Fawn Creek Winery is a family run
business that has been producing a variety of fine wines in the Dells for the
past two years.
Recently, I had the chance to spend the morning with two of the six owners, Dan Hanson and Jim Genrich, who showed me around the wine making facility, explained the wine making process, and poured me samples of their delicious offerings.
CHRIS DEARMAN: So tell me a
little about how you got into the wine making business here in the Wisconsin
Dells.
DAN
HANSON: My folks are from the Dells.
My mom and dad were both born and raised in the Dells. My sister Sue also lives
in the Dells. We basically have six partners here at the winery, me and my wife
Diane, my Brother-in-law Dan Haberkorn and his wife Sally, Jim Genrich, and
also my sister Susan Hanson. All family. It’s a family run business. We’ve
owned it for about two years, taking over business operations of the former
Tourdot Winery, which my sister was a part owner, in January 2011.
That’s pretty neat to be able to run
a successful business with your family. Is this everyone’s primary employment,
or do you have other jobs as well?
We all
work forty hour a week jobs. My sister Sue is an emergency room nurse over in
Sauk County, so she works Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. I’m semi-retired,
so I work Monday & Tuesdays. And then we all come up every weekend. So
that’s how it works. Our brother-in-law Jim, he actually has a vineyard over in
Portage. So he has a wine background. As well as my sister who was running it
before. I do the accounting and sales. We all do different jobs here.
How long has this place been
around for?
My dad
actually built this building, he and my brother-in-law. They built everything
in here. Built the deck, cabinets, shelves. Under Tourdot it was open for two
years, so the building is about five years old.
How did you come up with the name
Fawn Creek? My family used to have a vacation home down the road on Fawn Lake.
I’m assuming there is a Fawn Creek around here?
That’s
actually an interesting story. I didn’t even know Fawn Lake was here when I
named it – I just came up with Fawn Creek for some reason. Just thought it
sounded cool. The first day me and Diana were driving here, we saw a sign that
said Fawn Lake, and was like – wow, that’s really weird!
Everyone
thinks we named it Fawn Creek because of Fawn Lake, but it was just totally a
coincidence, totally out of the blue. Maybe subconsciously I named it this
because my uncle, who lived in Texas, lived on Fawn Creek Drive or something.
But when we found out Fawn Lake here, and we saw a creek running out, I was
like – hopefully that’s called Fawn Creek! – but it’s not. (laughs)
I noticed the vineyard out back.
How big is it, and do you grow all the grapes for the wine you make here?
We have
a three acre vineyard that we started a little over a year ago. We basically are
going to have two varieties of grapes that we’re going to use to make our own
estate wines out of. We’re growing a Prairie Star, which is for a white wine,
and Frontenac, which is for a red wine. We’re about two years away, so were
probably looking at 2015 when we’ll be able to offer our own estate wines that
are grown from grapes from our own property.
So where do you get your grapes
from now?
Right
now, all our grapes come from Lodi, California. We buy through a broker out
there, so it all comes crushed and de-stemmed. All the wine is then made here
using the Australian Method, which means it’s created in stainless steel tank,
which we have eleven of.
Is there a reason you choose
stainless steel tanks instead of barrels?
Most
wineries in California, the old-school way, is that they use barrels. The
reason we went with stainless steel tanks is because the cost to get into the
business. If you want to use oak barrels, the cost for them is quite high, Two
hundred to two hundred and fifty gallon oak barrels are very expensive. Also,
you can only use each barrel for one specific type of wine.
For
instance, let’s say you make a Chardonnay wine and you put it in an oak barrel.
That oak barrel can only be used for Chardonnay forever, or you would contaminate
the flavors. In the wine process you have to rack wines (move them), removing
all the sediment after fermentation. All the dead stuff sits at the bottom. So
with an oak barrel, you would have to move it into another Chardonnay oak
barrel. Here, we can move it from one tank to an empty one, clean it out, and
then we can put a Merlot in one that had a Chardonnay before. So that’s the
reason behind using stainless steel.
That makes sense. So, how many varieties
of wine do you make here?
Presently,
we make thirteen wines. We have two seasonal wines; our Summer Sun, which is a
tropical Viognier – that’s a summer wine, and then we have our Blackberry,
which is our seasonal fall wine. Then we have our whites: a Riesling, Chardonnay,
Pinot Grigio, and semi-sweet Riesling. Our reds are: Merlot, Zinfandel, and Cabernet
Sauvignon. Then, really our niche in the
marketplace, is our fruit-flavored table wines, where we have a blackberry Merlot,
our tropical Viognier, a raspberry Pinot Noir, a Strawberry Zinfandel, our Kilburn
Red – which is a cranberry Shiraz, and then we have a Peach Chardonnay as well.
We carry those all the time.
Do you bottle them here?
Everything
is bottled here. Everything is made by hand in here as well – all the yeast is
put in, everything is done right here. Our first year, which was 2011, we
bottled 28,000 bottles – and last year we did 52,000 bottles. We just went
through an expansion where we doubled out tank size, so now we have the
capacity to do about 100,000 bottles a year. I believe this year we should do
about 70,000.
Wow, with all those glass bottles
around here, is there ever any breakage?
Oh
yeah, we break bottles! (laughs)
Do you just sell wine here at the
winery, or do you sell it in stores as well?
We’re
carried throughout the state. We’re handled in the Fox Valley right now, and
primarily the western side of the state.
Out of the thirteen, which is
your personal favorite?
My
personal favorite is our dry Riesling – which is made in a California style
(not too sweet).
Which would you say is the most
popular of the Fawn Creek wines?
Just
Peachy – which is a Peach Chardonnay. Then our 2nd would be the
Summer Sun, which is our tropical Viognier, our seasonal wine. Those two would
be our top sellers.
Do you get a lot of people that
do that swirling the wine around in their mouth and then spit it out thing?
No,
nobody spits it out – that’s only on TV! (laugh)
I always thought that was a
stupid thing - seems like a waste to me! Are there any other favorites?
Well with
locals, our Kilbourn Red is popular because we donate a dollar
of every bottle sold to the Kilburn Volunteer Fire Department. Diane and I live
in Waterford, Jim lives in Elgin (Illinois), Sue in town, and Sally and Dan
live in Pardeeville. Since a lot of us don’t live in the immediate area, we
tried to do something for the community. Last year was the first year we did
it, and we gave them a check for $4100. They’ll be getting another one again
this year.
Since you’re a bit off the beaten
path, about ten miles from the hustle and bustle of downtown Dells, what have
you done to make people aware of the winery?
Well, we
have a lot of signage. We also market with the Visitor’s Bureau, plus all the
time-shares, we heavily hit those. Have give-away programs with them. But probably
fifty percent of our customers come from
Google. If you Google “winery in Wisconsin Dells” and we pop up first – us and Wollersheim winery (which is about 30 miles from the Dells in Prairie
du Sac, WI).
Speaking of Wollersheim, do you
have any friendly competition with them?
No,
Wollersheim is the big-boy on the block – there is nobody in Wisconsin like
Wollersheim. They were just voted the winery of the year. They’re old school.
They have the caves and the 1800’s building – it’s nothing like where we’re at.
You just concentrate on carving
your own niche?
Exactly.
Can you tell me anything that
stands out that was memorable or out of the ordinary over the past two years?
Last
September we had our 1st wedding. We had ninety guests, and the
bride and groom got married right in the vineyard. The reception was in the
building and on the deck. That was our first wedding, and we got one or two
more planned. It’s not really something were pushing to do in the summer months,
but in April, May, September and October we don’t mind doing them.
Can you tell me a little about
your future plans?
This
summer we’re going to be expanding our deck. Right now it handles ninety-six
people. With the new deck we figure we
can fit another sixty to seventy, so we’ll be able to hold about one hundred
and fifty people total. We have music Memorial Day through September – every
Saturday and Sunday in the afternoons.
We’re
also putting a thirty by sixty cement pad which can either be a party tent or
an additional tasting area. Right now we can only fit about fifteen people at a
time for a tasting in the winter due to being inside. So once we add the new
additions, we’ll be able to go to seventy-four people in the summer.
We’re
also having a BBQ and Blues Fest where blues bands will play, and we’ll serve
pulled pork and BBQ on July 29th. Then August 10th is
going to be our 1st annual Hawaiian Luau Pig roast. Our 3rd
annual Fall Fest is on October 5th – where we have crafters set up
here, and it’s kind of an end of the season blowout party. It’s going to be a
fun season!
Dan thanks for taking the time to
show me around and answer my questions. You have a pretty cool place here, and
I’m sure I’ll be coming back in the summer.
---
Jim Genrich is part owner and
official winemaker of Fawn Creek Winery. He grew up in Portage, WI and I learned that
he currently lives in my hometown of Elgin, IL, only a few blocks from my childhood
home. Jim was kind enough to explain the winemaking process in depth to me, as
well as pour numerous samples of his creations during my tasting.
So, how did you learn to make
wine?
JIM
GENRICH: A lot was from making wine at
home – a lot of online learning, a lot of books, and then pure experimentation.
I also have about one hundred and fifty vines at my mom’s in Portage.
I’m a novice to winemaking, so can
you walk me through the process from start to finish?
Well,
we get a concentrate from California, and then we constitute that concentrate. It
comes in a sixty-four bricks – and at sixty-four bricks it’s impervious to any
bacteria, yeast, mold, or anything. We then take and reconstitute it to twenty-three
bricks. When I talk about sixty-four bricks…
Yeah, what the heck is a brick – I
guessing it’s not the ones used to build houses right?
No,
it means sixty-four percent sugar – essentially it’s the measure of sugar
concentrate in there.
Now do you add stuff to it to get
the different flavors, or does it come already with various flavoring?
It
depends on what we’re making. If it’s one of the varietals, then it’s just the
straight grape juice we’re using. Then we ferment it. Most of them we ferment
dry, or with our Riesling we do two forms – we do a dry, as well as a
semi-sweet Riesling. We do that by stopping the process, so it still has some
of the residual sugar of the grapes inside there, which gives it a little bit
sweeter taste to it.
So how long does the whole
process take?
The
varietals – we’re running pretty close to about 70 days. When we put it in
primary for fermentation, it takes two to three weeks. So it’s 14-21 days to do
primary fermentation – that’s where the yeast converts the sugar.
And you put the yeast in there?
Yes,
we put the yeast in there, and it converts the sugar into carbon dioxide –
essentially, alcohol. Those are the two main components. There are a few other things that come off, but
were looking for the alcohol in there. The carbon dioxide goes out the top of
the tanks through a one way valve – it escapes out of there. That takes about fourteen
to twenty-one days. Then we transfer it all out, because when the yeast runs
out of food, the yeast dies and falls to the bottom of the tank. Once it falls
to the bottom of the tank, what we do is we take the good liquid, the wine that
we want, and we transfer it all to another tank. We always have to have one
tank empty in the building at all times, because we always have to have the
ability to transfer from this tank to another one.
So
essentially, we have eleven tanks in there, but we can only have ten of them
full at any point in time. So when we rack it, we transfer it from one tank to
another, leaving the sediment and stuff on the bottom of the tank. Then I drain
that, and it goes to a holding tank outside. It can’t go directly into our
septic because it has the yeast and stuff in there. It goes into the holding
tank and then we have that pumped periodically and removed.
What happens once you move the
good liquid to the empty tank?
So
the good wine goes to a new tank, and then the next part of the process is
secondary fermentation. Not necessarily all the yeast has died, there might be
a little bit of sugar left in there, so we give that another probably two weeks
to finish up any fermentation that would be done and completed.
Do you have to keep the tanks at
a certain temperature?
Typically
we keep most of them at sixty-five to seventy degrees. That’s where we want to
keep most of them at. When the yeast gets going in there, they actually heat up
quite a bit inside. Yeast dies at about one hundred and four to one hundred and
five degrees Fahrenheit. Maybe slightly higher, one hundred and ten degrees or
so, but if it gets too hot the yeast will die. If it gets too cold, less than
fifty degrees, then it won’t reproduce and won’t do their job either. So we try
to keep it in an environment that is sixty-five to seventy degrees.
Do you have control over how high
the alcohol content gets?
Around
twelve to thirteen percent alcohol – we have tools to monitor the alcohol
content. For table wines we can’t go over fourteen percent. We usually shoot
for twelve to twelve and a half so we have a little bit of room there. In case
the yeast ends up being a little more efficient than we expected it to be.
I’m sure there are rules on how
high it can go?
Yes,
federal regulation – it’s all licensing.
So what happens after the
secondary fermentation?
Secondary
fermentation takes about two weeks, and then what happens after that is our
clearing time – where we put some things in there to allow the solids to clear
from the wine, and then filtering. We want most of the solids to fall down
naturally to the bottom of the tank, and then right before we bottle it though,
we filter it with a particle filter. The wine if forced through the filter, and
any of the solids or undesirables get caught, so it comes out clear.
Dan walked me through the
bottling process, but I forgot to ask, do you guys “age” the wine, or wait a
certain period of time before selling them?
Most
of the varietals we put in the bottles after seventy days, then it will rest in
the basement until we determine it has come into itself. We usually try to do
six months or longer. Six months to a year for the varietals, and the fruits, we
usually do those within two weeks. They are made to be made bottled and drank
shortly thereafter. They are meant to be drunk within a year, but the fruit
ones are in the tanks for about forty days.
What’s your personal favorite?
The
dry Riesling and the Chardonnay for the whites. For the reds, the Merlot
itself. For the fruits, Just Peachy – it
almost tastes like you’re biting into a fresh peach!
Thank you Jim for explaining the
process and letting me taste all this great wine!
