You don't have to travel to the Napa and Sonoma Valleys of California to visit vineyards or for a wine tasting. We have our own.
Close to home is the St. Croix Vally Wine Trail. It includes Northern Winery (Stillwater), St. Croix Valley Vineyard (Hwy 36 and Manning), and Winehaven (Chisago City). I would add Alexis Bailly Winery to that list; it is located outside of Hastings). The other trail is the Upper St. Croix Wine Trail (http://upperstcroixwinetrail.com/). It includes Chateau St. Croix (north of St. Croix Falls), Dancing Dragonfly (St. Croix Falls), Wild Mountain Winery (Taylors Falls) and North Folk Winery (Stark MN). It will be adding James Perry Vineyards (Rush City) to their trail later this summer.
They all offer wine tastings. Some will give you the wine glass. Some will offer music on Saturday night with their tastings. Others offer food, for example, oven brick fire pizza on Friday nights at North Folk Winery). And of course, St. Croix Vineyard is co-located with Aamodt's Apple Farm.
Most use grapes they grow or purchase locally. A few purchase starter juice from vineyards outside of Minnesota. I like red wines and my favorite is from the Frontenac grape developed by the University of Minnesota. My favorite places for a picnic to accompany my wine tasting is Alexis Bailly and Wild Mountain Wineries.
If you are looking for a fruit or honey wine, you might want to focus on Winehaven or North Folk, but most offer some fruit wines and dessert wines.
If you are looking for banquet space, I would recommend Dancing Dragonfly or Chateau St. Croix; the former just opened this summer and they have a banquet space that can handle more than 300.
The bottom line is that for most of us, it is a manner of personal preference, white or red, dry or sweet, fruity or nutty, fermented in French oak, White oak or aluminum and so on.
I would recommend trying all nine wineries and tell us which of these would be your favorite and why. You might also want to comment on how our Valley's wines compare with the other great wine regions of the world, in terms of taste and cost.
I know what I and my friends will be doing this weekend, continuing our wine journeys across our beautiful state (and western Wisconsin). I will start with Wild Mountain Winery (http://www.wildmountainwinery.com/). They have a Frontenac that I really like.
