https://velcorin.com/">Velcorin</a>. And it’s used to treat <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brettanomyces">Brettanomyces</a>, which is the most common bacterial fault and why it’s highly toxic. If you go to Dimethyl dicarbonate on Wikipedia, you’ll see how toxic it is. Okay, I did look it up on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Wikipedia</a> Dimethyl dicarbonate. It is classified as toxic. The first warning is harmful if swallowed. It’s also toxic by inhalation. It causes burns. Well, that’s not really something that you want to be ingesting, especially if you’re going to be drinking it over a lifetime. Now, the public doesn’t know about these additives some and in fairness some are natural. Many are not. The wine industry spends millions of dollars a year and lobby money to keep content labeling and nutritional information off of wine labels. So you don’t have any idea how much sugar is in the wine you’re drinking. To people who care about their health sugar is a very important thing they want to know about. So our job is education. The wine sells itself. Now, that brings up the question. Dryfarmwines.com because of these strict guidelines. Why don’t you carry any domestic wines? The reason being is that there are not really any U.S. wines that meet our criteria. And so you talk about U.S. wines. There are a number of difficult criteria for them to meet. And they’re in the order of dry farming. So almost all domestic vineyards are irrigated. Number two, alcohol. We don’t accept any alcohol over twelve and a half percent. And that’s lab tested by us. Alcohol stated on a wine bottle is not required by law to be accurate. So we did lab testing for alcohol. So there are virtually no U.S. wines made that are twelve and a half percent or lower in alcohol. Virtually none. And then the third most prevalent reason that a U.S. wine wouldn’t qualify for our program is cost. So all of our wines sell for exactly the same amount. They’re $22.00 a bottle. There are no U.S. wines that meet our criteria of organic or biodynamic dry farming and alcohol that cost anywhere close to $22.00. The primary driver on a domestic wine price is going to be the cost of the land. All of U. S. vineyard costs are just so much higher than the capital cost of land in Europe and places like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaujolais">Beaujolais</a>, where anywhere across Europe where most of these small family farms that produce natural wines that we buy wine from, most of them are multigenerational landowners, that they don’t have any capital costs. We’re constantly being told to hydrate, drink more water. That philosophy does not transfer to grapevines. There are a lot of reasons not to irrigate a grapevine. And in most of Europe, it’s against the law to irrigate grapevines. Europeans have been making wine for over 3000 years. Now what we know, the moment you irrigate a great vine, you fundamentally change the physiology of how the fruit ripens. It also makes for a lazy vine and the fruit is actually less healthy. So the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenolic_content_in_wine">polyphenols</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavonoid">flavonoids</a>, native <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavonoid">flavonoids</a>, and other healthy compounds that are found primarily in red wines are actually reduced with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrigation">irrigation</a>. They’re also reduced with non-organic farming. But the real issue on irrigation is that, yes, stress does create a higher quality fruit. Even people who irrigate know that because that’s the reason that you space vines close together is also the reason that you see wine companies, even the ones that are irrigated, will tout hillside true hillside selection as superior because any fruit that grows on a hillside is under greater stress than that fruit that grows on flat ground. Whether irrigated or not. So, yes, I think everybody universally agrees that stress is helpful in creating a higher quality and character of the fruit. Here’s the thing with irrigation. You see, it’s cheaper and easier to farm using irrigation. It also creates a higher yield and fruit that weighs more. It might not surprise you when you fill a great area with water. It weighs more. Fruit is sold by the ton. So irrigation is about money. Irrigation didn’t come to California for wine farming until the early 1970s. So prior to that, everything California was also transformed for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryland_farming">dry farming</a>. Now, less than one percent of California vineyards are dry-farmed because <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryland_farming">dry farming</a> is more difficult, it requires more work and it’s more expensive. In our next episode, we’ll find out what happens when you drink a wine. With Low alcohol, sugar-free, toxic, free. Thank you for listening. I’m Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure. Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast/id1499244260?app=podcast">Apple</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/2io4po2EMTcJUA0tsGP4zt">Spotify</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly90aGViZXN0d2luZXBvZGNhc3QuY29tL2NhdGVnb3J5L3BvZGNhc3QvZmVlZC8">Google</a>, <a href="https://www.deezer.com/us/show/925162">Deezer</a>, <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast">Stitcher</a>, <a href="https://tunein.com/podcasts/Food--Cooking-Podcasts/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-p1295766/?topicid=138748899">Tunein</a>, <a href="https://www.breaker.audio/the-best-5-minute-wine-podcast-1">Breaker</a>, <a href="https://castbox.fm/channel/The-Best-5-Minute-Wine-Podcast-id2643072?country=us">Castbox</a>.

 Dry Farm Wines https://thebestwinepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Ep.-6-Pt.-2-Dry-Farm-Wines.mp3 Welcome to The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast. I’m your host Forrest Kelly from the seed to the glass. Wine has a past. Our aim at The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast is to look for adventure at wineries around the globe. After all grape minds think alike. Let’s start the adventure. We go on a different journey. We don’t drop into a specific winery. We are speaking with Todd White, founder, and CEO of Dry Farm Wines. There are 76 additives approved by the FDA for use in winemaking. Four of them are quite toxic. The most toxic is Dimethyl dicarbonate marketed under the brand name Velcorin. And it’s used to treat Brettanomyces, which is the most common bacterial fault and why it’s highly toxic. If you go to Dimethyl dicarbonate on Wikipedia, you’ll see how toxic it is. Okay, I did look it up on Wikipedia Dimethyl dicarbonate. It is classified as toxic. The first warning is harmful if swallowed. It’s also toxic by inhalation. It causes burns. Well, that’s not really something that you want to be ingesting, especially if you’re going to be drinking it over a lifetime. Now, the public doesn’t know about these additives some and in fairness some are natural. Many are not. The wine industry spends millions of dollars a year and lobby money to keep content labeling and nutritional information off of wine labels. So you don’t have any idea how much sugar is in the wine you’re drinking. To people who care about their health sugar is a very important thing they want to know about. So our job is education. The wine sells itself. Now, that brings up the question. Dryfarmwines.com because of these strict guidelines. Why don’t you carry any domestic wines? The reason being is that there are not really any U.S. wines that meet our criteria. And so you talk about U.S. wines. There are a number of difficult criteria for them to meet. And they’re in the order of dry farming. So almost all domestic vineyards are irrigated. Number two, alcohol. We don’t accept any alcohol over twelve and a half percent. And that’s lab tested by us. Alcohol stated on a wine bottle is not required by law to be accurate. So we did lab testing for alcohol. So there are virtually no U.S. wines made that are twelve and a half percent or lower in alcohol. Virtually none. And then the third most prevalent reason that a U.S. wine wouldn’t qualify for our program is cost. So all of our wines sell for exactly the same amount. They’re $22.00 a bottle. There are no U.S. wines that meet our criteria of organic or biodynamic dry farming and alcohol that cost anywhere close to $22.00. The primary driver on a domestic wine price is going to be the cost of the land. All of U. S. vineyard costs are just so much higher than the capital cost of land in Europe and places like Beaujolais, where anywhere across Europe where most of these small family farms that produce natural wines that we buy wine from, most of them are multigenerational landowners, that they don’t have any capital costs. We’re constantly being told to hydrate, drink more water. That philosophy does not transfer to grapevines. There are a lot of reasons not to irrigate a grapevine. And in most of Europe, it’s against the law to irrigate grapevines. Europeans have been making wine for over 3000 years. Now what we know, the moment you irrigate a great vine, you fundamentally change the physiology of how the fruit ripens. It also makes for a lazy vine and the fruit is actually less healthy. So the polyphenols, flavonoids, native flavonoids, and other healthy compounds that are found primarily in red wines are actually reduced with irrigation. They’re also reduced with non-organic farming. But the real issue on irrigation is that, yes, stress does create a higher quality fruit. Even people who irrigate know that because that’s the reason that you space vines close together is also the reason that you see wine companies, even the ones that are irrigated, will tout hillside true hillside selection as superior because any fruit that grows on a hillside is under greater stress than that fruit that grows on flat ground. Whether irrigated or not. So, yes, I think everybody universally agrees that stress is helpful in creating a higher quality and character of the fruit. Here’s the thing with irrigation. You see, it’s cheaper and easier to farm using irrigation. It also creates a higher yield and fruit that weighs more. It might not surprise you when you fill a great area with water. It weighs more. Fruit is sold by the ton. So irrigation is about money. Irrigation didn’t come to California for wine farming until the early 1970s. So prior to that, everything California was also transformed for dry farming. Now, less than one percent of California vineyards are dry-farmed because dry farming is more difficult, it requires more work and it’s more expensive. In our next episode, we’ll find out what happens when you drink a wine. With Low alcohol, sugar-free, toxic, free. Thank you for listening. I’m Forrest Kelly. This episode of the Best 5 Minute Wine podcast was produced by IHSYM. If you like the show tell your friends and pets and subscribe. Until next time, pour the wine and ponder your next adventure. Please subscribe from your favorite Podcast Platform: Apple, Spotify, Google, Deezer, Stitcher, Tunein, Breaker, Castbox. 

Dry Farm Wines Ep. 6 Pt. 2

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