Uncorking Minnesota's wine market

Go to Mark Hedin's White Rabbit Vineyards and Winery in Andover and you can sample a NuVo red, made from Minnesota Marquette grapes. Or you can sip a rhubarb wine, made from Hedin's own crop grown out back between trellises of grapes and a purple-stemmed tangle of raspberry canes.

For the most part, however, to taste Hedin's wines, you'll have to go to the source.

Hedin and other Minnesota farm-vintners have been frustrated in their attempts to get their wines off the farm. A key provision has been removed from a bill in the State Legislature that would have allowed small vintners to hold tastings at commercial locations, such as jewelry stores and art gallery openings.

"We're up against the misconception that wine isn't made in Minnesota, as an industry, and that the wine is bad," said Leon Ohman, owner of Goose Lake Farm and Winery in Elk River.

"We need to have the opportunity to go to these off-site tastings promoting a Minnesota product," Ohman said. "That would help our industry tremendously."

In the House, the bill sponsored by Rep. Tom Hackbarth, R-Cedar, may be attached to the omnibus liquor bill and could come to a vote in the next few weeks. It still would remove some legal and financial restrictions on wineries producing less than 50,000 gallons a year.

In the Senate, a similar provision, sponsored by Sen. Bill Ingebrigtsen, R-Alexandria, is awaiting a hearing in the Public Safety Committee.

Finding a compromise

Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association Executive Director Frank Ball has spoken out against the off-site tasting provision, saying his organization, representing alcoholic beverage distributors, opposes any measure that would allow small vintners to operate without the regulations and restrictions that have long governed the rest of the industry.

"The liquor industry is the most highly regulated industry in the United States," he said. "We want to help, but they can't take it out and do things with this alcohol that we can't do."