On a fine sunny morning in Grafton, John Weber surveys his crops.
“Most of the wines that you’ve had are not man-made as a separate species,” he explains. “They’ll just kind of morph in the wild and we kind of pick them and improve them over time.”
John is tuned into the science behind his vineyard, saying, “Oh I love that nerdy stuff, it’s probably my favorite part.”
Welcome to the Anton Vincent Winery – named for John’s grandfather, who farmed Wisconsin’s land way back in the early 1900s.
“So he’s got some big shoes to fill, if I’m looking up to him as an example,” John says. “He had a cattle farm and also a bunch of children. I don’t have any children, so I can spend my time with the grapes.”
And John has spent a lot of time with those grapes – three years to be exact. When we met up with him in the springtime, he broke down what’s been taking so long.
“The first year, you’re really just letting the plant grow naturally to establish a root system,” he said at the time. “The second year, you’re trying to get the trunk to grow up tall enough, so this trunk was already to this point in year two.”
And in this third year, the hope is to actually make some wine.
“A vineyard is a lot of work and a lot of investment in the first two years for nothing. I mean, you don’t get any fruit for the first three years,” John says.
And if the waiting wasn’t stressful enough, we had a dry summer. John wasn’t sure he’d get any fruit at all.
“There was a good two weeks where I was just going back and forth every single day,” he says.
But the harvest came together in the end – joy that just had to be shared.
“I mean, it’s kind of magical,” John says.
And dozens of volunteers showed up to help lighten the load. Kelsey Whitford works at a wine bar in Wauwatosa.
“So I have a lot of experience tasting wine and drinking wine, of course!” she says. “But not a lot of experience at this level, where it starts out.”
Her picking partner Joyce Caldwell has a connection to the vineyard that’s even more special.
“John is like one of my second sons,” she says.
Joyce says John has a knack for building community.
“He just has a personality that’s open to people, he’s engaging,” she says. “He’s one that can bring people together around what makes us a community, what makes us human.”
“You choose your family and I’ve got a good one out here,” John says.
And today’s gathering is just a glimpse of what Anton Vincent Winery can become. John hosted a lunch for his volunteer harvesters on the site of his future building.
“It’ll be a 4,000-square-foot building. The front section will be kind of the tasting room where people come in and taste wine, buy wine. And the back section is where we’ll produce the wine,” John explains.
“I don’t want to speak on what his plans are, but I can see how there could be so many cool community events here,” Kelsey says.
But those are exactly John’s plans – getting back to his roots and sharing the fruits of his labor with the people he loves.
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