Jeff Wilde Prairie Winery

Tyler Bertsch: All right, Jeff. So I guess to start, how did you first get into growing grapes? Explain where you're located and what varieties you grow, and that'll give us a good baseline.

Jeff Wilde: Well, we went ahead and just planted a few vines back in 1995, not knowing if they were going to survive. We went down to the local nursery, and Valiant grapes were what they had, so that's what we planted. We added a few more the next year and then so on. Then in 2000, we started working on getting our winery permit, probably in 2000. And then so then in—as that was going on, I don't know the dates exactly—but as that was going on, we ended up planting a half-acre of Seyval Blanc. That was in 2002. In 2004, we gave up on them because they die off every winter. And so then we replanted with some Marquettes, Briannas. And then we added to the vineyard with an additional couple hundred vines of Frontenac. And that was in 2003. In 2004, we planted another acre of vines and that was split pretty much half and half between Lacrescent and Frontenac. So we've always enjoyed going to wineries, vineyards and such back when we were younger. So once we found out we could get the grapes to grow, survive—the ones that did survive—we just kind of went from there. We had our winery permit in 2004, and so we've just kind of been at it ever since.

Tyler Bertsch: Did those varieties all—I guess which varieties didn't make it or have real winter die-back at your location? I know Seyval Blanc, I figured that one wasn't going to make it. But are the rest of them hardy? You don't have significant die-back?

Jeff Wilde: No, they all seem to handle it pretty well. Marquette maybe is a little touchy.

Tyler Bertsch: How about your Brianna? Was that pretty solid?

Jeff Wilde: They've been one of our better varieties. This year we had maybe a little bit smaller crop, but it's always been pretty healthy.

Tyler Bertsch: You said you had La Crescent and Frontenac, Marquette. Do you think the Marquette maybe isn't as cold hardy as the other ones, or do you think it's another issue that maybe is taking them out?

Jeff Wilde: Yeah, no, it's hard to know. We do have to go back in every year or generally have had about maybe 5% die-off. That might be a little high normally, but every year I maybe could replace 50 of them that had died off out of our close to 2,000.

Tyler Bertsch: Of the Marquette, you have about 2,000 Marquette?

Jeff Wilde: No, just in everything in general. Yeah. And then we also do have we have another couple hundred Valiant and about 150 Marechal Foch.

Tyler Bertsch: Do Marechal Foch do okay?

Jeff Wilde: They do good, yeah. They're not as hardy as everything else, but like I said, we'll have a little die-off now and then, but for the most part, they've hung in there pretty good.

Tyler Bertsch: But what soil type do you have generally?

Jeff Wilde: It's former cropland, so it's black dirt and then predominantly clay.

Tyler Bertsch: Oh yeah. Do you have issues with over-fertility on them since it is clay and really black and nutritious? Do they get overly bushy on some of them more so than you'd think?

Jeff Wilde: Originally, yes. Over the years though, for the most part, that's slowed down. But I used to grow alfalfa where the vineyard is, so it had plenty of nitrogen. So they got going a little too quick.

Tyler Bertsch: What year do you think they kind of started to slow down a little bit? You feel like they started to normalize?

Jeff Wilde: Well, probably somewhere around the seventh year.

Tyler Bertsch: Do you feel like some of these have aged more poorly than others? Like if you had to put money on, "Hey, I think this vine could live with standard care another 10, 20 years," which ones do you think would do better, or are there some you feel like they just get kind of shotty over 20, 30 years?

Jeff Wilde: Yeah, that's one of my questions is what the longevity is supposed to be. We've had some issues with some of the older Frontenacs from the 2004 planting. And I'm not sure what's brought it on, if it's reached the end of its life. The trunks on them are maybe three-inch diameter. I don't know if it's just that they've reached the end of their life or they took a herbicide spray that I had seven years ago, quite hard. So it's hard for me to know for sure what all is going on. And then the lack of moisture we've had the last four years. So I think my assumption on the Frontenac was it was maybe a lack of moisture. The trunks were splitting, and I don't know if that's a sign of lack of moisture or not, but the ones I ended up removing had split trunks.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. Did you notice any other of the varieties you stated that seem to do better in the drought? Like, could you tell any difference?

Jeff Wilde: The Valiant seemed to do fine with the lack of moisture.

Tyler Bertsch: How's your Brianna do?

Jeff Wilde: The Briannas, I didn't notice any issues with them.

Tyler Bertsch: Okay. The reason I bring it up is I hear Brianna from everybody does the best in the drought. That's why. But not a lot of people in the other states grow Valiant, so that's a good thing to know. That's mainly a Dakota thing. But definitely Brianna seems to be a better one for that.

Jeff Wilde: And the Marechal Foch has been—it doesn't always have a big crop, but the plants are nice and healthy and haven't had a lot of issues with those. So it's hard for me to know what all is going on with—like I said—2019 we got hit with a chemical called Resicore. It's a replacement for Roundup. So they spray it on Roundup Ready corn, and it would kill those weeds that Roundup does not.

Tyler Bertsch: How far was it away that hit you? Was it point-blank range?

Jeff Wilde: Pretty much right across the road. So it's maybe 250 feet.

Tyler Bertsch: Oh man. Did you notice in—and then we can kind of get into the recent one, but did you notice at that time a difference in how the vines responded based on the variety or maybe the age?

Jeff Wilde: Yeah, the Frontenacs took it hard. I use a double Kniffin system, so on a number of them, the upper canes died off. The lower ones handled it pretty well, but on a lot of the vines I went in and basically right at the lower wire—just above the lower wire—I ended up cutting them. And then trying to retrain stuff to go back out.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah.

Jeff Wilde: And that happened a year or two after the Resicore spray. The La Crescent didn't get much of that spray. They were sheltered by a little row of trees. I have from that spray, so they didn't get that. The Valiants took it hard on that spray. Brianna seemed to have taken it well. Our biggest variety is the Frontenac, so when that gets hit, you notice that.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah, where were the Brianna and the Valiant in relation to the proximity of the spray? Was it more due to the Frontenac being closer to getting hit, or was it just they're all kind of within equal or somewhat equal distance to where you think it was a variety difference?

Jeff Wilde: I believe it was a variety difference. Because, like I said, we have two acres going north and south, and the spray was coming from the south and went all the way through. Of course, the ones closer probably took a little more of the herbicide, but it went all the way through the vineyard.

Tyler Bertsch: Oh, gotcha. How'd the Marquette do? Do you remember?

Jeff Wilde: They suffered some. You know, it's like I mentioned before, I've kind of had trouble with the Marquettes. So they—for whatever reason—there always seems to be something going on with them.

Tyler Bertsch:  Well that's a good transition into the recent events? Maybe kind of explain what happened. Do you know what you got hit with herbicide recently? Was it this spring you got hit?

Jeff Wilde: Yeah, it was the first week of June. The vines were right in their fruit set stage so they had bloomed. And that pretty much—you could see the day after the spray—that where the clusters were dying off. And then the ones that didn't die off, a lot of them—I've been picking them—but they're like pinhead size berries.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah.

Jeff Wilde: But then you go 10 plants down and they look great. So it just kind of hit sporadically. I think when we went through right after the spray, we noticed that like I said some of them were right in that development stage and others were beyond it. The ones that were beyond it came out of it fine, at least the clusters did. So it's—and it was a 2,4-D product. It's called Enlist. E-N-L-I-S-T.

Tyler Bertsch: Yep.

Jeff Wilde: And then it had along with that another one, Liberty, which is another broadleaf that's similar to Roundup I guess along those lines.

Tyler Bertsch: Well Liberty is more of a contact spray, so that wouldn't have been what hit you because that's like a flamethrower basically. You know what I mean? So it's like throwing acid on something, but it's not systemic. The problem was probably that 2,4-D and I'm surprised if it was Enlist. It had to be your neighbor right next to you, right? Because that doesn't travel super far, but I could be wrong.

Jeff Wilde: No, it came from the same field as the Resicore did. Yeah. So it was droplets, it wasn't vapor drift. Well, it's hard to know. The operator, his boom was set at like three feet off the ground. He said that the wind speed was seven, but I'm confident that it was more than 10. You know, it's hard to know where they get their wind speed from, if it's 20 miles away or half a mile away. So their wind speed can vary based on where it's coming from. And the Enlist—reading up on the Enlist—it says no matter what the wind speed is, don't spray if there's a susceptible crop nearby. Grapes, tomatoes, whatever, don't spray. And the operator thought if it was under 15 miles an hour he was safe, but as it turned out he shouldn't have been spraying with the wind coming our way no matter what it was.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah, I bet. Did you go through the Department of Ag or how'd you handle it?

Jeff Wilde: Right, through the Department of Ag. Like I say, I got their test results back about three weeks ago. I just followed up with them this morning to find out if they had finished their review of the incident, and they have not yet. But yeah, no, they went through quite a few samples, took them down to the lab and the numbers came back quite high.

Tyler Bertsch: How quick do you have to contact them? Is it—sometimes it's like for me, I get hit with vapor from pretty far away and it's 2,4-D, and it seems like it takes a week or two before I really see it and I didn't know if they had like a deadline or anything.

Jeff Wilde: I could smell it that afternoon.

Tyler Bertsch: Oh man, that had to be pretty strong.

Jeff Wilde: And like I said, even that afternoon they started showing a little bit of fatigue. The next day they were definitely having some issues. But I did some deep watering on them. The vines came back quite nice and externally—you might know more about it—2,4-D acts like a steroid on things it hits. So I had excessive growth on the foliage. But what I've heard is that since the plants went through all that stress with all the extra growth, if we have a tough winter, there's a chance they may not come out of it because they've burned up all their reserves. But we'll see I guess.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah, let's hope it's not a brutal winter. If you do see a lot of damage or whatever, let me know because that's a good data point: if you have a brutal winter or a mild winter and what kind of happened. But they might be okay. Frontenac, I feel like, can be kind of a problem child but it also is really resilient. I feel like it's kind of a weed. It's just I don't know if it's because of its half riparia, and so I think it just used to taking that kind of battering and just coming back and coming back. It might not be the prettiest or most consistent vine, but they're pretty tough.

Jeff Wilde: Yeah, like I said, after that first incident I had to do a lot of cut-back on them, but most of them I was able to go back to our double Kniffin system, and they came through that pretty well.

Tyler Bertsch: Gotcha. What were the varieties—how did they handle that 2,4-D and Liberty? Was it different than the Resicore?

Jeff Wilde: They all looked pretty sick. I guess I never went back and compared the two on what I saw this last time around. On the first instance, everything that got hit by it showed signs. It wasn't like a 2,4-D—how you spot that damage—but they all took it fairly hard. But they didn't bounce back as quickly as they did off this last one. So they looked pretty sad for the next couple of years, even right after. They never really did come back to where they should have been until 2021; 2022 was when I started getting a decent crop again out of them.

Tyler Bertsch: Did you harvest this year? Did you have enough to harvest on these different varieties?

Jeff Wilde: Yep, I'm in the middle of that now, yes.

Tyler Bertsch: Do you notice just ballpark it—it doesn't have to be exact—but kind of a general how bad? How much did it affect harvest I guess that you can tell?

Jeff Wilde: Yeah, it's hard to just judge what you're seeing on one instance when there could be a number of different things. The Brianna crop just didn't have the clusters that normally—they were nice and healthy and full clusters, but just not the same numbers as they normally would. Whereas the Frontenac, like I said before, you could definitely tell where the clusters got affected by the spray. I went through yesterday, did some picking, and I had about 10-15 vines in a row that had hardly anything on them. The stems were there, but there were no berries or hardly any berries.

Tyler Bertsch: What was your pound difference from Brianna from this year to, say, last year? Like, I guess what percentage drop-off do you think it was weight-wise?

Jeff Wilde: Let me look at all that stuff. The Brianna this year had right about 900 pounds. And that's four rows of 36 plants, so less than 150, I guess. So 900 pounds this year, and last year was 1,600 pounds. So it's down like 40%. And Brianna is pretty consistent in numbers in the last four years, right in that 1,600 pounds, whereas this last year was down to 900. The Frontenacs, even though I had a lot of dead clusters or whatever you want to call them, I had other vines that were almost overly aggressive in their fruit. So kind of balances out a little bit for some reason. But you know, it's frustrating because you do all kinds of work to try to keep everything going as best as you can, and then all of a sudden, one morning somebody sprays their field and that goes that.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah, and you can't control it. That's what makes it so damn frustrating.

Jeff Wilde: No. Yeah, we're just seeing the last week or two the beetles are active. So I've been having to go through and try to get some spray on them to fight them off until I'm ready to pick.

Tyler Bertsch: Do you have the ladybug Asian beetles, the ones that smell, the orange ones? Do you get those kind of around harvest, or is it a problem for you, or is it just kind of they come later?

Jeff Wilde: No, it's a problem. My goal is to be done picking before they harvest the soybeans. With the lack of moisture, the soybeans around here are not very healthy. So the Asian lady beetles have been leaving the soybeans and finding some nice sweet grapes to chew on. So along with all the other flies and moths and bees and every critter, every bug.

Tyler Bertsch: Every critter, every bug. Right. Yeah, it's a challenge.

Jeff Wilde: It is, yeah.

Tyler Bertsch: How did your Marquette and Valiant take the recent spray? Did they—were you able to get a normal harvest, or was it down significantly more than the Brianna, or what do you think?

Jeff Wilde: Well, not all—the majority of the Valiant was not hit by this recent development. Those were back in a couple of other little patches that were beyond where the spray went through. Last year Marquette yield was 280 pounds; this

Jeff Wilde: ...year it was 360, so it was actually 20% higher.

Tyler Bertsch: Gotcha. I wonder if it has to deal with where you're at on fruit set exactly when it hit. How far along they are in the bloom stage.

Jeff Wilde: Right. Maybe Marquette was later or before or after, it makes you wonder. I'm pretty sure they were before the incident. The Foch, they were kind of in the middle when they got hit, but they came out of it pretty well as far as the crop. Frontenac was hit the hardest.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. Did you use any kind of fertilizers or anything like that after they got hit or just kind of water them?

Jeff Wilde: No, just water. I fertilized them two or three years ago. I didn't actually start watering them because of the spray; it was because of the lack of moisture. From June to June we've had three inches of rain and no snow. So they were struggling. I saw that in those older Frontenacs that I thought were having issues with it, so I started doing some deep watering on them where I had never done that before.

Tyler Bertsch: Especially with that fertile of a soil and it's clay. I don't water mine ever really, but it's been really dry, you're right. It's been terribly dry. When you normally fertilize, just a general fertilization, do you just use nitrogen or do you use 10-10-10 or what kind of fertilizer do you use?

Jeff Wilde: No, I have an agronomist come out, take samples, and then come back with recommendations. Some nitrogen, some potassium, some magnesium- probably four different items that they apply.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah, gotcha. What do you do for bird mitigation? Do you net, or do you use any other kind of sprays or anything?

Jeff Wilde: No, I net. One year I tried a product that's heavily advertised; it's called Bird Be Gone, and the birds enjoyed that. It didn't slow them down at all and that was even with netting on. It depends on the amount of foliage. The birds, with the way our system that we use—with grapes on the upper wire—the birds will sit on the top of the netting and reach in and grab grapes. That's why I tried this other stuff to see if that would help with that, and it did not. So it's all netting. For the most part I do okay, but I do see a little bit of damage from the birds. This year, not so bad, but generally, it's nice to have a couple of hawks live in the area, so that helps keep the birds away.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. What about deer?

Jeff Wilde: Not so much lately. The last few years, Game, Fish and Parks has been noticing quite a drop in the number of deer in the area. There's some disease that they're getting. But as a rule, they usually only eat the vines when they're in that first budding-out stage. They don't like the older growth, so they like the nice young fresh stuff.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah, it seems like to me I get hit in the spring with the deer real bad. They always want to munch on everything, and now, like this time of year, they kind of leave it all alone.

Jeff Wilde: Right. Right.

Tyler Bertsch: What do you do for weed control? Do you just mow or do you spray underneath the grapes or both?

Jeff Wilde: Both. This year I went through most of them two or three times with a weed eater. Early on I hit it with Liberty underneath the rows. But then I'd weed-eat, and then before I put the netting on, I went through with Liberty again. But there are so many weeds now that are resistant to those things that once I put my netting on I can't mow because I do a canopy-type netting. So the netting is maybe three, four feet out staked down to the ground, so I can't get through there and mow without ripping everything up. So once I put the netting on, there's no mowing done just because of the way my setup is, I guess.

Tyler Bertsch: With that, I was going to ask, over the years you've been doing this now for 20-some years, what are some things you maybe would have done differently if you were starting on day one? If you had to start all over again? Would you pick any different varieties or would you do different trellis setups? What would you do differently?

Jeff Wilde: Well, like they always taught us at the conference, you want the right soil type, so that would be one thing, which is not what we did. We just planted our vineyard where we lived. The double Kniffin system works well for the Foch and the Valiant, definitely not so good for Lacrescent and Frontenac. So that might be a change there as far as going to a different system for them. The Frontenacs like to grow straight up predominantly, and so do the La Crescents, so they're ideal for one of the other systems where your grapes are predominantly down low rather than on ours, where we've got grapes low and high. But it's a lot more work to put in the different systems than what we put in, so that had some effect on our mindset; just wanted to get going, get at it. Sometimes you get burned when you do that.

Tyler Bertsch: Yeah. Did you do wood posts or did you do metal? And I'm assuming you all hand harvest, right?

Jeff Wilde: Right. Yep. No, a little bit of both. I might have a wood post, then a metal post, and stagger them going down the rows. Plants are seven feet apart in the rows. So I have a post every 15 or 20 feet.

Tyler Bertsch: Would you have spaced them out a little more had you known, or do you think seven feet is pretty good?

Jeff Wilde: No, I think seven feet is kind of right in what they recommend, right in the middle. Some people say five feet, others say 10 feet. At least that's what I've seen. And so I just kind of picked something in the middle and went with that. My rows are about 11 feet apart, so I can get through there with a pickup or something large.

Tyler Bertsch: Pretty good drainage then. Like air in and out. Have you had any issues with fungal diseases on any of them?

Jeff Wilde: Definitely, there are years where the powdery and downy mildews and those types of things are an issue. I don't have any soil issues that I know of.

Tyler Bertsch: Which varieties get hit with the downy mildew the most, do you think?

Jeff Wilde: For sure the Valiants do. The Marquettes, Frontenacs, they'll get a little bit, but for us, the Valiants are the ones we have to keep a close eye on because once it gets started in there, the berries are so tight in the clusters that you can't get in once it gets going. This year I haven't had a lot of Phylloxera, a small amount. I did early on when I saw it showing up, I did some spraying for it.

Tyler Bertsch: What do you spray for it?

Jeff Wilde: I sprayed Movento. Yeah, you can just get it online. I have a company that I go through, I guess, but just Google Movento and it'll give you different places you can find it. It is expensive.

Tyler Bertsch: Did you have a year where you just got smoked with Phylloxera and did it come back the next year or do you feel like if I left it alone would I get smoked again next year or do you think it's kind of more environmental where it just kind of comes and goes?

Jeff Wilde: No, I think there's a good chance you'd get hit again hard. I think this year for us, the lack of moisture had something to do with it. They weren't nearly as active as they have been in the past.

Tyler Bertsch: Did your Brianna ever get hit with it much? The reason I ask is that is Labrusca species more so, and the Marquette, Frontenac, Lacrescent- those are all riparia. So that's why I kind of wondered if there was any species differentiation in there.

Jeff Wilde: No, the Marquettes get it, the Frontenacs. Brianna not so much. The Valiants can get it. Lacrescent, I haven't really had an issue with them. I had some fungus, I guess, a number of years ago when the clusters were starting to ripen, and I got some fungus in there that turned the leaves white, basically, or pale. Next year they had a lot of die-back on them. I'm not sure if that's what that was or not, but I haven't seen it since then. It wasn't the normal powdery mildew that I see on other spots. It was something else. And I never did look up what it actually was. I harvested my crop, and then next year they had quite a bit of die-back on them.

Tyler Bertsch: Gotcha. All right, well, I got no more questions unless you got anything you can think of that might be valuable to people, lessons you learned or tidbits or anything you can think of that is unique.

Jeff Wilde: Not off the top of my head. But I'll be sure to let you know, send you a note if something pops up.

Tyler Bertsch: All right. Thanks for the conversation.

Jeff Wilde: Okay. It was nice speaking with you.