Kelly April Tyrrell
Nick Smith, new wine and cider outreach specialist in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, discusses the fermentation set-up in place at his lab in Babcock Hall.
World-class wines and ciders aren’t the first things that come to mind when thinking of Wisconsin, but enologist Nick Smith has been hired to change that.
Since becoming an outreach specialist with UW-Madison’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences three months ago, Smith has visited wineries throughout the state, getting a handle on the issues Wisconsin viticulturists face.
“The biggest challenge right now is fruit access and the quality of that fruit,” says the Minnesota native. “It was a tough spring. There were some frost issues. And the grape varieties themselves are relatively new, so there isn’t a lot of history to understand how to make wine from them or where to grow them.”
Wisconsin residents have grown grapes since the mid-19th century, but only in the past 20 years has an industry begun to take shape with the development of grape varieties that not only can survive harsh winters, but also produce a viable fruit in the Upper Midwest’s short growing season.
The University of Minnesota, which launched its grape breeding program in 1908, has developed several winter-hardy grape varieties, with names like La Crescent, Frontenac and Marquette.
The trick now is to find the right home for each variety among the state’s five grape-growing regions, says Anna Maenner, executive director of the Wisconsin Wine Association.
“There is a lot of experimenting going on to see what is and isn’t working,” she says. “We don’t have a lot of information to pass along because these varieties aren’t necessarily being grown elsewhere.”
Recognizing that the state’s wine industry needed a full-time enologist, the Wisconsin Wine Association and the Wisconsin Grape Growers Association applied for a specialty-crop block grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help fund the position.
The $73,000 grant is supplemented with contributions from industry groups, Maenner says.
Today, there are 120 permitted wineries in Wisconsin, but according to the Wisconsin Grape Growers Association, fewer than half grow their own grapes.
Since it can take up to four years before a vineyard begins producing grapes — at a cost upwards of $8,000 per acre per year — grape growing in Wisconsin is risky business.
Smith says he doesn’t know whether there are better or worse parts of the state for growing grapes, except that the further north you grow, the less hospitable it gets.
His interest in enology — the science of winemaking — began at the University of Minnesota when he began brewing beer while studying for his business degree. He studied winemaking in Oregon before becoming a chemist for a commercial winemaker in California, eventually returning to Minnesota, where he made wine for tasting analysis.
Once he’s finished identifying the issues around Wisconsin’s wine quality and improving that quality, Smith will begin developing educational and industry-based outreach programs for grape growers and wine makers.
Responses to his efforts so far have been varied.
“The industry itself doesn’t have a unified identity,” Smith says. “Different wineries have different goals. Some are into production improvements, others are happy producing specific styles. Some are not too interested in what we’re doing.”
Maenner, on the other hand, sees nothing but possibility, noting that Wisconsin is appearing more often in the wine press as a region worth keeping an eye on.
Whether Wisconsin will have a Judgment of Paris moment — as California did in 1976, when wine-tasting judges favored California wines over French wines in blind taste-tests — remains to be seen.
“I see Wisconsin being an important player in the wine industry as time goes on,” Maenner says. “There are a lot of things happening right now with the environment and droughts in California. Our industry will continue to grow.”
