North Dakota: The new grape and wine destination?

Just up the road a piece from the Ayr exit on Interstate 94 lies an experience you won't want to miss.

In the final episode of Straight Talk's Farmhouse Treasures for You season, Emmery visits with Rodney Hogen, the owner of the "oldest and largest" vineyard in North Dakota and the only one to service wine made entirely with North Dakota grapes.

Rodney visits with Emmery about how he planted his first grapes in North Dakota and started Red Trial Vineyard. He also provides details about an upcoming educational experience and the exciting opportunities for future grape growers in the state.

Give the gift of the Red Trail Vineyard Experience to a loved one this Christmas.

Book your visit or event at http://www.redtrailvineyards.com

Become a fan on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/RedTrailVineyards/

Find the Red Trail Coffee Experience on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/redtrailcoffee/

Interested in learning how to grow grapes in North Dakota? Check out the upcoming N.D. Grape and Wine Association Conference .

Want to be featured in NDFB's Farmhouse Treasures for You ? Contact us at ndfb.org 

Transcript

[Opening podcast music]

Emmery Mehlhoff: Welcome to Straight talk with NDFB. I am your host, Emmery Mehlhoff. This is our last episode in our Farmhouse Treasures for You season, a season featuring NDFB members who are suppliers of fresh, processed or value-added agricultural products. Today I visit with Rodney Hogen, owner of Red Trail Vineyard in Buffalo, North Dakota, and the president of the North Dakota Grape and Wine Association. In today's episode, Rodney tells me about planting his first grapes in North Dakota, making his first wine, and how that eventually became Red Trail Vineyard. Rodney also visits with me about exciting opportunities for future grape growers and winemakers in North Dakota. Join me for today's conversation. 

[Jingle bells sound effect]

Emmery: Today I'm here with Mr. Rodney Hogen from Fargo, North Dakota. Rodney owns a vineyard in Buffalo, North Dakota, that is open during the summer, and he is a member of the North Dakota Farm Bureau, Farmhouse Treasures for You. And so today we're visiting about his vineyard and about the wine that he produces. Rodney, can you tell us about yourself and your operation?

Rodney: Sure, Emmery. Well, here's the scoop, folks. We started growing grapes back in 2003, and it was because of the second winery that just opened up in North Dakota. Greg Kemple in Casselton was just going to start the Maple River Winery, and he asked me if I would grow grapes for him. Well, at that time I was a farmer, we grew corn and beans and, well, I thought grow grapes in North Dakota? I didn't know it was possible. Well, after a little research, of course, I found that there are grapes that will stand our climates up here. And I made many trips down to southern Minnesota to vineyards down there and wineries and really got interested in this project of growing grapes. So this all started coming up... in 2023 (it will be) our 20th year. So it's really been exciting trip, and never did I think that I'd still be around after 20 years of growing grapes and how well this is taken off.

Emmery: So you started by growing grapes for somebody, is that correct? And then you began producing your own wine?

Rodney: Well, what happened is, in 2003, I did some research, and I did find some grapes that we could plant up here. The problem I had, though, was this was in February of 2003, and back then, this industry was just starting up, and it was hard to get vines to plant. And the deal is, if you didn't order them in the fall, you wouldn't get them in the spring. And so this is lesson number one. Order in the fall to get your grapes in the spring, or else you might not get what you want. 

And it's still kind of that same way today. If you want to start planting grapes, you better order them now so you can get them. Anyway, that first year, 2003, I did find 100 vines of a variety called King of the North. King of the North is a dark grape. It's a cold climate variety. It actually comes out of Madison, Wisconsin, originally, and I planted them then in 2003. You know, my plan was to plant 1000 vines the first year and then another 5000 the next year. How much work could this be? Because we were farming 1800 acres at the time, and, you know, well, a few acres of grapes can't be much. Well, thank God I only could find 100 vines because I found out how much work this is. It's all hand work, and it's more work than you think. 

So anyway, that's how we kind of started out, planting those 100 vines. And then I made my first trip to Oregon in 2003. And out there, I learned some things, too, that you didn't need to have a winery. You didn't need to be a winery to have a tasting room, because there's places out there that they don't have a vineyard. They don't have a winery. They buy a block of grapes from a vineyard, they take it over to a winery and have a wine made for them. Well, I thought, well, I kind of like that idea, too. So that was my thought then, to go ahead and let's do that. Let's grow the grapes. We'll take our production to a winery. They can make wine for us, and then we'll bring it back to our tasting room, that, oops, we don't have one. We have to find one. Well, don't you know, I found a 100 year old granary about 12 miles from our place. So in 2004, we moved this granary over to our site, built a parking lot, and built a driveway, and we put this old granary on a foundation, and we started working on it. And we worked on it all winter. In the spring of 2005, that's when we opened up for the first time with wine tasting at the Red Trail Vineyard. 

Now, you got to understand, it takes three years to get any grape production on a vine. We didn't have any grape wine, so we had wine made for us. I think the first year, we maybe had a raspberry wine and a honey wine and oh, gosh, I forget now. We had one other type of wine made for us so we could start doing wine tasting, and people started to come out. This is brand new for the whole community. Not only the community, but all of North Dakota. They're not used to going to tasting rooms and tasting wine like you would expect when you're out in California or Oregon. We started slow, very slow. 

In 2005 then, of course, was our first grape harvest. We harvested those 1st 100 vines that we planted in 2003. We took them up to a winery up at Burlington called Pointe of View. And Jeff Peterson up there, he made our first batch of wine for us. And that same year, Jeff made his first batch of wine also. His wine was made out of a valiant grape, and he called it Maiden Voyage. This is some of the first wine made in the state of North Dakota out of grapes in a commercial vineyard and a commercial winery. And our wine, we called it Alfa Rose. And it was made from our King of the North grapes. Well, he made 19 bottles. That's all we had. We had 19 bottles of this brand new wine made in the state. And that's where we started. And we'd never sold a bottle. I thought if we sold a bottle of wine, we'd be sold out in a day. And and I wanted more people to experience tasting this wine. What we did, we sold the wine tasting. It cost you a dollar to get a taste of this brand new wine made in North Dakota. And anyway, out of a bottle, we got about 28 wine tastings. And so we did fairly well on our 1st 19 bottles of wine. And you could taste it, but you can't buy it, but you get to taste it.

Emmery: So that was the first go around. So what yeah, tell me about what happened from there.

Rodney: That was the first grape wine made in the state. And after that, as the years went by, we still had to have some fruit wines made for us because our grapes, it takes a while to get production up. 2004, we planted another 700 vines. And from there on, every year we kept increasing. And now we're up to about 2500 vines total in our vineyard. We call ourselves, we're one of the oldest and largest in the state. And we're probably not the largest, and we're probably not the oldest, but we're the oldest largest, if that makes any sense.

Emmery: Yeah.

Rodney: Right now, out at our vineyard, we produce around last year, around 4000 bottles. And it's all grape wine. We're the only place in North Dakota where you're going to get only grape wine. We do no fruit wines, just grape wine. And another thing about our place, this is the only place where you're going to get grape wine from North Dakota. It's going to be grown in North Dakota. The grapes are grown here, it's produced here. Most of the wineries that you go to in North Dakota, they have juice shipped into them that's from out of state. So it's one of those deals we find out with our tourists that travel through. That's what they're looking for. They want North Dakota. They're here in North Dakota, they want to taste our wine. So that's one of our things that we want to keep going on here at the Red Trail Vineyard.

Emmery: So you have King of the North, and then it sounds like you have as time has gone on, you've planted several more.

Rodney: Yes, we've planted several more varieties, like Frontenac, Frontenac Gris, which is white grape. We planted Marquette. We have planted Saperavi, which is a very, very good grape, planted Crimson Pearl here. And we have a few Valiant grapes, too. In the past. We've tried to raise some Louise Swenson's, some Prairie Star, some Petite Pearl. We have Crimson Pearl. Our Petite Pearl didn't work out. We've tried Swenson Red. We've tried St. Pepin, and also another one, it was a seedless variety called Somerset Seedless. All these varieties, they didn't quite work out for us. So we actually took them out after several years of finding out that they don't work. And we replanted with something that has been working. So it's just a big experiment going on out here. It seems like every year. 

Another thing that happened this past year is we built an RV park and we had over 240 campers here our first year. And we haven't done very much advertising at all. The other interesting thing about these tourists, they're from all over the United States and they all have a story to tell, and I really enjoyed listening to them.

Emmery: So this is something that I think really makes and I've been out to your vineyard a couple of times with my brother and sister in law who used to live near you in Buffalo. And I would say you truly have an experience. You and your wife have really created this whole hospitality experience that is hard to find in North Dakota and something that North Dakotans are really good at. But you have created this culture of hospitality and enjoying good food and enjoying good wine.

Rodney: And that's one thing that's very exciting out here. It's called the Red Trail Experience. If you ever been to our coffee shop, I know Sue Ann. They sell the T shirts or shirts that you can get. It's called the Red Trail Coffee Experience. And so we do have a coffee shop that Sue Ann Bernstein runs on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And our campers like it. And it's surprising how many people drive out here from wherever to sit around and have a cup of coffee and visit. Our other experience, of course, is our Friday night suppers. We started these well, first we started in 2006 doing the North Dakota Grape Harvest Festival. And with that, it was an experience, one or two day experience. However, it it cost a lot of money to put on. Took 30 people to run it, and we never made any money. So it took us nine years to figure this out. 

Then we started to switch over to this Friday night supper deal. And my wife was born and raised in Pine City, Minnesota, close to Minneapolis. And she kept talking about Juicy Lucy's, which kind of excited me. Juicy Lucy. Lucy goes right along with the wine experience, doesn't it? And I have a picture of her stomping grapes in our tasting room. Anyway, that's where we started. I said, let's do that. Let's start doing a Juicy Lucy night. And so I got some roasts and some burger and other things. And I grounded all up. I wanted a nice juicy burger made out of some good meat. And that's how we started the Juicy Lucy: It's a big hamburger with cheese in the middle of it. That's how we kind of got going. 

Well, then I kind of start to expand on let's do a steak night. So right now we do about 26 Friday night suppers throughout the year. And not only that, we do anniversary parties and birthday parties and whatever kind of party you do. We've had a lot of bachelorette's parties out here and now we can kind of do anything you want. But that's part of the experience. The experience when people come here, it's totally different. It's not like going into Applebees or Red Lobster or one of those places where you go and you sit there and you order your food and then you eat and then you leave. 

At our place, you come in. Actually, you know what you're going to get because tonight we eat. We're having steak night. And that's what everybody gets. It goes from my mother. My mother always said, you got to eat what we eat. And that's how it is out here. The experience is, though, when you come, you sit with other people. You don't sit alone by yourself. You're sitting with other people. And sometimes you get to sit with some of the tourists that come through that are very interesting people that are traveling all over the United States. And they enjoy this, too, because they've never had an experience like this. 

Other experiences that just happened this year. Rose, one of the gals that works here, she's so good. She's so good with our flowers and all the landscaping and helping me with the vines. One day I told her, Rose, up here we got about half an acre of trees and a grove that has been there for, gosh, 60 years. It'd be nice to put a little place up there where we can have a campfire and some old logs sitting around. That's all I told her. Don't you know, the next day she was up there busy creating that. And then along comes her husband Mike and they started to build trails out there in this little forest. And it's just amazing walking trail to go through there and see the different trees. There's some mushrooms growing out there. There are birds out there. It's just another little experience for anybody that wants to come along with our tourists who love to do they all like to walk.

Emmery: It truly is that family hospitality feeling. And then, if you're fortunate enough, you get to listen to Mr. Rodney Hogan himself perform and other entertainment sometimes. And it is so fun. And it's just a really laid back night. And you're right, there's not that feeling, you go to a restaurant sometimes and everything's kind of put on. It isn't that way. It's more just a celebratory family meal is really how I would say it feels.

Rodney: Yeah, when you leave, you're part of the family. That's the way we want to keep it out there, too.

Emmery: And you mentioned too, that recently you guys have started to have a little coffee shop during the week. And I believe they get their coffee locally too, is what I understand.

Rodney: Yes, they do. Very good coffee from Alley Beans in Valley City. Oh my gosh, it's just so smooth. It's just good coffee. It's unbelievable. But Sue Ann approached me a couple of years ago, and Sue Ann, they home schooled their children, and their youngest is Gabe. And she said, what do you think about serving coffee down there? I said, well, we certainly have room for you. We can make it work. And especially in the mornings, we're not doing anything in the tasting room then. Well, she said, I'm teaching Gabe, and this would be a good business class for him to have a coffee shop. Well, that's all it took. And I said, let's do it. So she started doing that, her and Gabe, and they started doing a Tuesday and Thursday, and then last year they increased it to Wednesday also just because of the campers that we get now, just to maybe catch a few more of them. And it's really been going over good. And the coffee is great. You can sit out in the porch in the summertime, or you can sit inside and just sit, relax and visit.

Emmery: I understand that right now this is off peak season for you. The vineyard is not open, but when will you be open again? And how can our listeners find you and perhaps buy an experience for themselves or a friend for Christmas this year?

Rodney: Sure, you can go on our website, redtrailvineyards.com, and there is a place in there if you want to buy a gift certificate or whatever, you can do it online and I can send it to you. That's one way of doing it. Otherwise you'll have to just kind of wait around until next April is when we start. Usually it's the last Friday in April. That will be our first supper, and then every Friday after that, and it'll be all posted. The whole menu for the whole year will be posted on our website in April. And so you can kind of pick and choose. There are some people that say, well, we want to come on this date and we'll be here on this Friday. And they'll pick out the whole year. And I'll put them down in my phone and I'll have them, so they have their spot reserved. And that's another thing, you got to reserve a spot or else you can't get in.

Emmery: If there's an event that somebody is planning, how do they schedule that? Just give you a call, contact you through your website?

Rodney: Sure, give me a call. My number is on the website. Or there's a place on the website too, where you can just email me too.

Emmery: And your camper. How do we find reservations for that?

Rodney: Same way, just contact me either via text message or phone and I'll write you down. I'll put you in my calendar when you're going to be there and just kind of go from there. We got 14 spots. This is on the west side of our North Vineyard. We got 14 spots. Ten of them have water and electricity, and then the other four spots have water, electricity and sewer. And we also have a dump site.

Emmery: And you really are located in such an ideal spot just a few miles off I 94 on that Ayr exit. Yes, just a few miles of gravel, really well-maintained road. And such a good spot off I 94.

Rodney: It's a good county road and we're situated kind of halfway between Minneapolis and Medora.

Emmery: A perfect destination spot.

Rodney: We're having a lot of fun doing this.

Emmery: So, Rodney, I understand too that you are the president of North Dakota's Wine and Grape Association. Did I get that name right?

Rodney: Almost. It's the North Dakota Grape and Wine Association. We started this organization back in 2006 and started in Carrington, North Dakota, and we just keep moving forward on this. And of course, I'm president right now and we held our board meeting last night. We're getting ready for our annual meeting coming up. It will be held in Dickinson at Fluffy Fields. It's a winery out there and our annual meeting will be out there. We'll have some speakers talking about growing grapes and making wine. And we have a wine tasting competition also. It'll be a two-day event. And to find out more information, it will be all posted on the North Dakota Grape and Wine Association dot org website. We got a few more things we got to decide on, but it'll be coming up the 3rd and 4th of February, so let's hope it's not snowing.

Emmery: And really a good opportunity if there are people who are interested in what it takes to grow grapes in North Dakota and what it takes to produce wine. Really good opportunity to go out and learn about it and what it takes. And not only that, but a great networking opportunity with yourself, Rodney, and with the owners of Fluffy Fields and I'm sure several other places across North Dakota. A great opportunity to network and learn from their experience.

Rodney: Yes, very much so. And if anybody is interested in growing grapes in North Dakota, I just received some information that things are happening in this world, especially when it comes to the wines that we're all used to drinking, the Merlos, the Cabernets that are grown in California. And it seems like they're having more problems out there with fires, drought, trying to get water. And now some of these issues might be switching over to more of looking for climates that have more water and of course, North Dakota is one of them that we really don't worry about having a drought. So, what this group is looking at is maybe especially producing new grapes for our area, cold climate variety, and also the analogy of part of how to make these new vines produce great wine. And it's something that I can see in the future that if this all happens, this industry here in North Dakota is really going to take off even more than it is right now.

Emmery: That's really exciting. And is that your group in particular, or a separate group that's looking at.

Rodney: This is a separate group. It's a separate group. It's a team from different states that have different climates. These states are Oregon, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan, North Dakota and Iowa. Very interesting. We just had a big, actually worldwide meeting out in Vermont called VitiNord out there. It's surprising. In Vermont they can grow the Vinifera type, the Merlot and the Chardonnays. They only grow them twelve inches off the ground, though. They got to grow them kind of, but their climate is different there. But they have moisture, unlike California. They can dry up and they can have fires. And it's happened, and it seems like it's happening more.

Emmery: Well, check out the Red Trail Vineyard on their website and we'll link all the information about how to contact them and find them and their vineyard and their coffee shop in our show notes. And take some time this summer, go out and visit them. And if you're looking for a last-minute Christmas gift, contact them. Get that gift certificate all lined up for the summer. 

Thanks again, Rodney, for visiting with me. Really enjoyed our visit and excited to see you. This summer we plan to come out and visit you and excited about the conference that you have coming up in February and the potential learning opportunities that brings. So thanks again.

Rodney: Well, thank you, Emmery, for having me on and we'll see you down the trail.

[Jingle bells sound effect]

Emmery: Thank you for joining me for this season of Straight Talk with NDFB. Join us in January as I kick off the 2023 North Dakota Legislative Assembly, taking a deep dive into all the importantant agricultural issues, issues our lawmakers will be considering during this legislative session.

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