Lake Pepin Winery

Wine: Winery: Ambiance: Oct 22, 2018

Ignore the winery and ambiance ratings, ~ you come here for the unique mid-western wines. This is a 30+ year planted Minnesotan winery with an owner who wishes to use only his grapes or local state sources. John Marshall went out of his way to accommodate our tasting requests and even let us try wine examples of items ‘sold out’ as his Belle’s Bree, a Swenson Briana grape, which was a surprisingly refreshing white. A bit of sugar was added to the Frontenac Gris to give this wine a touch of taste. The Marquette grapes, planted in 2002, and fermented in stainless steel (seemingly oak is not popular in mid-western wines as stated by our host) was quite dry and could be enjoyed now or could be held for another year or so. The real surprise today was Lake Pepin’s Frontenac which normally is blended or has some sugar added by most local wineries, but not in the case of this 2017 vintage. This straight Frontenac just worked perfectly this year ‘as is’. We may be sorry that we did not buy more of this unique mid-western Frontenac release.