Port in LaPorte

In LaPorte, Minnesota Paul and Sharon Shuster are fermenting a batch of rhubarb wine. This is the home of Forestedge Winery, tucked between Minnesota Highway 64 and the Paul Bunyan State Forest, where Paul and Sharon along with partner, John Wildmo are growing, fermenting and bottling fruit wines as varied as:

* rhubarb,
* blueberry,
* strawberry,
* raspberry,
* chokecherry and
* sumac.

After just a year and a half in business, they opened the winery to the public in August 2000. “This is quiet, peaceful work,” says Sharon, the wine technician. “You can go away and let the yeast do the job,” adds Paul.

Much of the rhubarb for wine comes from the farm’s 1,000 plants, all offshoots of a single plant from the old farmstead. Sharon calls Forestedge a “perfect stopping place for tourists,” and hopes customers will admire the garden setting as much as the wine. High ceilings, earth-colored tiles and spacious, well-lit rooms — the barn-like winery is set amid curving rows of red-green rhubarb and the lush trees and gardens of the Shuster farm.

Artistic Atmosphere

They also have a retail area where people can sample wine varieties, pick up a bottle or two, and perhaps buy some local crafts. Area artists’ work adorns the winery’s Gallery area. Customers may also peek into the production area, where 55-gallon barrels line the walls, aging a rich blue batch of blueberry wine or a bright red vat of strawberry.

Italian winemaking equipment adds to the atmosphere — a wood-slatted press that operates on hydraulic pressure, a stainless steel filtering machine, a corker and a plastic capper that wraps the bottle top with a protective cover. A bottling machine fills six bottles at a time. “All this equipment we just bought will allow us to make a whole lot more wine,” Sharon says. Todd Sisson, lab coordinator for the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute lab in Crookston, helped the team locate the equipment and provided technical help. Michael Sparby and Lane Loeslie of AURI’s Crookston field office also helped the Shuster’s with marketing research and funding, along with the Small Business Development Center in Brainerd. A marketing study “allowed us to refine what we had planned,” Paul says.

Part of the winemaking art, Paul says, is to blend varietals together to get good flavor and color.

“It’s a challenge to make fruit wines that taste good,” Sharon says. “This is so different from the other work we do. It’s kind of exotic.” It’s a homegrown product using the fruits of Minnesota soils, and they can market it themselves. “To start with, we’re going to do everything right here,” Sharon says.

Different from the Rest

It intrigues Paul that many traditional grape wines are described and praised in terms of other fruits. Although homemade wine often relies on berries and other fruit, there are few commercial wineries built around those wines. “We’re different from most other wineries in Minnesota,” Paul says.

For a state farm winery license, 51 percent of the wine’s ingredients must be grown in Minnesota. “We’ve taken that a bit farther — 80 percent of the products we use are Minnesota-grown.” Paul says. “It’s right out of the garden and into the press,” adds Sharon. Last year, when they brought in and pressed fresh strawberries, people remarked they could smell strawberries before entering the driveway, Paul says. Additional funding from the Northwest Minnesota Foundation will allow Forestedge to buy more fruit from local growers and boost production. By supporting local growers, the Shuster’s believe, the wine will not only taste better, it will be better for the local farm economy.

Paul says he and Sharon both grew up in gardening families, “where you did things yourselves.” That formed the foundation for their love of gardening and their back-to-the-land lifestyle, Sharon says. The pair sees winemaking as an extension of that self-reliance. “It will be a nice business that, well past retirement age, a couple people could continue to run,” Paul says.

Just before sunset, Sharon and Paul walk through the giant rhubarb patch. Paul snaps off a rhubarb stalk and offers it like a glass of fine wine. It’s tart, fresh and slightly sweet. Just like a good 1999 vintage Forestedge rhubarb.