by Jim Schnaedter
Eric Gale and his wife, Amy, started their Egg Harbor winery Anchored Roots four years ago by planting three acres of cold-climate varietal grapes. Those grapes served as a starting point for their winery, which recently celebrated its two-year anniversary of making and serving wine.
I often ask Eric to educate me on vineyard management, production storage and anything else related to wine. I started working at his business a couple days a week when it opened in 2022. From there, I watched the operation grow and our team serve many satisfied customers.
I also watched Eric, Amy and their kids – Henry, 4, and Simon, 2 – grow as a family that represents the best Door County has to offer. Despite a schedule that includes tending the now 6.5-acre vineyard, making the wine, running the business, and raising two young sons, Eric and Amy always seem to make time to talk about wine. And when they do, it’s evident that while their winery isn’t the most important thing to them, it’s likely in the top five.
Recently, Eric and I were discussing summer in the vineyard. While the grape vines are doing the most important work – ripening the fruit in time to be harvested and crushed – the vintner is focused on pest and disease control, canopy management and anything else that will support the vines in their mission.
Fungus was the main concern during the growing season, Eric said. It might require a fungicide-spraying schedule, which, thanks to the natural resistance of cold-climate grapes, is less rigorous than the schedules used for warm- and cool-climate varieties. Another important task during the season is canopy management, which entails trimming leaves just the right amount.
The soil Eric’s vines were rooted in was sandy and did a poor job holding moisture, forcing the roots to work harder and go deeper to find water and nutrients. Eric further taxed his vines by leaving a vigorous cover crop that takes moisture and nutrients from the upper layers of soil. This combination of porous soil and vigorous cover crop meant new vines took longer to produce fruit, but that fruit was higher quality.
That’s when it hit me: the vineyard maintenance tasks Eric was describing are all small parts of a much larger pursuit. Drawing on my limited journalistic instincts, I asked Eric a follow-up question.
“What are you really trying to do here?”
It took Eric a moment to interpret my query, but then he started talking about the future of his vineyard and wine.
“We crushed around 225 pounds of grapes from our vineyard last fall, and I’m making a small amount of an estate field blend,” he said. “It is turning out even better than I expected, and I always have high expectations. This year, I estimate I will crush around 1,500 pounds and do another estate field blend using what I learned from last year’s product. In time, I should be able to produce approximately 2,250 cases of quality estate wine off of our vineyard.”
Eric then looped our discussion back to the vineyard, explaining how management and vine-training practices not only influence the current vintage but, more importantly, determine the quantity and quality of future vintages. Such practices develop an infrastructure for roots, vines and future shoots.
It was obvious to me that, despite the passion Eric was displaying as he talked and the success of the wine he had produced in his first two years, there was more to the story. So I repeated my previous question.
“What are you really trying to do here?”
This time, Eric knew exactly where I was going.
“By making very unique and exceptional wine, I’m hoping to elevate cold-hardy grapes, the ones we can grow in Wisconsin, to the status they deserve alongside the traditional and classic varieties,” he said. “I want Wisconsin grapes, wines and winemakers to get the credit they deserve. There is a strong, unbreakable connection between the land, the food, the people and the wine in every region. I’m hoping to help build that holistic connection right here within the Wisconsin Ledge AVA [American Viticultural Area.]”
So when Eric is trimming his shoots, spraying his vines, harvesting and crushing his grapes and – finally – tasting his wines, he’s pursuing a mission that’s broader than just making a great wine.
Although great wine is a very nice perk.
Jim Schnaedter describes himself as a wine appreciator, but not an expert. “I love drinking it, pouring it, talking about it and writing about it, but the more I do of each, the more I learn of what I don’t know about it.” He sets out to discover Door County wines and their makers in this series.
