Des Moines Business Record
06-23-07
Loving the Red, White and Fizz Biz
BY LYNDA EDWARDS
The huge 100-year-old white clapboard schoolhouse was rolled across green
farm fields laced by streams and up a hill, where it found a final resting place
next to Ed Mahlstadt's grapevines. Mahlstadt had paid $10 to Guthrie County for
the building and $7,200 to the truckers who hoisted the schoolhouse onto a
double axle trailer. His father-in-law, a lifelong farmer who owns 600 acres,
thought Mahlstadt was crazy.
But Mahlstadt's wife, Tracy, thought the schoolhouse would be a perfect tasting
room for tourists to sample wine the couple make at their 15-acre Stuart
vineyard.
A historic tasting room is just one of the many gambits Central Iowa vineyard
owners are deploying to lure visitors. More than 70 Iowa wineries are producing
more than 20,000 gallons of wine annually. The Iowa Wine and Beer Promotion
Board lists 14 Central Iowa wineries. Yet Central Iowa vineyard owners are just
starting to grasp their potential as tourist attractions, Iowa Tourism Office
spokesman Luann Reinders said.
"Eastern and Western Iowa wineries have forged alliances to create wine trails
and tours, Central Iowa vineyard owners weren't quite ready for that," she said.
"But they're learning."
If three Iowa wineries or breweries band together to stage a festival or event,
they can apply to Reinders' agency for grants ranging from $400 to $1,500.
Tours, on the other hand, are mostly done by entrepreneurs like Dennis Dieters
of Dubuque-based Iowa Wine Tours. He approaches hotels and bed-andbreakfasts to negotiate packages for the travelers who take his bus along the
wine trails.
Meanwhile, Central Iowa wineries are creating their own attractions. Mahlstadt,
who is the Des Moines Art Center facilities director, gave his rickety schoolhouse
a new roof, windows, a deck and a bar topped with honey-hued marble. Starting
July 7, tourists can drop by the tasting room every weekend, braving the long,
potholed gravel road to Mahlstadt's Dale Valley Vineyards.
Ed Mahlstadt (far left) gets help from his relatives as he bottles his inaugural
estate. His vineyard boasts a tasting room and apple trees.
Photo Submitted
Iowa Winegrowers Association president Greg Bakker lives in Urbandale and
owns Madison County Winery in St. Charles. He says he has already gotten calls
from a Texas excursion company wanting to bring tour buses by Bakker's
vineyards to taste the wines. Bakker believes two July 14 events in Ankeny may
be a wake-up call for Central Iowa winemakers because hordes of tourists are
expected to attend. Both events - the Mid-American Wine Competition and Swine
- will be at the Des Moines Area Community College campus.
The competition runs July 14 -15 with wineries from the Dakotas, Nebraska,
Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky and Iowa.
Doug Frost, one of only three people in the world to earn the titles of both Master
Sommelier and Master of Wine, will be the judge. Frost thinks this is the first
competition focused solely on Midwestern wines.
Swine will be held the afternoon of July 14. "It's a pork and wine festival that will
showcase 18 Iowa wineries," Bakker said. "Five top Central Iowa chefs will
create original gourmet pork dishes to match with the wines."
Underground Inc. chef Hal Jasa will unveil a bizarre treat: the boozy version of a
root beer float. He ladles two scoops of pork ice cream plopped into a glass of
sweet, earthy red Iowa wine.
"The pork ice cream will be a pale coffee color and have a sweet yet smoky
taste," Jasa said. "Trust me, it will be delicious."
Keep your day job
The Mahlstadts invested $100,000 of their own money into their venture and
don't expect to see a profit for seven years. Ed works full time at the Art Center
and Tracy works for OfficeMax as a business relationship manager. Wine is
literally a labor of love for them.
But anyone dreaming of owning a vineyard should realize the work is tough and
the hours long, just like any farm work.
"It takes four years before the vines produce grapes," Mahlstadt said. "If you lose
your vines, you're set back four years. One year, grasshoppers were swarming
all over. It was like a biblical plague."
Deer devoured the little apple orchard Mahlstadt planted by the tasting room.
"Deer are like rats; they eat everything," he said, nervously surveying his
replanted apple trees. "Nothing stops them, not even humans urinating on the
trees. Deer can jump over an electric fence. Thankfully, the deer don't seem to
like grapes."
Winemakers must de-stem the grapes, protect the wine from oxygen with argon
and nitrogen gas and run their wine through anti-bacterial filters. Mahlstadt ages
his wine in stainless steel tanks in an air-conditioned garage. He imported his destemming machine from Italy.
"I wanted to buy an Iowa-made de-stemmer and even sent the specs for one to a
manufacturer," he said. "But no one makes the equipment here. I'm hoping as
the Iowa wine industry grows, manufacturers will realize there is an opportunity to
sell these products if they make them."
Aspiring winemaker Kevin Boyle, a furniture designer at Meredith Corp.'s WOOD
magazine, grows two acres of grapes near Winterset and sells his crop to other
winemakers. He and his wife, Rose, experiment with blending their own wine in
plastic jugs in the garage, searching for their ideal liquid signature.
This fall, the Boyles will decide whether to leap into the additional tasks required
to make and bottle their own wine.
"Wine is still our dream but for the past few years, growing grapes was enough
challenge," Boyle said.
For example, the vast vineyards of California's Napa Valley are carefully
separated from farms that use certain herbicides. But in Iowa, vineyards grow
close by corn and soybean fields that are treated with 2,4-D herbicide. If wind
causes 2,4-D to drift over vineyards, it can be damaging, Boyle explained.
"And our hot, humid summers make vines more susceptible to mildew and rot,"
he added.
Boyle cleverly convinces friends that harvesting grapes is joy, not work. "The
grape-stomping episode of I Love Lucy and that Keanu Reeves movie, A Walk in
the Clouds, already have people thinking harvest is romantic," Boyle said.
But the rest of the year, Boyle, his wife, his partner and his partner's wife do all
the field work.
"The Iowa wine industry is still in diapers, so there's a big shortage of skilled
vineyard labor," Boyle said.
"Someone who picks lettuce for a living can't really work on grapevines without
training. Two-year-old grapevines require different pruning from 3-year-old vines.
Each type of grapes requires a different type of care."
Grooming the grape workers
Iowa may get a skilled vineyard workforce via DMACC. Enology instructor Paul
Gospodarczyk is organizing a certificate program to train vineyard workers and
an associate's degree for aspiring winemakers. Although the course work will be
done online and in a DMACC lab, the associate's degree will actually be awarded
by Charles Stuart University in Australia, which Gospodarczyk said is famous for
its enology program.
"The certificate program will cover pruning, managing trellises, canopy
management and forklift operation for hired hands working in the vineyard," he
said. "The degree program is geared toward people owning the vineyard."
Gospodarczyk observes that when vineyard owners talk about how they create
wine, they sound like artists, except winemakers use processes and grape
varieties instead of brushstrokes and paints to craft a sensory experience.
He teaches his students that aging wine in oak barrels imbues wine with coconut,
toasted bread and vanilla flavors. A buttery note can be captured through lactic
acid. Chocolate is the most unpredictable and elusive flavor to create in a wine,
he said.
Some Iowa winemakers import California grapes to mix with their own so they
can come closer to a Sonoma or Napa wine. The practice is hotly debated
among Iowa winemakers. Some say that when tourists come to Iowa, they would
enjoy the adventure of tasting a native wine.
And wine made purely from Iowa grapes will never taste like a Robert Mondavi
wine, Iowa State University horticulture professor Paul Domoto cautions.
"And why should it? Iowa grapes, like Iowa tomatoes, are lower in acid and
higher in pH," Domoto said. "This translates into a sweeter taste than Napa
Valley soil can produce. Since Midwestern palates prefer sweeter wines, it
seems like a good fit."
Domoto said Iowa soil is too fertile, which presents problems California
winemakers don't face.
"Here's why bad soil makes good wine grapes; grapes are the sexual,
reproductive organs of a vine," Domoto said. "When conditions are tough - poor
soil, blazing sun - the plant feels nature is exterminating it. The plant reacts by
developing more sexual organs, the grapes, on its vine."
DMACC plans to open a laboratory toward this year where Iowa winemakers can
have vintages tested for flaws such as bacteria or acidity. The wine will also be
tasted by a panel of experts and rated. The best wines win gold or silver
certificates.
A true Iowa wine will always have its own personality. And as wine lovers will
often tell you, searching out the next unusual, memorable wine is why they will
drive hundreds of miles, down dirt roads if need be, to taste a wine by a novice
vintner.
Hunting for your wine
"Young wine lovers are the big hope for Iowa winemakers because they think
trying something new is a big adventure," Doug Bakker said. "For them, trying a
wine that is a work in progress is like enjoying a painting by an artist who is still
finding his true style,"
Mahlstadt's father-in-law, Jim Lonsdale, sold Mahlstadt the land for his vineyard.
Lonsdale's farm was founded in 1853 and he kept it intact through the financially
catastrophic 1980s, a decade that destroyed many family farms. Lonsdale frankly
concedes he was skeptical of an Iowa vineyard's odds of success.
"Now I'm a believer," Lonsdale said, laughing. "People ask why anyone would go
into farming because a farmer and his family worry constantly, work from sunup
till sundown and are at the mercy of the weather and a hundred other things. But
a farm is a legacy. You want it to go on."
When he sees Mahlstadt hosting a wedding at the vineyard, with the bride and
groom standing on the schoolhouse deck, enjoying the wine and the vista of
mooing cows, green hills and lush grapevines, Lonsdale knows his farm's legacy
is living on - with a unique twist.