by Nick Heitman, Category Manager: Meat, Seafood, Beer, Wine & Spirits
Can you tell us a bit about your background, and how you came to making wine in Wisconsin?
Erin Rasmussen: “I grew up in Madison (about a mile away from the west side co-op location!), and I studied French and Music performance at UW. I think that my arts education gave me the vocabulary to talk about wine, and I think access to food outlets like the Co-op and the Dane County Farmer’s Market allowed me the realization that food tastes better when people care about what they’re growing. When I think about my young adulthood through that lens, it almost seems inevitable that I ended up interested in wine, where the farming is just as important as the artistry.
“I moved to Napa Valley for a winemaking internship in 2008 and spent the next ten years learning everything I could. I worked at several wineries in Napa and Sonoma, and ended up getting a graduate degree in viticulture and enology (grapegrowing and winemaking) at Lincoln University in New Zealand.
“Deciding to leave California to make wine in the Midwest wasn’t easy, but when I got the opportunity to taste cold-climate hybrid grapes in a research vineyard and realized I could make wine the way I wanted to in my home state, I jumped at the chance. I was looking for a reason to move back to Wisconsin and pursue a creative challenge.”
What are hybrid grapes, and how do they differ from “traditional” wine grapes grown in climates outside the Midwest?
ER: “Hybrid grapes are interspecies crossings between Vitis vinifera (“traditional” wine grapes) and wild or endemic grape species (Vitis riparia, Vitis labrusca, and others). The hybrids we use for winemaking have been crossed and recrossed and selected for desirable characteristics such as flavor, sugar accumulation, cold-hardiness, drought resistance, and pest and disease resistance. To be clear, these are not GMO grapes. They have been cross-pollinated and grown from seed. It’s like when annual flowers self-seed, and the next year you get volunteers that produce flowers that look suspiciously like the love children of the colors you planted the year before.
“Hybrids differ from traditional varieties because of the genes they inherited from wild grapes. Often, this means that they can be quite acidic (if you’ve ever tasted a wild grape, you know what I’m talking about). High acid grapes like these can be tricky to make wine with, and may be part of the reason why so many examples of midwestern wines are so sweet—the sugar balances out the acid.
“Hybrid grapes are also the reason any of us is able to drink any wine made from traditional grapes. Over a hundred years ago, Europe’s vineyards were mysteriously dying, and no one could save them. The global wine industry was facing a complete collapse until a Missouri entomologist found that phylloxera, an invasive louse-like pest native to North America, was the culprit. Phylloxera feeds on the roots of grapevines, damaging them and leaving them susceptible to fungal infections. Wild American grape species are resistant to phylloxera and so the solution to the problem was to graft traditional wine varieties onto American rootstocks.
“Hybrid grapes continue to solve problems. They are able to grow in more diverse regions (like Wisconsin), and new varieties are being developed to increase pest and disease resistance and drought tolerance.
“Wisconsinites can be particularly proud because the modern era of hybrid grapes was led by Elmer Swenson, a farmer in Osceola, Wisconsin, and the University of Minnesota’s grape breeding program which launched at the beginning of the 20th century. These grapes are now planted all over the world.”
Many wines made in Wisconsin are what most would describe as “sweet,” which is to accommodate the palates of what many people are looking for in the Midwest. How are the American Wine Project wines different, and how would you get people who may prefer a “sweet” wine to give them a try?
ER: “The difference between ‘sweet’ and ‘dry’ gets complicated because consumers have a different working definition of these words than the wine industry does!
“In technical wine terms, ‘sweet’ refers to a wine that has sugar in it. ‘Dry’ refers to a wine that has no sugar. Humans can generally perceive sugar at a concentration of four grams per liter or higher. So, a wine with measurable sugar (technically sweet) may not actually taste sweet.
The opposite is true as well. Some flavors and aromas are perceived as sweeter than others. Vanilla, pineapple, papaya and raspberry jam are all tasting notes that read as sweet flavors. Wines can show aromas and flavors like these and be perceived as sweet but not have any measurable sugars. In winemaking slang, we sometimes call this ‘fruit-sweet.’
American Wine Project wines don’t have any measurable sugars in them. But, several of them are made from grapes that have sweet-associated flavors. When I get to talk to someone who prefers sweet wines, I make sure to ask what kinds of fruit flavors they gravitate towards, and then I can match that up with some of the more ripe, tropical, or juicy styles I make. Summer Land, made with Brianna grapes, is a great example of a technically dry wine that is juicy and tropical.
I think sweet wine drinkers might be surprised at how many wines they enjoy that are sugar-free, and I think people who like dry wines might be surprised at how many well-known ‘dry’ wines contain a little sugar! It’s all about balance and perception.
With the popularity of natural wines growing across the country and globally, what are some of your wine-making processes people may be interested in learning about?
ER: “My goal when making low-intervention wines is to take advantage of the inherent value of my grapes. But, grapes rarely offer perfection, so my job is to apply techniques in order to help the wine be the best interpretation of the vineyard it can be.
“For example, hybrid grapes can be overwhelmingly high in acid. If I were making a conventional wine (even a very expensive one), I might choose to add potassium carbonate (basically baking soda) to deacidify the wine. But, because I know that grape stems have potassium in them, and because I want to extract some of the tannin from the stems as well, I choose to ferment many of my wines whole-cluster.
“I also use older neutral barrels to avoid imparting any oak flavors, and I allow the fermentations to occur with yeasts that are active on the grapes, or in the winery (referred to as native fermentation). Another technique I use is extended lees aging, which means allowing the wine to rest in the barrel, on the sediment (lees), for the better part of a year, or more. This technique allows the midpalate of the wine to develop, builds texture and mouthfeel, and helps the acidity integrate and soften.
“These techniques aren’t exclusive to natural wine, but they do require care and attention to detail, two attributes that are hallmarks of winemaking with minimal intervention.”
Are there any new or exciting wines that we will see from American Wine Project in the near future?
ER: “Late spring is always exciting because it’s the time of year I release the new vintage of Social Creature, a gorgeous magenta-colored rosado, and new vintages of two sparkling wines, Ancestral and We Are All Made of Dreams. For me, getting to release these wines at the tasting room is the true sign that summer is here.
“You have a great tasting room space in Mineral Point, can you tell us what people can expect when they come to visit?
“The winery and tasting room is in the old high school Tech Ed building, but you would never guess it! It’s airy and spacious, with groups of eclectic vintage seating and ample outdoor patio space. The large windows look out over an acre of gardens filled with perennials, wildflowers, and even a frog pond.
“We offer tastings as flights, so instead of elbowing your way to the bar, you get to find the perfect loungy spot to relax, taste the wines, and maybe build a cheeseboard with local options. Each week we offer a spritz made with our fizzy Piquette, and we’ve got craft beer and NA options as well.
“I also encourage people to follow the winery on Instagram and Facebook, which is where we post about special events, food trucks, and opportunities for volunteers to help with botting and other winemaking work.”