Open: Year Round

In the fall of 2006, I (Ashley, the voice of this website) was a single, condo-living uptown girl, frequenting happy hour in 4-inch heels, and hanging with my girlfriends by Lake Calhoun.  Our story started when I met Aaron at an Oktoberfest tent party.  I saw him wearing his deerskin lederhosen and I was hooked.  A native Wisconsin farmboy, Aaron moved to Minneapolis to work in the corporate world after college, while still continuing the wine-making hobby he picked up in college on the side.  He told me on our first date that his long-time dream was to start a vineyard and winery.  His passion and ambition about this venture was contagious and I bought into the dream too...enough to be willing to trade in a few pairs of my peep-toe pumps for rubber boots.  Next thing I knew, we bought 12.5 acres with a little farm house just west of the Twin Cities in Waconia, got married, adopted two brother/sister spirited Great Danes, planted 4000 grapevines, welcomed our first baby (a boy) the beginning of 2011, and then our baby girl, the fall of 2012.  In July 2013, we fulfilled our dream of opening the winery and tasting room.  We work full-time jobs in addition to keeping up with the vineyard, starting and raising our family, working on an addition to our little farmhouse, and building our new winery building and tasting room (which was completed in October 2014).  And as if that weren't enough, we thought, why not add a brewery to the mix too? A little too fitting considering how we met.  We are excited to be Minnesota's First Winery & Brewery!  Our life is very full, very busy, and very humorous.  Some might call us crazy trying to do this all concurrently. We like to call it "living the dream."