Reported by Brad Penner, STATEWIDE Correspondent


This is what you will see when you visit wine country. Long, lush rows of grapevines rolling up and over the hills of...northern Lancaster County.
"I had a farm, 400 acres here and I had to do something with it."
James Arthur Jeffers didn't know much about traditional crops and he didn't want to raise livestock.
[Jeffers] "And so we came out here and said, hey, why don't we try some grapes and lo and behold he and I got down on our hands and knees one weekend and crawled around and planted 2-300 grapes in the ground and tried a few hundred more the next year. Everything survived. We said, man, we're experts already."
Encouraged by that early success, Jeffers and his family began to do a little more research. They started by talking with the few people who were already growing grapes in the state. They learned more on the road.
[Jeffers] "We have been to all the wineries in Missouri and in many other areas as well as all through California picking up ideas, asking questions, talking to owners, talking to winemakers, et cetera and just getting a feel for it. We didn't hear anything negative. We didn't hear anybody say I would never do it again so that was kind of encouraging in itself."
Nebraskans are used to seeing corn and soybeans growing in the fields. Natives may be the most surprised to hear about a Nebraska vineyard.
[Jeffers] "The hills that you see up in this part of the country, in this part of Nebraska right north of Lincoln are ideal for grape growing because you can tell by the soil that you are looking at out here, it is kind of sandy clay but it's enough porousness to allow it to work well and grapes function well up here. We lose very, very few."
"The grapes planted here aren't the same as you would find in California."
"They're all created for winter heartiness, cold climates like we have here."
Jim Ballard joined his father-in-law in the winery business. His specialty is marketing and promotions but he has a hand in nearly every part of the operation.
[Ballard] "It's good that I know a little bit of everything that happens. I may not be an expert at this, I may not be an expert at what happens in the field but at least I know enough that when people come in and ask me about it, I can at least give them some intelligent answers."
"Be careful when you are packing it, you don't pack it too hard."
Kevin Smith is in charge of growing the grapes. This past Spring they planted thousands of new vines. The vines are soaked in water to prepare the roots, then planted by hand. A mound is formed at the bottom of the hole and the roots are spread out over the mound. Different varieties are planted together. Some are red, some are white, but all of them are tough.
[Smith] "Some are more cold hearty than others. These have been tested. A vineyard up by Pierce grows a lot of these same grapes and he can't grow some of them that we can grow successful here and he is just in the northern part of the state but there is enough of a climate difference between this part of the state and the northern part of the state that it does truly make a big difference but he does really great things with his grapes up there as well."
[Jeffers] "We're finding that, you know, California can produce chardonnays and certain types of grapes out there that we can't. We are finding we can produce grapes that they can't and the grapes we're producing in some cases are beating them in international competition in winemaking and in the bottle. That's what counts is the taste and the finished product."
Everything is still a bit new at James Arthur Vineyards. They broke in a new bottling and labeling machine this Spring. They soon discovered that they needed a different type of adhesive to make the labels stick.
"When it's on the roller here, it is given enough pressure to stick it on but then on the tail end, it rolls it off because there's no pressure on the roller. That's the part that is coming out."
Back in the fields, it's the middle of Summer. It's an important growing stage because each plant is developing its fruit. Unnecessary growth is trimmed so more of the plant's energy can be devoted to fruit development. Leaves along the bottom of the vines also must be removed.
[Smith] "It's crucial to do this because you don't want mud getting on the leaves. Probably our biggest problem in Nebraska is with powdery mildew and some of the funguses. They come up from the soil. They're natural soilborne diseases so we want to keep the leaves away from the ground. This doesn't have it. This is just dust like you would see in a garden. But we want to try to prevent it and so all of the bottom leaves are removed."
At the same time, he needs to leave enough leaves on the vine to nourish the fruit and shade the grape clusters so they don't get sunburned during the heat of the day.
[Smith] "Today is supposed to be almost 100 degrees. Grapes don't mind that. They like warm weather. Earlier in the month when it was 60 degrees, we had some fear for the grapes because they slow down, and they were blooming at the time. If they slow down while they're blooming, they won't successfully go through pollination. This is what happens when we had that cold weather. You can see some of the buds didn't develop. Some of them fell off."
As with other plants, each growing season will affect the crop differently. But with grapes, there are also long term considerations.
[Smith] "You got to remember this cane is going to last us up to 30 years so we want to keep it as straight as possible when it is young and as healthy as possible when it is young."
The folks at James Arthur Vineyards believe in the future of grapes, and they're encouraging their neighbors to join them.
[Smith] "Boy, there's a lot of grapes and a lot of grape varieties that we can grow in Nebraska and it can be very economical for farmers to think about this as an alternative crop."
Smith says more than a dozen people in the area are growing grapes for the vineyard.
[Jeffers] "Most of these are people with small acreages. The nice thing about grapes is it doesn't take very many acres to make a pretty good income off it and many people with these 5, 10, 20 acre plots that are common for acreages here can have a 3, 4, 5 acre plot of grapes in there and make a pretty good supplemental income out of it."
[Smith] "It's not only us that need these. The market is there. Missouri has 26 -- probably more than that now -- wineries and they don't have enough grapes in Missouri so there's a shortage of groups."
As odd as it may seem, Nebraska could become a grape state. Winemaker Michael Black had his own doubts when he first saw an ad for a job at James Arthur Vineyards. The doubts went away when he came for a visit.
[Black] "I believe they're doing a fantastic job here as far as maintaining the fields themselves."
Black came from a winery in Washington. Before that, he spent several years in California learning the winemaking craft.
[Black] "We will not have a problem at all making excellent wine."
Fine wine is often associated with a slow pace. It takes time to age and when it is consumed, it's savored not guzzled. But there is also a time of urgency during the process -- harvest.
[Smith] "We look at integrity of the grapes and they're really good right now. They're full. They're full of juice. They're full of sugar. They're ready to go."
As harvest time approaches, workers test samples daily to see how much sugar the grapes contain. The sugar is measured in units called bricks.
"What we do is squeeze the whole berry and get the whole juice on the prism of it and shut it down and when you look through it in the light, you see your brick reading and it's about 17 bricks. "
The sugar content and Ph levels in grapes are two things Kevin Smith considers before harvest.
[Smith]" The third consideration, sometimes the most important, is the integrity of the cluster. With this severe heat that we're in right now with our heat index up above 110, we not only have to worry about the employees being out here but also the grapes because what is happening is the sugar content can actually decrease when you get above 100."
When the time is right, crews descend on the fields picking ripened fields as quickly as they can. They don't have weeks to bring in the crop.
[Smith] "We're not looking at that. We're looking at days. Ideally for the winemaker, I would like the grapes to come in at a cool temperature. This afternoon the grapes are not going to be cool. They're going to be warm. We try to get our harvest done as soon as possible. Typically, harvest stpers at the rise of dawn. It's exciting, it's invigorating because you're looking at all your tonnage go in but then you're also looking at your harvest leaving the fields. Kind of like your kids leaving home for college."
A processing machine removes the stems and some of the juice from the grape clusters. The remaining fruit and skins go into a crass where the rest of the juice is rung out.
[Black] "Every time we press grapes, it's like ringing out a rag. You ring out a rag, you think it is dry, you fluff it up, you ring it again, more water comes out. Grapes are the same thing."
[Ballard] "With all the new grapes coming in, we're going to have some new wines. We got a new winemaker now. We're all anxious to see what he is going to do with these grapes coming in, what kinds of wines he is going to make. Yeah, it's a lot of fun."
The juice is pumped into stainless steel tanks. This is where the winemaker comes in. Michael Black must test the juice for Ph levels and sugar content.
[Black] "What we're after here is a Ph and our total acid to be in balance and then we will sweeten it up to get the proper amount of sugar to achieve somewhere around 12% alcohol."
A few days later, Black is working on a batch of red wine. Part of his job is to help nature along in turning the grapes into wine. That means carefully adding the right amount of yeast.
[Black] "What we have done now is kicked off fermentation on this lot of wine. We buy yeast that has specific strains for particular flavors and aromas. What I'm doing here is I'm mixing the grapes in so the grapes go back down to the bottom where the juice is, allowing maximum skin contact. The color is extracted from the skins contacting the wine grapes or the juice. So by pushing the skins back down into the grapes, it's actually getting them wet and extracting the color from the skins."
Michael Black never really expected to make wine in Nebraska. Now that he is here, his aim is the same as the rest of the folks at James Arthur Vineyards.
[Black] "What we're looking at doing here is actually putting Nebraska on the map as a premium grape growing region making it so people are aware of Nebraska so when they see Nebraska on a bottle of wine, they automatically think of premium wine."