Wineries popping up on prairie

VOLGA- Jim and Nancy Schade opened their winery with the goal of bringing a touch of Napa Valley to the South Dakota prairie.

Visitors to Schade Vineyard, just a half hour from the homestead where Laura Ingalls Wilder penned many of her childhood stories, can tour the property, take in some Midwest hospitality and sample an array of potent potables made from locally grown grapes, rhubarb, plums, buffaloberries and chokecherries.

"I think the rhubarb wine is most unique to South Dakota," Nancy Schade said.
Schade was the third vineyard to set up shop in South Dakota after the Legislature passed a 1996 law allowing farm wineries. South Dakota's burgeoning industry, now a dozen wineries strong, produced 39,785 gallons in 2006.
About 70 acres of grapes are growing in a state more famous for corn and soybeans, but that number could soon increase. Nearly 140 people showed up for beginning grape-growing workshops offered this spring both east and west of the Missouri River, said Rhoda Burrows, an Extension horticultural specialist at South Dakota State University.
"There's a lot of people that are interested," she said.....for more of the story from zwire

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