Rae Lee Lester was the visionary at Michigan's Wyncroft Winery

  
A Michigan wine family is in mourning, and the industry is now short one very determined and couragous woman who was not afraid to break the rules.

Rae Lee Lester, 56, wife and soul mate for nearly 40 years of Jim Lester, and the business mind and visionary behind the charting of Wyncroft Winery in Buchanan, Mich., passed away Feb. 6, following a four-year battle with cancer.

It was Rae Lee's idea not to have a tasting room. It was her business model to sell only by the case and to a mailing list of customers and fine restaurants. Her research came up with the name Wyncroft, which means "beautiful refuge" in old English.

"I was the one who could see the trees," Jim Lester said this week. "Rae Lee was the one who saw the forest."

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"I've been through grieving before," he said, "but never like this. A large part of each other's soul is in each one of us. I feel like I've been hollowed out."

'Not a good minister's wife'
Jim and Rae Lee were sweethearts since their teen years growing up in the Seattle area, both children of parents that loved gardening, and were faithful members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Yes, they were raised teetotalers.

They met at the church high school, Auburn Academy in Auburn, Wash. "I heard her sing when she was 16, and I said, 'Who is that!'"

They married in 1973, and church was their life in the beginning -- from Jim's theology degree at the Seventh-day Adventist Walla Walla University, to a year running a church in Yakima, to another year as missionary students in Tanzania.

Buried in my reporter's notebooks, I have Rae Lee commenting on that period in their lives: "I was not a good minister's wife," she said. "It was the time of women's liberation." And if you ever met Rae Lee, you knew she was liberated.

The Lesters came to Michigan for Jim to get a master of divinity degree from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, but the experience in Africa kept percolating in their hearts, and in 1976 they left the church -- due to "philosophical differences," as Jim put it. In truth, they were touched by the humanity and culture of the African people, who practiced their own brand of "grace and mercy," Jim once told me.

Sunday dinners with the professor
They moved to South Bend, Ind., where Jim sold office products and Rae Lee was a stay-at-home mom. There they met a Notre Dame chemistry professor, Maurice E. Schwartz, who would change their lives forever. It was his mentoring with a cellar of 20-year-old Bordeaux wines and their Sunday dinners together that initiated the Lesters' journey in food and wine.

"We made our first wine in 1983 -- nine bottles of Pinot Noir in Gallo jugs," Jim said. It was from grapes off the secondary clusters of an experimental planting at Tabor Hill, and it shocked everybody.

Schwartz was amazed, and so were the Lesters. "We knew we were not geniuses. It was the quality of the fruit in southwest Michigan," Jim said. "We realized you could grow wine here."

Schwartz was the one who gave Rae Lee a copy of "Joy of Cooking," which she read from cover-to-cover and used as the basis for her gourmet tables for many years.

In the mid-1980s, Jim and Rae Lee became partners in Michigan's first "boutique" winery, Madron Lake Hills, one of the first Michigan wineries to sell to chic restaurants in Detroit. It produced wine from 1987 to 1991, and went out of business in 1993.

Building Wyncroft
Jim continued to sell office furniture and Rae Lee sold real estate, but they never lost their desire to make wine commercially. By 2000, they had enough investors, including Don Mossey, former longtime chairman of the board of trustees at Hillsdale College, to open Wyncroft, which today has its limited production of Pinot Noirs, Rieslings, Chardonnays and flagship Shou, a Bordeaux-style blend, in fine restaurants across the country -- from Everest in Chicago and Oya in Washington, D.C., to The Lark in West Bloomfield Township, Mich.

Wyncroft will continue its mission of making world-class wines, Lester said. "We are moving on, just like she wanted us to."

Son Eric, 31, is vineyard manager and assistant winemaker. Daughter Hilary, 28, is married to English professor James Wilson at Villanova University in Philadelphia, and they hope to one day relocate to Notre Dame so she can rejoin the winery.

My favorite quip from Rae Lee, which I jotted down in 2006, sums up her spirit: "Our business is crafting little bottles of love that we send out into the world."

The family will celebrate Rae Lee's life on Feb. 28. A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of South Bend, 101 East North Shore Drive, South Bend, IN 46617.

 
A Michigan wine family is in mourning, and the industry is now short one very determined and couragous woman who was not afraid to break the rules.

Rae Lee Lester, 56, wife and soul mate for nearly 40 years of Jim Lester, and the business mind and visionary behind the charting of Wyncroft Winery in Buchanan, Mich., passed away Feb. 6, following a four-year battle with cancer.

It was Rae Lee's idea not to have a tasting room. It was her business model to sell only by the case and to a mailing list of customers and fine restaurants. Her research came up with the name Wyncroft, which means "beautiful refuge" in old English.

"I was the one who could see the trees," Jim Lester said this week. "Rae Lee was the one who saw the forest."

Advertisement
"I've been through grieving before," he said, "but never like this. A large part of each other's soul is in each one of us. I feel like I've been hollowed out."

'Not a good minister's wife'
Jim and Rae Lee were sweethearts since their teen years growing up in the Seattle area, both children of parents that loved gardening, and were faithful members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Yes, they were raised teetotalers.

They met at the church high school, Auburn Academy in Auburn, Wash. "I heard her sing when she was 16, and I said, 'Who is that!'"

They married in 1973, and church was their life in the beginning -- from Jim's theology degree at the Seventh-day Adventist Walla Walla University, to a year running a church in Yakima, to another year as missionary students in Tanzania.

Buried in my reporter's notebooks, I have Rae Lee commenting on that period in their lives: "I was not a good minister's wife," she said. "It was the time of women's liberation." And if you ever met Rae Lee, you knew she was liberated.

The Lesters came to Michigan for Jim to get a master of divinity degree from Andrews University in Berrien Springs, but the experience in Africa kept percolating in their hearts, and in 1976 they left the church -- due to "philosophical differences," as Jim put it. In truth, they were touched by the humanity and culture of the African people, who practiced their own brand of "grace and mercy," Jim once told me.

Sunday dinners with the professor
They moved to South Bend, Ind., where Jim sold office products and Rae Lee was a stay-at-home mom. There they met a Notre Dame chemistry professor, Maurice E. Schwartz, who would change their lives forever. It was his mentoring with a cellar of 20-year-old Bordeaux wines and their Sunday dinners together that initiated the Lesters' journey in food and wine.

"We made our first wine in 1983 -- nine bottles of Pinot Noir in Gallo jugs," Jim said. It was from grapes off the secondary clusters of an experimental planting at Tabor Hill, and it shocked everybody.

Schwartz was amazed, and so were the Lesters. "We knew we were not geniuses. It was the quality of the fruit in southwest Michigan," Jim said. "We realized you could grow wine here."

Schwartz was the one who gave Rae Lee a copy of "Joy of Cooking," which she read from cover-to-cover and used as the basis for her gourmet tables for many years.

In the mid-1980s, Jim and Rae Lee became partners in Michigan's first "boutique" winery, Madron Lake Hills, one of the first Michigan wineries to sell to chic restaurants in Detroit. It produced wine from 1987 to 1991, and went out of business in 1993.

Building Wyncroft
Jim continued to sell office furniture and Rae Lee sold real estate, but they never lost their desire to make wine commercially. By 2000, they had enough investors, including Don Mossey, former longtime chairman of the board of trustees at Hillsdale College, to open Wyncroft, which today has its limited production of Pinot Noirs, Rieslings, Chardonnays and flagship Shou, a Bordeaux-style blend, in fine restaurants across the country -- from Everest in Chicago and Oya in Washington, D.C., to The Lark in West Bloomfield Township, Mich.

Wyncroft will continue its mission of making world-class wines, Lester said. "We are moving on, just like she wanted us to."

Son Eric, 31, is vineyard manager and assistant winemaker. Daughter Hilary, 28, is married to English professor James Wilson at Villanova University in Philadelphia, and they hope to one day relocate to Notre Dame so she can rejoin the winery.

My favorite quip from Rae Lee, which I jotted down in 2006, sums up her spirit: "Our business is crafting little bottles of love that we send out into the world."

The family will celebrate Rae Lee's life on Feb. 28. A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. at First Unitarian Church of South Bend, 101 East North Shore Drive, South Bend, IN 46617.