I spent about thirty years teaching in Wisconsin, and not long after I retired — well, a good fifteen years ago now — I planted my first Marquette and Frontenac vines, and killed most of them the first couple of winters. Nobody had written the cold-climate answers down in one place: which varieties actually survive a Zone 4 winter, when they ripen in our short season, how to keep frost off the young shoots.
So I read every university extension bulletin I could find, talked to growers up here in the north, and tested it out on my own rows. Fifteen years on, I tend a home vineyard of cold-hardy vines out behind the house and make my own wine every fall — and this site is everything I’ve pulled together, so you can skip the mistakes I made.
What I grow
Out behind the house I tend a home vineyard of cold-hardy vines — Marquette, Frontenac, La Crescent and Petite Pearl — the hybrids bred to take a real northern winter. A few rows, a passion that got out of hand, and enough fruit to make my own wine every fall.
Why cold-climate?
Almost every grape-growing guide out there is written for warm places — California, the south, the Mediterranean. They’ll tell you to plant Cabernet and never mention it would be dead by February up here. This site fills the gap nobody else does: growing grapes (and making wine) where winters actually get cold, in USDA Zones 3 through 6.
From grapes to glass
For me the grapes were always really about the wine. Once you’ve nursed a vine through a few winters and finally pulled a real crop off it, turning that fruit into a bottle you made yourself is the best part — and I’ll walk you through that side too.
What you’ll find here
Everything on this site is what has actually worked in my own Zone 4 vineyard, backed by the research from the cold-climate breeding programs at the University of Minnesota, Cornell, and other land-grant university extension services that did the real breeding and trials. Where the science matters, I cite the people who did it, so you can dig deeper.
One honest note: for anything safety-critical — sprays, chemicals, food and wine sanitation — always follow the label and check with your local extension office; they’re the final word. Otherwise, welcome aboard, and good luck with your vines.
— Pete