Wine Renaissance

COLFAX — On a muggy morning in early September, Bret Seebeck pulls a flatbed trailer up to his two-acre Colfax grape vineyard with breakfast pizza and doughnuts in the back seat.

The meal is for the eight pickers and Jasper Winery employees who will be helping Seebeck harvest his fall crop of white wine grapes.

“Once we get going, we’re lifting those 25 pound boxes, dumping them into the 1,000 pound bins and hauling them onto the trailer,” he said.

Seebeck and his wife Kim have been growing wine grapes at their home for 12 years. He’s one piece of Iowa’s now thriving wine industry.

But how do Iowa-grown grapes get from the vines on the state’s more than 300 vineyards to local restaurants and grocery store shelves?

Wine grapes sprout in spring. Throughout the season they put on vegetative growth and produce self or wind-pollinating flowers. Then the grape clusters begin to form.

One side is left exposed to the sun. Seebeck said that’s what gives the grape its flavor. The grapes on Seebeck’s vineyards won’t be picked until they reach 20 “brix” — a measurement of the fruit’s sugar content.

Iowa whites are harvested in early to mid-August, but the state’s grapes are harvested through the fall. Reds at the vineyard Seebeck farms at Sugar Grove near Newton will not reach full maturity until October.

The yield depends on a lot of factors but timely rain is key. Rain helps increase the volume of the individual grapes, although Seebeck said it usually doesn’t affect the number of clusters. You need enough sun in between showers to dry the fruit for the sugars inside to solidify.

Heavy rains of 2008 caused a large crop for Iowa vineyards. Seebeck said this year, the positive moisture is giving central Iowa grape growers about 500 pounds more per acre than average.

“This is a good year for grapes. It’s because of all the timely rains and still getting enough breaks between the rains,” he said. “So they’re not getting flooded out like in years past.”

At his Colfax vineyard, Seebeck farms an acre of La Crescent — a white — and an acre of Frontenac — a red. According to the Iowa Wine Growers Association, Iowa temperatures are suitable for more than 40 cold climate grape varieties — Catawba, St. Croix and La Crosse and Frontenac are prominent.

Seebeck’s vines are on trellises in a vertical shooting position, prepared for hand picking. But some Iowa vineyards are harvested by machine.

There are self-propelled and drag-behind picking machines which harvest grapes by shaking the vines but there are only a few in Iowa, and the equipment is expensive. The pickers can range from $40,000 to more than $200,000 and are typically used on larger acreages. Seebeck prefers to employ local pickers and harvest the grapes by hand.

“Your trellis and your vines have to be prepared for machines. I get mine prepared for hand picking,” he said. “And hand picking is gentler on the grapes. You can get a pretty good yield with the machine. If their ripe, they’ll shake the bushes so hard that it will knock most of it out. But it busts up the berries more and you loose some of your juice.”

Seebeck estimates machine pickers lose about 5 percent of the juice. There is some juice loss in the handpicking process due to crush in the transport boxes, but Seebeck said most of it still is processed at the winery.

The grapes are sold by the pound or the ton, depending on the vineyard’s yield. Seebeck expects to get seven tons from his two-acre Colfax vineyard this year alone. The three-acres he tends at Sugar Grove will produce an additional eight tons.

The Colfax grower is a supplier for Jasper Winery. He’s worked with the Des Moines-based winemaker since he established a vineyard 12 years ago — when the winery was still based in Newton.

He uses a similar process at the second acreage he leases from Sugar Grove. Seebeck’s vineyards are two of the five within 45 miles of Des Moines which produce grapes used by Jasper Winery.

Owned by Jean Groben of Newton, the Des Moines winery harvests nearly 35 acres of vineyard, incorporating several different varieties of whites and reds. Jasper Winery processes 60 tons of grapes per year. Three of the vineyards are located in Jasper County including Cherry Creek — managed by Jean’s husband Paul Groben.

The Grobens began growing grapes in 2000 and opened their first winery in Newton in 2003. Their son Mason Groben, who also operates Madhouse Brewing Company, is responsible for the wine production and has a degree in viticulture and enology from the University of California, Davis. In 2008, outgrowing their Newton location, the Grobens opened a larger winery near Waterworks Park in Des Moines.

Jean said she never expected the wine industry in Iowa to take off to the extent it is today.

“I think the growth of the wine industry has been nice, and the acceptance of the public to try our wines.” Jean said. “The quality of the wine keeps getting better and better as we all learn how to work with these grape varieties because these are not traditional varieties. They’re hardy.”

On a loading dock behind the polished tasting room and shining stainless steel tanks where the finished products ferment, Seebeck and the workers at Jasper Winery put on waterproof boots and unload the flatbed for weigh-in and grape processing.

Jasper Winery weighs the grapes not only to calculate payment for the growers and forecast how much wine they’ll produce, but tonnage has to be reported to government regulators. Jean said each ton of grapes produces 150 gallons of juice.

As they load grapes onto a forklift, the 20-somethings play the funky 1970s track “Cissy Strut” by The Meters on concert stage-quality speakers.

“To make wine you need three things, music, beer and a lot of sweat” Jean said.

The red grapes are put through a crusher/destemmer machine. From there, the skins, seeds and juices are pumped into a tub. Reds are fermented together with the skins and seeds

The whites go through an extra step. Once destemmed and crushed, white grapes are pumped into a presser capable of processing early 3.5 tons at a time. The juice is all that remains and is sent through a wine hose into the tanks visible through Jasper Winery’s display window.

The white wines can be fermented in six to seven months, but dry reds are barrel-aged take a minimum of one year to ferment — some aging two to three years.

Thursday afternoon, Mason takes a break from tending the tanks, picks one or two red grapes from the crusher and pops them in his mouth. He’s checking the product’s sugar level. Mason said the grapes crushed and destemmed Thursday are consistent in taste with the fruit in recent seasons.

But the Grobens said it is a misconception that all Iowa wines are sweet. Jasper Winery produces 12 varieties and half are dry — four dry reds and three dry whites along with the sweets.

“I have a favorite,” she said. “But it’s like saying which of your kids is your favorite.”

Contact Mike Mendenhall at mmendenhall@ newtondailynews.com