South Dakota Wine: A Fruitful History

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INTRODUCTION

As my co-author, Kara Sweet, and I began working on this project, South Dakota’s wine industry was celebrating its twentieth anniversary. Over the two decades since the 1996 passage of the Farm Winery Bill by the state legislature, winemaking has moved out of the basement and evolved into an industry two dozen wineries strong—and growing.

Creating something out of nothing is always a challenge, but working toward a goal while being told your task is impossible can be particularly daunting. While shopping at the local ag supply store, prospective winemakers were told that the soil here wasn’t right for grapes. They were warned that the climate was too harsh, too erratic. It rained too much, too little, hailed too frequently. Consumers wouldn’t be interested in wine that wasn’t the standard California or French issue. They would be better off growing corn and soybeans or raising cattle like everyone else.

They proved the naysayers wrong. It takes a stubborn sort—an industrious, tireless, resourceful type of person—to pioneer an industry. But those who thought grape growing and winemaking would never succeed in South Dakota appear to have forgotten who these people’s ancestors were. They came from the East, oftentimes fresh from a monthslong transatlantic journey, to an open prairie of vast, dense grass and made a life for themselves among strangers. They brought with them only a spark of hope and the scant contents of their wagons and built their homes from blocks of that same rich earth.

If they could do that, our winemakers asked, then why can’t we grow grapes?

Many of South Dakota’s winery owners, and much of the population at large, come from a winemaking tradition. Wine didn’t start here with the first commercial vineyard in the mid-1990s. It started with baskets of fragrant wild plums; tart rhubarb; sweet, sunny dandelions; and whatever else early European settlers could gather from their adopted home. Long before there was local wine on any store shelf, bottles and barrels and jugs lined the root cellars of Dakota Territory, full of that fermenting flora.

While working on this book, it has been our privilege to travel to many of South Dakota’s wineries. Tasting the grapes and reveling in the variety of flavors encased beneath their delicate skins. Walking through acres of netted vines, accompanied by the music of clinging birds trying to pick at the berries protected beneath the deep-green leaves. Snipping the dense, ripe clusters from the vines as we each helped in the harvest. Visiting with winery owners and discovering what led them to take a leap of faith on an untested venture. While some came from agricultural backgrounds, their professions were as varied as South Dakota’s landscape—chemists, mathematicians, lawyers, professors, civil servants, truckers, engineers, marketing pros, fitness instructors and college administrators, all of whom saw an opportunity and said yes.

Being part of an industry in its infancy has both advantages and drawbacks, though. Because many of the grapes grown in South Dakota are cold-hardy varieties developed in the past half century, largely at the University of Minnesota—and, to a lesser extent, at South Dakota State University—these varieties are still emerging. Research continues in an effort to make grapes like Valiant, La Crescent and Frontenac better. That means the wines we were tasting two decades ago may have been less refined than those we sip with dinner today, despite the winemaking process being quite the same. In many cases, though, the wine has gotten better because the winemakers themselves have evolved from hobbyists with day jobs to professionals focused on creating a quality product. And working with grape varieties that are merely decades old allows for freedom that makers of the old standby wines will never enjoy.

In these pages, it is our aim to deliver as vivid a picture as possible of South Dakota’s burgeoning wine industry, where it began and where it is headed. One great advantage of writing a history such as this is most of the founders are alive and accessible. They are still hands-on, developing new products and fine-tuning old. Many have taken time to sit down and share their successes and failures, unearth photographs and newspaper clippings, dig up old recipes and do everything in their power to make sure we had all we needed to show the world that South Dakota is wine country.

We hope that our gratitude to these people, and our pride in this beautiful state, is expressed clearly through the telling of their stories in the spirit we intend—with warmth, love and appreciation for the industriousness they and their ancestors displayed when deciding to take the fruits of this prairie and turn them into wine.

—DENISE DEPAOLO

Chapter 1

WINE ON THE PRAIRIE

Anna and her husband, Jon, looked out the window of their simple sod house. The rolling plains of grass were a vast expanse in front of them. The hills gently ebbed and flowed until they disappeared on the horizon. It was a horizon that in many ways seemed similar to the Vojtas’ home in Moravia, Czechoslovakia. Yet it was so, so very different.

Fearful of the war that was nearing their homeland, Anna Pesä and Jon Vojta saw no other option than to flee their country. They were anxious for their freedom and their way of life. They had heard what America had to offer. It was a promised land for those who could get there. Land was available. Farming was a viable option. The United States really was a place where Anna and Jon believed they could raise their family safely and securely—if they were willing to work hard.

The couple saved what money they could and sold any possessions they could to secure passage on a vessel to the United States. They arrived in the country in 1876, as America was celebrating its 100th birthday. The Vojtas arrived on the East Coast with what few possessions they had left.

Eventually, Anna and Jon made their way to the Dakota Territory, a land with great farming opportunities but also severe winter weather. The cold was not a hindrance for the couple, and they soon homesteaded in what is now very northern South Dakota—almost on the North Dakota border—in Mound City, Campbell County, near present-day Mobridge. This spot was chosen over others because Jon saw it as less congested than areas like Tabor, another popular homesteading spot. In April 1891, the couple settled and started construction on their home—a sod house, common for homesteaders in the American Midwest.

HARD WORK

There were definitely hardships to this life. One was the language barrier Anna and Jon faced. They took it upon themselves to learn English as quickly as possible and then to teach the language to their children. This was an important priority. Additional areas of their new lives were also difficult, but they had settled in a community filled with immigrants, many others from Czechoslovakia, as well. The families often helped one another through trying times, no matter the situation.

Of course, living in a sod house was not luxurious. Ralph Vojta, Anna and Jon’s great-grandson, knew this was not easy for his ancestors. He had never heard any story of how nice and comfortable living in the sod house was. Instead, he always caught the phrase, It was home, commented quite fondly. I never heard the original family complain [about] any hardship they ever encountered. They were tough, determined people. They had to be.

Anna Pesä made wine in the old country, Moravia, before making the move to the United States. The region had a very strong winemaking tradition then; it still does. Moravia is in today’s Czech Republic, on the border of modern-day Slovakia. Then, Anna and other traditional winemakers would have made wines from the indigenous grapes of that part of Europe, grapes like Muller-Thurgau and Blaufränkisch. All production was done by hand, from the planting, the pruning and the picking of the grapes to the stomping, the pressing, the fermenting and the bottling of the wines.

Earthenware containers, basically jugs with stoppers, were used for multiple processes of making and serving the wine. Only native yeasts were used to start fermentation. These yeasts were found naturally on the grapes themselves. Once the grapes were picked and crushed, the yeast would start fermentation automatically. These wines were then aged in handmade barrels inside hand-dug root cellars, all under the watchful eyes of home winemakers like Anna Pesä.

After arriving in America, Anna continued to make wine as she raised her family. Her son, Thomas, would often help her with the work. Then Thomas met his future wife, Frances Kalda. Frances’s mother, Josefa Kalda, also immigrated to the United States. Josefa was Bohemian, a neighbor to the Moravians in eastern Europe. Josefa brought with her an extensive winemaking background from her homeland. Frances had learned these winemaking traditions well before she married Thomas. After Thomas and Frances were married, the Vojtas and the Kaldas continued their connections to their native homes through wine.

The Vojta homestead in 1876 near Mound City, South Dakota. Courtesy of Prairie Berry Winery.

It was through Thomas and Frances that winemaking was not lost but instead passed on to the next generation, and the next and the next. Thomas and Frances had five children in the sod home near Mound City. Frank was their son. Frank’s son Ralph Vojta always loved making wine with Grandma Frances. Ralph remembered that Frances, with winemaking in her blood from both sides of her heritage, would have him and his brothers pick wild berries each autumn from all over the prairie surrounding her home. This harvest provided the berries that would go to the hillside cellar for production.

Frances made jams and jellies as well as wine. Ralph recalled, Whatever she did was delicious. I well remember the taste of the jellies on homemade bread and the special taste of chokecherry wine served on special occasions. Ralph remembered on holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas that he was allowed to have one tumbler full of wine served with his meal. It was a special, Czech crystal glass. Ah, the memory, he noted with fondness.

Sandi Vojta’s ancestors: Anna Pesä (back), Frances Kalda (seated right) and Thomas Vojta (seated left), with their children. Courtesy of Prairie Berry Winery.

Ralph Vojta, Sandi’s dad, as a child. Courtesy of Prairie Berry Winery.

Anna and Frances used their own South Dakota fermentation techniques, which were passed on to Ralph through those fall harvests. The ladies used whatever was available, for both fruit and equipment. Ralph’s great-grandfather Jon made wood barrels for aging the wines. Jon often sourced these trees from near the Missouri River. The berries for the process changed frequently, depending on what was available to pick that year or even that month.

Ralph’s father, Frank, was usually the production assistant, helping his mother with wine production but never actually making the wine himself. Then Ralph became the assistant. After Grandma Frances’s passing, and as Ralph aged and matured, his curiosity for making wine also grew. He wanted to do it himself, but he had to do this from memory. Frances had not written down a process. She had never used a recipe, so to speak. She just used what she had and made each vintage work. Since Ralph had no written instructions, he began a process of trial and error that would take him years to perfect. However, after much experimentation, Ralph finally got a chokecherry wine that he thought was