Aric Schmiling didn’t expect to make his career in the family business. Sure, he grew up cleaning tanks and working at his parents’ feet at von Stiehl Winery in Algoma, but he envisioned his path leading elsewhere.
“I wanted to be outside,” he said in May as he led me through the towering 5,700-gallon tanks of the von Stiehl production facility. “I wanted to be in Wisconsin, but didn’t think it would be here.”
He went to UW – Green Bay to study environmental science and business, but a switch flipped during his sophomore year, when a friend asked him bluntly, “Why wouldn’t you come back [to von Stiehl]?” He transferred to Michigan State to major in enology and viticulture and began a career in winemaking.
His parents, Bill and Sandy Schmiling, bought von Stiehl from Dr. Charles Stiehl in 1981, long before there was a Door County Wine Trail or much recognition at all of the peninsula as a place to enjoy wine. Dr. Stiehl had founded the winery in 1967, the first licensed winery in Wisconsin, in the building that once housed the original Ahnapee Brewing Co. in the late 1800s.
“When I was young I didn’t see the potential for the business, I just saw all the work,” Aric said.
But the pull of home, and the lake, was strong.
“When you grow up next to the water, you take it for granted,” he said. “You don’t realize how beautiful the area we live in is.”
He and his brother Brad both made their way back home, throwing themselves into the business and buying it from their parents in 2003.
“It’s awesome working with my brother,” Aric said. “We don’t overlap a whole lot – he does the tasting room and marketing, and I handle the production.”
That production includes contracts to make and bottle wines for five other wineries, in addition to more than 40 varieties of wine for von Stiehl. The winery is the third-largest producer in the state.
The Schmiling brothers take pride in using apples and other fruit from Door and Kewaunee County in their wines.
“When you source your fruit here, it just feels better,” Aric said. But he said many people don’t realize how diverse the product is, with fruit sourced from beyond Wisconsin as well. “Cab or riesling are made from grapes that don’t grow in this climate, so we bring them in from California, Washington, the east coast and make world-class wines here in Wisconsin.”
But regardless, most of their fruit comes from down the road, so to speak. This fall they’ll get 15-20,000 gallons of apples and apple juice from local orchards.
Eight years ago they added a specialty bottling line from Italy to bottle their own sparkling wines as well. Previously they had to send that out for bottling. “It has to be done under pressure, it’s more technical, with thicker glass,” Schmiling explained. “Now we can bottle it for other wineries.”
Today von Stiehl has grown far beyond what Dr. Stiehl could have imagined. In addition to the winery, von Stiehl has its own vineyard, cider bar and cocktail lounge serving liquor produced in its own distillery.
