Day Two saw us heading south on the GRR (aka SR 35) looking for the Danzinger Vineyards in nearby Alma. This small town of about 750 people is another excellent example of those quaint, historic UMRV burgs with specialty/antique shops, restaurants/pubs, B&B's, and art galleries. Alma sits right on the river banks with beautiful panoramic views of not only the river itself, but of the docks and the lock and dam.
Danzinger Vineyards came in at #2 on the list of the wineries we visited here in the UMRV AVA (Villa Bellezza was #1). Not only a beautiful setting, but some really great wines. We ended up buying a bottle each of the Edelweiss and the Golden Sunrise, plus I just couldn't leave without a bottle of Raspberry Rapture, a sweet dessert wine with natural chocolate and raspberry flavors. To say it was "yummy" is a huge injustice. It was scrumptious!
Danzinger Winery at night.....
A sampling of the Danzinger whites.....
The next winery on our tour also turned out to be our least favorite. The wines just were not that great at the Seven Hawks Winery in Fountain City. To begin with, the wine tasting is done is a retail shop in downtown Fountain City. Quaint little shoppe, but nothing to brag home about. They did have an ice wine that we liked, and we ended up buying a bottle. Ice wine is produced from grapes that are picked while still frozen on the vine. The water freezes, but the sugars don't. Through this process the wines become very concentrated and much sweeter -- thus it takes a lot more grapes to yield a small amount of wine. Ice wines -- essentially dessert wines -- are almost always more expensive than your average wine. The Seven Hawks version -- Sleeping River Ice Wine -- took nearly a year to finish and is made with winter harvest Frontenac Gris grapes. The taste is very nice, delicate fruit flavored, with a soft honey finish. Will save it for a special occasion. Seven Hawks also produces a nice ruby port, Fountain City Ruby, which turned out to be a very rich, port-style red dessert wine (chocolate and cherry flavors) -- and I bought a bottle, of course.
While the wines weren't that great at Seven Hawks, the young lady pouring our wine samples was able to direct us to a popular local eatery, The Monarch Public House (i.e. tavern), an Irish style pub house. The day so far had been wet and rainy, so I opted for the traditional Irish stew, with an appetizer of lightly battered cheese curds (white cheddar cheese nuggets), a Wisconsin staple (or so we're told). Both were delicious, BTW.
After lunch, with rain coming down harder than ever, we continued our journey on the GRR toward out next wine tasting adventure, Elmaro Vineyard, in Trempealeau. This winery and its tasting room turned out to be quite spectacular, if not a wee bit hard to find (thank goodness for GPS). When we arrived, the fairly large parking lot was almost full -- including a couple small buses. As it turned out, this winery is the closest to the interstate, so easy to reach, if hard to actually find. Anyway, this place was jumping with people, but the Elmaro staff was keen to the task. We ended up sampling wines served by a "mature lady" who doubles as a school teacher the rest of the year. Excellent wine tasting experience, even if we didn't end up buying more than a couple bottles. Again, just like Villa Bellezza, somebody's got some big bucks in this venture. Beautiful grounds, great seating areas to sample wines and order some appetizers. It was just a crummy day to be sitting outside. All in all, probably our #3 winery out of the seven we visited.
Elmaro winery
We ended up purchasing three wines we liked: a semi-sweet white made with the Prairie grape; an Edelweiss, another semi-sweet wine made with the Edelweiss grape; and the only wine we bought made with organically grown Briana grapes, named, aptly, Simply Briana.
The last winery we visited, Garvin Heights Vineyards, was located across the mighty Mississippi, in Winona, Minnesota. The rural road leading to the winery winds up from the river valley to a plateau where the grapes are grown. In addition to making wines using grapes from their own vineyards, Garvin Heights also buys grapes from several local growers in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. This winery specializes in growing cold climate grapes developed by the University of Minnesota (I mention the specific grapes in the Day One blog post). These grapes have been developed after years of cross-breeding native American grapes with European wine grapes. The results have been a wide variety of grapes that not only can withstand the cold winters of Minnesota (and Wisconsin). but also still produce grapes that yield wine quality similar to those grown in more traditional wine growing areas. Garvin Heights ferments these grape varieties separately and where desirable, blends the wines to make various wine selections. This winery also produces several fruit wines and three port-style dessert wines. We bought several bottles: a Bluff Country White, a sweet white wine made from several different grapes; a Choco Pêche wine made from Marquette grapes, with flavors of chocolate and peach (very nice!); and a port-style dessert wine, Riverport Red.
By the time we left Garvin Heights, the rain had pretty much ran its course. We drove up Minnesota Highway 61, the equivalent of the Great River Road (Highway 35) on the Wisconsin side of the river. Minnesota also calls SR 61, the Great River Road. Only this one, unlike the one in Wisconsin, was a four-lane, divided highway all the way to Wabasha, where we crossed the river back into Nelson. Just in time for another stop at The Creamery for some of their delicious ice cream! The end to a great day of wine tasting in the Upper Mississippi River Valley!
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