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Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery
Five-year-old winery and cidery now the largest in Minnesota
It’s not an unfamiliar story: A couple raises four daughters while farming corn and soybeans, and during free time they visit wine regions in Italy and California. They get bitten by the “let’s start a winery” bug, plant some vines and open the doors to a small winery. That story describes how Gary and Vicky Vogt, owners of Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery in Spring Valley, Minn., entered the wine business, but it doesn’t really tell the full story or give a clue as to what happened next: In five years, the winery went from being just opened to the largest winery in Minnesota.
Vicky Vogt had been looking for a business opportunity that would draw her four girls, now grown, back home to southeastern Minnesota. She knew that none of her daughters or sons-in-law wanted to grow corn or soybeans as she and her husband had done for about 25 years, but it occurred to her that they might be interested in growing grapes and opening a winery, as the entire family enjoyed wine. She and her husband attended a wine conference to learn more about the industry, she did a lot of research and then wrote a 40-page business plan.
During 2010, the family began to put that plan into effect, and two daughters, their husbands and children became part of the new venture. Daughter No. 1, Shawn, an attorney, and her husband, Patrick Sween, an aeronautical engineer, moved their family east from California so that Sween could be the vineyard manager. He took courses through the University of Minnesota’s VESTA program to learn the skills needed to grow grapes, while Shawn Vogt Sween set up her law practice in nearby Grand Meadow with the winery as one of her clients. Daughter No. 3, Kristin Osborne, and her husband, Justin Osborne, also joined the winery’s team. Kristin Osborne, who had run her own public relations agency, became the marketing director, and Justin Osborne, formerly a construction manager, also took courses through the VESTA program to learn the winemaking skills he would need as the family’s winemaker.
The winery, a combination tasting room/wine-production facility with about 9,000 square feet, was built in 2010-11. Vogt worked with architect John Kirk, owner of John W. Kirk Design in Minneapolis, Minn., to come up with a plan for the winery that allowed for additions when the winery needed more space in the future. The winery design is distinctly modern, even futuristic. The roof is stainless steel; the walls in the tasting room are composed of two main materials: a horizontal metal siding and a vertical cedar wood, with the goal of creating a somewhat industrial-style space but with the wood providing a feeling of warmth.
The Vogt family planted a total of 6 acres of grapes in 2010 and 2011; the winery was bonded in 2010 and officially opened Dec. 15, 2011. Osborne had made 8,000 gallons of wine, and within a year they were sold out. In 2012, production was increased to 12,000 gallons, and the following year to 26,000 gallons. Vicky Vogt had planned for the winery to expand, but she never envisioned that growth would happen quite so quickly. According to the Wines Vines Analytics Winery Database, Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery makes between 50,000 and 499,999 cases per year.
Early in his winemaking career, Osborne noticed that many hard ciders were being made with artificial flavoring and colors, but none emphasized the natural flavor of the apples. He decided to try making a cider using local Honeycrisp apples and no flavorings or sugar. He made small lots of cider in 2012 that were then sold only on tap in the Four Daughters tasting room under the name “Loon Juice.” The cider is light in color with a crisp, pleasant apple taste and a great acid/sugar balance, and visitors to the winery loved it. Officially launched into distribution in August 2014, Loon Juice hard cider was packaged in 5-liter mini-kegs custom-made by a German company.
With sales of wine and demand for Loon Juice increasing, the family decided they needed to double the size of their sales, wine production and storage areas. In 2014-15, a 9,000-square-foot addition to the winery created space for the Barrel Room (a working barrel-storage facility that also can be used as an event space to seat 300 people), a pre-function Cocktail Room that can handle 200 guests standing or 80 seated, a private dining room for 20 people, an expanded kitchen facility that will allow for cooking classes and a wine-storage area.
In 2016, the winery expanded again, adding a separate 12,000-square-foot building dedicated to the production of Loon Juice. The cider facility, with higher ceilings, more space and a better design, was finished by June 1, and this summer Osborne created four other flavors of cider: Tea Time, Ginger Mojito, Strawberry Shandy and Grow a Pear.
The vineyard
The Vogts farm approximately 5,000 acres, so they had some choices for land to use for a vineyard and winery. They selected a parcel of 9 acres near the intersection of two state highways about a half hour south of Rochester, Minn. The topsoil on the site is shallow, drains well and is characterized as dry and rocky, which is typical for the Upper Mississippi River
Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA) that includes the Four Daughters location. The AVA is the largest in the country—covering 29,914 square miles—and includes parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois.
Like many of the 32 wineries within this AVA, the Vogts planted cold-climate varieties developed by Elmer Swenson and the University of Minnesota breeding programs including Brianna, Frontenac, Marquette, Edelweiss, Frontenac Gris and St. Croix; all are own-rooted.
Kristin Osborne, the winery’s marketing director, told Wines & Vines, “We knew that VSP was a solid, proven option for trellising, but with the rich, fertile soil in southeast Minnesota, the moveable wire lyre, in theory, would be a much better option for our vigorous vines. We’re the only ones in the Midwest with this trellis system (it’s labor intensive and very difficult to build). Once it’s up and managed properly though, you should nearly double your production per acre. So, in theory, we knew this would be the best trellis system for us, but we didn’t know how the growth would play out.”
As a consequence, Patrick Sween, the vineyard manager, noted, “We put half of each variety on VSP and half on Lyre.” In order to allow him to change the trellis system in the future, the vines are more widely spaced than in many vineyards: There are 10 feet between rows and 8 feet between vines, resulting in approximately 575 vines per acre.
“In addition to the cold-climate grapes, we’ve got a couple rows of oddballs,” Sween continued. “There’s some small amounts of Riesling, Aligoté, Chardonnay, Grüner Veltliner, Gewürztraminer and Muscat, plus some miscellaneous vines we brought back from workshops at the university.” Most of the vinifera vines came from the nursery at Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyards in New York, while the source for the Minnesota varieties was Winterhaven Vineyard and Nursery in Janesville, Minn.
The winery has no plans to expand the vineyard, which is fine with Sween. He does most of the work in the vineyard manually but occasionally brings in some other family members to help, especially in managing the Brianna grapevines. He has few problems with insects and is fortunate not to have any Japanese beetles, but the humidity in Minnesota makes it necessary to spray multiple times for powdery and downy mildew. The row middles are planted with turf grass, with no cover crop under the trellis. Round-up is sprayed early in the season, and other herbicides are applied as needed during the growing season.
Véraison occurs about Aug. 1, and Sween anticipates harvest may be somewhat early this year. In order to control the labrusca character in some of the varieties, he plans to pick Edelweiss at about 15° Brix and Brianna at 18°-19° Brix. He usually gets 18 tons of fruit from the 6 acres at Four Daughters; the remainder of the Minnesota varieties are purchased from nearby vineyards to give the winery flexibility in case of localized spring or fall frosts. Harvest is all done by hand.
The winery
Making wine from Minnesota cold-climate varieties offers challenges that don’t often occur with other hybrid grapes or with vinifera. Minnesota hybrids can have high acid levels, sometimes over 14 g/L; pH numbers can be as low as 3.0; Brix numbers vary from very low (such as the Edelweiss mentioned above) to more normal, between 21° and 24° Brix, but with Marquette and Frontenac Gris sometimes achieving sugar levels as high as 28° Brix.
White wine grapes arrive at the winery either in picking lugs or MacroBins, depending on the grower. The vineyard at Four Daughters supplies only part of the fruit needed for their wine. Consequently, Osborne brings in grapes from growers in the Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA and in other parts of Minnesota, and smaller amounts of grapes or juice from California.
Osborne likes to press whole clusters, and the grapes are put by hand into the SK 28 hl pneumatic membrane press from Prospero Equipment. The juice then goes into one of the Letina tanks from G.W. Kent to cold settle. The glycol chiller keeps the juice at around 40° F, and after four or five days, Osborne warms the juice by wrapping the tanks in heated blankets. He notes, however, “It doesn’t work very well.”
Depending on the Brix of the juice and the ultimate style of the wine to be made, Osborne may sweeten the juice either by adding white granulated sugar or blending in a higher Brix juice.
Deacidification also takes place before fermentation. “My philosophy is to do a little of everything: a little water, a little deacidification, a little sugar, some blending,” Osborne said. “Using a little bit of several methods helps avoid the major drawbacks of any one particular method.” He added that he rarely needs to deacidify any of the red wines. “The only cold-hardy red wine we make is Marquette,” he stated, “and that acid can be managed in the vineyard.”
With the white wines, he adds yeast to kick off the fermentation, but the strain varies from year to year. He noted, “I’ve had good success with basic Prise de Mousse yeasts,” or he may add either Lallemand’s Champagne yeast or a Laffort yeast. Fermentation usually takes two to four weeks, and the white wines rarely go through malolactic fermentation.
Osborne decides when to filter the white wines depending on the style of the wine. “If it’s a sweet wine, we could filter before fermentation is complete,” he said. “If it’s a barrel-aged white, it might not be for a year.” However, typically white wines are filtered using their Della Toffola crossflow filter a day or two after fermentation is completed. Most white wines are bottled six to 10 months after harvest. Osborne currently has a small amount of Chardonnay in oak, and he plans to keep it there for 10 months before bottling the wine.
Like the white wine grapes, the red grapes arrive at the winery in lugs or MacroBins. Grapes that come from places like California, including Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon, arrive in MacroBins that have been chilled and shipped immediately to Four Daughters.
All red grapes are sorted by hand and then dumped into the Precisa 50 crusher/destemmer from G.W. Kent. After crushing, the grapes are put into one of the 2,000-gallon SK red fermentors from Prospero Equipment. If those tanks are in use, the grapes will be fermented in 225-gallon MacroBins. Fermentation is usually kicked off with Lallemand’s D-254 yeast and normally takes anywhere from five to 10 days. If the grapes are in a red fermentor, a sprinkler from G. W. Kent is used for a couple of hours per day, according to Osborne, or by doing a rack and return one time per day. If the grapes are in a MacroBin, they are punched down three times per day by hand, using a punch-down tool.
After fermentation is complete, the wine is pressed using the SK pneumatic membrane press and goes into French oak barrels from reWine (located in Salem, Ore.) for eight to 24 months, depending on the variety. All red wines are filtered using the Della Toffola crossflow filter prior to bottling.
Now that the cider production has been moved into a separate building, the production facility is being converted into a “boutique” winery. Osborne has hired an executive winemaker, Daron Ford, and “winemaker one,” Carrie Gurule, who works only on the wine side.
The cidery
One of the first questions about Four Daughters cider is: Where did you get the name “Loon Juice?” According to Osborne, the name came to him while he was on a fishing trip in northern Minnesota. “I wondered, what would happen if you got lost there, in northern Minnesota? What would save your life?” He noted that the Swiss have St. Bernard dogs with small barrels of brandy that save people in the Alps. “It had to be alcohol,” he continued, “and I wanted to use Honeycrisp apples that were patented by the University of Minnesota for our cider. The loon is the state bird, so if a loon came to the rescue, it would bring ‘loon juice.’”
As the Four Daughters’ website says, “Despite our name, Loon Juice contains zero traces of loon. Because that would be gross. Instead, all our cans contain the perfect combination of nature and fun—two things we can all agree on. Everything starts with the best-tasting apple around: the Honeycrisp.” As many apples as possible are sourced from orchards in Minnesota, but as the quantity of Loon Juice produced has increased, the winery has had to get some Honeycrisp apple juice from Wisconsin, Iowa, Washington and, in the summer, from Chile.
The Honeycrisp juice arrives at Four Daughters in 5,500-gallon tankers and is put into one of the 5,800-gallon tanks made by Badger Fabrications in Sauk City, Wis. Champagne yeast is added to start the fermentation; the temperature of that fermentation is controlled using the glycol chiller. After the cider has finished fermentation, it is sweetened with fresh Honeycrisp juice to bring the alcohol to about 6% and then filtered on the same day through the Della Toffola crossflow filter. According to Osborne, after a day or two of filtering, the cider is pasteurized using the 42 hl per hour pasteurizer from IDD Process and Packaging and goes into cans that same day. The canning line, a 24/4 monobloc from Palmer Canning Systems can fill 200 cans per minute.
The new flavored ciders that Osborne added to the cider lineup this summer include some juice concentrates added to the apple juice: Ginger Mojito has key lime juice, ginger and mint essences; Grow a Pear includes pear juice; Strawberry Shandy has strawberry concentrate and lemon juice, and Tea Time has black tea added to the apple juice.
When Osborne first made Loon Juice, it was served only on tap in the tasting room. As demand for the cider grew, the decision was made to distribute the cider to restaurants in a specially designed package: 5-liter mini-kegs. “We especially liked the space that the mini-kegs gave us for graphics,” Kirstin Osborne noted. “A local artist did the artwork. At that time, we were the only place in the U.S. putting cider in mini-kegs.” The first distributor shipment of 50 kegs went out in the fall of 2014.
The winery, however, knew Loon Juice was a good product and that it was going to grow in sales volume. The mini-kegs had to be filled by hand, a major disadvantage when large volumes need to be packaged. Consequently, the winery switched to using 22-ounce “bomber” bottles and then added its first canning line in the summer of 2015.
When the 12,000-square-foot cider facility was finished May 31, 2016, the original canning line was replaced with the new 200-cans-per-minute Palmer Canning Systems line. Four Daughters also has hired a cider maker, Luke Schomer, to help manage the facility. The canning line runs five days per week and sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays.
Meanwhile, the mini-kegs haven’t been totally abandoned. While not in use right now, Justin and Kristin Osborne think they will be used in the future for special events or holidays.
Marketing
Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery is located about an hour and a half drive southeast of Minneapolis-St. Paul and was designed to be a destination winery. The vineyard was planted with the idea that weddings might be held in the middle of it or on the patio when the weather is warm, and the new Barrel Room was designed for events as large as 300 people. The windows in the Barrel Room that look out on the patio and the vineyard are actually a series of garage doors that can be raised to expand the room to the outside when the weather permits. The space has a dual purpose, as the barrels are not just for decoration but are used for aging wine.
With a tasting room bar, a restaurant on site, tables and chairs both inside and on a patio overlooking the vineyard, it is a welcoming place for people who want to spend an afternoon in the country, and the winery has developed a loyal local clientele. But Four Daughters also benefits from being only a half hour drive south of Rochester, home of the internationally known Mayo Clinic and a large IBM facility; it also is not far from the headquarters of Hormel Foods in Austin, Minn. As a result, the winery has visitors from all over the world.
Promoting a winery takes a lot of hard work utilizing social media, advertising, public relations, special promotional events and much more. Vicky Vogt and Kristin Osborne have done that, but sometimes it’s being in the right place or who you know that can make the difference. That happened to Four Daughters in 2014, when a high school friend of Vogt’s recommended to the Universal Music Group that they use Loon Juice at their after-party at the 2014 Country Music Awards, and the planner in charge did just that.
As a result of contacts made at the Country Music Awards, Four Daughters was asked to provide wine for private events at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2015, and then in 2016 the winery became the official provider for the Sundance Film Festival. Their wines—including Marquette, Chad’s Folly, Big Boy Blend and Moscato—were poured at all official festival receptions and parties.
The final question for Vicky Vogt: Does she think her other two daughters will come back to Spring Valley and join the winery? She responded, “Hopefully, at some point!”
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