Maple River Winery in Casselton

By Nikki Berglund
Staff Writer

This past week I had the pleasure of checking out our state’s own Maple River Winery in downtown Casselton, N.D. I am ashamed, as a person in the wine industry, that I’d never ventured out there before, and the experience was one I would highly recommend to everyone. Along with the winery, Maple River has recently added a distillery and the reviews have been nothing but glowing.

My sister and I had no idea what to expect as we embarked on an afternoon adventure out to Casselton. For some reason we were both picturing walking through orchards or fields or something along those lines. This was not the case. The winery is smack dab in the middle of downtown Casselton! Rather than grow their own produce, the fruit is sourced from a variety of growers throughout North Dakota. According to the website, they used 220,000 pounds of fruit in 2010 alone, which makes sense once you learn that the wines consist of about 95% real fruit.

Though not fulfilling our romantic notions of what a winery should be, the visit exceeded all expectations. Established in 2001, by Greg and Susan Kempel, the Maple River Winery is something to make all of us natives proud!

Walking into the winery you immediately catch a whiff of the fermentation process at work. The tour of the winery itself is short, but not without plenty of helpful and knowledgeable people. Amazingly enough, the entire winery and distillery are run by four full-time employees and two full-time interns. Every bottle is hand filled, corked, foiled, and labeled with about 35-40,000 bottles going out each year!

Next came the fun part—the wine tasting. When we first saw the impressive list of wines, around 20 or so, we were a little nervous about the drive back, but no worries. Although there is a lot to sample, the whole thing only ends up being about a glass total, which works out to be perfect. The flavor profiles are diverse and unique with selections ranging from dry to semi-dry to sweet to semi-sweet.

Luckily with all of these flavors dancing around in your mouth, they do provide you with some pretzels to cleanse your palate.

We started on the dry side of the spectrum with the Elderberry wine, which was unlike anything I had ever tried. I found it quite pleasant.

The chokecherry wine, one of their best sellers, which is considered semi-dry, leaves a little tartness to linger on the tongue.

As for the sweeter wines, it was a treat to try the newly released Strawberry Rhubarb wine.
Along these same lines was the award-winning rhubarb wine which won a silver medal in the 2009 Minnesota Monthly Food and Wine Experience.

Some of the more unique selections included a lilac and a dandelion wine, both of which come
in a 375ML bottle since they are made only from the flower which has a much smaller yield.

Even though I was pleasantly surprised by the lilac wine, it was the dandelion that turned out to be one of my favorites.

There is also an ominous-sounding apple jalapeño wine. At one point this wine was almost discontinued until it turned out that some of our talented local chefs were using it in their recipes and encouraged them to keep it around. using it in their recipes and encouraged them to keep it around. I learned that this is great in pasta sauces and for marinating wild game, and apparently a perfect drink with fajitas or other Mexican foods.

There is only one grape wine in the bunch, the Bumble Bee Red, made with wild North Dakota grapes and honey.

These wines retail across the board at $13.99, including the 375ml bottles, due to the increased labor needed to produce them.

The newest addition to the Maple River family is the distillery, established in December 2009. In a short time, it has already created a buzz around town for its fruit-infused liquors. So far there is a rhubarb and chokecherry vodka with cordials to match and also a wild plum cordial. There are also eight different brandies.

Although you cannot tour the distillery due to certain liquor laws, you can taste some of the wares. We didn’t opt to do this since it was getting a little late in the day.

The HoDo is currently carrying the rhubarb vodka, and features a cocktail called “the Cat’s Meow” consisting of the rhubarb vodka, fresh squeezed orange juice, and candied ginger simple syrup.

You can visit the Maple River Winery and Distillery tasting room Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for a free tour followed by a comprehensive wine tasting.

The winery also hosts the region’s largest Pride of North Dakota store. Along with its own jams, sauces, salsas, etc, you can also purchase a wide variety of other unique North Dakota products such as Emu Oil lotion and North Dakota dirt soap(!?).

Whether you think you would enjoy fruit wines or not this is a great place to visit yourself or to treat your friends and family to. Special thanks goes to Sara Lesnau, the winery’s most enthusiastic intern, who brought this place to my attention and encouraged my long-overdue visit.

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If You Go

What: Maple River Winery
Where: 628 Front St, Casselton
When: Mon-Sat 10am-5pm
Info: 701.347.5900