Nauvoo, IL

With a 12-acre vineyard and wine-making plant, Brenda and Kelly Logan are preserving a family tradition that dates back to 1857 when Kelly’s great, great grandfather planted the first grapes on this west central Illinois farm. The couple is also helping to preserve the history of Nauvoo, a community whose past is steeped in the drama of religious clashes and prohibition.

Once upon a time, Nauvoo supported 600 acres of small, family-owned vineyards. Then in the 1920s, the government put a halt to commercial wine production by banning alcohol consumption. Kelly and Brenda’s vineyard is one of very few that sprung back into gear after prohibition ended in 1937.

Now Brenda and Kelly give farm tours, explaining that history and the art of wine making, and they are part of a thriving local agritourism economy heralding the area’s past. On their home place stands glass blower and pastry shops, both operated by neighbors, and their own storefront with wines, grape juices, apples, apple cider and fruit preserves for sale. Across the street, other neighbors run a bed and breakfast.
In town are several antique shops and other tourist-friendly businesses. The main feature of Nauvoo, however, is more than 50 restored homes of Mormons who where driven out of town by an angry mob in the 1800s. These houses draw present day Mormons from across the country back to learn that part of their people’s history.

While Mormons religious beliefs prohibit imbibing alcohol, they come to Baxter’s Vineyards to pick apples and grapes and indulge in other sweet treats. Brenda estimates her farm gets as many as 30,000 visitors a year, including many repeat and local customers. Baxter’s also has an internet-based mail-order business.

The Logans host home wine-maker contests and they sell fresh grape juices and equipment for home wine making. At an annual grape stomp the couple hosts at the vineyard, their guests step into wooden wine barrels for a competition to see who can stomp the most juice out of eight pounds of red globe grapes in three minutes. The Logans also participate in several local tourism initiatives with the city, such as an Easter Bunny Trail, a Nauvoo Holiday Walk in December, and a September Nauvoo Grape Festival.

When the couple bought the farm from the family corporation in 1987, they did all the work themselves. Brenda attended seminars and classes on wine-making and soon took over that part of the operation, while Kelly oversees the outdoor work. As soon as the business picked up speed, Brenda hired staff to help in the store, with wine-making, and with vineyard and orchard maintenance. Kelly works full time off the farm as a truck driver in order to secure a steady cash flow and health insurance for the family.

The Logans also hire a half a dozen pickers in September and October to harvest the fruit. In addition to 10 American and French varieties of both juice and wine grapes, Baxter’s has 300 dwarf apple trees in six popular eating varieties, such as golden delicious and braeburn. They also keep five acres a rotation of corn, soybeans, hay and straw, which they contract with another grower to harvest. The field crops are often a break-even proposition, but the family gets a tax benefit from having the land in production.
Baxter’s Vineyards is not an organic operation, and the couple doesn’t intend to make that transition, but they employ Integrated Pest Management practices. With the steep price of chemicals and quick development of insect resistance to most kinds of pesticide, grape growers have no choice, in Brenda’s view, but to use chemicals strategically and sparingly.
Another agricultural challenge for the Logans is getting their neighbors to prevent a chemical spray used on corn and soybeans but toxic to grapes from drifting onto their land. And the couple contends with deer, raccoons, and wild turkeys after their fruit, which they protect with high wire electric fencing around the orchard and vineyard.

Brenda looks forward to the prospect of diversifying the business even further through collaboration in a community effort to reestablish blue cheese production in Nauvoo. A corporate-owned plant employing several dozen people closed in 2003, leaving lots of skilled cheese makers behind. Brenda and others hope to make use of that local skill base to open up a much smaller artisan cheese plant on Baxter’s Vineyards.

Others would take responsibility for securing a steady supply of regionally sourced organic cow or goat milk, making the cheese and marketing much of it. Brenda and Kelly, meanwhile, would attract more visitors to their farm with the addition of the cheese plant, earn an income from rent, and cross market the cheese with the wines.