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Park Farm Winery’s Vineyards during the growing season.
Park Farm Winery is most popular during the height of fall with the changing leaves.
Park Farm Winery’s Vineyards during the growing season.
Park Farm Winery is most popular during the height of fall with the changing leaves.
The ancient art of growing vineyards and wine-making is setting down the roots of a new historical chapter in the American Midwest. While temperate climates in regions of France and California are most famous for their vineyards, Midwest locations like Park Farm Winery outside of Bankston have been providing locally-grown wine since their first vintage in 2004. According to the winery’s owners, Jim and Dave Cushman, the vineyard was first planted in 2001 with 2.5 acres of French hybrid by their father who was looking to get into a form of alternative agriculture. The initial plan was to grow the grapes and sell them to Tabor Home Vineyards and Winery in Baldwin, but the business soon took off in a new direction.
Dave Cushman said, “My dad put pen to paper on the payback of growing grapes and, after the first year of tending to the vineyard, he realized how much labor was involved and started thinking about the value aspect of it. Making them into wine was where there was the chance to be profitable. At the same time, Tabor Home had gotten a grant to train a winemaker for a future winery and asked my dad if he’d be interested in partnering with him to sponsor the winemaker to be trained for the winery dad would later build.”
The winery was opened in 2005 and has been hard at work perfecting its vintages by growing seven different varieties of grapes. A typical growing season sees the vines pruned around late February, with grapes budding out around the first of May and picking taking place around the second week of September or sooner depending on the weather. Cushman said that good wine often comes from a consistent climate and the unpredictable changes in Midwestern weather lengthen the learning curve because there are more variables to narrow down the exact causes of a good wine batch.
In spite of the challenges brought by the weather, the grapevines themselves can withstand it well thanks to university breeding programs at the University of Minnesota and Cornell University. These programs crossed American grapes, like Concords, with European wine-making grapes, like Vinifera.
Jim Cushman explained, “They selected for cold-hardiness and fast ripening as well as flavor and sugar content. There are quite a few varieties we can grow here that will survive the winters and ripen in a shorter growing season. The biggest challenge we face isn’t the vines but the weather. We’re a lot more humid than someplace like California so we have to deal with fungus and other diseases as well as pests.”
Luckily for the Cushmans, they don’t have to start from scratch since a lot of the wine-making learning curve has been compressed thanks to historical knowledge. They are simply refining it to meet the needs of the region.
“The Vinifera varietals are what all the wine-making protocols were based on as it was developed over several thousand years in France and refined in California,” said Dave Cushman. “These varietals we’re growing have a little different chemistry because they’ve been designed to grow in this climate. These nuances in the chemistry mean the wine-making strategy is different so there’s a bit of a learning curve to it for the whole Midwest. We’ve grown grapes here over the last twenty-five years and we make good wine from them, but the real challenge is consistently making good wine year after year.”
Contrasting with the iconic image of century-old aged wine casks, most of the wine created at Park Farm Winery is best served “young” due to the unique qualities of the grape varietals. These include high acids, lower overall sugar, and almost no tannin, which is the part of wine that preserves and ages it.
Dave Cushman said, “For the most part, the high acid low tannin varietals tend to produce a wine that’s better consumed when it’s younger and makes it better with food since the higher acidity helps clean the palate between bites.”
The vineyard does contain a few new grapes with higher tannin to make aged wine, but they are largely untested.
Park Farm Winery’s chief identity as a local distributor, with a large portion of their sales made on location as people taste wine alongside homemade pizza in a restaurant-like experience.
“About 90% of our wine is distributed through Northeast Iowa,” said Dave Cushman, “so we’re very local on that standpoint. We’ve shipped wine all over the country but that’s not very common. It’s very much a local product at this point.”
The Cushmans’ short-term hopes are to grow between 45-50 tons of production on their 11 acres that will produce between six and seven thousand gallons a year. At that point, they will assess what they want to do regarding the possible expansion on a wholesale or direct-to-consumer basis.
The winery can be visited all year round but sees the most traffic in the fall and during live music events held on weekends during warmer months. For more information, visit www.parkfarmwinery.com.
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