(upbeat music) - Several years ago I attended a winter meeting in Worthington.

This seemed like such a nice area and we had never done a show here.

We contacted a friend of ours who lives in the area and he suggested we come visit Round Lake Vineyards.

He said they have introduced so many flower types, ponds and plants to the venue to make it a remarkable and desirable place to relax and enjoy the surroundings, wildlife and certainly the lake.

I was hooked.

So let's go learn more.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at Heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative.

Proud to be powering Acira, pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a non-profit rural, education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Wyndham, Minnesota.

And by friends of "Prairie Yard and Garden", a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of "Prairie Yard and Garden", visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(upbeat music) - I have always wanted to learn more about growing grapes and to make wine.

This spring, one of our friends named Ken invited me to come out and see how he handles and prunes his grapevines.

And then I heard about Round Lake Vineyards and Winery.

Imagine my excitement when owner Scott and Jenny Ellenbecker invited our "Prairie Yard and Garden" crew to come and see their commercial operation.

Thanks so much for letting us come and visit.

- Thanks Mary.

This is gonna be fun.

- What are your backgrounds?

- So I was in the marketing industry for 30 years and we live in the country so we, we just thought we would grow grapes and there's a lot more to it than that.

But I spent a lot of time traveling.

At one point I was gone 250 nights a year and Jenny raised the family and took care of things.

Now I never leave.

It's I, we have the food truck comes twice a week and a restaurant makes us dinner every day.

We don't have to worry about going anywhere.

- We started an interest in vines.

My sister lives in California, so we would go out and visit her and then we started going, oh, this would be great.

Scott found out during his travels, he goes, Hey, guess what?

We can grow grapes in Minnesota.

I'm like, yeah.

He goes, do you wanna plant some grapes?

I'm like, sure.

It'd be fun.

It's just a big garden.

A little big garden.

- It is a big garden.

- And so now we have 23 acres of grapes and a restaurant and full events.

- How did Round Lake Vineyards get started?

- In 2005, I was working on a story.

I was a writer and a photographer.

I was working on a story in California on the use of water in vineyards and obviously irrigation, but they also use it for climate control.

So in the valleys in California it can get over a hundred degrees.

So they turn the irrigation on and cool the vines.

So I came back, I went up to Cold Spring to do a story on a dimensional stone quarry and in Kimball there's a, there's a a vineyard there and a lady was out working.

So I asked her a bunch of questions and then where did she get the grapes?

And she told me about Ray Winter and he has a nursery.

So I drove to Janesville and they told me about George that has been growing grapes for a long time.

So I talked to George and by the time I got home I said, Jenny, we should plant grapes.

So the next year in 2007 is when we first planted grapes.

Jenny's grew up here on the property.

We bought this property from her grandmother in 2002.

It was originally the round Lake waterfowl station.

Her grandparents bought the property 'cause they wanted to raise ducks and geese.

And over 20 years they grew this to be the largest collection of waterfowl in the world right here.

There was 85 different species of birds and then they, on the property at there was a big walk-In incubator, there is the duck barn.

We were living in Mitchell, South Dakota.

And grandma called and said, do you wanna buy the house?

Because nobody's living in it.

We bought it and moved here in 2002.

- [Mary] What makes this a good location for growing grapes?

- [Scott] You can grow anything in Minnesota.

You can, our weather is perfect.

The ground here in southwest Minnesota is black down three feet.

A big issue we have is when we first plant a vineyard, it's so vigorous it doesn't put on fruit because- - Just pearls.

- Fruit is a seed that the plant will put on so it reproduces.

So if the plant is not stressed, it doesn't put on grapes.

So we've learned that we have to really prune them back heavy in the winter and then they'll, then they'll be shocked into saying, oh, I gotta put some seeds on.

- [Mary] Do you have to worry about the grapevines over our winter when we get such nasty winters?

- [Jenny] They've been bred to withstand the cold.

The university has developed them to withstand 35 to 60 below, just depends.

We have a couple breeders in Minnesota that are even breeding some grapes, so.

- [Mary] What is the difference between a winery and a vineyard?

- So a winery makes the wine.

The winery is really the function of taking the product that you grow in the vineyard, which is the, the fruit.

And then we bring it in and we go through the process of making it.

So when we started in 2007, we were a vineyard.

So it was Round Lake Vineyards.

In 2015 we opened the winery and then at 16 we, we bought a food trailer and then in 2020 we opened a full scale restaurant.

So we are really kind of a destination, not just the winery, not just the vineyards.

And so there's a lot going on here.

It's a different kind of a of experience because people will come here and sit for four hours.

You don't sit for four hours at a normal restaurant.

You don't sit for four hours in a bar, generally.

But people come and sit and visit with friends and it's casual.

They're not just drinking the whole time, they're eating and socializing.

This is this kind of place where people come as a group.

- Well it is so beautiful.

Would you mind actually taking me out to the grapes so that I can see what you grow and how you do that?

- Oh, that's a lot of fun.

- Yes.

- Let's do it.

(upbeat music) - Bees provide an essential service that puts food on our plates and keeps agriculture healthy and thriving in Minnesota by taking pollen and nectar from flower to flower, bees deliver key nutrients that help our garden vegetables to grow large and delicious.

That's why I'm at Glacial Ridge Growers today in Glenwood, Minnesota.

Here, the Stark family has been cultivating pollinator friendly flowers and habitats for nearly 50 years and teaching other people how to do this as well.

From their greenhouses here on the prairie, the Starks grow a variety of vegetables and herbs and native plants, all nurtured with pollen from friendly, buzzing bees.

- Well the average homeowner can do a lot of things.

One, the first thing to do is to plant native plants because those are the plants that our pollinators want to go to.

The other thing is to keep your pesticide usage low, 'cause we don't wanna be killing off those pollinators and just keep a good broad environment out there for, you know, for plants to grow.

A pollinator friendly garden is something that can be a lot of fun for us.

We'll get to see all those bees and butterflies out there, which is really the nice thing, especially in the fall as they build up for their migrations.

And also it just is a, is a good thing to support those bees, especially because we need them for pollination.

They're so important to all of our crops so we want to continue to help them along as much as we can.

- At the risk of a bad pun, I imagine the folks here at Glacial Ridge Growers are as busy as bees.

And if you'd like to learn more about starting your own pollinator friendly garden, please visit Minnesotagrown.com for more information.

- Here we are in our Itasca Vineyard.

We started planning this one six years ago.

This Itasca was developed by Peter Hemstead when he was at the University of Minnesota.

It has a very nice, it was nice dry white wine.

- Well I can't believe the size of the leaves.

- Yeah.

- Are they always like that?

- [Jenny] For Itasca, each grape vine has a little bit different color and a little bit different leaf shape.

The Itasca has this nice big size.

- [Mary] So when it has a big leaf like that, does this one tend to yield more?

- No, they yield about the same.

Some varieties do yield more.

Our Marquette is always one for us that just doesn't have the tonnage that it gets.

But Frontenac Gris is another variety that was developed by the University of Minnesota and we get quite a bit of tonnage out there for our Frontenac Gris.

we started with our first 10 acres.

We started with five the first year we planted Brianna, Frontenac Gris, Marquette and we started with a couple little table grapes too, which are seedless.

'cause at the time we thought it'd be fun if we had some seedless grapes and we could get going and we could sell it at the farmer's market.

- [Mary] And I noticed that you have a lot of clover here.

- [Jenny] Clover just is a good ground cover, helps take out the nitrogen.

But also we do have bees on property and the bees like the clover.

- [Mary] Okay.

You don't have to fertilize grapes.

- [Jenny] We do once in a while.

We can add a little bit of fertilizer next to them.

Our first couple years we had so much we didn't have to.

Now that they're taking that out, we do fertilize.

We do some spray fertilizing on the vines as well.

So.

- When do you prune?

- We prune.

So there's a couple different things of pruning.

You prune in the winter after, usually you don't wanna go, you wanna have 'em all pruned back by before they bud out.

So we start February, March, wanna be done by April 1st.

All this vigor is pruned off in the winter.

- [Mary] So it is put on all this growth just this one season.

- Yep.

- Then when do you start harvesting?

- We usually start harvesting the end of August, September and October.

Just depends on the season.

Some varieties come sooner.

You leave your reds in the ground, you don't harvest them as soon just trying to get that acidity level.

The plant will tell you, the grapes will tell you.

We start testing them and you want your sugar, your bricks, and your acidity levels.

There's some varieties we have to harvest by hand, but most we have a machine that harvests them.

When we have 23 acres, it takes a long time and then trying to find the people to pick through there.

So yes, a harvester is, and plus our production is right here on site, so we don't have to travel, we just bring it right away to production and then it goes through the process.

We'll put 'em in a crusher, destemmer that takes out all the stems and pushes them through.

That becomes a juice.

We'll put 'em in our press.

- [Mary] Do you have to worry about the birds getting after your crop?

- [Jenny] Yes.

We have to worry about birds in the vineyard.

They like the nice sweet, juicy grapes.

So what we'll use is we use lasers and the lasers give, we'll use them.

They go during the day and at night they just go through and make a little pattern.

We set it up in the vineyard and that will scare the birds away.

Some of the worst predators, we have a lot of raccoons where we're at and they will go through and eat out and clean out the vines.

So we have that.

Also we have deer as you're coming in, you'll see our deer fences.

They are more when the buds just to come out.

The little greens is when we have the deer pressure the most.

We have used the netting, ah just the labor intents to get the netting on and off.

And most of the time, by the time they get the nets off to harvest them, it's that day and try our kids, most of the high school kids and the others are back in school already.

So we're lacking our labor for that.

So the lasers have kind of helped do that.

- And they do a good job?

- They do do a good job.

- [Mary] Do you have to reprogram them so the birds don't get used to the pattern?

- Yep, we reprogram and we set where we want it.

And pressures, one laser will cover about four to five acres, just depending on its location, so.

- [Mary] Okay.

Then for the grapevines, do you plant more each year?

- We haven't.

We've tried to plant some, it's just so labor intensive.

We are growing, we'll be adding more.

We just pulled out a couple acres that we'll be adding some more back in.

- Is there a life expectancy of the grapevines?

- [Jenny] They keep growing until they could be frost damage or they could be winter kill in their, so we've had some that we planted in 2007, so sometimes if you get something dies up above, we have suckers on the bottom just like you do on a tree.

So we'll train up that sucker and start a whole nother one, so.

- Now thank you for telling me all about here, but can I see where the grapes go to after they're harvested?

- Yes.

- Scott, can you please describe the process that the grapes go through after they're harvested and you bring 'em in here?

- Yeah, so it's the day of harvest.

It's exciting.

So we have the bins we put in the vineyard the night before.

And we have a vehicle that will, forks that will drive around with the bins to fill with grapes.

And we use a mechanical harvester.

So the harvester shakes the vines and the grapes fall off the stems into buckets that travel on a chain and dump onto conveyor.

And a series of conveyors dumps it into the bin that is in the next row.

So when the bin is full, it's set on a trailer and it's brought up here.

So it dumps it into a destemmer, and it separates any mog, any matter other than grapes that is in the bin.

The destemmer also cracks the berry open and then the whites are pumped into a the press and the press squeezes them with, with a big airbag and it drops down into a pan that's, it's got a screen.

So it's just letting the juice go through, mostly just juice.

And then we pump it from the pan into one of our tanks.

So this is our primary fermentation tank.

It's all measured in liters.

So this is a, this is a 50, 75 and 100 hectoliter tanks.

Everything that comes in is tracked from the vineyard where Jenny talked earlier about pH, acid and sugar.

Those are tracked in the vineyard.

And then we bring those in and we are measuring those all the way through the fermentation process.

So we introduce yeast into the liquid, which is grape juice.

And the yeast starts to eat the sugar.

And the byproduct of the yeast is alcohol.

But we are keeping track of what's in that tank by the number on the tank, the, the chemistry of the wine, the gallons and the amount of wine.

And every step through the fermentation process, we will lose a little bit.

So we need to log that because the government keeps track of every drop we have and if something gets spilled.

So we have to track all of that in our records.

As you go through fermentation, there's different things that are happening.

And the winemaker's job is not to screw up what the God has given us.

So you have to look at the gases that are being released.

There's a lot of CO2.

So they're keeping track and monitoring everything that's going on with the fruit.

I have say 80% of a winemaker's job is to clean.

We're always cleaning, we're always sterilizing.

You can have no bacteria in the process.

So we're always going through the cleaning process.

We have two people doing that.

Probably could use three.

But it's you, you have what you have.

- [Mary] Yeah, so then do, does the wine go from the big containers here into barrels then?

- [Scott] There's two ways to look at that.

With the reds, we bring the grapes in and we crack 'em running through the destemmer and put them in a vessel to ferment, with the skins and the seeds.

The color from red wine comes from the skins.

So that period of time that it's fermenting on the skins, we're extracting color and tannin, which is plant structure and complexity in a red wine comes from the skins.

So the whites will come in and be squeezed away from the skins right away.

And juice will be fermented.

With a red, so you're gonna put that in a fermentation vessel, then you're gonna take that red and you're gonna squeeze it away from the skins and put it into barrels.

Red wines will mature in a barrel for anywhere from what we, usually nine months is the shortest up to three years.

If you've ever tasted a wine and it's at, oh, that's really dry, that's because the tannin, has a lot of tannin.

So by going into a barrel, over time those tannins become more relaxed and so it becomes smoother as you drink it.

So a white wine will spend months in the, in a tank and during the process doing different things to it.

So we'll start usually bottling whites in the spring after or during the winter after the harvest.

The reds that we're, that we're putting in a bottle today were harvested in, in 2020, 2019.

We just bottled at 2017 cabernet recently because it just needed more time in the barrel to help those, the acid and the tannin become more smooth, so it's easier to drink.

- [Mary] Do you use all of your wine here on site or do you sell some offsite too?

- [Scott] We started growing grapes and the first harvest was 2009 and we sold a lot of our, all of our grapes to other wineries.

And then when we started keeping our white wines in 2014, we didn't know what to expect.

So we did buy a little bit of fruit that year, but today we grow about 40 tons of our own grapes and we're gonna bring 40 tons from surrounding vineyards.

And then we'll bring usually about 40 tons in from the west coast.

So we buy a lot of grapes from Washington.

We buy a little bit from California because they're grapes that we can't grow here.

- [Mary] You have a lot of events that happen here too.

Can we go and see like your event center and some of your facilities where you host groups too?

- [Scott] Yes.

There are so many places around here that you can put a group family reunions and whatever.

So we'll go take a look at 'em and show you what the, what the property looks like.

- [Mary] Sounds great.

(upbeat music) - I have a question.

What are soil amendments and why are they important?

- Soil amendments are anything that you would add to your soil to just make the growing conditions for your plants better.

First thing that you wanna do though, before you even add anything or change anything to your soil, is get a soil test.

The University of Minnesota offers soil testing as well as some county extension offices.

So you'll really wanna call ahead and find out what the fees are and what you wanna test for.

So after we have our soil test back, that's where we get into amendments.

First and foremost, you want some really good, healthy, organic matter and we will buy in compost.

Compost is really just broken down plant material.

It can be wood chips, it can be leaves, it can be all sorts of organic matter, but that really helps you build your soil components and make sure that your microbes, the microfauna bacteria and fungus that are good for your soil, it helps to make sure that they have a good food source to thrive in.

If you are missing certain components, like your phosphorus is too low or your potassium is too low, your soil test will tell you that.

Almost always though, we need nitrogen.

That's really one of the best things to green up your plants.

So we'll buy a meal based fertilizer.

And what I mean is it has like feather meal, bone meal, blood meal, meal based components are not water soluble.

They need that bacterial or fungal breakdown to release the nutrients to the plant.

So this particular fertilizer that we use is a 1602.

And when you look at a fertilizer label, you'll see three big numbers in succession like that.

Nitrogen is the first, phosphorus is in the middle, potassium is on the end.

And then finally, it's not so much a soil amendment, but eventually it will be.

Make sure you give your plants a good coating of mulch.

Mulch will help to conserve your water to make sure that your plants don't dry out that much.

This sorta shredded hardwood will break down and will help eventually feed your plants.

And then you just add more when you need more.

- [Narrator] Ask the arboretum experts has been brought to you by the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, dedicated to welcoming, informing and inspiring all through outstanding displays, protected natural areas, horticultural research and education.

(upbeat music) - This is our cellar.

We call it the cellar, the event facility.

When we built the winery where the restaurant and, and wine tasting is, we needed, we put our production in there, but we needed a place to store the barrels.

So I said, let's build a separate building and we'll call it the cellar and we'll make it bigger so we can have parties.

So we've now put bridal suites in the cellar building where the barrels used to sit.

We have a buffet area so you can, we can do weddings and bring buffets through.

We also do tons of other fun things.

So there's a wedding almost every weekend in the summer on a Saturday, sometimes on Fridays, but through the season we'll have other things going on.

Like today we have a car show.

It's the cruise in, we're gonna do a hog roast and people come and they get a cheap dinner and walk around and look at cars.

So that's one kind of event.

But we have spaces for family reunions, spaces for class reunions.

We have class reunions from people that drive for a half hour, 45 minutes.

They come here, do their class reunion.

'Cause we have a big space that allows for groups of different sizes, we can do the food.

This is really becoming a spot where people come for family and other types of events.

So they're used to driving.

So people come for just events, things that are going on.

The Duck Blind Bar is a space we have over here.

We built a couple years ago, it was a garage.

It was the original garage that was built in the '50's and we were storing stuff in it.

And then when we got the production building, we could move our storage over there.

So we've turned that into a little bar area.

We can do picnics and have family reunions, things like that.

It's just, there's so many spaces that this space won't interfere with that space.

So we can just have other things going on.

- So do you have wine tastings sometimes too?

- We do wine tastings constant.

You know, we think about that.

We started talking about all the space, but people can come and do a wine tasting anytime, during the day.

One of the, one of the things that we, we feature and focus on is flavor.

So there are five tastes, sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami.

Those are the five tastes that everybody has.

So we look at how acid, tannin, sugar balances out against those other flavors.

So not only do you can you do a tasting, you can get a a flight and taste through your dinner.

So you can see how the food and the wine affect each other.

It's a, it's a unique way of doing a wine tasting.

But we see that people like to discover that those two things together.

It's not just getting a bottle or a glass of wine.

You can do that obviously, but just to just discover process of, of drinking the wine and what the taste is all about.

- Do you find that that's getting more popular?

- So there's a, there's a term that came out a couple years ago, it's called Elky Tourism, where people will go with their friends, they'll get a carload or a suburban load or whatever, and they'll, they'll go to a winery and do a wine tasting and then they'll go 20 miles down the road to a brewery or 30 miles further and they're gonna go to a distillery.

So it's becoming a real thing where people just socialize.

It's not, it's not like the old days where you just go sit in a bar or go sit in a restaurant, a Perkins or something like that.

Those are great places for what they are.

But here people can be very social and do things together for a long period of time and just sit and visit.

There's people that will bring their lawn chairs and they'll get wine and just sit by the lake.

If you don't have a lake in your backyard, come sit in my backyard.

You don't have to sit by the winery.

We have music four days a week, so you can come and listen to music in the summer and Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday.

But if you just want to come with your special somebody and go walk off with a bottle and maybe a pizza and go sit on a picnic table, you can do that here.

- [Mary] Well, this has been so interesting and so beautiful.

Thank you so much to you and to Jenny for letting us come out.

- So let me tell you a story.

This is funny, but we bought the property in 2002 and we're sitting about right here in a golf cart.

And the grass was knee high and the trees were overgrown to the ground.

And this was the old farmstead that they were on.

And I said, we just gotta share this.

This is a beautiful place.

So we've trimmed the trees, the grass, we now have some facilities so people can come and enjoy it with us.

But it was just all about let's share this and we're excited that we can do that every day.

- Thanks for sharing with us.

- Thanks Mary.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Prairie Yard and Garden" is provided by Heartland Motor Company, providing service to Minnesota and the Dakotas for over 30 years.

In the heart of truck country, Heartland Motor Company, we have your best interest at heart.

Farmers Mutual Telephone Company and Federated Telephone Cooperative.

Proud to be powering Acira.

Pioneers in bringing state-of-the-art technology to our rural communities.

Mark and Margaret Yackel-Juleen in honor of Shalom Hill Farm, a nonprofit, rural education retreat center in a beautiful prairie setting near Windham, Minnesota.

And by friends of "Prairie Yard and Garden", a community of supporters like you who engage in the long-term growth of the series.

To become a friend of Prairie Yard and Garden, visit pioneer.org/pyg.

(upbeat music)