Business Spotlight: Wine by Another Fruit

Just because grapes aren’t growing doesn’t mean there isn’t work at a winery.

And just because that winery may not use grapes traditionally grown in Missouri doesn’t dampen the wine’s flavor.

The wine now being processed at OOVVDA Winery three miles north of Springfield is made from raspberries and strawberries. Roughly 650 pounds of frozen raspberries and 500 pounds of frozen strawberries are thawing in tanks before the juice is pressed out and fermentation begins.

Owner Brian Overboe is even experimenting with a wine made from tomatoes available for Bloody Mary fans in May.

OOVVDA Inc. operates five-year-old OOVVDA Winery, the 46th Missouri winery on record of the state’s 97 listed at www.winecompass.com, according Brian Overboe.

Overboe is a third-generation vintner carrying on a tradition started by his grandfather, who also made wines from available fruit while living in Minnesota.

“When the fruits started getting overripe, he’d make wine,” says Overboe, a senior application engineer, who retired in 2008 after 23 years at Webco Industries Inc. “I was going to have to do something to augment my early retirement.”

Even the five-acre winery’s name is a tribute to Overboe’s heritage. OOVVDA stands for Overboe’s Own Viking Vintners Distinctive Alcohols. Overboe’s family roots can be traced to Norway.

Overboe and his wife, Fran, bought the winery property in late 2003 and began planting red and black raspberries and cherry trees. The raspberry plants cover about two acres, and cherry trees cover another two acres.

By 2005, he began harvesting and bottling wine, and that first year of production netted 350 gallons of wine. In 2010, OOVVDA has bottled 2,000 gallons, or 10,000 bottles, and the raspberries remain the most common fruit OOVVDA uses.

During 2005, about 100 people visited OOVVDA. In 2010, the winery has welcomed 3,000 visitors, of which 50 percent are local and 50 percent are tourists, Overboe says.

“We have people coming in all the time, friends from out of town, relatives from out of town, who have researched things to do in Springfield,” Overboe says.

Those visitor numbers have OOVVDA nearing Overboe’s goal of profitability by the fifth year.

“It’s beginning to minimize impact to my retirement income,” Overboe says, noting that 2010 revenue is projected to reach $70,000, up 40 percent compared to $50,000 in 2009.

Most of OOVVDA’s wines are made from fruits such as apples, raspberries, plums, kiwi, peaches, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, cherries and pears.

While at least 95 percent of the nearly 7,000 U.S. wineries are traditional grape users, Jim Anderson, director of the Missouri Wine and Grape Board, says wine production with other fruits is on the rise.

“We’re seeing a lot of wineries diversifying and trying other products,” Anderson says. “We’ve seen blackberry, elderberry, blueberry. You see this diversity of wines just because of country and regions, and also local products. It’s good any time you have diversity in product like that.”
Overboe suggests food pairings for his fruit wines such as apple wine with turkey, cherry wine with ham and raspberry wine with all meats.

OOVVDA also produces wines using grapes purchased from Tyler Ridge Vineyard, a vineyard four miles away owned by Mike and Kathy Dennis, who plan to open their own winery next summer.

“We buy all the grapes they’ll sell,” Overboe says, adding that he also buys fruit from area orchards including Murphy Orchard in Marionville and Ozark Mountain Orchard in Highlandville. Only about 15 percent of the fruit used to make wine is grown at the winery.

Last year, the third for the Dennises to sell grapes to OOVVDA, the winery bought 7,000 pounds of grapes.

Mike Dennis says he sells 1 ton of grapes to OOVVDA for $1,200 to $1,500.

The Overboes’ winter months are spent making wine from the frozen fruits purchased and working on off-season improvement projects.

“I make wine from May through the end of the year,” Overboe says. “You don’t just make it.

It’s not a one-step operation; it takes five months for any wine to be ready to market. My job is to make wine the way you like it, not to try and tell you you’ve got to like it.”[[In-content Ad]]