(exciting music) - Welcome to A Shot of Ag.

My name is Rob Sharkey.

I'm a fifth generation farmer from just outside of Bradford, Illinois.

I started a podcast which led into an XM Radio show, which led into a national television show, which led into me being right here today.

But today is not about me.

Today is about Diane Hahn.

Now you are the Owner and Manager of the Mackinaw Vineyard.

- That's right.

- That sounds like a dream job.

- Well you know, people think that often, like when I'm doing tour and tastings and I have multiple ones in a day and people are like, you get paid to drink, don't you?

And I said, kind of, yes I do.

So yeah, it's a lot of work though, too.

My only friend who works harder, we were talking about this, is my friend Ken, who has the Ropp Jersey Cheese.

So grapes are a little well behaved compared to cows.

They're a little easier.

- That would go together, right?

The wine and cheese?

- Well, yes.

We were one of the first places that sold his cheese.

- [Rob] Really?

- Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

We try to really support local businesses and we have Ken's cheese, we have chocolate from The Chocolatier in Bloomington.

I used to sell some jellies and jams from a gal in Pekin.

She doesn't have them anymore, but I mean, and Donnie B's Popcorn in Bloomington.

So any local foodie kind of stuff, we try to carry if we can do it.

- That's very cool.

I should have asked you this beforehand so I don't look like an idiot now.

I'm assuming the Mackinaw Vineyard is in Mackinaw or around Mackinaw.

- Yes, it's in Illinois, and it's a good question because I can't tell you, I used to get a thing from the Michigan Board of Tourism if I wanted to be in their tourism magazine, and I wish I'd had the money.

It was really expensive, 'cause I thought this would be absolutely hilarious if I could be like sure, I'll do an ad for central Illinois.

And I finally one year said I am not near Mackinaw Island.

I am in the center of Illinois.

And they're like, really?

I'm like yeah, there's a Mackinaw, Illinois.

So that's where we are.

We're 30 minutes from right where we're sitting.

- Gotcha.

All right, so it's a family business.

Tell me how it started.

- The winery was founded by my husband Paul, and he was a lifelong farmer and had a construction company and he bought the property, which was a cornfield in the early 90s.

In 1991, he dug a lake on the property, dug the foundation for a house and built a Victorian, and that was his dream, to always build a Victorian style house, so he did that, and then in '97 he decided to get into specialty crops and started looking at specialty crop growing.

He saw a little tiny business card sized ad in a farm magazine, and it said, learn to grow wine grapes in Illinois, and wait for it, the class was in Wisconsin.

Why there was not a meeting room in Illinois where you could learn something, apparently not.

But anyway, so there wasn't.

So anyhow, he went up there, just did a weekend class, decided he'd try it, and he started putting grapes in, and that was in the late 90s.

And then in 2003, built the tasting room onto the back of the house, and it was a pretty small space and just was gonna have a small tasting room and it really kind of took off.

If he was sitting here, he would say we've been playing catch up ever since, but he really had a vision for what the place could be.

It's on 86 acres and we still have corn and soybeans.

My friends, the Cornwell brothers, and that is their real name, farm the corn and soybean.

- [Rob] That's convenient.

- Isn't that the best name?

Cornwell brothers.

Anyway, they do the regular farming, and then the grapes are about 15 acres of the property.

- The grapes, extremely sensitive to anything.

How does that work with being next to corn and beans?

- It's a little challenging.

Our neighbors have been really good to help with it.

We kept commercial pesticide licenses to do our own things, but we know the local FS services.

They know what to ask people that spray around us not to use because they are a little more fragile than corn and soybean, especially with all these crops that are Roundup ready and all these different things, but it works okay.

Our grapes are French-American hybrids and they're developed at University of Minnesota and at Cornell and New York.

They're cold tolerant grapes, so they'll live through our minus 30 degree.

That is their outermost temperature to survive, is minus 30 below zero, and they'll survive.

Most of the vineyard was planted between like '97 and '99.

- It was just corn.

So that had to take a lot of confidence to do that, to take ground out of production agriculture and to put in a vineyard.

- And I will tell you, too.

Paul unfortunately passed away from colorectal cancer six years ago, but when he was alive, he loved live music.

Just always had a love for it and started doing concerts in a small way, and one of the things we're known for is our outdoor music events and concerts.

I can't tell you how many times neighbors would sit with me and him and he'd leave the table for whatever, and they'd lead in looking around the yard at all the people hanging out and they'd go, we thought he was nuts, but he was crazy like a fox because we all thought, really?

You're gonna do a vineyard in Illinois?

Good for you.

- You know what?

It's like if you build it.

Like Kevin Costner.

- Yes, and you know what?

We have a very, it's really dear to my heart commercial.

A friend of ours, Richard, is a ringer for James Earl Jones.

The voice, the look, you should have him on the show.

Anyway, but we made a Field of Dreams commercial with Paul and him, and it's on YouTube.

It's really cute.

And Paul's sitting on a swing and Richard suddenly is there and goes Paul, if you build it, they will come.

Paul, come to your backyard.

And it's the best, and it's all these pictures of kids running around on a concert night and people drinking wine and having fun.

They'll feel as if they took a vacation, though they never strayed far from home.

No, it's really cheesy, but we did it on, we have the world's most interesting beer guy, the Dos Eqis?

So we figured we couldn't get sued.

- Some people think that guys is.

- I was a little, when I met you.

I thought you meant, anyway.

We kept it narrow enough because we called him the most interesting winemaker in Mackinaw, so that's not a big category.

We thought we won't get sued if we say that.

So we have a commercial with that too, where he's like swimming with the dolphins, and seriously, it's video of him.

We were on a vacation and he swam with dolphins.

He's like, I met another crazy person.

But with him swimming with these dolphins, like pulling him through the water and it goes, he doesn't swim with dolphins, dolphins swim with him, and they thank him for it.

And he's kissing the dolphin at the end.

And then we have Bacchus gives him wine making advice.

And one of our employees dressed up with the grapes and a toga out in the vineyard, like asking him questions.

And then what was the other, oh.

Some people say they make handcrafted wine, but he really does.

And through trick photography, he was holding the grapes and he went like this and then magically a bottle appeared and said some people say they make handcrafted wine, but he really does.

He is the most interesting winemaker in Mackinaw.

- Okay, I like it.

- It was hilarious.

The commercial's hilarious.

You'll have to look these up.

They're very funny.

- You guys are still going strong today.

- Yes, 19 years we've been open to the public.

- That you just talked about, because you're doing events.

When you look out over now, how's that make you feel about what you and your husband built?

- It's fun to see it grow every year and think of Paul.

If he was sitting here, he'd say this.

He had just a vision of a small boutique kind of winery and over the years, and again, it's really grown with our customer base and what people liked and wanted to see more of.

So we started out doing weddings and we did just a couple the first year.

He built a gazebo down by, we have a big, we have a five acre lake and he built a gazebo in front of it for a bandstand.

So people said, can we get married in there?

And it was like two weddings and then it ballooned to 10 and then 20, now we're around 30 to 40, sometimes more weddings a year.

So we built a big pavilion building.

See what you've been missing?

- Who says I'm missing anything?

I've been to your place.

- Have you been to a concert?

- No.

- See that's, wait 'til you see that.

It's really fun.

People come with their families and everything, but you know, it's just grown with the weddings, the murder mysteries.

Those are fun.

Those are indoors in the fall and the early winter, early spring.

- [Rob] It was chilly.

- Yeah.

That we're indoors.

We don't do everything outside, but it's fun.

It's a fun place, and that's the thing for me.

I'll tell you one landmark I was always hoping for.

Last year I had a girl get married there who was five years old the first time she was there.

Her dad was in one of the bands and she was there, 'cause often we'll do a wedding in the afternoon and they'll stay and do their reception and then hang out for the band night.

She saw brides there through the years, and she had told her folks when I get married, I want to get married there.

And her wedding was there last year.

It was just like a full circle feeling of you do something long enough and people like it, and I kept waiting for that either guy or girl to show up, say I remember coming here as a little kid and I wanted to get married here.

- Honestly, I mean, come on.

You want to talk full circle?

I mean, you make wine, right?

So it would be cool to have someone get married there that was conceived with the aid.

- I'm sure there would be many people that would say my parents told me.

Maybe there's kids running around with the middle name Mackinaw that we don't know about.

It could be.

If your middle name is Mackinaw.

Not the island, Illinois.

- Focus.

- Oh, squirrel.

- When people think of central Illinois, they don't think of.

- Oh they think of Mackinaw Hill.

- No, but they think of corn, soybean, flat.

- Oh, absolutely, yes.

- Your area is not quite like that.

- It is kind of fun because I can always tell a first time person visiting 'cause they walk in through, you kind of come in through a small gift shop and come out in the tasting room.

And Paul, again, with the vision of his construction background, he built this great big peak view window that overlooks the valley, and it's a real valley and we're on a glacial moraine, and then the building is, the tasting room's off the second floor, so it's all windows and you can see the whole valley floor below you and it's really beautiful, and this time of year is great 'cause all the crops are coming in different colors.

It's so pretty, and the vineyards popping, and people walk in and they just, they go, a frequent comment, you really have a valley.

They can't believe it.

They think it's just kind of a little joke that yeah right, it's a valley.

It's so flat here.

- That's because that's what we do here in central Illinois.

I live in a valley.

Oh, you live in a five foot depression.

- You live in a swale.

It's a drainage ditch.

No, but it's pretty, and I've had many people, and I think this too, if we could throw mountains at the very back of that view, it really looks like Napa Valley or some of the famous wine country kind of places.

- That just takes a lot of dirt moving.

All right, growing grapes, building a place is one thing.

Making the wine, oof.

How do you learn to do that?

- Paul really, and I would say with the two exceptions I can think of, maybe three in Illinois, most people that own wineries, they inherited some land.

They kind of self-taught through trial and error.

Maybe they had background in chemistry or biology or something.

Paul didn't, he just by trial and error learned to do it, took classes, talked to people, watched tapes, read things.

I've assisted with that process over the years.

When he got sick and it was clear he wasn't gonna make it, Eric Hahn, his son Eric, his youngest took over the wine making.

And so Eric really has the management of the vineyards.

He does the rough wine making and wine industry.

A lot of what he does is cellar route where they're harvest, pressing, doing all those things, and then when comes to finishing the wine, which is really the blending and adding sugars, we all do that together.

We do it bench testing.

A group of us will sit, figure out how sweet or not sweet we want something.

If we want to blend things, talk about it before bottling and make those decisions.

- Do you do the, where you stomp on the grapes?

- We do, and I brought my little friend over there, little stomping girl has been sitting next to you, but the Memorial Day weekend, or I'm sorry, Labor Day weekend, Sunday.

- She looks angry.

- [Diane] Well I think, yeah.

She looks shocked.

- Is that supposed to be a happy look?

- I think it's the shocked look.

It's sort like the Lucy show, there's that famous stomping scene so Lucy's like, you know, crazy face.

She needs red hair, though.

- Have you seen the clip of the gal doing it on the news and she fell down and like broke her clavis or something?

- No.

- You haven't seen that?

Oh, we'll have to get you watch that.

- We put two half ton tubs out and I have the band The Mystery Machine comes and they play music in between the stomping, but one of the guys DJs for me and we just play crazy music.

I dress up like Lucy.

- [Rob] You dress up like Lucille Ball.

- And I just act crazy.

I MC it and encourage people to get in the tubs.

Usually families will come and parents in this tub and kids in this tub and jumping around.

We like Katie Perry.

- Really?

- Yeah, it's like dance music.

It's really nutty.

You need to come.

- It's like a new version on an old, oh I would, no.

- It's very fun.

It's just silly fun, and I have prizes for the kids.

The kids win a lot 'cause they just do, and the judging, as it's loosely put, is by the audience clapping for whoever.

Paul used to dress up as Bacchus.

Eric does it now and Eric is like six seven.

- [Rob] You said Bacchus?

- Bacchus the Greek god of wine, whatever he was.

- There's a god of wine?

- Yes, don't you get out much?

- Apparently not.

- Yeah, Bacchus, but he's a Greek myth thing, but he's like the partier god.

- He's a Greek myth thing.

He's a god.

- Well, one of them.

Anyway, he's Bacchus, but Eric dresses up like him and he has this big wooden staff.

I've got a mic so he puts the staff over the people and they're like clap for the winners.

And then the audience judges it, but I let the kids win.

I'm an easy judge.

And I have a big grab bag, and then I have gift certificates for the adults to win a free swag item or couple bucks or something.

- [Rob] Can we try some?

- Yes, if you would like to try some, that would be just fine.

- Which one?

- The one closest to you, the Alexander's Conquest.

When Paul first opened in 2003, he entered six wines in the state fair competition.

All of them medaled.

Five of them got silvers, and that wine won the double gold and the best in show for the state.

He had a good palate, and that was a big honor for a first time entry, and that kind of put the place on the map.

If he was sitting here, he'd say I was running to catch up ever after that.

But we age our red wines, and red wines will hold up quite a long time, 15, 20 years, if you make them right and you store them correctly.

This wine we entered in the state competition in 2021 and it won another double gold, so we're pretty excited about that.

- Must be good.

You know why I already like this?

- No.

- Thank you.

Let me say thank you.

- You're welcome.

- For putting the tab on there.

- Yes, we tried to make it simple.

- Here, can you take the tab off?

- I can, and if I can do it, anyone can, 'cause I have like no fingernails.

So you tear it and pull that off.

- What's so hard about putting this on?

- I don't know, and I don't like it when I get bottles of wine and that's not on there.

You need a wine knife then.

- Look how fancy PBS is.

You ready for this?

- Oh, wait.

Okay, yes.

(glasses clinking) I was not told to bring glasses.

- They're plastic.

(glasses clinking) At least we won't break them, huh?

That's right on the mic, too.

It drives the guys in the back crazy.

(Diane whispering) - You can.

- Okay.

The plastic safety in case certain people in the acting community show up and want to throw things.

More safe.

- Oh, the Johnny Depp.

- Yes.

- Yes, so look at this.

- But there's an H on them, like Hahn.

I just realized that, isn't that cool?

- I don't know what the H originally stands for.

- Well now it's for Hahn.

- It's for Hahn, yeah.

You ever seen one of these?

This is PBS', too.

- I have seen those.

- Should we try using it?

- That's kind of high end.

Think you can handle that?

You can drive a tractor, forklift, mower.

- I can, so I put that down.

Now what?

- [Diane] Squeeze the handle and then crank the thing back.

- Well, it's not like setting.

There we go.

Here, you squeeze.

- Okay, and you pull the handle.

- Okay, here we go, it's teamwork.

I'm not feeling good about this.

- You didn't quite do it right.

Well, it wasn't straight.

- How can you do it wrong?

- It wasn't straight, but that's okay.

Now pull it, pull.

It should pull up.

- Oh, there it comes.

- See, I'm holding tension.

There we go.

- So you're doing all the work.

- You didn't really do it wrong, but you need to have this lower.

You had it a little crooked.

- You didn't really do it wrong, but you screwed it up.

- Hey, here's the thing.

The bottle's open.

That's all that counts.

- Are you supposed to do something with the cork?

- Well, you take it off.

I mean, if you're gonna re-cork the bottle.

- You see people smell it and stuff.

- No, I don't.

You smell the wine.

Yes, I'm not gonna mess with this now.

- We're gonna put this down here.

Is there a proper way to pour?

- Well, don't spill it (laughing).

- Okay, thank you.

That seems aggressive.

- These wine glasses are not great for tasting.

You want a wine glass, here, excuse me.

Excuse me in the camera.

This is a really good wine glass for tasting.

In fact, I'm gonna let you have this 'cause you're gonna follow me along.

- [Rob] Is that legal?

- Sure.

- It's fine.

- Anyway, you want this wide hip part in the glass so you can swirl it and open it up, and you want this tapered lid.

See how these are kind of wide.

- [Rob] These are more champagne.

- Yeah, they are, and this is gonna taste better.

I'm gonna give you this glass, but you asked about proper wine tasting, so first thing you want to do with wine, you want to check your color and you want to see a nice burgundy or purple color, dark red.

You don't want to see ambers or oranges.

That's a sign of oxidation, and that means the winemaker didn't keep the air out of the tanks when you are making it.

We use inner gas to blanket the tanks, and so it keeps air off.

It's a spoilage thing to have it oxidized.

So this nice red color.

Now we're gonna swirl it and open it up.

This is super important, because 80%.

- You're aggressively swirling.

- I'm aggressively swirling it.

Couple reasons.

You're opening it up and you're putting the air back in that we went to a lot of trouble to keep out of it when we're making it.

The other thing you're doing, and this is very scientific, you're volatizing your esters.

So, what are we doing?

- [Rob] Volatizing.

- Volatizing my esters.

On a chemical level, the esters are what gives fruit their smell, flowers their smell.

So this is really important to release these because the next thing you're gonna do is you're gonna smell the wine, and when you smell the wine, 80% of what your brain thinks you're tasting in your mouth is your sense of smell.

- [Rob] 80%?

- 80%.

This is an off-dry wine, meaning, dry means zero sugar.

When the wine's done fermenting, we leave it alone.

If we add a little bit of sugar, it's an off-dry, a little more is a semi-sweet, and then a sweet is like, you know it's sweet.

- [Rob] That's Boone's.

- That's sweet, that's a sweet wine, that other one, the white one.

Okay, so I've swirled it and opened it up for you.

I want you to sniff it.

I'm gonna do this on this empty glass.

Go like this, stick your nose in.

- Oh, we're going all in.

- No, you're you're gonna taste this.

So big sniff, 'til the point that you almost can taste it from smelling it, right?

- Well, there's too much.

No, I took in too much.

That's on me.

- So do your nice sniff.

Then take a little sip, swish it around like mouthwash and then swallow.

- Okay.

- This glass is a little tough.

- You know usually I would have a joke, right?

But you can't joke about this.

This is fantastic.

- Isn't that great wine?

- It is, and I'm not a huge red guy.

- But tasting it properly and having it in a proper glass makes a huge difference in the wine, the quality of the wine tasting experience, and that's a nice wine in that it's very, has just enough sugar, takes the acid down a little bit.

Red wines can be a little bit acidic, and you can drink it by itself to enjoy it or have it with food.

It's a nice balanced wine.

You like it?

- I'm gonna need a moment.

- Here.

- Yeah.

- Cheers.

Good.

That's a tasty wine.

What do you think?

Do you drink reds very often?

- No, because I don't really like reds.

I didn't think I did, but that's fantastic.

- What you just said is interesting, because when I do tour and tastings, often I'll have a group and we'll do tours and wine tastings and I do chocolate and wine tastings, so I pair chocolate from the chocolatier with our wine.

I always use drier wines for that, especially.

So I'll have a group of people sitting and I'll say, how many of you drink sweet wine?

Almost everybody will drink sweet wine, probably four to one.

So I will ask them that, and then a very few people will say they like dry wine.

We'll taste it properly like you just did, and the sweet drinkers usually go home with a bottle of dry wine.

They go, I never knew I liked dry wine, but this tasted really good because of what we did, and I said had you not done the swirling, the sniff, the whole thing, you would've probably thought it was a little bit too much.

- We've only got a few minutes left.

Talk about this, and I will amuse myself.

- I brought a schedule for you, but basically like I said, we have concerts.

We start in end of May.

- [Rob] Want a drink?

- No, I have my water.

We have our opening festival in May, and it's just really fun.

The Lion's Club participates.

We have a cookie lady with ice cream cookie sandwiches.

- [Rob] This place sounds like heaven.

- It's fun.

For the opening May festival, we'll get like 50, our wines plus about, our wines in total, it's about 50 wines to taste and then wines from all over the world and then craft beers, we'll have wine and craft beer tasting and music all day and food.

It's very, very fun.

And then every Saturday June through September, we have a concert out on the lawn and it's down by the lake.

We have a couple Friday night concerts.

Chicago Farmer is gonna be there with us.

Chicago Farmer, he's a guy that grew up just south of us in Delavan, really nice guy.

He'll be there on one of the Fridays.

I think it's the 15th.

And bless his heart, he's coming on his anniversary.

I owe his wife, 'cause he's playing on their wedding anniversary.

But they're a nice couple.

- Our next guess is actually my preacher.

I probably shouldn't drink anymore.

- I don't know your preacher, so it could be okay.

Anyway, Brushville is gonna be there on the 29th, so we try to do kind of more country stuff on Friday nights, but all the bands kind of play a nice smattering of dance music and different things like that.

I should have brought some cheese for you to have with that.

We do salsa dance lessons and Bev Caballero come and do salsa lessons on Friday nights once a month in the summer.

It's super fun.

And then Father's Day fishing.

We let dads and grandpas and families come out and do fishing for free on Father's Day and bring a picnic.

We have a wine run for the Children's Hospital Cancer Center.

- So if people want to find.

- Yeah, upcoming events.

We have many of these schedules.

- [Rob] Website?

- Yeah, website, upcoming events, mackinawvalleyvineyard.com, or pick up the phone and call the winery.

But if you go on our website and the email there comes to me, if you see something and have a question like oh, what can we bring or what are we doing or whatever, just call or email me is fine.

But yeah, and the grape stomp and we have an art festival in July with local artists that come, We have a lot of stuff.

- This is the best interview I've ever had.

- I hope you remember it.

I'm glad you enjoy it.

That's one of my favorite wines that we make, and I love it.

I enjoy all our wines and Eric does a good job.

- Diane Hahn, Mackinaw Vineyard.

Thank you very much.

- Thank you.

- Everybody else.

- Salud.

- We'll catch you next week (laughing).