Those who think wineries and pioneers are two things best left on the wild West Coast, take another look at sedate Du Page County.
Just off Ill. Hwy. 19 in Roselle, there is a self-proclaimed pioneer of the grape. His name is Fred Koehler, and he is running a winery that threatens to put Du Page County on the maps of even the most discriminating wine tasters.
Koehler is the wine master of Lynfred Wineries, 15 S. Roselle Rd.
There`s a certain gentility about Lynfred Wineries that may at first disguise the seriousness of this winery, where wine is produced in a cellar. A Tiffany-style lamp shade hangs serenely over a wooden sign announcing Lynfred Wineries. The tiny vineyard at the end of the gravel driveway is just for show, as the winemaker explains. Visitors are invited to taste wine in a room decorated with brass chandeliers and red velvet wallpaper, a place that seems more like a grandmother`s living room than a tasting room.
But quality is for real, and though the winery produces only 50,000 bottles a year, a number that pales next to the output of commercial wineries, it has attracted the interest of those who know about wine.
The winery`s American chardonnay recently stumped judges at a national wine competition in Reno. Lynfred`s wine competed with 300 others mostly from the West Coast. The chardonnay won best of class and tied with a West Coast chardonnay for best of show.
”I could just tell it was a winner when it was bottled,” Koehler said. He made the chardonnay from Napa Valley grapes aged in the oak barrels from Limousin, France, in his cellar. That same week, his plum and peach wines produced from Michigan fruit received awards at the Midwest Wine Seminars Wine Competition.
Koehler has increased the price of the chardonnay to $25 from $13.50 a bottle. He has a limited number of cases left, and though several wine stores in the San Francisco area have asked to buy the chardonnay, he is selling it only to winery patrons.
Commercialism is not for Koehler, whose ancestors began making wine in Frankfurt, Germany, as a hobby. The best way to buy any of the 30 varieties of wine produced by Lynfred is to go there. The wines are not sold in stores, and they are served by only a seafood restaurant in Algonquin, a steak house in Reno and a local country club.
”We don`t have the quantity of wine to offer it to stores or restaurants. Large commercial wineries like Gallo probably spill more wine on the floor than we make. We`re into quality control here,” Koehler said.
Koehler and his wife, Lynn, who died last October, opened Lynfred Wineries in 1977. They bought a landmark building erected in 1912 by a lumber baron as a wedding gift for his daughter.
”We were making too much wine at home in Wood Dale. It was becoming more than just a hobby,” said Koehler, who is manager of Elmhurst Country Club in addition to overseeing the production and sales of Lynfred wines. ”Soon, I think this will become a full-time occupation.”
Koehler buys all the fruit and grapes used in the wine. He sees buying grapes as an advantage over growing them. ”Illinois soil is too rich for grapes. It produces a sweet grape without enough acid. By buying grapes, I have the pick of the best grapes in the country. If I had to use my own grapes,” he said, ”I might have to make wine from a mediocre crop.”
After the fruit and grapes are processed by an automatic crusher outside his cellar, they are put in a large redwood vat where small amounts of yeast and sulfite are added. The wines, even the fruit wines, are then moved to oak barrels where they are aged for six months to two years.
As if it wasn`t unique enough to open a winery in Du Page County, the Koehlers were determined to produce ”only wine that we thought was the highest in quality. It has to be so good that when you open a bottle, you can`t put it down,” Koehler said.
The winery may boast more now about producing seyval blancs, zinfandels, rieslings and cabernets than the dozen or so fruit wines it began producing. The fruit wines, including apple, strawberry, raspberry, rhubarb and elderberry, are held to Koehler`s high standard and have no trace of the sweet, syrupy taste often associated with such wines.
”Many people come in here expecting sweet wine. In fact, they may even want wines that are sweeter than ours. But we make our fruit wines to taste like the fruit,” he said.
”People did think we were crazy to start a winery in the Midwest,” he said. ”On our first trip to California, we had a terrible time convincing people to sell us their grapes, but now every year we`ve got vineyards asking us to buy from them.”
How the industry felt about him wasn`t all Koehler had to worry about. There were also his neighbors. The first time he applied to change the zoning of the area from residential to special use, about 150 residents protested at a village meeting and he was turned down.
”Neighbors thought we would emit fumes and factorylike noises. They just didn`t really know what a winery was,” he said. But after some understanding village board members granted them a permit, the Koehlers made Lynfred welcome in the neighborhood. Now Du Page residents and others kick up their heels at the winery`s annual August Extravaganza, a daylong event featuring such things as grape spitting and grape stomping.
”We`re more than here to stay,” Koehler said, savoring his beloved peach wine from behind the tasting bar. ”In fact, we are the wave of the future. The trend is toward local wineries supported by local populations. The country will be dotted with them pretty soon.”
