ND Grape and Wine Association

Dakota Sun Shines at the 2018 Indy International Wine Competition

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Dakota Sun Gardens & Winery walked away with top honors at the 2018 Indy International Wine Competition winning gold and double gold for their wines and being named Winery of the Year! Bruce and Marleen Gussiaas have been hosting guests and producing amazing North Dakota wines for almost a decade and are putting quality fruit wines on the international map. At the 2018 competition they received a double gold medal for their Crabapple Wine which also won Best of Class in their category. They also garnered gold medals for their Pear, Apricot and Haskap wines. But the feather in their cap is certainly being named Winery of the Year out of hundreds of wineries from across the country and around the globe. This is a testament to the consistent quality of wines they are making.

4e Winery featured on WDAY

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WDAY showcased 4e Winery in a segment on March 6.

What started as a hobby for a local couple has turned into much more: a winery

Fargo, ND (WDAY/WDAZ TV) – What started as a hobby… has now turned into much more.

The second season of “4-E Winery” near Mapleton kicks off April 16th.

Barely a mile off of Interstate-94, you’ll find this historic Bonanaza farm.

“We get to welcome people to this wonderful little piece of the prairie,” said Lisa Cook.

Lisa and Greg Cook bought the farm a few years back and after renovations and additions, the couple turned this old 20th century farmstead into a winery.

Now it’s called the 4E winery to represent the four elements. Owners say they just want to get people back to their natural roots.

“What we need to do is educate people of North Dakota of its wines and how good they can be,” said Lisa.

Lisa and Greg have been making home-brew wines for more than 20 years.

Greg, who is a chemist at NDSU, says he has always been interested in how wines are made.

“I realized early on that its more art than chemistry in the wine cause it’s a natural living beverage,” said Greg.

4e Winery uses all natural ingredients in their 14-different styles of wine.

Some are hybrid grapes bred for cold climates, others are local berries and rhubarb.

“Now it’s not going to be chardonnay, we can’t grow those or Merlot grapes, but we can grow grapes that grow really well here and they are going to have that taste of the North Dakota prairie,” said Lisa.

Grapes are planted, picked, and then fermented for months.

The wine is transferred from tank to tank throughout the winter, to remove unwanted sediments.

Then, one of the final touches, adding any necessary sweetener.

“Then it’s filtered and bottled, all by hand,” said Greg.

The bottling will continue all throughout the summer, as some of the wines still need to finish fermenting.

The wine can then be purchased through the 4e’s tasting room, which is open every Thursday through Sunday, starting on April 16th.

“It’s more about the experience than it is necessarily the wine, you’re tasting what was grown and produced by hand right here,” said Greg.

The winery also hosts special events like tours and bachelorette parties.

Dickinson’s First Winery

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A great article in the Dickinson Press this morning about Fluffy Fields Vineyard.

Wine fresh off the vine, Dickinson’s first vineyard looks to open in late spring

By Andrew Haffner Today at 5:30 a.m.

Western North Dakota doesn’t come to mind as a wine-producing region, and with good reason.

The state was the last in the U.S. to federally license a commercial winery, and opened its very first in 2002.

More than a decade later, Fluffy Fields Vineyard — Dickinson’s first and only federally licensed commercial winery — could soon give visitors a taste of homegrown North Dakota wine.

The winery is a brainchild of Dickinson couple Kevin and Deb Kinzel and is being constructed on their property near Sundance Coves, east of the city, with hopes of opening for business sometime in the late spring.

Deb Kinzel said her family’s foray into serious winemaking began with a glass carboy — a jug used for fermenting small batches of wine — given to her husband.

The family had already planted some grapes as part of their garden and had dabbled in fermentation, but Deb said that first carboy started a series of expansions that rapidly grew into a building.

“One carboy led to 50 carboys which went to bigger tanks to this,” Deb said, gesturing to the winery around her. “We had one grapevine at first. Then we bought 10, and the next year he ordered 600 — and next year we’re getting 1,000, which we’re planting north of town.”

As the Kinzels delved deeper into their hobby, they invited friends and visitors to the farmers’ market they hosted on their property to taste the wines they were creating.

Those initial tastings went well enough for the couple to consider selling their wares — which wasn’t possible to do legally without extensive permitting and official winery status.

Deb said the options were simple.

“Either I was going to be a bootlegger and end up in jail, or we were going to start a winery,” she said with a laugh.

Kevin said the winery is set up with four 500-gallon fermenters and will soon have a chiller to control the temperature of the fermentation process.

As soon as that piece of machinery is installed, he said, “we’re ready to go.”

Kevin said he’s stocked with enough fruit and grape juice — much of the latter brought in from growers in Iowa, to begin with — to make about 3,000 to 3,500 gallons of wine in the first run.

At five bottles per gallon, the winery could be flowing with as many as 17,500 bottles by the time it gets through its first season of fermentation.

Kevin said the process of making a large amount of wine is basically the same as a small batch, but admitted with a laugh that the undertaking was “a little scary.”

Despite that, Kevin, who has worked at Winn Construction for the past 26 years, said he enjoys driving around on a tractor through the grapes more than anything.

“Seeing the grapes on the vine — between doing that and walking into the building — it’s still enough to make me step back and say, ‘Wow,’ sometimes,” he said.

Moving forward, the Kinzels hope to make the business a family affair both in its staffing and clientele.

Deb plans to open the indoor and outdoor spaces at the winery for weddings, bridal and baby showers, and other larger gatherings in addition to regular tastings and open hours.

Joining the Kinzels in running Fluffy Fields are the couple’s son, Kody and their daughter and son-in-law, Krista and Kenny Jessop.

The Jessops will work on the office end of the winery and Kody, 25, and will serve as Fluffy Fields’ vinter, or wine maker, and oversee production.

Kody said he studied the craft through online courses and spent two months working at Santa Maria Vineyard & Winery in Carroll, Iowa, to prepare himself for the role.

So far, he said the experience, while unexpected, has been a good one.

“My parents kind of woke up and said they wanted to grow grapes,” Kody said with a laugh. “ … At first I was a little leery. I’m not a gardener. But just going to school and learning about the process of making wine and the science of it, it’s actually really fun.”

Kody said North Dakota’s wine-producing culture is “still young,” and while breeding programs from North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota have produced some varieties of grape that can survive the region’s harsh winters, there’s still work to be done to develop and promote cold-climate viticulture, or grape production.

At the same time, he said he saw his parents’ endeavor as well-positioned in a larger industry.

“It’s going to help Dickinson get on the map a little more,” Kody said of the winery. “And it’ll be in a good place when it gets bigger, and more wineries come up here when they find out they can grow grapes and make good fruit wines in a colder climate.”

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